7 ms·

After so many years fighting for XMPP, in my humble opinion it will be better to use matrix instead. XMPP was mostly killed by Google.

by DiThi 9y ago

SamWhited 9y ago
Why would matrix adoption succeed where XMPP adoption failed? They've done a few good things (Olm), and don't have to worry about backwards compatibility yet, but for the most part it seems like they're just reinventing the wheel and re-discovering problems XMPP fixed 15–20 years ago, except with a giant distributed graph protocol that doesn't scale very well (not that this matters for most people that aren't, eg. Google).
- Torgo 9y ago
  Matrix Riot is really good.
  - SamWhited 9y ago
    Does that have anything to do with Matrix though, or just that one company implemented a nice client? Conversations for Android/XMPP is also very good. There aren't any good desktop options, unfortunately, but I don't think this is necessarily an XMPP problem (although it is a problem that should be fixed), just that all the companies that write good desktop clients for XMPP make them proprietary or locked to their specific chat service.
    - nickexyz 9y ago
      https://github.com/dino/dino https://github.com/dino/dino Shows a lot of promise. Would love a nice Windows client as well though. With Mix coming, I think XMPP will become/remain pretty awesome. https://docs.ejabberd.im/tutorials/mix-010/ https://docs.ejabberd.im/tutorials/mix-010/
      - SamWhited 9y ago
        Thanks for the links; I wasn't aware ejabberd had an experimental MIX impementation! I switched to Prosody for my personal server a while back just because it was easier to setup/configure, but maybe it's time to look at ejabberd again (although I hate to run a full beam VM just for a single small server; as nice as beam is, it's still a lot of extra stuff to run on my tiny server).
        nickexyz 9y ago
        I actually switched to Ejabberd from Prosody a few days ago! I hear you, but Ejabberd seems snappier now than from what I remember. Well worth a try, importing users from Prosody was a breeze. There aren't any client's that can handle mix yet, but I think I saw something about it at Conversations GitHub.
      - ryukafalz 9y ago
        Dino looks really cool, thanks for the link! Looks like it doesn't yet support MAM[0], but aside from that this may be the closest thing to a Conversations equivalent I've seen for the desktop. https://github.com/dino/dino/tree/master/xmpp-vala/src/module/xep https://github.com/dino/dino/tree/master/xmpp-vala/src/modul...
    - DiThi 9y ago
      > or just that one company implemented a nice client? That is a huge deal. Having a de-facto reference client for all platforms with most of the features is very important. XMPP never had that. Google could have done it but they didn't. I used XMPP for more than a decade and tried everyone else to switch, but it has always been lacking in many ways in all platforms, without a safe fallback option.
    - goffi 9y ago
      > There aren't any good desktop options, unfortunately, but I don't think this is necessarily an XMPP problem (although it is a problem that should be fixed), just that all the companies that write good desktop clients for XMPP make them proprietary or locked to their specific chat service. For the record, we have a working Desktop/Android client on the way, which supports file sharing, carbon, MAM, Jingle (for file transfer only so far, but voice/video is planed at some point), with unique interface, and more features to come. It is also working on web and console (TUI + CLI). UI may need improvement, help is welcome. https://www.goffi.org/blog/goffi/9ff9bb64-1e1f-4334-80e5-a86f0b6b795b https://www.goffi.org/blog/goffi/9ff9bb64-1e1f-4334-80e5-a86... and https://salut-a-toi.org/ https://salut-a-toi.org/
- sweden 9y ago
  Easy file sharing? Shared chat logs across devices? Easy encryption? Easy voice chats? Video chats? Group voice/video chats? These are all things that I have on Matrix out-of-the-box and that I have some trouble getting on XMPP. I run my own XMPP server, I have been doing it for a couple of years, but getting some modern features is very difficult, if not impossible. But with Matrix everything is quite easy.
  - SamWhited 9y ago
    I feel like clients and servers have fixed most of these. I've never had to do anything to have chat logs, all devices just have it thanks to MAM, file sharing is done with HTTP Upload, encryption is done with OMEMO (axolotl/Olm, although this one is still making its way into clients many support it already), voice and video is still a problem but lots of XMPP based services exist to make it easier (Jitsi Meet). It's only not a problem with Matrix yet because they have a single client; if they ever get as popular as XMPP and have many, they'll have the same fragmentation issues. What the XSF needs is one really good desktop client to compete; something with a feature set comparable to Convesations on Android, and good looks to boot.
    - ryukafalz 9y ago
      >I've never had to do anything to have chat logs, all devices just have it thanks to MAM Android has Conversations, which has pretty good XEP support. But I can count on one hand the number of desktop clients that support this, and none of them are Pidgin[0] or Adium, which are probably the two most popular desktop XMPP clients (though it's hard to know for sure). Gajim supports it but not for multi-user chats[1]. Chat history is certainly not a solved problem overall in XMPP. >It's only not a problem with Matrix yet because they have a single client Matrix has lots of clients, the difference is it has an official reference client that supports (almost) all the protocol's features. [0] https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15653 https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15653 [1] https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8036 https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8036
  - ge0rg 9y ago
    File sharing, cross-device logs and encryption have been addressed in the last one-two years, pushed forward by Conversations on Android. However, getting that into other clients (e.g. on desktop/web) requires dedicated developers, and this is where XMPP currently lacks a little bit - not for lack of motivation but for lack of time.
saagarjha 9y ago
Sigh…the struggles of dealing with Google Talk’s limited Jabber interface…
- SamWhited 9y ago
  Google Talk is an interesting case; it was great having non-technical friends use a federated system (obviously they didn't know that, nor do they need to know that; this is one of the big problems with most small XMPP-based services, they only focus on technical people and use federation as a marketing point), but it was aweful dealing with, eg. Google refusing to follow certain standards, refusing to do TLS over S2S connections, etc. sigh indeed.

