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I was just about to try out Mattermost for our company communications. It integrates with a few things including gitlab, but Zulip seems to have a larger number

I was just about to try out Mattermost for our company communications. It integrates with a few things including gitlab, but Zulip seems to have a larger number of integration options, which is awesome. Anybody tried both and have thoughts on them? I still prefer to host my own infrastructure, and I want to be able to archive and categorize a discussion (after it's happened) for searchability, but a couple of our people want an alternative to email and Google Hangouts for communications, and are pushing for Slack or XMPP. I've never been a big chat user and another of our people doesn't do chat at all (so we'd likely need some kind of email gateway for him). I'm not convinced anything exists that answers all these needs, but maybe I'm just way out of the loop. Also, do any of these integrate with XMPP? Googling is inconclusive, but it seems neither connects to XMPP directly, which is unfortunate. I'd like to see an open standard backing whatever chat we choose.

proksoup 11y ago
I think HipChat might be the only one backing the XMPP horse still. A timeline [1]. [1] https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Jebus. That chart is horribly depressing.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Needs to be updated. It shows Zulip died in late 2014.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  HipChat, while providing the XMPP backend, and a self-hosted option, isn't cheap, and doesn't seem to provide the extensibility that an open source option would. But, it's certainly closer to the right thing than Slack (at least, from a surface level examination). I guess it doesn't even need to be XMPP, specifically. But, some open standard and some level of interoperability would be nice. In googling I came upon matrix.org, which also seems promising, but has the same problem XMPP has of not having great clients (though I also found Kaiwa, which looks like a pretty good XMPP client with Slack-like features). Maybe one of these open source projects will formalize their protocol, and we can all move forward on interop with that.
  - ara4n 11y ago
    [Matrix lead here] The open source clients for both Matrix and XMPP are improving a lot currently. On the Matrix side there's vector.im; on XMPP there's Kaiwa and Conversations.im. If you want to help break the fragmentation and have an open standards based approach please run the clients and help us make them better - it is open source, after all!
    - hobarrera 11y ago
      Something really missing about matrix (at least last time I looked) is a hosted option with my own domain. I don't want to use the domain you provide, because I'm tied to a provider forever. I don't want to set up my server right now, because it's just too much work to try something that I may end up dumping (because nobody else I know uses it yet). The overhead to get it is too high, when you're just betting it'll prosper.
      - ara4n 11y ago
        Yup, agreed. We're planning to provide domain vhosting (ie point the SRV for your domain to matrix.org and you'll get your own server instance) which should help a bit, although doing that for free could start to get uneconomic. We also need to work out a nice way to let users migrate between providers.
        hobarrera 11y ago
        Free for "2 users per domain" might catch on for those of us who use our own domain for email/im. Not the most common thing in the world, but probably quite common amongst your potential early adopters. All while keeping away domains with hundreds of users that would cripple your servers.
- bshimmin 11y ago
  That chart is amazing (and depressing, as another commenter said). I counted and I've used 18 different ones. I've also used a few others for video and audio conferencing, like WebEx (unless that falls under a particular Cisco one in the chart, I don't know). Currently I'm "only" using Slack, Skype, iMessage, and Google+ Hangouts (very occasionally, with considerable loathing). It strikes me the situation is inherently ridiculous, but after not far off 20 years of dealing with it, I can't say it bothers me that much anymore.
hanley 11y ago
HipChat supports XMPP [0], and you can host it yourself. Not sure about the guy that "doesn't do chat", he might be out of luck. Time to adapt. [0] https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=751436251 https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageI...
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  He writes more code than everyone else in the company combined. He does whatever he wants.
  - eevilspock 11y ago
    in this case, correlation might actually mean causation :)
- bad_user 11y ago
  HipChat supports XMPP clients, but not federation, which is the interesting part of XMPP.
finnn 11y ago
Kaiwa[1] seems like it's supposed to provide this slack-style group chat web interface thingy, but uses XMPP as the backend. I've played with it a little, not the worst. [1]http://getkaiwa.com/ http://getkaiwa.com/
tabbott 11y ago
Zulip has beta-quality integrations for mirroring content with a Jabber or IRC server (also we have one for Zephyr but that's a lot less popular). Check out bots/irc-mirror.py and bots/jabber_mirror.py. It's a bit complicated to setup right now though -- feel free to ping the Zulip development mailing list for help if you're interested. (Patches welcome!)
raesene9 11y ago
lets-chat (https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat) works fine with XMPP and is relatively straigtforward to setup.
it33 11y ago
Hi SwellJoe, Mattermost team here. We've had requests for XMPP, and potentially it can be added in future. Feature idea can be tracked here (and more ideas welcome!): http://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/suggestions/9495150-add-xmpp-support http://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/sugges... That said, communication has changed significantly since the XMPP standard. For example, after we implemented markdown in Mattermost it's really hard to go back (http://www.mattermost.org/open-source-slack-alternative-adopts-markdown/ http://www.mattermost.org/open-source-slack-alternative-adop...). If you decide to try Mattermost, please let us know if we can help! Twitter at @mattermosthq or via community options at http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  In doing research today I see some valid reasons for not going XMPP. The question that raises for me is merely: How do these things interoperate going forward? I'm through with walled gardens, particularly with something as important as team communications. If not XMPP, then what needs to happen to allow any chat to federate with any other chat? And, perhaps equally important, how does one move data from one to another. Data lock-in should be on everyone's mind, but it always seems to be an afterthought (so far after that it doesn't come up until the disastrous occurs and your vendor sells out and closes up shop, or becomes like SourceForge and destroys user trust). I don't mean to rant at you, of course. Mattermost looks great and it is open source, which means any complaints I have, I am free to put my money/time where my mouth is and fix it.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Have you had a look at IRCv3? Specifically capability negotiation - http://ircv3.net/specs/core/capability-negotiation-3.2.html http://ircv3.net/specs/core/capability-negotiation-3.2.html

proksoup 11y ago

I think HipChat might be the only one backing the XMPP horse still. A timeline [1]. [1] https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf https://cdn.sameroom.io/chat-timeline.pdf

