6 ms·

Because XMPP sucks. It had 20 years to succeed, and failed. Maybe it’s time for you to move on? Last company I worked at that used it internally had thousands

by jiofih 6y ago

Because XMPP sucks. It had 20 years to succeed, and failed. Maybe it’s time for you to move on? Last company I worked at that used it internally had thousands of employees in IT and still considered maintaining the jabber server not worth it - a million XEP extensions cannot bring it to the same level as a modern chat client. On every matrix post the xmpp crowd comes out of the woods, but what have you got to show? What’s the best cross-platform or web client for it right now? They all look like half-baked ports of long abandoned QT apps made for Linux and still don’t support syncing/multi-presence well.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Did the company switch to Matrix? XMPP was pretty successful in the 2000s. More than Matrix so far. There were missed opportunities but the main reason it declined was Facebook and Google decided closed was more profitable than open. Why exclude native clients?
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  I'm not even convinced they decided it was more profitable. The decision probably went something like this: Manager: Our users want this feature Developer: We can't add that because it will cause incompatibility with XMPP clients Manager: This is the 50th feature that has been blocked by XMPP and hardly any of our users use it. Time to cut off support for it
  - mszcz 6y ago
    That and they probably threw hoards of cash and engineering at the problem.
  - xorcist 6y ago
    It's probably much simpler than that: "It has come to my attention that clients which we do not control connect to our service. This severely limits the monetization opportunities available to us. Please fix before it is caught in a due diligence."
- upofadown 6y ago
  XMPP is pretty successful right now. Last I heard there were something like 80k federated servers. Matrix can only dream of that level of sucess...
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    we can see ~60k federated servers on Matrix right now, and presumably there are loads more we can't see.
selfhoster11 6y ago
Messaging underwent an earth-shattering paradigm shift in the past 20 years, so numerous features considered optional back in 2000 are now mandatory when you want any mass market appeal (which is the whole point when messaging is dominated by network effects). A rework of the FOSS messaging ecosystem was much needed, and Matrix was the one to deliver it and not XMPP. I say the winner takes the crown, especially when the end result is more coherent for users. The fact is that sometimes the kind of tool you need is a solid monolith built from the ground up with specific objectives in mind, and not a loose accretion of small utilities and extensions.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  I wish Matrix delivered what it promised. But it hasn't yet. Matrix is coherent if you use the reference server and clients. But so is XMPP if you get them from the same source. And the Matrix reference server needs pretty powerful hardware.
  - arendtio 6y ago
    > And the Matrix reference server needs pretty powerful hardware. That is not a bug, its a feature (or so the Matrix people say). In fact, part of the Matrix design is a fat server which has a lot more responsibilities by default than an XMPP server. However, I guess a full-featured XMPP server (with MAM, Push, etc.) probably has similar requirements.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      The Matrix people don't say it's a feature. They say the rewrite will fix it. XMPP with MAM and push doesn't have similar requirements.
      - Arathorn 6y ago
        There's some confusion here. * Dendrite ("the rewrite") uses about 5-10x less RAM than Synapse; it's in relatively late beta and you can see for yourself today. For instance, dendrite.matrix.org is currently sitting at 480MB of RAM, despite being in ~5000 rooms spanning ~150K users. * Matrix is coherent no matter what clients you use, given there is only one version of the spec (and as it happens, we haven't broken backwards compatibility yet). Sure, some implementations might not have implemented all the features, but the features they do implement (assuming they're not buggy) will work reliably with any other client or server out there. It's fine to dislike Matrix and pine for XMPP, but please don't spread FUD.
thiht 6y ago
> Because XMPP sucks YES! I never understand why people are so eager to defend XMPP for its so called perfection, when it's so bad in reality. The "eXtensible" part only is a huge and unfixable mistake. Make it feature complete, not eXtensible, or you end up with dozens of clients not working the same way and subtly failing in multiple scenarios.
kuschku 6y ago
The ridiculous part is that nowadays IRC has more stable and reliable (and beautiful) clients for web and mobile than XMPP.
- Tepix 6y ago
  IRC is lacking a ton of features. It doesn't even have a standardized charset! Nowadays people want E2E encryption, using multiple devices, multimedia, real-time audio + video, contact management, push notifications etc.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    UTF-8 has been in the standard since the mid 2000s. You're just as much out of date with the other assertions.
  - johnisgood 6y ago
    I use IRC. I use it with multiple devices, including desktop and phone. I have "contact management" and notifications (whatever push is) on both desktop and my phone. I use OTR for private messages. The only thing it may be missing is audio/video, but I think even that may be doable, I have not researched it due to lack of need.
    - Tepix 6y ago
      Interesting. Are these bolted on features standardized anywhere? In RFCs perhaps?
      - johnisgood 6y ago
        I do not think so. I SSH into my Linux server where I run irssi (IRC client) inside screen (screen manager). Some people use IRCCloud. That is how I can use it on both my phone and desktop. On phone I use JuiceSSH, but I have used ConnectBot before, too. I have notifications because my status bar and window manager know how to handle urgency hints and "bellIsUrgent" is set to true. OTR is natively supported by irssi. Weechat supports it via a plugin. I do not know about other clients. As for contact management... I am not entirely sure what it entails. Some IRC servers (such as UnrealIRCd, for example) support "WATCH" which is a notify-type system. The server will send you a message when any nickname in your watch list logs on or off. You can read about it more here, along with alternatives: https://ircv3.net/specs/core/monitor-3.2 https://ircv3.net/specs/core/monitor-3.2. There are a couple of different ways to achieve the same thing.

by jiofih 6y ago

pseudalopex 6y ago

Did the company switch to Matrix? XMPP was pretty successful in the 2000s. More than Matrix so far. There were missed opportunities but the main reason it declined was Facebook and Google decided closed was more profitable than open. Why exclude native clients?

