6 ms·

Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence

272 points by inputmice 1mo ago

zeafoamrun 1mo ago
And I haven't used XMPP for about 20 of them (sadly)
- giancarlostoro 1mo ago
  There was a time where both Google Chat (whatever it was called back then I lost track) and Facebook Chat were built on it. So you might have.
  - zeafoamrun 1mo ago
    You're right. I know at least one company used XMPP for things like customer support chat too. So maybe I have. I just mean the last time I used it intentionally was a long time ago before I was worn down futilely trying to convince friends to use it instead of locked down chat apps.
    - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
      That's fair, no worries.
  - seba_dos1 1mo ago
    Google Talk - and it was an actual federating XMPP server, in contrast to Facebook which merely allowed you to login with an XMPP client.
    - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
      There was a point where Google and Facebook supported external clients, and then within the same year both Google and Facebook closed up to any external clients, then ultimately ditching XMPP.
      - account42 1mo ago
        It's a shame that we didn't get antitrust enforcement imposing interoperability requirements on them back then.
- esafak 1mo ago
  25 years of independence and, dare I say, irrelevance.
dewey 1mo ago
> Matrix reinvented the wheel as a rubber-tyred metro. On paper, it provides real benefits, such as climbing steeper inclines, which are then used to aggressively advertise and lobby local governments to buy in. But in the end, the municipality gets locked into a single vendor. I stumble upon Matrix from time to time, but Jabber I haven't really seen anywhere in the past decade after my internet friends moved to IRC. Are there any bigger communities still using it? Back in the days Facebook Messenger was backed by it, so maybe there's still some bigger entity using it as a backbone for something?
- inputmice 1mo ago
  XMPP these days often gets used as a friends-and-family style messenger (Think WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal replacement) rather than something communities would use (Discord/IRC). A lot of users of XMPP are also out of the public eye. NATO, police forces and intelligence agencies use it. The community style channels are supported though and a search engine for them can be found here: https://search.jabber.network/channels/1 https://search.jabber.network/channels/1
  - Semaphor 1mo ago
    Yeah, I use it as a messenger for my wife and I.
  - AlecSchueler 1mo ago
    > NATO, police forces and intelligence agencies use it Is there anywhere to read more about this?
    - liotier 1mo ago
      The existence of "XEP-0365: Server to Server communication over STANAG 5066 ARQ" suggests military usage. Isode advertises XMPP as "The NATO Standard for instant messaging" (https://www.isode.com/secure-xmpp/ https://www.isode.com/secure-xmpp/) and it is one of their core offerings. I remember seeing NATO command posts using IRC long ago - makes sense because it is ultra light, and therefore usable on extremely low bitrate degraded links... XMPP seems to be the successor for that purpose. https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/XMPP_trials https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/XMPP_trials says "On shortwave, you can see the military use this protocol. They are known for using MIL 188-110A Serial HF waveform (fixed 600bps/S) and 6-bit code clear text with dual bursts of STANAG 4539 and STANAG-5066 as for XMPP Multi-User Chat (MUC) messages, over a bandwidth of 34 kHz. Multi-User Chat (MUC) is a central service for military communication. [..] XMPP is widely used for military deployments, where operation over constrained and degraded networks is often essential, particularly for tactical operation"
Flowdalic 1mo ago
[flagged]
kogasa240p 1mo ago
Its biggest issue is adoption because it's very solid otherwise and even supports stuff like screen sharing.
- tcfhgj 1mo ago
  screensharing is ubiquitous at this point
- goffi 1mo ago
  I'm also working on experimental XMPP based remote desktop control for what it worth.
lnz_me 1mo ago
i set up a xmpp server a few weeks ago for agent orchestration and agent to human workflows. hadn't inatalled ejabberd in a very long time but feeling right at home.
mococa 1mo ago
It was so cool when facebook, google and others used to use xmpp, at that time I used a single IM client https://adium.im https://adium.im
- exe34 1mo ago
  I had amsn when msn and yahoo messenger were the place everybody I knew was at.
  - d3Xt3r 1mo ago
    I was on Miranda. It was tiny and portable (unlike Trillian) and could connect to pretty much every popular messaging service, including IRC. And in spite of being able to connect to everything, it used far lesser memory than even just a single instance of MSN and Yahoo. It was one of my go-to apps that I'd install on a freshly formatted PC back in the day.
