7 ms·

Who might be the right entity to take on creating a replacement for XMPP?

scrollaway 11y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ One of the best things that could happen today I think is Google open sourcing the Hangouts protocol. It's a reasonable alternative to XMPP and has a massive userbase. The clients are pretty horrible but that might be completely unrelated to how good the protocol is (Note: I have no idea how good it is. Because it's closed source.). I was hopeful for a while but I don't really see it happening anymore :( Oh well... Edit: Oh and the worst part: Communication is just one side of that coin. The other side is identity and it's one hell of a side. OpenID was a disaster. Mozilla got it mostly right with Persona but completely botched the marketing and has all but given up on it now. There is no decent foss protocol for identity/authentication today other than Persona, and nobody is working on one. There was a time indeed where I could've pictured Google working on solving this just for the hell of it. Just because it would improve the world. That Google is gone, and there's nobody with the appropriate reach that seems willing to do it now.
- lstamour 11y ago
  Identity is a separate problem. So far, https://www.accountchooser.com https://www.accountchooser.com and OpenID is winning -- if by winning you mean maintaining a list of very popular email providers and using their APIs. ;-)
- StavrosK 11y ago
  I will forever mourn and be angered by Mozilla giving up on Persona so easily.
  - fletchowns 11y ago
    Why is Persona dead? Visiting the site doesn't seem to give any indication it's dead...
    - notatoad 11y ago
      It's been "given to the community" or something like that. They didn't kill it, but they aren't paying any staff to work on it anymore.
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      What notatoad said, plus I don't think they're maintaining things very well any more. Last time I tried to use the ecosystem, various non-core things were breaking. Huge pity, it's a very well-designed protocol.
  - lukeh 11y ago
    Persona was great and it's a bit sad to see it dead after investing a lot of time in it but - one big architectural problem was there was no way to support delegation (the problem OAuth was originally designed to solve).
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Yeah, I can't see Google ever either open sourcing Hangouts, or making it possible to federate it. Google's opinion seems to be that everything that is a service or protocol should be a Google API.
- e12e 11y ago
  Has anyone got experience with both XMPP and SIP/H.323? From what I've been able to figure out, H.323 looks like it's one of the better candidates of protocols that exist today and is "reasonably" simple... while SIP... well, SIP smells a lot like it came from big TelCos. And not in a good way. See eg: https://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h323_vs_sip/ https://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h323_vs_sip/
  - jallmann 11y ago
    > Has anyone got experience with both XMPP and SIP/H.323? I've worked with all three. The H.323 vs SIP battle was fought a long time ago... for better or worse, SIP won. Any H.323 systems still in the wild can probably be considered "legacy." That being said, while H.323 has more "batteries included," its call flow is accordingly more complex. SIP is not too bad, there is some subtlety to it, but the main issue is that you have to piece together dozens of RFCs for an interoperable system, not to speak of implementation-specific quirks. XMPP is the more appropriate protocol in this context -- IM and group chat -- because it has had presence and ad-hoc messaging baked in from the start, including reasonably supported MUC. Ultimately, XMPP's issues are similar to SIP's -- the patchwork of XEPs is too unwieldy to work with. For an example, compare the multimedia bits (eg, Jingle) and the corresponding SIP session setup flow. The stigma of being a XML-based protocol designed in the 90's doesn't help, either. The biggest reason SIP is sticking around, however, is that it has major buy-in from the telcos with IMS/4G. However, SIP is also a more appropriate protocol for traditional telephony. In that respect, comparing SIP and XMPP is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. With the appropriate extensions, one could behave like the other, but it wouldn't be their strength.
    - fletchowns 11y ago
      What are some of the reasons it's hard to design a good messaging protocol?
      - jallmann 11y ago
        If you know your requirements up front, then it's not hard. In fact, it's a good exercise to do so -- probably one reason why messaging systems are a dime a dozen nowadays. What's hard is making a messaging system that is everything for everybody. If SIP or XMPP has taught us anything, it's that "extensibility" is a killer. Requirements evolve, and often it is perceived as easier or "cleaner" to start from scratch, rather than work around the idiosyncrasies of existing systems. On the other hand, if you are trying to design a protocol to solve a domain specific problem (eg, in cryptography, multimedia, distributed systems, etc) then it becomes more of a research endeavor with all the associated pitfalls. In that case, there will always be the "shoulders of giants" to build off of. Unfortunately though, for every pioneering TextSecure, there are a dozen CryptoCats repeating the same mistakes of years past...
vbezhenar 11y ago
https://matrix.org https://matrix.org is a promising candidate.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  I remember reading about matrix when they first announced. Was pretty excited about it, haven't heard anything since. I It's just tech though; even if it's mind-blowingly great, won't do much good if no large-scale userbase picks it up somehow.
  - ara4n 11y ago
    We're still alive and going strong - currently supporting glossy client development like Vector.im and building out bridges to as many other networks as possible (IRC, Slack, HipChat etc) using http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge and similar. In terms of being picked up by a large user base... yes, we need it if we are to be really relevant. And that means relying on folks like those commenting on this thread to try using it, contributing to it, and help us make it better.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      Well I'll do my part on mindshare, I do like what I see :) Maybe you guys should do another Show HN.
sitkack 11y ago
I don't know who will do it, but it will be in-band, meaning inside http and using html5.
ara4n 11y ago
Whilst we're not trying to replace XMPP, Matrix.org does provide an entirely different architecture (decentralised and evetually-consistent history, high baseline feature set, HTTP-based, etc) that can be used for group chat/VoIP/etc.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ One of the best things that could happen today I think is Google open sourcing the Hangouts protocol. It's a reasonable alternative to XMPP and has a massive userbase. The clients are pretty horrible but that might be completely unrelated to how good the protocol is (Note: I have no idea how good it is. Because it's closed source.). I was hopeful for a while but I don't really see it happening anymore :( Oh well... Edit: Oh and the worst part: Communication is just one side of that coin. The other side is identity and it's one hell of a side. OpenID was a disaster. Mozilla got it mostly right with Persona but completely botched the marketing and has all but given up on it now. There is no decent foss protocol for identity/authentication today other than Persona, and nobody is working on one. There was a time indeed where I could've pictured Google working on solving this just for the hell of it. Just because it would improve the world. That Google is gone, and there's nobody with the appropriate reach that seems willing to do it now.

