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This was touched upon - the point is that XMPP's extensibility means we aren't "stuck at the lowest common denominator". One of the burdens of the ecosystem, f

This was touched upon - the point is that XMPP's extensibility means we aren't "stuck at the lowest common denominator". One of the burdens of the ecosystem, for example, is Pidgin. I don't want to pick on the project too hard, I know they're working on various things including a big refactor for Pidgin 3.0. But the reality is that Pidgin has implemented few (if any) of the XMPP features introduced in the past decade. Yet it's still an amazingly popular client. That means the experience for Pidgin users is getting progressively worse as the rest of the XMPP ecosystem moves on, but we don't add new features to XMPP and think "but no, because Pidgin!". We do consider backwards compatibility in general. And while it's surely slower and more effort than just rolling out an update to a single app on the app store, it's not "stuck". I appreciate the path Signal took (possibly more than many in the decentralized protocol communities), but simply believe that what was lost in pursuing a centralized model is not something I'm okay with losing.

tehjoker 6y ago
I think the real problem isn't that some clients support emojis and some don't, it's that Signal is a security product and lowest common denominator in the installed base can mean broken security. I can see why Moxie makes this tradeoff, but I am also pleased by the way the encryption system is making its way into other platforms. Hopefully, this will over time result in some kind of useful ecosystem, but you might only want to trust the part of it that is more strictly controlled for "serious business".
- upofadown 6y ago
  There is no interoperability between systems that use ideas from Signal Protocol and it is unlikely that there will ever be. There is no published standard. The best you can do is transiterate existing source code. It is a very complicated protocol with lots of state. It requires a server infrastructure to work. To be interoperable clients need access to information on the same server. The protocol is simply not designed for interoperability...
rkangel 6y ago
> This was touched upon - the point is that XMPP's extensibility means we aren't "stuck at the lowest common denominator". To echo the sibling comments - with security you are stuck at the lowest common denominator. If anyone in your ecosystem can negotiate down the security (because they don't support it) then the system as a whole is vulnerable. There are UI things you can do to highlight this ("messages to this destination are not secured") but it becomes complex and confusing for users (what happens if you have a group of people with secure features and you add someone without?). In summary - I can see where Snikket is coming from. It gives a common name to talk about - a new lowest common denominator feature set.

tehjoker 6y ago

I think the real problem isn't that some clients support emojis and some don't, it's that Signal is a security product and lowest common denominator in the installed base can mean broken security. I can see why Moxie makes this tradeoff, but I am also pleased by the way the encryption system is making its way into other platforms. Hopefully, this will over time result in some kind of useful ecosystem, but you might only want to trust the part of it that is more strictly controlled for "serious business".

upofadown 6y ago
There is no interoperability between systems that use ideas from Signal Protocol and it is unlikely that there will ever be. There is no published standard. The best you can do is transiterate existing source code. It is a very complicated protocol with lots of state. It requires a server infrastructure to work. To be interoperable clients need access to information on the same server. The protocol is simply not designed for interoperability...

rkangel 6y ago

> This was touched upon - the point is that XMPP's extensibility means we aren't "stuck at the lowest common denominator". To echo the sibling comments - with security you are stuck at the lowest common denominator. If anyone in your ecosystem can negotiate down the security (because they don't support it) then the system as a whole is vulnerable. There are UI things you can do to highlight this ("messages to this destination are not secured") but it becomes complex and confusing for users (what happens if you have a group of people with secure features and you add someone without?). In summary - I can see where Snikket is coming from. It gives a common name to talk about - a new lowest common denominator feature set.