- zerozerotwo 1mo ago
  This used to be one of the biggest Mac open source projects. I remember they demoed project builder (before Xcode) compiling it
- nunez 1mo ago
  Best chat client ever. Man we had it good back then.
- eddieroger 1mo ago
  One of my happiest open source memories was creating an Adiumy skin for my college and others actually downloading and using it. The app was huge. Those were the days.
- dewey 1mo ago
  Loved Adium and the community was great in building custom smileys (For the young people, that's how we called Emojis back in the days!), themes and dock icons.
mococa 1mo ago
I think Android still uses XMPP to delivery push notifications under the hood
- inputmice 1mo ago
  Indeed. And on a Google-free Android phone the XMPP client Conversations can utilize its existing, permanent XMPP connection to deliver push notifications to other (mostly open-source) apps using an alternative to Google push (FCM) called UnifiedPush. There was a talk at FOSDEM about that. https://gultsch.video/w/gRGZqKKvNBvvMesyWNQzoK https://gultsch.video/w/gRGZqKKvNBvvMesyWNQzoK
- daneel_w 1mo ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, Apple's push notifications network ("APN") and a few other macOS/iOS under-the-hood things are also built on top of XMPP.
telesilla 1mo ago
Google & XMPP standards foundation develop the very useful Jingle XEP, so XMPP is linked to the history of Google Voice and whatever Google Talk/Chat turned into, maybe somehow inspiring Google Meet? Jingle was also inspirational to WebRTC signalling.
1970-01-01 1mo ago
XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. And it is champion by default, which is kind of the point here. All other popular systems and servers went defunct; it will never be taken over by BigCo and left to rot. Here's to 25 more years!
- grumbel 1mo ago
  > XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. Not my experience. I had to give up on it since it was just completely flooded with spam, and unlike mail readers that have ways to mitigate it, XMPP clients were ill prepared. Might still work if you keep your address hidden, but as chat-like alternative to a public email it just stopped working years ago.
  - fluoridation 1mo ago
    What do you mean? You have to accept a friend request before someone can message you. It's more spam-resistant than email, not less. That said, I don't know if there's anything that prevents spamming friend requests.
    - grumbel 1mo ago
      And how am I going to find the valid friend requests under the hundreds of spam ones? I used it just like a chat version of public email, for bug reports and such, so I don't know who is going to message me beforehand.
      - fluoridation 1mo ago
        Fair enough. I've only ever used XMPP when Google chat used it and at work in the days before Slack.
      - ezst 1mo ago
        You can mediate friends requests by having servers generate an invite link, you can generate QR codes your friend can scan on a side channel, ... There are ways
writtenone 1mo ago
Are there any XMPP clients with the UX and privacy of Signal? All of them seem to look like they're from the 00s!
- pantalaimon 1mo ago
  https://dino.im/ https://dino.im/
  - writtenone 1mo ago
    Thanks! Any good Android clients? "Conversations" seems to be the best and it's nowhere near the polish of Signal & Co. crashes often, UX is clunky, family will never stick with it.
    - fishgoesblub 1mo ago
      What makes you think that? I haven't experienced, or heard of people having frequent crashes. Me and my family also use it to communicate to each other with no issues regarding the UI.
    - 4chandaily 1mo ago
      As a counterpoint, I use conversations literally every day, and cannot recall the last time it crashed. My partner and kids have used it for at least the last 7 or 8 years to communicate with me and each other. I don't claim there are no issues, but "crashes often" isn't something I would expect to hear about it. I don't find the UX to be clunky either, but I acknowledge that could just be my familiarity with the program, so I would leave that for others to dispute.
    - arendtio 1mo ago
      Crashes?!? I've been using Conversations for a long time and can't remember any crashes. Something must be wrong with your setup. For me, the bigger problem is that I was unable to get OMEMO + Apple Clients working properly. I think OMEMO 1 has some design flaws and hope that OMEMO 2 will fix those.
    - 1mo ago
fishgoesblub 1mo ago
I love XMPP and am hopeful for its future with what the teams behind Movim[0], and Fluux[1] are doing. It was a tremendous shame that Matrix didn't improve upon XMPP and instead did their own thing. I continuously wonder what would the XMPP ecosystem look like, if the millions of dollars of funding Matrix initially had (what a waste) went to XMPP instead? [0]: https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ [1]: https://github.com/processone/fluux-messenger https://github.com/processone/fluux-messenger
