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I'm just wondering what makes someone look at an XMPP client like Conversations and say: "This is fundamental flawed let's completely reinvent the wheel. There

I'm just wondering what makes someone look at an XMPP client like Conversations and say: "This is fundamental flawed let's completely reinvent the wheel. There is no way we can ever get a good UX out of this" Matrix might not be a bad protocol for Instant Messaging. But neither is XMPP. And XMPP already has an established infrastructure of public servers and a fairly large user base which will take Matrix at least 5-10 years to build up (That's were the 5-10 years were coming from).

Arathorn 10y ago
So from 2012-2013 we maintained a service that ran on XMPP. It wasn't a fun experience. Had Conversations existed back then it might how shown us the light of how to build create a good and modern experience on top of XMPP. Instead, we swapped it out for a proprietary HTTP-based precursor to Matrix (called Glow), which worked astonishingly well for what we needed. So in 2014 we decided to build Matrix with the primary goals of: 1. decentralising the conversation so no single entity owns or controls it: being a federated communication database rather than a messaging platform. 2. making bridging a first class citizen (hence the name Matrix; it's designed to matrix together other conversations) 3. providing a deliberately monolithic spec to try to avoid fragmentation and help us evolve it relatively rapidly. Now, I have huge respect for you in showing that it's possible to build a good UX on top of XMPP. And we don't think XMPP is fundamentally flawed. But we wanted to try a completely different architecture and design and see if it flies. As per the earlier comment I see it very similar to NNTP and SMTP. They can be both used to power conversations, but architecturally they couldn't be more different, and the world is big enough for both. Genuine question: any idea how big the public XMPP federation is in terms of active servers and active users? Would be interested to know how Matrix compares.

Arathorn 10y ago

So from 2012-2013 we maintained a service that ran on XMPP. It wasn't a fun experience. Had Conversations existed back then it might how shown us the light of how to build create a good and modern experience on top of XMPP. Instead, we swapped it out for a proprietary HTTP-based precursor to Matrix (called Glow), which worked astonishingly well for what we needed. So in 2014 we decided to build Matrix with the primary goals of: 1. decentralising the conversation so no single entity owns or controls it: being a federated communication database rather than a messaging platform. 2. making bridging a first class citizen (hence the name Matrix; it's designed to matrix together other conversations) 3. providing a deliberately monolithic spec to try to avoid fragmentation and help us evolve it relatively rapidly. Now, I have huge respect for you in showing that it's possible to build a good UX on top of XMPP. And we don't think XMPP is fundamentally flawed. But we wanted to try a completely different architecture and design and see if it flies. As per the earlier comment I see it very similar to NNTP and SMTP. They can be both used to power conversations, but architecturally they couldn't be more different, and the world is big enough for both. Genuine question: any idea how big the public XMPP federation is in terms of active servers and active users? Would be interested to know how Matrix compares.