4 ms·

People are always bashing XMPP around but truth to be told, my experience with the Android client Conversations is pretty damn good. I use the Android client w

by sweden 10y ago

People are always bashing XMPP around but truth to be told, my experience with the Android client Conversations is pretty damn good. I use the Android client with a personal XMPP server based on Prosody and I frequently use it to communicate with a friend who is also running his own XMPP server and the experience is very good. We never lost a message, we can share pictures just like in WhatsApp, we can send any type of file and the battery usage is unnoticeable. It seems to me that the people who bash XMPP are people who never actually used it and they are just echoing myths from the last decade.

mindcrime 10y ago
It seems to me that the people who bash XMPP are people who never actually used it and they are just echoing myths from the last decade. That's my take as well. At this point "XMPP sucks on mobile" seems to be just an outdated meme that keeps replicating itself, but has little actual relevance.
grahamburger 10y ago
Agreed, I used the Xabber client on Android for years to keep in touch with our entire remote team (20ish people) using a basically out of the box ejabberd server. Never noticed poor battery life or heavy bandwidth usage and the communication was rock solid. Switching back and forth between desktop clients and mobile worked as expected with no weird surprises. All around a great experience, and this was 2011 ish through 2014.
stonogo 10y ago
>It seems to me that the people who bash XMPP are people who never actually used it and they are just echoing myths from the last decade. In the interest of productive discourse, I'm not going to react to the suggestion that I'm an ignoramus who just parrots ancient usenet posts. I'll merely mention it, because I want you to understand that this sort of response does not provide for a discussion of the technical merits of a communications protocol. Yes, XMPP advocates are continually providing anecdata about how wonderful things have been lately. My problem is that I've been running XMPP/Jabber servers for over a decade, at several different institutions with wildly varying deployment needs... and not once has it ever been a good experience. The failure modes vary, it's true. Sometimes it has been a matter of sheer bandwidth consumption, such as communications over satellite uplink. Sometimes the problem has been interoperability across a federated network. Sometimes the problem has been with specific clients, both commercial and FOSS. But there have always been problems. There are other protocols and solutions that have been far less painful to run, but this is not a discussion about $protocol, it's a discussion about XMPP. Honestly, I'd rather see XMPP win. The best-case deployment scenario for it is miles above the best-case for most other protocols. But every time someone brings up limitations, the drumbeat starts: "we're working on an XEP for that, implementation coming soon" "you're just rehashing complaints from five years ago" "this wouldn't be a problem if you'd stop using $server_one and switch to $server_two" "that client doesn't work with $server_two, change the client" ad infinitum.

by sweden 10y ago

mindcrime 10y ago

It seems to me that the people who bash XMPP are people who never actually used it and they are just echoing myths from the last decade. That's my take as well. At this point "XMPP sucks on mobile" seems to be just an outdated meme that keeps replicating itself, but has little actual relevance.

grahamburger 10y ago

Agreed, I used the Xabber client on Android for years to keep in touch with our entire remote team (20ish people) using a basically out of the box ejabberd server. Never noticed poor battery life or heavy bandwidth usage and the communication was rock solid. Switching back and forth between desktop clients and mobile worked as expected with no weird surprises. All around a great experience, and this was 2011 ish through 2014.

stonogo 10y ago

>It seems to me that the people who bash XMPP are people who never actually used it and they are just echoing myths from the last decade. In the interest of productive discourse, I'm not going to react to the suggestion that I'm an ignoramus who just parrots ancient usenet posts. I'll merely mention it, because I want you to understand that this sort of response does not provide for a discussion of the technical merits of a communications protocol. Yes, XMPP advocates are continually providing anecdata about how wonderful things have been lately. My problem is that I've been running XMPP/Jabber servers for over a decade, at several different institutions with wildly varying deployment needs... and not once has it ever been a good experience. The failure modes vary, it's true. Sometimes it has been a matter of sheer bandwidth consumption, such as communications over satellite uplink. Sometimes the problem has been interoperability across a federated network. Sometimes the problem has been with specific clients, both commercial and FOSS. But there have always been problems. There are other protocols and solutions that have been far less painful to run, but this is not a discussion about $protocol, it's a discussion about XMPP. Honestly, I'd rather see XMPP win. The best-case deployment scenario for it is miles above the best-case for most other protocols. But every time someone brings up limitations, the drumbeat starts: "we're working on an XEP for that, implementation coming soon" "you're just rehashing complaints from five years ago" "this wouldn't be a problem if you'd stop using $server_one and switch to $server_two" "that client doesn't work with $server_two, change the client" ad infinitum.