6 ms·

It's sad that we don't have a very good self hosted chat solution. Last time I checked around, XMPP didn't have a client that I could recommend to business cli

It's sad that we don't have a very good self hosted chat solution. Last time I checked around, XMPP didn't have a client that I could recommend to business clients that looked easy/simple to use, has no gotchas and looks native. Currently I use Mattermost, which does basic things fine and things are stable but the formatting is just getting in the way making texts unnecessary big and bold when people never intend to (there is a per user setting to disable formatting but I can't tell everyone to turn it off), and reply and quoting interface is just wrong and I never use it, so most of the other people use another vendor service which is easy and does things in a saner way. And video/voice is apparently not in their integrated goal and is thrown to some external paid service, so pretty much only simple text and file uploads. I'm not looking for anything too special in my opinion but I find it there's no self hosted solution that has, - Simple interface so I don't have to lecture people 10 minutes on how to use it. - WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc - File uploads - Decent reply/quote feature - Multiple people voice call - Optionally multiple people video calls - Native clients for desktop and clients and web Interface

ajconway 7y ago
Matrix seems to be the future now. The present is, however, Slack.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  > The present is, however, Slack. Actually, in terms of number of users, the present is MS Teams. Both companies release their numbers and it's not even close.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Not surprised there. Plenty of companies already in bed with Microsoft. This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. Still feel like competitors can do better though. Microsoft Teams looks nice but people still have issues with it. I only used it long enough to not see those issues.
    - bachmeier 7y ago
      > This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. What's important is that when you log into your email account, you're logging into Teams, Planner, etc. I recently started using Planner, as awful as it is (seriously, you can't even drag cards!) because I can't expect others to adopt a new tool.
  - sascha_sl 7y ago
    Are these real active users, or just "so many accounts in the attched AD" though?
    - bachmeier 7y ago
      Not sure, but I really don't believe Slack's numbers either. I have a Slack account that only occasionally gets used, so they probably count me. Whatever the real numbers might be, Teams is very heavily used. My university has Office 365 and Teams comes with it for free. No need to pay for Slack. No need to expect others to use a new tool and a new app and a new login when Teams is right there.
  - eikenberry 7y ago
    Completely due to bundling. My last employer was using Slack until MS basically told them they could have Teams for free as part of the O365 subscription.
- SamWhited 7y ago
  Matrix will likely never take off, sadly. I was hoping for an alternative for a while too, but not having a proper standards body to advocate for and push the standard probably means it's not displacing XMPP any time soon. Also the protocol just isn't great for chat; if you need a giant distributed graph database, great, but for chat it's just very heavy.
  - neiljohnson 7y ago
    The evolution of the Matrix protocol is governed by the Matrix.org Foundation (https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/). XSF contributed the XMPP spec to the IETF after ~10 years, Matrix is a younger protocol (2014) and perhaps it will do something similar in the future. Given the adoption rates of Matrix, I think it is fair to conclude it is a good fit for chat. Though it is fair to call out that it works quite differently under the hood from many other chat protocols. The decentralised architecture adds a resilience not possible in a purely federated system.
    - Zash 7y ago
      A correction: The Jabber project started in 1999 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3921 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3921 was published in 2004. https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/xmppwg/2002-May/000000.html https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/xmppwg/2002-May/000000.htm... suggests that the IETF process was already started in 2002.
      - neiljohnson 7y ago
        Oh interesting, thank you for the correction. In any case Matrix would not rule out working with the IETF in the future, but for now the Matrix.org Foundation manages the governance of the protocol.
    - SamWhited 7y ago
      If they donated the spec to a proper standards body I would be much more comfortable with it.
edhelas 7y ago
https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ maybe ? :) (doesn't have all the features listed)
rglullis 7y ago
Check Matrix/Synapse (server) and Riot (client)
lucideer 7y ago
> WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc Assuming you know the minimum features non-technical users want/need in such a tool is going to exclude a lot of options that might otherwise be viable. WYSIWYG is probably the canonical example of this: non-technical users DON'T need WYSIWYG. Slack has been the (non-self-hosted) solution du jour for what you describe. My company use Slack and we have thousands of non-technical staff on it: complaints were rife when they recently introduced WYSIWYG and we continue to get requests for help in disabling it. For the future, I think Riot is your best bet. Matrix may suffer the same fate of XMPP, but if it escapes that fate, it'll be because of Riot. It doesn't tick all your boxes yet, but RiotX is a hopeful project in terms of native, and the integrations it supports make a lot of features easy to add in some usable capacity.
- mekster 7y ago
  > complaints were rife when they recently introduced WYSIWYG and we continue to get requests for help in disabling it. Can you tell me how they don't like it? Do they rather want auto formatting like markdown or no formatting at all?
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
(self-promoting here) We're building Xabber in exactly this direction. Currently, of your list wee lack multiple people voice/video calls, and also a native client for desktop. Web version is rather mature already, with android / iOS clients coming to shape fast and will soon be released. We'll likely make an Electron-based desktop version, though of course it far from ideal However, doing all this great stuff we had to replace many common XMPP extensions, like multi-user chat, which is utter garbage. The replacement works like ... well, Telegram groups, has nice fallback capabilities to legacy clients and is generally very well working.
- mekster 7y ago
  Nice to know someone is working to create a sane solution. Building for the web first and porting to Electron for desktop and webview for mobile is good as you can have identical interfaces for users to switch between and less bugs to chase for developers and I see no downside with that path. I understand multi user calls/videos isn't simple as I still use Skype just for that for a group of people and it seems to do that part fine.
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Is this MUC replacement MIX or a custom thing? In any case, I may have to give this a try - I used Xabber a bit on Android years ago.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    No, it's not MIX. I believe that MIX will never fly, because it requires support by a participant's server. So unless all server developers will implement it, XMPP users will not be able to use it. Also, it puts too big emphasis on compatibility with old MUC, which is beyond saving. Our approach does not require anything from a participant's server, and it does not even require a specialized support by a participant client: a reasonable fallback is provided for legacy clients, even if a participant is connected using 2 clients, one of which does support the new standard, and another one does not. It was achieved by clever dancing around how message carbons work and allows to sync clients nicely.
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
> - WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc WhatsApp is the most popular chat app among non-technical users in the world, and it explicitly uses symbols instead of WYSIWIG for formatting. I'm pretty sure you're making up these requirements without actually researching your target audience.
- mekster 7y ago
  What does your research say? I'm barely mentioning the features which people would generally expect out of chat apps. Regarding the WYSIWYG, I always hear complaints, including myself that texts get weirdly formatted when they paste from somewhere else and it does more harm than good when symbols are automatically parsed, so the other option would apparently be WYSIWYG editor, which anyone will have no problem comprehending how to use. You can't just expect everyone to read and learn formatting rules to type. I'm an engineer but I don't even want to remember some Mattermost formatting rules to avoid unintended transformations.
  - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    You're making very strong statements that aren't backed by empirical evidence. All I can say is that I see that successful chat apps for 'normal people' seem to have converged on something that isn't WYSIWIG, and it's probably not an accident. P.S. Asking users what they want probably isn't the best idea. See "Homer's car" for a humorous take on this issue.
kitd 7y ago
Someone recently pointed me at DeltaChat [1]. 'Chat' over SMTP/IMAP. Apart from voice/video, it ticks all of the above (plus other features such as threading and e2e security), with the fallback of being able to use a regular email client in an emergency [1] - https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
- SamWhited 7y ago
  Does this have a standards body behind it advocating for and developing a spec that anyone can implement? I'd argue that this is a requirement for any communication system to take off and be useful and sustainable long term.
  - kitd 7y ago
    SMTP - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821 IMAP - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501
    - SamWhited 7y ago
      That does not cover the higher level messaging and presence protocol.
- mekster 7y ago
  I wonder if it can handle large attachments efficiently, assuming postfix is set to allow 1GB attachment or so.
fiatjaf 7y ago
You basically listed all features ever invented. There's not a single "hosted" chat app that has all the features you want.

