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A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

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Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#41

Post by tehabe »

SamWhited wrote: post #24
tehabe wrote: post #2

The problem with Jabber is, that you are locked in to one server, switching means that you have to re-add all your contacts and so far there is no automatic way to do it. I think the developer of IMCom (console Jabber client) thought about that and how it could work but I don't think his idea got a lot of attention.

As opposed to what that doesn't lock you in? I'd be curious to see how they do it. With an XMPP compatible account you could at least host with your own domain (by running your own server or using a hosted service like https://account.conversations.im/domain/ ), and then moving isn't too bad. If you fall under GDPR regulations you can presumably ask for a copy of your data now too, and then hand that to whatever your…

Weirdly enough, services like WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram are more portable. Because the identifier is not owned by the service but is provided by s.o. else. It is essentially a decentralised social graph in the address book of your phone. I'm aware of the caveats though.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#42

Post by hutzlibu »

rascul wrote: post #11

Still waiting on a decent Android client (preferably open source) which does text, voice, and video. Without that, XMPP is effectively dead for me nowadays. Otherwise I'll never be able to get my friends off of Facebook Messenger.

This is something that annoys me as well... Especially since with webrtc the browser can do this native, so why is there nothi avaiable?

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#43

Post by JepZ »

rascul wrote: post #11

Still waiting on a decent Android client (preferably open source) which does text, voice, and video. Without that, XMPP is effectively dead for me nowadays. Otherwise I'll never be able to get my friends off of Facebook Messenger.

I wish Conversations would support the voice and video stuff, but somehow they decided against it. Otherwise Conversation is a very decent XMPP client for Android.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#44

Post by JepZ »

tehabe wrote: post #2

The problem with Jabber is, that you are locked in to one server, switching means that you have to re-add all your contacts and so far there is no automatic way to do it. I think the developer of IMCom (console Jabber client) thought about that and how it could work but I don't think his idea got a lot of attention.

I don't see the dependency on you provider as much as a problem as how you should know which provider will be there in five years.

Furthermore, running your own server isn't as easy as it should be. I run my own ejabberd with about 20 users (mostly family) since a few years now, but the configuration still gives me headaches. It is not as complicated as mail server, but still not as easy as providing the domain name and a certificate. Maybe ejabberd is just too powerful for small/simple installations.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#45

Post by inputmice »

TheChaplain wrote: post #36
rascul wrote: post #11

Still waiting on a decent Android client (preferably open source) which does text, voice, and video. Without that, XMPP is effectively dead for me nowadays. Otherwise I'll never be able to get my friends off of Facebook Messenger.

I hope I'm incorrect, but as I understand it would be impossible to make a decent XMPP client on Android. Any app wanting to get push messages _must_ go via Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, other processes with long running services or network connections will be killed off in favor of longer battery life.

The battery consumption of Conversations with or without FCM is about the same. (Battery consumption in both cases depends on a lot of factors like frequency of messages, quality of network or even how often your operating system kills Conversations due to a lack of memory. But eliminating all those factors battery consumption is in the same ballpark. The only difference from an end user perspective is that Conversations doesn’t have to ask for a Doze exemption if you use a server that has the push extension.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#46

Post by rascul »

Boulth wrote: post #39
rascul wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not worth the effort for just one person. I need a service a majority of my friends can use. And they're not interested in something that to them is essentially the same as AIM from 20 years ago. I really want to like Signal, but the phone number requirement just won't work for me. In the last five years, I've had a phone number for only about one year, and it's changed three times. I'm just not good with holdin…

I wouldn't say XMPP did not change for 20 years, have you seen https://conversations.im/ ? Except voice / video (that I personally use rarely either way) I don't see any important modern feature missing.

Not saying it didn't change, that remark came from a non tech friend of mine, and it's hard for me to disagree without getting into boring technical stuff they're not interested in.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#47

Post by Freak_NL »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #37
icc97 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try just getting one of them to sign up. You don't need to have all your friends chatting via XMPP, sometimes it's good to just have one friend that you can talk about this stuff with. Also you don't have to use XMPP, Signal is an open source worthy alternative to WhatsApp and FB messenger.

Signal isn’t really open source the way Firefox or Linux is... you can audit the source code, but you can’t connect to the network with a modified version. It’s nice that we can audit the source code. But it’s kind of pointless if you can’t modify it.

Signal is also effectively limited to smartphones due to the phone number requirement, making it even less free.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#48

Post by Vinnl »

Freak_NL wrote: post #47
erikpukinskis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal isn’t really open source the way Firefox or Linux is... you can audit the source code, but you can’t connect to the network with a modified version. It’s nice that we can audit the source code. But it’s kind of pointless if you can’t modify it.

Signal is also effectively limited to smartphones due to the phone number requirement, making it even less free.

You can use Signal desktop - all you need is a phone to receive a confirmation text message, but that needn't be a smartphone.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#49

Post by sametmax »

ovrdrv3 wrote: post #8

>Efficient and environmentally friendly air conditioning technology contributes to environmental protection in the data center. Speaking of environmentally friendly AC methods, I always found it fascinating and simple yet genius when I read the news that facebook has some data centers in very cold parts of the world. Edit: Here's a little gallery of their data center in northern Sweden: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/…

That's neat. Only economically possible when things get to the scale of facebook or google, but really neat.

Re: A free XMPP server powered by green energy and hosted in Germany

#50

Post by dcbadacd »

Vinnl wrote: post #48
Freak_NL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is also effectively limited to smartphones due to the phone number requirement, making it even less free.

You can use Signal desktop - all you need is a phone to receive a confirmation text message, but that needn't be a smartphone.

Even that is too much to give to a chat application. In most cases a phone number is tied to a person, requiring that is pretty much requiring a full name.
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