XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging • Hacker News Board

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#71

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

cullumsmith wrote: post #57

My family uses a self-hosted Prosody instance with the Conversations app on Android and Dino/Gajim on the desktop. It works great. Combined with JMP.chat, we even get SMS and voice calls from the telephone network to all our different XMPP apps. Truly feels like the future. The technology of yesteryear seems to have more staying power. The protocols churned out by my generation seem destined for either VC/advertiseme…

"Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers"

https://archive.is/t5m32

The host, jwz.org, redirects traffic linked from HN.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#72

Post by zaik » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:15 PM UTC

mxuribe wrote: post #42

skeptrune wrote: post #3

I think the big issue with XMPP are the clients. Element is so much better that it's hard not to recommend Matrix to people despite its bloat and metadata leakage problems. JMP/Snikket for tying a normal phone number to your XMPP @ are really convenient, but the clients remain a problem. Plus, SIP dialers are not supported on IOS afaik. I am really surprised there isn't a venture backed company pushing XMPP forward.…

I think its not only the clients...Rather its what the server side supports and to ensure clients align with that....And i think among a group of techy friends, well, they can coordinate the proper settings...but it becomes thorny when involving some not-techie buddies...Of course its possible, but, you know, the onboarding process is less than ideal. I say that not being an xmpp guru of coruse, so YMMV. > I am reall…

WhatsApp's contributions to the XMPP ecosystem are nil.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#73

Post by quantadev » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:15 PM UTC

The key to getting a Messaging protocol "right" is to have the simplest possible post of a message to a server, and the simplest possible read of messages from a server down to like 20 lines of code, which Nostr did get right.

Nostr is great because it doesn't tie your user name to some domain name that you don't own (like ActivityPub/Fediverse does). If a domain name is part of a user name, that ultimate gives "control" over your identity to someone else...(unless you're hosting your own domain, of course)

I think XMPP is probably the superior protocol (better than both Fediverse, and Nostr, and I've written implementations in both), for some technical reasons, but as far as I know it takes way more than 20 lines of code to implement a read/write operation, so imo it's too complicated.

Even ActivityPub looks simple at a first pass, but if you try to write your own server (like I did) you realize the protocol is a complete mess and compatibility issues are rampant across different sever implementations as a result.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#74

Post by LaGrange » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

rom1v wrote: post #33

Mandatory blog post on XMPP and decentralized protocols: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

> if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.

It is, gods make it stop.

"Oh no complicated specification" do you think you're getting paid 100k/year because it's _easy_? Gods.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#75

Post by upofadown » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:21 PM UTC

qup wrote: post #55

upofadown wrote: post #41

The SMS gateway provided by jmp.chat has made XMPP fairly awesome for me. I have an XMPP client on all my devices and SMS contacts are just more contacts in my roster.

Can you explain how the gateway works?

You get a phone number with the account. SMSs come from/to that number. You can transfer in a number if you want. You get some phone minutes as well. The basic idea is that you only need a data connection to your various devices. It eliminates the annoying need to type on your phone when you want to exchange SMSs with someone while you are on your laptop/desktop. Particularly helpful to people like myself who don't have a smartphone to type on.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#76

Post by cyberax » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

I hope XMPP just goes away and stops distracting people from more productive avenues.

It can't be fixed. It's dead. Matrix is the modern replacement.

I used XMPP to implement a chat client within our application around 2012. It was a freaking nightmare. The roster system, the incompatibilities, the lack of standardized synchronization, the never-working group messaging.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#77

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:25 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#78

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #62

shadowgovt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nowadays it faces a marketing issue because it's extensible, so none of those problems go away because a solution exists somewhere. "Hey, I want to set up a modern messenger." "Sure! Here's XMPP, the ten extensions you need to enable and configure (problem left as an exercise for the reader), and the seven ports you need to open!" "... Okay? A Matrix node is apparently a drop-in solution; I'm gonna use that." XMP…

Ironically I think the absolute opposite. An XMPP server is something I can install on my ten year old home server without a second thought ( you have several to choose from even in debian's repositories) and expect it to work with minimal config. Matrix servers? You have mostly one implementation to choose from and it comes "packaged" as a monster container with several python modules likely already with CVEs and go…

Yeah, it's great. One package that works and already knows all its dependencies. And thosev exploring the CVEs should generally find themselves in a chroot jail so not too much to worry about.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#79

Post by righthand » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #65

righthand wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, because developing tech is about winning marker-share only. That’s exactly why XMPP was developed in the first place.

Market share matters for a communication system though. Why bother to run a server or install a client if there's nobody to talk to?

It matters in the “I stumbled into this public chat room” sense. It doesn’t matter in the “we need a private comms channel” sense.

At the end of the day, the point is that XMPP was never trying to “win” against IRC, ICQ, AIM, Matrix, et al.

Re: XMPP: The Gem of Instant Messaging

#80

Post by SamWhited » Thu, Nov 07, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #70

SamWhited wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix and XMPP operate in very different ways Matrix is a graph database synchronization protocol, whereas XMPP is event based. Let's use group chats as an example: with Matrix if you join a group chat hosted on another server, the entire history of the chat gets synced to your server. This means it's very resource intensive to scale, but very reliable since you pretty much always have chat history available and if…

The real difference between XMPP and Matrix is that I can read the discussions about XMPP on this site without the CEO of the company that pretends not to own it, but does de facto own it through some kind of wannabe Sam Altman "it's actually a non profit that happens to be controlled by my for profit company" move, coming into the comments to denigrate anyone with an ounce of criticism for his product

(oh yah, FWIW he's done this to me too; shows up and accuses me of being biased against matrix and not disclosing my affiliation with XMPP stuff… meanwhile he controls a company and gets paid by them, I just chose to work on XMPP open source stuff instead of Matrix stuff and don't get paid for it)