lstamour 11y ago
Identity is a separate problem. So far, https://www.accountchooser.com https://www.accountchooser.com and OpenID is winning -- if by winning you mean maintaining a list of very popular email providers and using their APIs. ;-)
StavrosK 11y ago
I will forever mourn and be angered by Mozilla giving up on Persona so easily.
- fletchowns 11y ago
  Why is Persona dead? Visiting the site doesn't seem to give any indication it's dead...
  - notatoad 11y ago
    It's been "given to the community" or something like that. They didn't kill it, but they aren't paying any staff to work on it anymore.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    What notatoad said, plus I don't think they're maintaining things very well any more. Last time I tried to use the ecosystem, various non-core things were breaking. Huge pity, it's a very well-designed protocol.
- lukeh 11y ago
  Persona was great and it's a bit sad to see it dead after investing a lot of time in it but - one big architectural problem was there was no way to support delegation (the problem OAuth was originally designed to solve).
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Yeah, I can't see Google ever either open sourcing Hangouts, or making it possible to federate it. Google's opinion seems to be that everything that is a service or protocol should be a Google API.
e12e 11y ago
Has anyone got experience with both XMPP and SIP/H.323? From what I've been able to figure out, H.323 looks like it's one of the better candidates of protocols that exist today and is "reasonably" simple... while SIP... well, SIP smells a lot like it came from big TelCos. And not in a good way. See eg: https://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h323_vs_sip/ https://www.packetizer.com/ipmc/h323_vs_sip/
- jallmann 11y ago
  > Has anyone got experience with both XMPP and SIP/H.323? I've worked with all three. The H.323 vs SIP battle was fought a long time ago... for better or worse, SIP won. Any H.323 systems still in the wild can probably be considered "legacy." That being said, while H.323 has more "batteries included," its call flow is accordingly more complex. SIP is not too bad, there is some subtlety to it, but the main issue is that you have to piece together dozens of RFCs for an interoperable system, not to speak of implementation-specific quirks. XMPP is the more appropriate protocol in this context -- IM and group chat -- because it has had presence and ad-hoc messaging baked in from the start, including reasonably supported MUC. Ultimately, XMPP's issues are similar to SIP's -- the patchwork of XEPs is too unwieldy to work with. For an example, compare the multimedia bits (eg, Jingle) and the corresponding SIP session setup flow. The stigma of being a XML-based protocol designed in the 90's doesn't help, either. The biggest reason SIP is sticking around, however, is that it has major buy-in from the telcos with IMS/4G. However, SIP is also a more appropriate protocol for traditional telephony. In that respect, comparing SIP and XMPP is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. With the appropriate extensions, one could behave like the other, but it wouldn't be their strength.
  - fletchowns 11y ago
    What are some of the reasons it's hard to design a good messaging protocol?
    - jallmann 11y ago
      If you know your requirements up front, then it's not hard. In fact, it's a good exercise to do so -- probably one reason why messaging systems are a dime a dozen nowadays. What's hard is making a messaging system that is everything for everybody. If SIP or XMPP has taught us anything, it's that "extensibility" is a killer. Requirements evolve, and often it is perceived as easier or "cleaner" to start from scratch, rather than work around the idiosyncrasies of existing systems. On the other hand, if you are trying to design a protocol to solve a domain specific problem (eg, in cryptography, multimedia, distributed systems, etc) then it becomes more of a research endeavor with all the associated pitfalls. In that case, there will always be the "shoulders of giants" to build off of. Unfortunately though, for every pioneering TextSecure, there are a dozen CryptoCats repeating the same mistakes of years past...

vbezhenar 11y ago

https://matrix.org https://matrix.org is a promising candidate.

scrollaway 11y ago
I remember reading about matrix when they first announced. Was pretty excited about it, haven't heard anything since. I It's just tech though; even if it's mind-blowingly great, won't do much good if no large-scale userbase picks it up somehow.
- ara4n 11y ago
  We're still alive and going strong - currently supporting glossy client development like Vector.im and building out bridges to as many other networks as possible (IRC, Slack, HipChat etc) using http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge and similar. In terms of being picked up by a large user base... yes, we need it if we are to be really relevant. And that means relying on folks like those commenting on this thread to try using it, contributing to it, and help us make it better.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Well I'll do my part on mindshare, I do like what I see :) Maybe you guys should do another Show HN.

sitkack 11y ago

I don't know who will do it, but it will be in-band, meaning inside http and using html5.

ara4n 11y ago

Whilst we're not trying to replace XMPP, Matrix.org does provide an entirely different architecture (decentralised and evetually-consistent history, high baseline feature set, HTTP-based, etc) that can be used for group chat/VoIP/etc.