5 ms·

Why do we have RFC standardized and decentralized email but never could make standard chat/call protocol? XMPP and now Matrix made good progress in that direct

Why do we have RFC standardized and decentralized email but never could make standard chat/call protocol? XMPP and now Matrix made good progress in that direction but are mostly obscure to date.

bsder 6y ago
1) Because email predated everybody trying to become a monopoly and extract rents from the Internet. 2) NAT really screwed us all by breaking the end-to-end nature of the Internet.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  3) because electronic mail is fundamental and early attempts at walled gardens proved it could not be contained
- Shared404 6y ago
  > 2) NAT really screwed us all by breaking the end-to-end nature of the Internet. Don't worry, we'll all be on IPV6 any day now.
- zucker42 6y ago
  Could you explain how NAT is relevant to the growth of walled gardens to someone was born after the development of the World Wide Web?
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    If nothing else, NAT makes it harder to leave a walled garden for a small chat program between you and your friends/family/interest group. Without it, you could potentially all run the program and talk. With it, someone has to be technical enough to do port forwarding, someone has to be on a connectin without carrier-grade NAT so that port forwarding is an option, and/or someone has to pay with money/time to setup and run a server on a dedicated IP or upgrade their connection to a static IP. The most easily accessible alternative is another company's closed system. I suspect NAT wasn't involved in that developing as much as money was - IRC, email, Newsgroups were hard to profit from. Having a distinctive service which is different from your competitors so customers can be attracted, and which is closed so customers want to bring their friends and family in to talk to them and then can't leave without the whole group leaving, is bound to be more profitable for the winners than taking part in a federated system where only one user can join and talk to their contacts with relays to other servers.
vecio 6y ago
I wrote something about protocols https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23609991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23609991
rorykoehler 6y ago
I'd like to see the EU fund efforts to develop open standards for all these technologies.
- jojobas 6y ago
  They are too busy banning memes and legislating encryption backdoors. I wouldn't be holding my breath.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    That's OK. I'll make it happen if no one else does.
- aloisdg 6y ago
  I dont know about the whole EU, but the french government is fond of Matrix and Jitsi.
stubish 6y ago
Because all the big players are trying to own the standard chat/call protocol, so instead we have several non-standard chat/call protocols, so consumers suffer. The market is failing to produce the product that consumers want. And I can't see this changing in the current world.
- jojobas 6y ago
  Arguably the consumers don't realize the value of open email vs "everybody's on Gmail". Almost everyone outside of HN/Slashdot is happy with whatever messenger they get from Facebook.
  - marcusjt 6y ago
    They can't be, deciding which messaging app to use to contact a given person and have a reasonable expectation of getting a reply reasonably quickly, is very much an unsolved problem that everyone suffers from, whether techie or not. And it varies by country & subculture, e.g. over here in the UK almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp as their primary IM, whereas my understanding is that it's much less popular in the USA. And let's not talk about iMessage, the most closed of all IM platforms.
maxerickson 6y ago
The lowest common denominator dictates everything if you do interop. And then you add a committee and the lowest common denominator doesn't change very fast.
remir 6y ago
SIP is ubiquitous and works pretty well. It's probably at the core of all these video conferencing apps. You can do audio/video calls and IM with it (using SIMPLE). The problem is being able to call people beyond your SIP servers. Companies don't want to allow it, probably because they don't want to have their service become a commodity.

Why do we have RFC standardized and decentralized email but never could make standard chat/call protocol? XMPP and now Matrix made good progress in that direction but are mostly obscure to date.

bsder 6y ago

1) Because email predated everybody trying to become a monopoly and extract rents from the Internet. 2) NAT really screwed us all by breaking the end-to-end nature of the Internet.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
3) because electronic mail is fundamental and early attempts at walled gardens proved it could not be contained
Shared404 6y ago
> 2) NAT really screwed us all by breaking the end-to-end nature of the Internet. Don't worry, we'll all be on IPV6 any day now.
zucker42 6y ago
Could you explain how NAT is relevant to the growth of walled gardens to someone was born after the development of the World Wide Web?
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  If nothing else, NAT makes it harder to leave a walled garden for a small chat program between you and your friends/family/interest group. Without it, you could potentially all run the program and talk. With it, someone has to be technical enough to do port forwarding, someone has to be on a connectin without carrier-grade NAT so that port forwarding is an option, and/or someone has to pay with money/time to setup and run a server on a dedicated IP or upgrade their connection to a static IP. The most easily accessible alternative is another company's closed system. I suspect NAT wasn't involved in that developing as much as money was - IRC, email, Newsgroups were hard to profit from. Having a distinctive service which is different from your competitors so customers can be attracted, and which is closed so customers want to bring their friends and family in to talk to them and then can't leave without the whole group leaving, is bound to be more profitable for the winners than taking part in a federated system where only one user can join and talk to their contacts with relays to other servers.

vecio 6y ago

I wrote something about protocols https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23609991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23609991

rorykoehler 6y ago

I'd like to see the EU fund efforts to develop open standards for all these technologies.

jojobas 6y ago
They are too busy banning memes and legislating encryption backdoors. I wouldn't be holding my breath.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  That's OK. I'll make it happen if no one else does.
aloisdg 6y ago
I dont know about the whole EU, but the french government is fond of Matrix and Jitsi.

stubish 6y ago

Because all the big players are trying to own the standard chat/call protocol, so instead we have several non-standard chat/call protocols, so consumers suffer. The market is failing to produce the product that consumers want. And I can't see this changing in the current world.

jojobas 6y ago
Arguably the consumers don't realize the value of open email vs "everybody's on Gmail". Almost everyone outside of HN/Slashdot is happy with whatever messenger they get from Facebook.
- marcusjt 6y ago
  They can't be, deciding which messaging app to use to contact a given person and have a reasonable expectation of getting a reply reasonably quickly, is very much an unsolved problem that everyone suffers from, whether techie or not. And it varies by country & subculture, e.g. over here in the UK almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp as their primary IM, whereas my understanding is that it's much less popular in the USA. And let's not talk about iMessage, the most closed of all IM platforms.

maxerickson 6y ago

The lowest common denominator dictates everything if you do interop. And then you add a committee and the lowest common denominator doesn't change very fast.

remir 6y ago

SIP is ubiquitous and works pretty well. It's probably at the core of all these video conferencing apps. You can do audio/video calls and IM with it (using SIMPLE). The problem is being able to call people beyond your SIP servers. Companies don't want to allow it, probably because they don't want to have their service become a commodity.