After so many years fighting for XMPP, in my humble opinion it will be better to use matrix instead. XMPP was mostly killed by Google.

by DiThi 9y ago

After so many years fighting for XMPP, in my humble opinion it will be better to use matrix instead. XMPP was mostly killed by Google.

SamWhited 9y ago

Why would matrix adoption succeed where XMPP adoption failed? They've done a few good things (Olm), and don't have to worry about backwards compatibility yet, but for the most part it seems like they're just reinventing the wheel and re-discovering problems XMPP fixed 15–20 years ago, except with a giant distributed graph protocol that doesn't scale very well (not that this matters for most people that aren't, eg. Google).

Torgo 9y ago
Matrix Riot is really good.
- SamWhited 9y ago
  Does that have anything to do with Matrix though, or just that one company implemented a nice client? Conversations for Android/XMPP is also very good. There aren't any good desktop options, unfortunately, but I don't think this is necessarily an XMPP problem (although it is a problem that should be fixed), just that all the companies that write good desktop clients for XMPP make them proprietary or locked to their specific chat service.
  - nickexyz 9y ago
    https://github.com/dino/dino https://github.com/dino/dino Shows a lot of promise. Would love a nice Windows client as well though. With Mix coming, I think XMPP will become/remain pretty awesome. https://docs.ejabberd.im/tutorials/mix-010/ https://docs.ejabberd.im/tutorials/mix-010/
    - SamWhited 9y ago
      Thanks for the links; I wasn't aware ejabberd had an experimental MIX impementation! I switched to Prosody for my personal server a while back just because it was easier to setup/configure, but maybe it's time to look at ejabberd again (although I hate to run a full beam VM just for a single small server; as nice as beam is, it's still a lot of extra stuff to run on my tiny server).
      - nickexyz 9y ago
        I actually switched to Ejabberd from Prosody a few days ago! I hear you, but Ejabberd seems snappier now than from what I remember. Well worth a try, importing users from Prosody was a breeze. There aren't any client's that can handle mix yet, but I think I saw something about it at Conversations GitHub.
    - ryukafalz 9y ago
      Dino looks really cool, thanks for the link! Looks like it doesn't yet support MAM[0], but aside from that this may be the closest thing to a Conversations equivalent I've seen for the desktop. https://github.com/dino/dino/tree/master/xmpp-vala/src/module/xep https://github.com/dino/dino/tree/master/xmpp-vala/src/modul...
  - DiThi 9y ago
    > or just that one company implemented a nice client? That is a huge deal. Having a de-facto reference client for all platforms with most of the features is very important. XMPP never had that. Google could have done it but they didn't. I used XMPP for more than a decade and tried everyone else to switch, but it has always been lacking in many ways in all platforms, without a safe fallback option.
  - goffi 9y ago