ajconway 7y ago

Matrix seems to be the future now. The present is, however, Slack.

bachmeier 7y ago
> The present is, however, Slack. Actually, in terms of number of users, the present is MS Teams. Both companies release their numbers and it's not even close.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Not surprised there. Plenty of companies already in bed with Microsoft. This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. Still feel like competitors can do better though. Microsoft Teams looks nice but people still have issues with it. I only used it long enough to not see those issues.
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    > This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. What's important is that when you log into your email account, you're logging into Teams, Planner, etc. I recently started using Planner, as awful as it is (seriously, you can't even drag cards!) because I can't expect others to adopt a new tool.
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  Are these real active users, or just "so many accounts in the attched AD" though?
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    Not sure, but I really don't believe Slack's numbers either. I have a Slack account that only occasionally gets used, so they probably count me. Whatever the real numbers might be, Teams is very heavily used. My university has Office 365 and Teams comes with it for free. No need to pay for Slack. No need to expect others to use a new tool and a new app and a new login when Teams is right there.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  Completely due to bundling. My last employer was using Slack until MS basically told them they could have Teams for free as part of the O365 subscription.
SamWhited 7y ago
Matrix will likely never take off, sadly. I was hoping for an alternative for a while too, but not having a proper standards body to advocate for and push the standard probably means it's not displacing XMPP any time soon. Also the protocol just isn't great for chat; if you need a giant distributed graph database, great, but for chat it's just very heavy.
- neiljohnson 7y ago
  The evolution of the Matrix protocol is governed by the Matrix.org Foundation (https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/). XSF contributed the XMPP spec to the IETF after ~10 years, Matrix is a younger protocol (2014) and perhaps it will do something similar in the future. Given the adoption rates of Matrix, I think it is fair to conclude it is a good fit for chat. Though it is fair to call out that it works quite differently under the hood from many other chat protocols. The decentralised architecture adds a resilience not possible in a purely federated system.
  - Zash 7y ago
    A correction: The Jabber project started in 1999 and https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3921 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3921 was published in 2004. https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/xmppwg/2002-May/000000.html https://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/xmppwg/2002-May/000000.htm... suggests that the IETF process was already started in 2002.
    - neiljohnson 7y ago
      Oh interesting, thank you for the correction. In any case Matrix would not rule out working with the IETF in the future, but for now the Matrix.org Foundation manages the governance of the protocol.
  - SamWhited 7y ago
    If they donated the spec to a proper standards body I would be much more comfortable with it.

