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Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

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Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#71

Post by Semaphor »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
fishgoesblub wrote: post #21

I love XMPP and am hopeful for its future with what the teams behind Movim[0], and Fluux[1] are doing. It was a tremendous shame that Matrix didn't improve upon XMPP and instead did their own thing. I continuously wonder what would the XMPP ecosystem look like, if the millions of dollars of funding Matrix initially had (what a waste) went to XMPP instead? [0]: https://movim.eu/ [1]: https://github.com/processone/fluu…

It's because the xmpp standard is absolutely brutal. I've tried to stand up a server and the amount of configuration I had to do just to get off the ground was absolute nonsense. It's sort of the Apache of chat protocols and that's not a compliment.

> I've tried to stand up a server and the amount of configuration I had to do

I run my own server for 2 people. Using Prosody [0] took some config but wasn’t that hard. Easier than installing Arch, harder than installing Windows ;)

Nowadays, there is also Snikket [1] by the Prosody maintainer, which is essentially an opinionated all-in-one configuration setup based on Prosody, barely any config needed.

[0]: https://prosody.im/

[1]: https://snikket.org/

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#72

Post by justsomehnguy »

ezst wrote: post #53
grumbel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how am I going to find the valid friend requests under the hundreds of spam ones? I used it just like a chat version of public email, for bug reports and such, so I don't know who is going to message me beforehand.

You can mediate friends requests by having servers generate an invite link, you can generate QR codes your friend can scan on a side channel, ... There are ways

Or you can just show the welcome message from a new contact, just like anyone else does. Adding a 2nd factor here is the reason XMPP suck.

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#73

Post by upofadown »

troupo wrote: post #54
1970-01-01 wrote: post #17

XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. And it is champion by default, which is kind of the point here. All other popular systems and servers went defunct; it will never be taken over by BigCo and left to rot. Here's to 25 more years!

> XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. No. It doesn't "just work". It very much depends on which subset of the XEPs all the parties in the chain support. > All other popular systems and servers went defunct; Well, in this sense it does just work :)

You can always send and receive messages no matter what XEPs are supported. Not that that is a problem in practice. There is a fairly well established subset of XEPs that everyone supports.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0479.html

https://compliance.conversations.im/

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#74

Post by justsomehnguy »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #17

XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. And it is champion by default, which is kind of the point here. All other popular systems and servers went defunct; it will never be taken over by BigCo and left to rot. Here's to 25 more years!

> XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works.

Except no.

You can't even have a conversation between Conversations and Fluux because OMEMO is enabled by default in Conversations and there is just no OMEMO support in Fluux - despite it being actually modern one.

Gajim works but Pidgin doesn't even show "I sent you an OMEMO encrypted message but your client doesn’t seem to support that". Just like images, which is a first party in Telegram and even WhatsApp.

So much for 'just works'.

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#75

Post by dhc02 »

pavo-etc wrote: post #60

I have recently picked up XMPP as my agent communication layer, and its worked great. Each pi agent is given an account and wrapped in an XMPP client[0] that lets it speak to me and other agents when needed. This has worked well since I can spin up new accounts on demand and I can use existing server software (ejabberd, perfect) and clients (Fluux, great; Conversations, okay). I've had to make a few custom modificati…

This is really neat. I've recently been watching people use custom pi harnesses and thinking of jumping in, but I was dreaming of a way to do essentially what pi-msg does so that I could drive it remotely in a more full-featured way. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#77

Post by tredre3 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #68
fishgoesblub wrote: post #21

I love XMPP and am hopeful for its future with what the teams behind Movim[0], and Fluux[1] are doing. It was a tremendous shame that Matrix didn't improve upon XMPP and instead did their own thing. I continuously wonder what would the XMPP ecosystem look like, if the millions of dollars of funding Matrix initially had (what a waste) went to XMPP instead? [0]: https://movim.eu/ [1]: https://github.com/processone/fluu…

It's because the xmpp standard is absolutely brutal. I've tried to stand up a server and the amount of configuration I had to do just to get off the ground was absolute nonsense. It's sort of the Apache of chat protocols and that's not a compliment.

Counter point: I ran prosody for years and changed almost nothing to the defaults.

Just like with Apache, all you need is a sane default configuration that covers the most common use cases, and I think modern XMPP servers offer that.

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#79

Post by tredre3 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #69
PunchyHamster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense. It's old, crufty mix of extensions, which nobody actually wants to be that modular for a chat client, because that just gets you into mess of what server/client supports

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you want it to work? You should have installed the 'it actually works' modules." Working with XMPP gave me a whole new appreciation for why people keep inventing their own chat protocols. I don't think this is an unsalvageable situation, but the protocol is desperately in need of an "XMPP: the Good Parts" doc.

> the protocol is desperately in need of an "XMPP: the Good Parts" doc.

It exists! https://docs.modernxmpp.org/

Re: Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

#80

Post by F3nd0 »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #74
1970-01-01 wrote: post #17

XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. And it is champion by default, which is kind of the point here. All other popular systems and servers went defunct; it will never be taken over by BigCo and left to rot. Here's to 25 more years!

> XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. Except no. You can't even have a conversation between Conversations and Fluux because OMEMO is enabled by default in Conversations and there is just no OMEMO support in Fluux - despite it being actually modern one. Gajim works but Pidgin doesn't even show "I sent you an OMEMO encrypted message but your client doesn’t seem to support that". Just like images, which is a f…

And of course most XMPP clients which support OMEMO only support an old version of it, which is incompatible with the new OMEMO version, currently only supported by KDE’s own client—Kaidan. That also happens to be the only desktop client I feel like I’d actually enjoy using (if only I could use it to talk with people not using Kaidan).
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