    > There aren't any good desktop options, unfortunately, but I don't think this is necessarily an XMPP problem (although it is a problem that should be fixed), just that all the companies that write good desktop clients for XMPP make them proprietary or locked to their specific chat service. For the record, we have a working Desktop/Android client on the way, which supports file sharing, carbon, MAM, Jingle (for file transfer only so far, but voice/video is planed at some point), with unique interface, and more features to come. It is also working on web and console (TUI + CLI). UI may need improvement, help is welcome. https://www.goffi.org/blog/goffi/9ff9bb64-1e1f-4334-80e5-a86f0b6b795b https://www.goffi.org/blog/goffi/9ff9bb64-1e1f-4334-80e5-a86... and https://salut-a-toi.org/ https://salut-a-toi.org/
sweden 9y ago
Easy file sharing? Shared chat logs across devices? Easy encryption? Easy voice chats? Video chats? Group voice/video chats? These are all things that I have on Matrix out-of-the-box and that I have some trouble getting on XMPP. I run my own XMPP server, I have been doing it for a couple of years, but getting some modern features is very difficult, if not impossible. But with Matrix everything is quite easy.
- SamWhited 9y ago
  I feel like clients and servers have fixed most of these. I've never had to do anything to have chat logs, all devices just have it thanks to MAM, file sharing is done with HTTP Upload, encryption is done with OMEMO (axolotl/Olm, although this one is still making its way into clients many support it already), voice and video is still a problem but lots of XMPP based services exist to make it easier (Jitsi Meet). It's only not a problem with Matrix yet because they have a single client; if they ever get as popular as XMPP and have many, they'll have the same fragmentation issues. What the XSF needs is one really good desktop client to compete; something with a feature set comparable to Convesations on Android, and good looks to boot.
  - ryukafalz 9y ago
    >I've never had to do anything to have chat logs, all devices just have it thanks to MAM Android has Conversations, which has pretty good XEP support. But I can count on one hand the number of desktop clients that support this, and none of them are Pidgin[0] or Adium, which are probably the two most popular desktop XMPP clients (though it's hard to know for sure). Gajim supports it but not for multi-user chats[1]. Chat history is certainly not a solved problem overall in XMPP. >It's only not a problem with Matrix yet because they have a single client Matrix has lots of clients, the difference is it has an official reference client that supports (almost) all the protocol's features. [0] https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15653 https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15653 [1] https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8036 https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8036
- ge0rg 9y ago
  File sharing, cross-device logs and encryption have been addressed in the last one-two years, pushed forward by Conversations on Android. However, getting that into other clients (e.g. on desktop/web) requires dedicated developers, and this is where XMPP currently lacks a little bit - not for lack of motivation but for lack of time.

saagarjha 9y ago

Sigh…the struggles of dealing with Google Talk’s limited Jabber interface…

SamWhited 9y ago
Google Talk is an interesting case; it was great having non-technical friends use a federated system (obviously they didn't know that, nor do they need to know that; this is one of the big problems with most small XMPP-based services, they only focus on technical people and use federation as a marketing point), but it was aweful dealing with, eg. Google refusing to follow certain standards, refusing to do TLS over S2S connections, etc. sigh indeed.