edhelas 7y ago

https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ maybe ? :) (doesn't have all the features listed)

rglullis 7y ago

Check Matrix/Synapse (server) and Riot (client)

lucideer 7y ago

> WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc Assuming you know the minimum features non-technical users want/need in such a tool is going to exclude a lot of options that might otherwise be viable. WYSIWYG is probably the canonical example of this: non-technical users DON'T need WYSIWYG. Slack has been the (non-self-hosted) solution du jour for what you describe. My company use Slack and we have thousands of non-technical staff on it: complaints were rife when they recently introduced WYSIWYG and we continue to get requests for help in disabling it. For the future, I think Riot is your best bet. Matrix may suffer the same fate of XMPP, but if it escapes that fate, it'll be because of Riot. It doesn't tick all your boxes yet, but RiotX is a hopeful project in terms of native, and the integrations it supports make a lot of features easy to add in some usable capacity.

mekster 7y ago
> complaints were rife when they recently introduced WYSIWYG and we continue to get requests for help in disabling it. Can you tell me how they don't like it? Do they rather want auto formatting like markdown or no formatting at all?

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago

(self-promoting here) We're building Xabber in exactly this direction. Currently, of your list wee lack multiple people voice/video calls, and also a native client for desktop. Web version is rather mature already, with android / iOS clients coming to shape fast and will soon be released. We'll likely make an Electron-based desktop version, though of course it far from ideal However, doing all this great stuff we had to replace many common XMPP extensions, like multi-user chat, which is utter garbage. The replacement works like ... well, Telegram groups, has nice fallback capabilities to legacy clients and is generally very well working.

mekster 7y ago
Nice to know someone is working to create a sane solution. Building for the web first and porting to Electron for desktop and webview for mobile is good as you can have identical interfaces for users to switch between and less bugs to chase for developers and I see no downside with that path. I understand multi user calls/videos isn't simple as I still use Skype just for that for a group of people and it seems to do that part fine.
ryukafalz 7y ago
Is this MUC replacement MIX or a custom thing? In any case, I may have to give this a try - I used Xabber a bit on Android years ago.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  No, it's not MIX. I believe that MIX will never fly, because it requires support by a participant's server. So unless all server developers will implement it, XMPP users will not be able to use it. Also, it puts too big emphasis on compatibility with old MUC, which is beyond saving. Our approach does not require anything from a participant's server, and it does not even require a specialized support by a participant client: a reasonable fallback is provided for legacy clients, even if a participant is connected using 2 clients, one of which does support the new standard, and another one does not. It was achieved by clever dancing around how message carbons work and allows to sync clients nicely.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

> - WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc WhatsApp is the most popular chat app among non-technical users in the world, and it explicitly uses symbols instead of WYSIWIG for formatting. I'm pretty sure you're making up these requirements without actually researching your target audience.

mekster 7y ago
What does your research say? I'm barely mentioning the features which people would generally expect out of chat apps. Regarding the WYSIWYG, I always hear complaints, including myself that texts get weirdly formatted when they paste from somewhere else and it does more harm than good when symbols are automatically parsed, so the other option would apparently be WYSIWYG editor, which anyone will have no problem comprehending how to use. You can't just expect everyone to read and learn formatting rules to type. I'm an engineer but I don't even want to remember some Mattermost formatting rules to avoid unintended transformations.
- otabdeveloper4 7y ago
  You're making very strong statements that aren't backed by empirical evidence. All I can say is that I see that successful chat apps for 'normal people' seem to have converged on something that isn't WYSIWIG, and it's probably not an accident. P.S. Asking users what they want probably isn't the best idea. See "Homer's car" for a humorous take on this issue.

kitd 7y ago

Someone recently pointed me at DeltaChat [1]. 'Chat' over SMTP/IMAP. Apart from voice/video, it ticks all of the above (plus other features such as threading and e2e security), with the fallback of being able to use a regular email client in an emergency [1] - https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/

SamWhited 7y ago
Does this have a standards body behind it advocating for and developing a spec that anyone can implement? I'd argue that this is a requirement for any communication system to take off and be useful and sustainable long term.
- kitd 7y ago
  SMTP - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821 IMAP - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501
  - SamWhited 7y ago
    That does not cover the higher level messaging and presence protocol.
mekster 7y ago
I wonder if it can handle large attachments efficiently, assuming postfix is set to allow 1GB attachment or so.

fiatjaf 7y ago

You basically listed all features ever invented. There's not a single "hosted" chat app that has all the features you want.