- PunchyHamster 1mo ago
  It makes sense. It's old, crufty mix of extensions, which nobody actually wants to be that modular for a chat client, because that just gets you into mess of what server/client supports
  - zaik 1mo ago
    > mess of what server/client supports If you allow for independent implementations of the protocol this will always happen. Also, inventing another non-standard protocol creates even more incompatibility between clients and servers.
    - opan 1mo ago
      IRC and email worked out pretty well I think.
      - tcfhgj 1mo ago
        e-mail stuck in time still not enceypting by defaul
      - singpolyma3 1mo ago
        Yes if you never add new features eventually everyone crystallizes
  - akho 1mo ago
    Matrix is in the same place wrt feature mismatches. It's a quality of the problem, not of the solution. I actually think XMPP does a better, more structured job here.
basilgohar 1mo ago
I loved using XMPP and used to run my own server and even had the apps that would send notifications from my phone for different events over XMPP (forgot the name at the moment). I'm all-in on Matrix right now and use it for my family but it's a far cry from the usability that XMPP had. I am still hopeful that Matrix can live up to its promises but perhaps XMPP will always be around if that doesn't work out. Who knows!
- wycx 1mo ago
  MAXS? As far as I can tell, it is broken by newer versions of Android.
bborud 1mo ago
If only they had avoided XML. XML drove away a lot of people who would otherwise have been interested early on. (I once found myself in the same meeting as two of the people who made the mistakes that meant you couldn’t just pipe stuff through an XML parser and hope it worked. I tend to speak my mind)
tolerance 1mo ago
I had a good technical experience using XMPP once but the community I found using it was an obscure one and I haven't come across another instance of others using it since. No matter how useful a tool is the main hurdle is adoption. This sort of retrospective is useful from an advocacy point of view.
abound 1mo ago
I recently migrated from Google Voice to jmp.chat, which is a telephony/SMS/etc bridge to XMPP. I use Dino on my laptop, and Cheogram on my phone, and the experience has been quite nice and seamless. Next step is to host my own Prosody server and import my whole Google Voice history.
unethical_ban 1mo ago
I think of Matrix as a protocol + client/server suite; an open standard with official software backing it and a number of parallel implementations. When I wanted to stand up an independent server that could do most of what Discord does for communities, Matrix was the easy find. Encrypted chat, e2e support, and encrypted voice and video chat rooms with screen share. I admit I didn't research "XMPP-based discord alternative" but maybe that says something about the ecosystem's health.
Daunk 1mo ago
XMPP always seemed great, buy I have yet to find a client that can replace Telegram's client on both desktop and mobile.
- nik_ca 1mo ago
  I use 'Conversations' (from F-Droid) on my Android and self-hosted 'XMPP Web' on my PC https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web This combination covers 99% of my needs.
colechristensen 1mo ago
My first task at my first real tech job was setting up an ejabberd server
pavo-etc 1mo ago
I have recently picked up XMPP as my agent communication layer, and its worked great. Each pi agent is given an account and wrapped in an XMPP client[0] that lets it speak to me and other agents when needed. This has worked well since I can spin up new accounts on demand and I can use existing server software (ejabberd, perfect) and clients (Fluux, great; Conversations, okay). I've had to make a few custom modifications to each client to make agent comms a bit nicer (e.g. exposing status messages more prominently since I use that to expose current agent commands), but the XMPP layer has had pretty much everything I could have wanted. Controlling a chat service is a bit intoxicating, I'm now using it as my notification service over a bunch of different projects. I used Google Chat way back, its nice that the tech is still around and great as ever. [0]: https://github.com/zachpmanson/pi-msg https://github.com/zachpmanson/pi-msg
- gatlin 1mo ago
  Amazing! Perhaps my project here would interest you. Also do you have bonjour support? https://github.com/gatlin/pii https://github.com/gatlin/pii
  - pavo-etc 1mo ago
    Pii is interesting! pi-msg doesn't support bonjour, I'm running it on a nixos server (nix is the real secret ingredient of my whole setup) the xmpp server is the same machine as the agents. I'm almost always on a different network to the one where the server is. If the server goes down the agents and ejabberd are coming down simultaneously.
- tehnoslow 1mo ago
  Cool use case with the agents, hadn't thought of that
- dhc02 1mo ago
