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XMPP works – 1 July 2020

xmpp.org

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Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#41

Post by jimktrains2 »

gsich wrote: post #33
im3w1l wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though it's widely recognized as impossible for individuals to self-host, at least there are many available providers, and any medium+ size organization can self-host. Things could be better but they could be worse too.

By whom? The crowd on HN? Selfhosting email is obviously doable. Selfhosting does not imply residential IP.

It's not reliable. Large providers will black hole you and you don't know until someone says they never got an email. Even following all the rules you get hit and with Google, Microsoft, &c it's impossible to get to anyone to resolve the issue once you know about it. Even for small companies this is a nightmare.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#43

Post by gsich »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #41
gsich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By whom? The crowd on HN? Selfhosting email is obviously doable. Selfhosting does not imply residential IP.

It's not reliable. Large providers will black hole you and you don't know until someone says they never got an email. Even following all the rules you get hit and with Google, Microsoft, &c it's impossible to get to anyone to resolve the issue once you know about it. Even for small companies this is a nightmare.

Haven't have any issues. "You can't self host email" is the bad HN meme.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#44

Post by [deleted] »

samoa42 wrote: post #37
icedchai wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on an XMPP client for a while, many years ago, for a proprietary chat system that used ejabberd as a back end. The protocol is/was awful. On a related note, AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM. Everyone in the late 90's, early 2000's was on it.

> AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM afaik AIM was a derivative of ICQ, but yea those were the good times. today i know more ppl that won't touch whatsapp then there were w/o icq numbers back than, probably the closest we've got to a ubiquitous instant messanging. i still remember my icq# althou i havent used it in like 15y and have burned throu like five phone numbers since.

[deleted]

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#45

Post by the8472 »

GuardLlama wrote: post #6

XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse: 1. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you…

> 2. If you do (or don't!) run your own server, how do the end users find a halfway decent application on their fancy iPhone 18 Pro++ that supports push notifications?

That's a problem with the iphone, not xmpp. Apple restricts what you can do with your hardware and offers no other options than their push notification approach. You cannot blame existing protocols for apple's distributed-software-hostile whims of the day. Blame apple for only offering an anemic subset of the internet.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#47

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

MattJ100 wrote: post #34
GuardLlama wrote: post #6

XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse: 1. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you…

This is the gap Snikket[1] is aiming to fill. A preconfigured XMPP server that you can safely and easily run yourself (it's invite-based registration), with "blessed" apps provided for each platform that are guaranteed to be maintained to a common standard. It's early days and there's still some way to go, but the current release (server + Android client) is receiving excellent feedback from those using it. The next…

So you took Conversations, renamed them, and call it a day, focusing next on iOS? Then I've got rather bad news for you. You'll need to be focusing for a long, long time.

It took us 'only' 2.5 years to build a good XMPP client for iOS (which we plan to release this month, finally), and while building it we had to break down XMPP down almost to a core and replace most of its components with better thought through solutions that account for real life scenarios.

We had to throw away MUC garbage, do push notifications differently, make different video calling, etc. - and that requires modifications on the server-side. Now it works acceptably, just some rather little quirks/bugs remain. It is no coincidence that not one released XMPP client today can be called 'working'.

However, to make it work _really_ great we'll have to do 'break' XMPP even further and rethink how presences work. Currently, they are a major pain.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#48

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

icedchai wrote: post #16
jayd16 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used it professionally it was always a pain. XMPP was very chatty for mobile. Multi user chat and chat history was a pain to get working. Clustering was also dark magic. This was Ejabberd which was considered the best option at the time. At the time, it felt like every feature was stuck in beta/RFC mode with very poor cross server compatibility. How is a federated protocol supposed to work like that? I think X…

I worked on an XMPP client for a while, many years ago, for a proprietary chat system that used ejabberd as a back end. The protocol is/was awful. On a related note, AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM. Everyone in the late 90's, early 2000's was on it.

Not all parts of the protocol are awful. Many stupid extensions (XEPs) sure are bad, chiefly, MUCs.

However, this breaking down of the protocol to small components is the strength of the protocol, not a weakness.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#49

Post by rakoo »

gspr wrote: post #32
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email seems like such an anachronism. All the big providers manage to get along with each other. At least we have some solace [1] in that, unlike chat and Git, it's fucking impossible to self-host e-mail. [1] This part is the joke.

> Email seems like such an anachronism. All the big providers manage to get along with each other. Think of the value of this! Anyone, anywhere, using whatever client they choose, can send a basic message to anyone and expect it to arrive and be taken seriously. Imagine if IM had worked the same way! I know XMPP is a shitstorm, but one can dream. Not until I left academia and started working for MegaCorp that mandate…

IM can work the same way, by tacking it on top of email: https://delta.chat/en/

(Bonus: encryption is done automatically for you, by default)

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