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
I'm not even convinced they decided it was more profitable. The decision probably went something like this: Manager: Our users want this feature Developer: We can't add that because it will cause incompatibility with XMPP clients Manager: This is the 50th feature that has been blocked by XMPP and hardly any of our users use it. Time to cut off support for it
- mszcz 6y ago
  That and they probably threw hoards of cash and engineering at the problem.
- xorcist 6y ago
  It's probably much simpler than that: "It has come to my attention that clients which we do not control connect to our service. This severely limits the monetization opportunities available to us. Please fix before it is caught in a due diligence."
upofadown 6y ago
XMPP is pretty successful right now. Last I heard there were something like 80k federated servers. Matrix can only dream of that level of sucess...
- Arathorn 6y ago
  we can see ~60k federated servers on Matrix right now, and presumably there are loads more we can't see.

selfhoster11 6y ago

Messaging underwent an earth-shattering paradigm shift in the past 20 years, so numerous features considered optional back in 2000 are now mandatory when you want any mass market appeal (which is the whole point when messaging is dominated by network effects). A rework of the FOSS messaging ecosystem was much needed, and Matrix was the one to deliver it and not XMPP. I say the winner takes the crown, especially when the end result is more coherent for users. The fact is that sometimes the kind of tool you need is a solid monolith built from the ground up with specific objectives in mind, and not a loose accretion of small utilities and extensions.

pseudalopex 6y ago
I wish Matrix delivered what it promised. But it hasn't yet. Matrix is coherent if you use the reference server and clients. But so is XMPP if you get them from the same source. And the Matrix reference server needs pretty powerful hardware.
- arendtio 6y ago
  > And the Matrix reference server needs pretty powerful hardware. That is not a bug, its a feature (or so the Matrix people say). In fact, part of the Matrix design is a fat server which has a lot more responsibilities by default than an XMPP server. However, I guess a full-featured XMPP server (with MAM, Push, etc.) probably has similar requirements.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    The Matrix people don't say it's a feature. They say the rewrite will fix it. XMPP with MAM and push doesn't have similar requirements.
    - Arathorn 6y ago
      There's some confusion here. * Dendrite ("the rewrite") uses about 5-10x less RAM than Synapse; it's in relatively late beta and you can see for yourself today. For instance, dendrite.matrix.org is currently sitting at 480MB of RAM, despite being in ~5000 rooms spanning ~150K users. * Matrix is coherent no matter what clients you use, given there is only one version of the spec (and as it happens, we haven't broken backwards compatibility yet). Sure, some implementations might not have implemented all the features, but the features they do implement (assuming they're not buggy) will work reliably with any other client or server out there. It's fine to dislike Matrix and pine for XMPP, but please don't spread FUD.

thiht 6y ago

> Because XMPP sucks YES! I never understand why people are so eager to defend XMPP for its so called perfection, when it's so bad in reality. The "eXtensible" part only is a huge and unfixable mistake. Make it feature complete, not eXtensible, or you end up with dozens of clients not working the same way and subtly failing in multiple scenarios.

kuschku 6y ago

The ridiculous part is that nowadays IRC has more stable and reliable (and beautiful) clients for web and mobile than XMPP.

Tepix 6y ago
IRC is lacking a ton of features. It doesn't even have a standardized charset! Nowadays people want E2E encryption, using multiple devices, multimedia, real-time audio + video, contact management, push notifications etc.
- kuschku 6y ago
  UTF-8 has been in the standard since the mid 2000s. You're just as much out of date with the other assertions.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  I use IRC. I use it with multiple devices, including desktop and phone. I have "contact management" and notifications (whatever push is) on both desktop and my phone. I use OTR for private messages. The only thing it may be missing is audio/video, but I think even that may be doable, I have not researched it due to lack of need.
  - Tepix 6y ago
    Interesting. Are these bolted on features standardized anywhere? In RFCs perhaps?
    - johnisgood 6y ago
      I do not think so. I SSH into my Linux server where I run irssi (IRC client) inside screen (screen manager). Some people use IRCCloud. That is how I can use it on both my phone and desktop. On phone I use JuiceSSH, but I have used ConnectBot before, too. I have notifications because my status bar and window manager know how to handle urgency hints and "bellIsUrgent" is set to true. OTR is natively supported by irssi. Weechat supports it via a plugin. I do not know about other clients. As for contact management... I am not entirely sure what it entails. Some IRC servers (such as UnrealIRCd, for example) support "WATCH" which is a notify-type system. The server will send you a message when any nickname in your watch list logs on or off. You can read about it more here, along with alternatives: https://ircv3.net/specs/core/monitor-3.2 https://ircv3.net/specs/core/monitor-3.2. There are a couple of different ways to achieve the same thing.