  This is really neat. I've recently been watching people use custom pi harnesses and thinking of jumping in, but I was dreaming of a way to do essentially what pi-msg does so that I could drive it remotely in a more full-featured way. Thanks for sharing.
dpc_01234 1mo ago
Any Android XMPP client recommendations? I tried one, then it's fork Monocle, and none of the seem to be able to handle simple notifications correctly.
- Semaphor 1mo ago
  Never had notifications issues with conversations.
- opan 1mo ago
  Seconding Conversations, though I wish it'd let me disable relative timestamps.
_carbyau_ 1mo ago
When I ever have time... 1. Gain/find-someone-with crypto library use knowledge. 2. Jabber client with Iroh networking and E2EE. 3. Completely remove XMPP server dependence. 4. Allow users to exchange Iroh-Node-ID outside of jabber (QR code, other secure channels?), store in Jabber contacts. 5. Develop from there. Calendar usage, multiparty, backups. But I have neither the time nor the knowhow right now.
bobanrocky 1mo ago
We use xmpp for our company’s IOT product suite. Works quite well with its presence and messaging capabilities .. Backend runs ejabberd.
grumbel 1mo ago
Looking at my complete grey friends list in Pidgin, with not a single user left active, it looks like everybody left around 8-12 years ago. Many of the old servers are offline as well.
krisgenre 1mo ago
In 2009, I worked for a company that was developing a modified version of Ignite Realtime's Spark IM client and I have vague memory of sending messages to Gtalk from it. Because of Google's support, XMPP was all the craze back then. It's great to see that Openfire (Ignite Realtime's XMPP server) has had a release even last week! https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/ https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/
Dormeno 1mo ago
Why is every XMPP client a worse experience than Telegram? I don't get it.
- edhelas 1mo ago
  Define worse
  - Dormeno 1mo ago
    This is not an exhaustive list, just stuff off the top of my head. Finding/viewing/sharing/joining chats Adding users (can't find them, invites not being received, etc) Broken messaging (messages not arriving, formatting not being handled or handled the same way, even on the same XMPP server!) OMEMO issues (key exchange not working, or OMEMO keys getting lost or something when both clients involved were working perfectly fine the day before - Telegram's E2E doesn't break randomly and no, there isn't a MitM issue) Clients asking for encryption, but then get mad because you're using Thunderbird's XMPP implementation and complain they don't like the encryption supported by Thunderbird. Not being able to disable encryption on some clients (I actually rather not have encryption anymore because of all the problems) Multi-device messaging issues (fresh chats can have messages going to one device but not the one the user is active on or history synchronisation) Mobile notifications inconsistently working, even when using external push messaging providers (it works consistently always on Telegram, it's even more consistent with Matrix, even though Matrix has more push disadvantages) Client crashes (I can't even remember when Telegram last crashed, but Pidgin crashed on me today and it has only a single XMPP account on it) Clients failing to connect without useful information (Siskin no longer connects to my account and the only indication is that the "enabled" button becomes disabled, despite the account working on other clients and devices) UI lockups (Miranda NG, Psi, Gajim, and Pidgin all tend to become unresponsive for short periods of time, probably a blocking wait being imposed in the UI for some reason?) Common issues that every modern messaging application has, like voice and video, are barely supported overall despite being fully supported in the XMPP standards (file sending is even an issue for Thunderbird) There is next to no failure recovery on most XMPP clients. Anything that fails on Telegram will try to recover and resend without needing the user to intervene and helpfully displays it's working on it.
grugdev42 1mo ago
XMPP is great. You can own your whole stack with no commercial restrictions. If you're coming from Slack, this plugin is a game changer: https://modules.prosody.im/mod_slack_webhooks https://modules.prosody.im/mod_slack_webhooks sudo prosodyctl install --server=https://modules.prosody.im/rocks/ https://modules.prosody.im/rocks/ mod_slack_webhooks
- ee334y5rthsrth 1mo ago
  tox is this same, but you dont need install any program. just start
ee334y5rthsrth 1mo ago
show me one agent who use jabber for communications with user
n3storm 1mo ago
I am the designer of Coccinella logo, if anybody remembers... Developer sadly died, but project was so ahead of its time I can believe sell point today is still an online shared canvas...
n3storm 1mo ago
These Christmas I am asking for a one binary rust XMPP server and I'll be back.

