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Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#101

Post by synchrone »

hengheng wrote: post #85
click170 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into detail about what features were lacking? For what it's worth, a lot comes down to what features the server admin has activated. I've heard many complaints about XMPP but this is the first I've heard someone mention lack of features as a problem with it.

Server-side chat logfiles that are distributed to all connecting clients? I've never looked into the protocol, but I'm pretty sure that one is lacking.

There was certain controversy about which protocol to use for sharing history between clients for both private chats and MUC, but now XEP0313 seems to be the future of it.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25982426/persistent-xmpp-...

There are implementations for servers, e.g https://code.google.com/p/prosody-modules/wiki/mod_mam_muc, but I have yet to see a client reliably supporting this.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#102

Post by jcbrand »

pikzen wrote: post #15

Welp, time to register an account on jabber.org I don't really understand why they took the XMPP API to such lengths (it even displayed OTR messages as [encrypted message], that's not really the kind of thing that comes to mind instantly when I think about an XMPP API) to finally deprecate it. Pidgin will probably see a sudden surge of bug reports.

jabber.org doesn't accept new registrations since 2013.

If you're looking for a public XMPP server to register an account at there is a (no longer updated) list of Jabber servers at https://xmpp.net/directory.php and a more up to date list at https://list.jabber.at.

You can register an account any public XMPP server at https://conversejs.org (via the chat client in the bottom right).

Incidentally, I run the conversejs.org server which is open to registrations.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#103

Post by jcbrand »

simoncion wrote: post #59
pikzen wrote: post #15

Welp, time to register an account on jabber.org I don't really understand why they took the XMPP API to such lengths (it even displayed OTR messages as [encrypted message], that's not really the kind of thing that comes to mind instantly when I think about an XMPP API) to finally deprecate it. Pidgin will probably see a sudden surge of bug reports.

In my experience (as of about a year ago) the jabber.org servers are -I guess- seriously overloaded. Frequent disconnection or failures to login were the norm for my @jabber.org account. If I had to guess, I would bet that they're under frequent "attack", but I really have no idea. Does anyone have any more recent information on the health of jabber.org's XMPP service?

I think jabber.org is indeed overloaded and they don't accept new registrations since 2013.

See my answer to the GP about available servers.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#104

Post by zamalek »

Zuckerberg sure has been interesting this week:

> Developers please use our platform!

> Developers we are now going to obsolete any work you've done with the XMPP front-end.

Demonstrating a clear moving target is not how you attract developers, Facebook.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#105

Post by fenesiistvan »

Can anybody tell me, why the SIP chat protocol is so under used?

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3428.txt

-based on open standards (SIP)

-supported by most VoIP servers (so we have full interoperability between vendors such as Cisco, Huawei, Siemens, Voipswitch, Mizutech, Jitsi and others)

-simple and extendable

-lots of free services, free/open source software. You can also host your own or integrate into your company PBX

In the previous years, we always see the same path for messaging applications:

1. Startup company add messaging based on open standards (SIP/IRC/XMPP/other?)

2. One the company has significant user base, switches to a non-standard / proprietary protocol

Already happened for Skype, Yahoo, Google, Facebook

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#106

Post by throwawayaway »

simoncion wrote: post #92
throwawayaway wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

web client xmpp isn't going to be very good at storing message history, i'll grant you.

Yep. You'd need a server somewhere to store and replay that message history. There is an XMPP standard that specifies how to do that. Question is whether or not your client can speak that protocol.

curiousity piqued, what's the XEP number for the protocol?

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#107

Post by phillc73 »

hengheng wrote: post #66
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #2

Sigh , yet another nail in the XMPP coffin, at least as far as the general public is concerned. Remember when we had ICQ, and AIM, and MSN Messenger, and Gadu-Gadu, and we were dreaming of a unified messaging system?

So, I don't do web or software development, let me tell you^W^Wrant about how chat in 2015 feels to use. I'm 27, I grew up on IRC, I know my ICQ UIN by heart. Chat has always replaced SMS for me, and most groupware as well. I was happy when Facebook came along, and suddenly even the non-nerdy friends were compatible with my preferred way of having an endless conversation about random things. Chatting feels natural to…

> ... persistent group chat, shared chat history with a search function, synchronized unread/read statuses....

Across all my devices - Web, Linux, Android and FirefoxOS. No advertising.

Telegram - http://telegram.org

I've been using it for several months now and am very happy. Would love integrated voice calling, especially to landlines/mobiles, and hope someone develops a plugin for this soon (perhaps the guys at Jaconda[0] will do it).

I have just one regular contact still using Facebook messenger, and our conversations are now very disjointed, as sometimes I don't login to that service for several days at a time. I don't use Skype as a messenger service, but do still have about four or five contacts who are wedded to it for free voice calls. I use WebCallDirect[1] for cheap calls to landlines/mobiles.

[0] https://jaconda.im [1] http://webcalldirect.com

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#109

Post by zmb_ »

fenesiistvan wrote: post #105

Can anybody tell me, why the SIP chat protocol is so under used? https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3428.txt -based on open standards (SIP) -supported by most VoIP servers (so we have full interoperability between vendors such as Cisco, Huawei, Siemens, Voipswitch, Mizutech, Jitsi and others) -simple and extendable -lots of free services, free/open source software. You can also host your own or integrate into your company P…

>-simple and extendable

It's the first time I hear anyone describe SIP as "simple". If you printed out all the SIP specs, you'd probably have a pile close to a meter high. Among the protocol crowd (including IETFers) SIP is often regarded as an example of protocol design having gone off the rails in a spectacular fashion. It has been repeatedly beat in the market by proprietary protocols that do things better (e.g., see the mess SIP NAT traversal ended up as compared to Skype).

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#110

Post by christop »

click170 wrote: post #78
hengheng wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I don't do web or software development, let me tell you^W^Wrant about how chat in 2015 feels to use. I'm 27, I grew up on IRC, I know my ICQ UIN by heart. Chat has always replaced SMS for me, and most groupware as well. I was happy when Facebook came along, and suddenly even the non-nerdy friends were compatible with my preferred way of having an endless conversation about random things. Chatting feels natural to…

Can you go into detail about what features were lacking? For what it's worth, a lot comes down to what features the server admin has activated. I've heard many complaints about XMPP but this is the first I've heard someone mention lack of features as a problem with it.

In addition to logging as mentioned, I find that file transfers (encrypted!) that Just Work between users regardless of the network/client/server used seems to be missing.

I really like XMPP, and the extensibility it has is brilliant, but at the same time leads to a crazy level of fragmentation for the instant messaging use case. You're basically guaranteed that you can chat to others and maintain a buddy list, but anything much beyond that is a toss up, depending on the server used, how it's configured, and what client each user has.

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