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Well, this is a good demonstration of the "products vs protocols" issue that I actually wrote a blog post about: https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/

Well, this is a good demonstration of the "products vs protocols" issue that I actually wrote a blog post about: https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/ https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/ Much has been said about the staleness (or "stability") of Linux distro repositories. There's a reason you can't 'apt install slack', and this is one of them - many of the packages you quoted are years out of date. Secondly, there are a great many things that implement XMPP, and not all of them are suitable Slack replacements. It's unreasonable to expect that they would be (just like not everything that implements HTTP is suitable to use for daily browsing of the web). XMPP is similarly a protocol, not a product. To be clear I'm not saying it's your fault for starting with an "apt search", without a better idea of where else to start. That's part of the reason I'm advocating a slightly more product-led approach for XMPP these days. I'm personally focusing Snikket on personal messaging right now, so it's not a Slack replacement ( https://snikket.org/about/goals/ https://snikket.org/about/goals/ ). Luckily there are many open-source Slack alternatives these days (Rocket Chat, Mattermost, Element/Synapse). I think XMPP is further behind in this market. An XMPP-based solution would do well to use Converse.js or Movim, but that still leaves a whole lot of backend setup to deal with. For a custom solution with custom requirements it's great to have these composable building blocks available, but for a simple setup and onboarding experience, you're right - registering at slack.com wins hands-down :)

theamk 5y ago
I think the biggest problem with XMPP is the lack of understanding of target audience, and lack of acknowledgement of past problems. Even in this discussion, you and zaik mentioned "XMPP" without any qualifications as viable messenger system. Anyone who reads those messages may try it, hit the old/low-featured client, and give it up forever, like our org did. If the goal to get more users to XMPP, starting with "Try Snicket, it implements right subset of XMPP" will work much better than just saying "XMPP". And in the ideal world, XMPP would embrace Compliance Suites -- the "getting started" page would mention a compliance level for each recommended client, the "features" page would list which features were added each year, and each project homepage would carry a large compliance level badge. Then in our conversation, you could just say "hey, you want Advanced Client 2016 or later, not the ancient stuff in the Ubuntu repos". Sadly, I don't think this will happen because I think XMPP is focused too much on low-featured clients.
- zaik 5y ago
  When telling my friends about XMPP I always recommend them a client (one of Conversations, Siskin IM, Gajim or Dino) and a public server to register. At least for servers there is a compliance suite: https://compliance.conversations.im/ https://compliance.conversations.im/

theamk 5y ago

I think the biggest problem with XMPP is the lack of understanding of target audience, and lack of acknowledgement of past problems. Even in this discussion, you and zaik mentioned "XMPP" without any qualifications as viable messenger system. Anyone who reads those messages may try it, hit the old/low-featured client, and give it up forever, like our org did. If the goal to get more users to XMPP, starting with "Try Snicket, it implements right subset of XMPP" will work much better than just saying "XMPP". And in the ideal world, XMPP would embrace Compliance Suites -- the "getting started" page would mention a compliance level for each recommended client, the "features" page would list which features were added each year, and each project homepage would carry a large compliance level badge. Then in our conversation, you could just say "hey, you want Advanced Client 2016 or later, not the ancient stuff in the Ubuntu repos". Sadly, I don't think this will happen because I think XMPP is focused too much on low-featured clients.

zaik 5y ago
When telling my friends about XMPP I always recommend them a client (one of Conversations, Siskin IM, Gajim or Dino) and a public server to register. At least for servers there is a compliance suite: https://compliance.conversations.im/ https://compliance.conversations.im/