4 ms·

I’ve been running a matrix server for about 2 years for family. It’s… ok. Clients are bad. Right now nobody on iOS can send images because there is a bug in flu

by WD-42 8mo ago

I’ve been running a matrix server for about 2 years for family. It’s… ok. Clients are bad. Right now nobody on iOS can send images because there is a bug in fluffychat preventing it. Kinda defeats the purpose of a chat for sharing baby pictures. Synapse is a beast. It’s basically taken over my entire VPS. Joining rooms of various FOSS projects has been nice, but honestly I wish they’d all just stick to libera.chat This article makes me wonder why we collectively ditched xmpp for matrix when it seems like the protocol is still miles ahead?

jamiemallers 8mo ago
[dead]
- singpolyma3 8mo ago
  > Two XMPP clients might support completely different feature sets. This is of course true of Matrix as well. Just because you document everything in one place doesn't mean every app will support it all. Or that every app will even want to support it all. If every app were exactly the same there would be no point in having multiple apps, after all. > The network effects of WhatsApp/Signal/iMessage are the real enemy, not protocol design. Absolutely.
- zadikian 8mo ago
  Don't know if it's still this way, but I had the exact same experience with the XEPs a decade ago. Even message history is an extension, but at least it has broad support. File transfer was much harder to get right. The servers (ejabberd included) also all defaulted to a simpler but less secure config, so I would've appreciated a writeup like this post back then.
dannersy 8mo ago
I am genuinely interested in hearing why we collectively ditched XMPP. I would love to hear someone who has been in the weeds on the development or even just following closely. Edit: Seems someone beat me to it with a good reply.
- singpolyma3 8mo ago
  > I am genuinely interested in hearing why we collectively ditched XMPP We didn't. It was never very popular, and is today more popular that it has ever been.
  - WD-42 8mo ago
    It wasn’t popular? I remember using pidgin to talk to friends on google chat, facebook and my work contacts. It was glorious. I haven’t had a reason to use an xmpp client in over a decade.
    - kombine 8mo ago
      Same! Pidgin was such a great piece of software
      - rw_grim 8mo ago
        We're still here... https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news
    - jjrh 8mo ago
      Likely you do or have without knowing it. The protocol is used in telecom quite a bit for all sorts of things. Jitsi is built on XMPP. Lots of games use it for chat - league of legends and unreal engine I believe. Xmpp shows up in all sorts of places if you look.
    - singpolyma3 8mo ago
      Pidgin is a multi protocol client. Not an XMPP client.
  - zadikian 8mo ago
    Depends if you mean just the technology or using it in the small federated spirit. Google Talk and Facebook Messenger were XMPP all the way through and worked with vanilla XMPP clients. Slack wasn't XMPP but supported it via a gateway until it was dropped. Not sure how popular the small federation was back then, but I know Mac OS X Server touted an XMPP server and that was a first-class feature of iChat.
jamesfinlayson 8mo ago
> Clients are bad. Yep. A friend ran an XMPP server for a while and the one person on iOS had a client that couldn't handle whatever encryption protocols the Android client supported, and the iOS client also choked on new certificates for the same domain (there was some way to accept it but the default behaviour was to just stop receiving). The killer that moved us to Signal was that someone got a new phone (something that had happened before without causing an issue) and the new phone could connect to channels but just saw nothing.

by WD-42 8mo ago

jamiemallers 8mo ago

[dead]

singpolyma3 8mo ago
> Two XMPP clients might support completely different feature sets. This is of course true of Matrix as well. Just because you document everything in one place doesn't mean every app will support it all. Or that every app will even want to support it all. If every app were exactly the same there would be no point in having multiple apps, after all. > The network effects of WhatsApp/Signal/iMessage are the real enemy, not protocol design. Absolutely.
zadikian 8mo ago
Don't know if it's still this way, but I had the exact same experience with the XEPs a decade ago. Even message history is an extension, but at least it has broad support. File transfer was much harder to get right. The servers (ejabberd included) also all defaulted to a simpler but less secure config, so I would've appreciated a writeup like this post back then.

dannersy 8mo ago

I am genuinely interested in hearing why we collectively ditched XMPP. I would love to hear someone who has been in the weeds on the development or even just following closely. Edit: Seems someone beat me to it with a good reply.

singpolyma3 8mo ago
> I am genuinely interested in hearing why we collectively ditched XMPP We didn't. It was never very popular, and is today more popular that it has ever been.
- WD-42 8mo ago
  It wasn’t popular? I remember using pidgin to talk to friends on google chat, facebook and my work contacts. It was glorious. I haven’t had a reason to use an xmpp client in over a decade.
  - kombine 8mo ago
    Same! Pidgin was such a great piece of software
    - rw_grim 8mo ago
      We're still here... https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news
  - jjrh 8mo ago
    Likely you do or have without knowing it. The protocol is used in telecom quite a bit for all sorts of things. Jitsi is built on XMPP. Lots of games use it for chat - league of legends and unreal engine I believe. Xmpp shows up in all sorts of places if you look.
  - singpolyma3 8mo ago
    Pidgin is a multi protocol client. Not an XMPP client.
- zadikian 8mo ago
  Depends if you mean just the technology or using it in the small federated spirit. Google Talk and Facebook Messenger were XMPP all the way through and worked with vanilla XMPP clients. Slack wasn't XMPP but supported it via a gateway until it was dropped. Not sure how popular the small federation was back then, but I know Mac OS X Server touted an XMPP server and that was a first-class feature of iChat.

jamesfinlayson 8mo ago

> Clients are bad. Yep. A friend ran an XMPP server for a while and the one person on iOS had a client that couldn't handle whatever encryption protocols the Android client supported, and the iOS client also choked on new certificates for the same domain (there was some way to accept it but the default behaviour was to just stop receiving). The killer that moved us to Signal was that someone got a new phone (something that had happened before without causing an issue) and the new phone could connect to channels but just saw nothing.