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Decentralizing Trillian

blog.trillian.im

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Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#11

Post by ndr »

acomar wrote: post #8

I must be missing something, because it sounds like they're creating one more IM protocol and claiming it will solve protocol fragmentation. If they want an open and federated protocol, why not back XMPP?

"IMPP is a binary protocol that works by establishing a TCP connection to an IMPP server, authenticating with that server, and then exchanging messages with that server in order to reach other clients. Over the years, best efforts have been made to keep the protocol flow reasonably compatible with XMPP with the long term idea of enabling federation between IMPP and XMPP servers. As such, the general flow for establishing an IMPP session somewhat mirrors that of XMPP: [...]"

Source: https://www.trillian.im/impp/

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#12

Post by lambda »

acomar wrote: post #8

I must be missing something, because it sounds like they're creating one more IM protocol and claiming it will solve protocol fragmentation. If they want an open and federated protocol, why not back XMPP?

I was wondering this myself.

At least one point in its favor is that it's smaller and lighter weight than XMPP. XMPP feels fairly over-engineered, and then you need to trawl through a huge pile of extensions to figure out which ones you will actually need to implement for interoperability.

However, this does bring to mind the old xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#14

Post by smacktoward »

ndr wrote: post #11
acomar wrote: post #8

I must be missing something, because it sounds like they're creating one more IM protocol and claiming it will solve protocol fragmentation. If they want an open and federated protocol, why not back XMPP?

"IMPP is a binary protocol that works by establishing a TCP connection to an IMPP server, authenticating with that server, and then exchanging messages with that server in order to reach other clients. Over the years, best efforts have been made to keep the protocol flow reasonably compatible with XMPP with the long term idea of enabling federation between IMPP and XMPP servers. As such, the general flow for establis…

That explains what IMPP is, but it doesn't answer the question of how/why it's different from XMPP.

And the "keep the protocol flow reasonably compatible with XMPP" part only makes it more curious. The more similar your protocol is to XMPP, the stranger it seems that you don't just use XMPP.

The answer may be just inertia; the spec says they started working on IMPP in 2001, back when XMPP was still very young. It could be that they've just built a ton of internal infrastructure on top of this thing and can't afford to move it all to pure XMPP. But that doesn't really explain why anyone else would want to use it in 2013.

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#15

Post by drivebyacct2 »

ndr wrote: post #11
acomar wrote: post #8

I must be missing something, because it sounds like they're creating one more IM protocol and claiming it will solve protocol fragmentation. If they want an open and federated protocol, why not back XMPP?

"IMPP is a binary protocol that works by establishing a TCP connection to an IMPP server, authenticating with that server, and then exchanging messages with that server in order to reach other clients. Over the years, best efforts have been made to keep the protocol flow reasonably compatible with XMPP with the long term idea of enabling federation between IMPP and XMPP servers. As such, the general flow for establis…

If anything it makes the original question even more pertinent. It's the "what" but not the "why".

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#16

Post by MattJ100 »

lambda wrote: post #12
acomar wrote: post #8

I must be missing something, because it sounds like they're creating one more IM protocol and claiming it will solve protocol fragmentation. If they want an open and federated protocol, why not back XMPP?

I was wondering this myself. At least one point in its favor is that it's smaller and lighter weight than XMPP. XMPP feels fairly over-engineered, and then you need to trawl through a huge pile of extensions to figure out which ones you will actually need to implement for interoperability. However, this does bring to mind the old xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/

XMPP is old, and mature. I'm afraid this "over-engineered" feeling comes to just about every successful technology that reaches such an age :)

Technology is full of people reinventing the wheel (sometimes better, obviously), but more often than not, unnecessarily.

Once you start to dig into any domain deeply, you encounter so many details you would never have imagined existed at first glance. Federated IM is no exception, and it's not easy. XMPP still has problems that are currently being solved that any new protocols won't even be thinking of for 10 years yet.

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#19

Post by uptown »

spartango wrote: post #5
CrazedGeek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. Trillian's iOS IM client is one of the few that's any good.

Indeed, especially if you use it in combination with their desktop applications (win or mac), because the "continuous client" functionality makes switching between devices fluid.

Definitely. I wish Apple would have bought them instead of rolling their own iMessages. Trillian consistently delivers messages to me wherever I am, and keeps everything property synchronized better than any other messaging tool I've used.

Re: Decentralizing Trillian

#20

Post by marssaxman »

MattJ100 wrote: post #16
lambda wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering this myself. At least one point in its favor is that it's smaller and lighter weight than XMPP. XMPP feels fairly over-engineered, and then you need to trawl through a huge pile of extensions to figure out which ones you will actually need to implement for interoperability. However, this does bring to mind the old xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/

XMPP is old, and mature. I'm afraid this "over-engineered" feeling comes to just about every successful technology that reaches such an age :) Technology is full of people reinventing the wheel (sometimes better, obviously), but more often than not, unnecessarily. Once you start to dig into any domain deeply, you encounter so many details you would never have imagined existed at first glance. Federated IM is no excep…

The over-engineered feeling tends to be present from the start with technologies based on XML...
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