SwellJoe 11y ago
Jebus. That chart is horribly depressing.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
Needs to be updated. It shows Zulip died in late 2014.
SwellJoe 11y ago
HipChat, while providing the XMPP backend, and a self-hosted option, isn't cheap, and doesn't seem to provide the extensibility that an open source option would. But, it's certainly closer to the right thing than Slack (at least, from a surface level examination). I guess it doesn't even need to be XMPP, specifically. But, some open standard and some level of interoperability would be nice. In googling I came upon matrix.org, which also seems promising, but has the same problem XMPP has of not having great clients (though I also found Kaiwa, which looks like a pretty good XMPP client with Slack-like features). Maybe one of these open source projects will formalize their protocol, and we can all move forward on interop with that.
- ara4n 11y ago
  [Matrix lead here] The open source clients for both Matrix and XMPP are improving a lot currently. On the Matrix side there's vector.im; on XMPP there's Kaiwa and Conversations.im. If you want to help break the fragmentation and have an open standards based approach please run the clients and help us make them better - it is open source, after all!
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    Something really missing about matrix (at least last time I looked) is a hosted option with my own domain. I don't want to use the domain you provide, because I'm tied to a provider forever. I don't want to set up my server right now, because it's just too much work to try something that I may end up dumping (because nobody else I know uses it yet). The overhead to get it is too high, when you're just betting it'll prosper.
    - ara4n 11y ago
      Yup, agreed. We're planning to provide domain vhosting (ie point the SRV for your domain to matrix.org and you'll get your own server instance) which should help a bit, although doing that for free could start to get uneconomic. We also need to work out a nice way to let users migrate between providers.
      - hobarrera 11y ago
        Free for "2 users per domain" might catch on for those of us who use our own domain for email/im. Not the most common thing in the world, but probably quite common amongst your potential early adopters. All while keeping away domains with hundreds of users that would cripple your servers.
bshimmin 11y ago
That chart is amazing (and depressing, as another commenter said). I counted and I've used 18 different ones. I've also used a few others for video and audio conferencing, like WebEx (unless that falls under a particular Cisco one in the chart, I don't know). Currently I'm "only" using Slack, Skype, iMessage, and Google+ Hangouts (very occasionally, with considerable loathing). It strikes me the situation is inherently ridiculous, but after not far off 20 years of dealing with it, I can't say it bothers me that much anymore.

hanley 11y ago

HipChat supports XMPP [0], and you can host it yourself. Not sure about the guy that "doesn't do chat", he might be out of luck. Time to adapt. [0] https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=751436251 https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageI...

SwellJoe 11y ago
He writes more code than everyone else in the company combined. He does whatever he wants.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  in this case, correlation might actually mean causation :)
bad_user 11y ago
HipChat supports XMPP clients, but not federation, which is the interesting part of XMPP.

finnn 11y ago

Kaiwa[1] seems like it's supposed to provide this slack-style group chat web interface thingy, but uses XMPP as the backend. I've played with it a little, not the worst. [1]http://getkaiwa.com/ http://getkaiwa.com/

tabbott 11y ago

Zulip has beta-quality integrations for mirroring content with a Jabber or IRC server (also we have one for Zephyr but that's a lot less popular). Check out bots/irc-mirror.py and bots/jabber_mirror.py. It's a bit complicated to setup right now though -- feel free to ping the Zulip development mailing list for help if you're interested. (Patches welcome!)

raesene9 11y ago

lets-chat (https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat) works fine with XMPP and is relatively straigtforward to setup.

it33 11y ago

Hi SwellJoe, Mattermost team here. We've had requests for XMPP, and potentially it can be added in future. Feature idea can be tracked here (and more ideas welcome!): http://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/suggestions/9495150-add-xmpp-support http://mattermost.uservoice.com/forums/306457-general/sugges... That said, communication has changed significantly since the XMPP standard. For example, after we implemented markdown in Mattermost it's really hard to go back (http://www.mattermost.org/open-source-slack-alternative-adopts-markdown/ http://www.mattermost.org/open-source-slack-alternative-adop...). If you decide to try Mattermost, please let us know if we can help! Twitter at @mattermosthq or via community options at http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/

SwellJoe 11y ago
In doing research today I see some valid reasons for not going XMPP. The question that raises for me is merely: How do these things interoperate going forward? I'm through with walled gardens, particularly with something as important as team communications. If not XMPP, then what needs to happen to allow any chat to federate with any other chat? And, perhaps equally important, how does one move data from one to another. Data lock-in should be on everyone's mind, but it always seems to be an afterthought (so far after that it doesn't come up until the disastrous occurs and your vendor sells out and closes up shop, or becomes like SourceForge and destroys user trust). I don't mean to rant at you, of course. Mattermost looks great and it is open source, which means any complaints I have, I am free to put my money/time where my mouth is and fix it.
voltagex_ 11y ago
Have you had a look at IRCv3? Specifically capability negotiation - http://ircv3.net/specs/core/capability-negotiation-3.2.html http://ircv3.net/specs/core/capability-negotiation-3.2.html