272 points by inputmice 1mo ago

zeafoamrun 1mo ago

And I haven't used XMPP for about 20 of them (sadly)

giancarlostoro 1mo ago
There was a time where both Google Chat (whatever it was called back then I lost track) and Facebook Chat were built on it. So you might have.
- zeafoamrun 1mo ago
  You're right. I know at least one company used XMPP for things like customer support chat too. So maybe I have. I just mean the last time I used it intentionally was a long time ago before I was worn down futilely trying to convince friends to use it instead of locked down chat apps.
  - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
    That's fair, no worries.
- seba_dos1 1mo ago
  Google Talk - and it was an actual federating XMPP server, in contrast to Facebook which merely allowed you to login with an XMPP client.
  - giancarlostoro 1mo ago
    There was a point where Google and Facebook supported external clients, and then within the same year both Google and Facebook closed up to any external clients, then ultimately ditching XMPP.
    - account42 1mo ago
      It's a shame that we didn't get antitrust enforcement imposing interoperability requirements on them back then.
esafak 1mo ago
25 years of independence and, dare I say, irrelevance.

dewey 1mo ago

> Matrix reinvented the wheel as a rubber-tyred metro. On paper, it provides real benefits, such as climbing steeper inclines, which are then used to aggressively advertise and lobby local governments to buy in. But in the end, the municipality gets locked into a single vendor. I stumble upon Matrix from time to time, but Jabber I haven't really seen anywhere in the past decade after my internet friends moved to IRC. Are there any bigger communities still using it? Back in the days Facebook Messenger was backed by it, so maybe there's still some bigger entity using it as a backbone for something?

inputmice 1mo ago
XMPP these days often gets used as a friends-and-family style messenger (Think WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal replacement) rather than something communities would use (Discord/IRC). A lot of users of XMPP are also out of the public eye. NATO, police forces and intelligence agencies use it. The community style channels are supported though and a search engine for them can be found here: https://search.jabber.network/channels/1 https://search.jabber.network/channels/1
- Semaphor 1mo ago
  Yeah, I use it as a messenger for my wife and I.
- AlecSchueler 1mo ago
  > NATO, police forces and intelligence agencies use it Is there anywhere to read more about this?
  - liotier 1mo ago
    The existence of "XEP-0365: Server to Server communication over STANAG 5066 ARQ" suggests military usage. Isode advertises XMPP as "The NATO Standard for instant messaging" (https://www.isode.com/secure-xmpp/ https://www.isode.com/secure-xmpp/) and it is one of their core offerings. I remember seeing NATO command posts using IRC long ago - makes sense because it is ultra light, and therefore usable on extremely low bitrate degraded links... XMPP seems to be the successor for that purpose. https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/XMPP_trials https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/XMPP_trials says "On shortwave, you can see the military use this protocol. They are known for using MIL 188-110A Serial HF waveform (fixed 600bps/S) and 6-bit code clear text with dual bursts of STANAG 4539 and STANAG-5066 as for XMPP Multi-User Chat (MUC) messages, over a bandwidth of 34 kHz. Multi-User Chat (MUC) is a central service for military communication. [..] XMPP is widely used for military deployments, where operation over constrained and degraded networks is often essential, particularly for tactical operation"

Flowdalic 1mo ago

[flagged]

kogasa240p 1mo ago

Its biggest issue is adoption because it's very solid otherwise and even supports stuff like screen sharing.

tcfhgj 1mo ago
screensharing is ubiquitous at this point
goffi 1mo ago
I'm also working on experimental XMPP based remote desktop control for what it worth.

lnz_me 1mo ago

i set up a xmpp server a few weeks ago for agent orchestration and agent to human workflows. hadn't inatalled ejabberd in a very long time but feeling right at home.

mococa 1mo ago

It was so cool when facebook, google and others used to use xmpp, at that time I used a single IM client https://adium.im https://adium.im

exe34 1mo ago
I had amsn when msn and yahoo messenger were the place everybody I knew was at.
- d3Xt3r 1mo ago
  I was on Miranda. It was tiny and portable (unlike Trillian) and could connect to pretty much every popular messaging service, including IRC. And in spite of being able to connect to everything, it used far lesser memory than even just a single instance of MSN and Yahoo. It was one of my go-to apps that I'd install on a freshly formatted PC back in the day.
zerozerotwo 1mo ago
This used to be one of the biggest Mac open source projects. I remember they demoed project builder (before Xcode) compiling it
nunez 1mo ago
Best chat client ever. Man we had it good back then.
eddieroger 1mo ago
One of my happiest open source memories was creating an Adiumy skin for my college and others actually downloading and using it. The app was huge. Those were the days.
dewey 1mo ago
Loved Adium and the community was great in building custom smileys (For the young people, that's how we called Emojis back in the days!), themes and dock icons.

mococa 1mo ago

I think Android still uses XMPP to delivery push notifications under the hood

inputmice 1mo ago
Indeed. And on a Google-free Android phone the XMPP client Conversations can utilize its existing, permanent XMPP connection to deliver push notifications to other (mostly open-source) apps using an alternative to Google push (FCM) called UnifiedPush. There was a talk at FOSDEM about that. https://gultsch.video/w/gRGZqKKvNBvvMesyWNQzoK https://gultsch.video/w/gRGZqKKvNBvvMesyWNQzoK
daneel_w 1mo ago
Unless I'm mistaken, Apple's push notifications network ("APN") and a few other macOS/iOS under-the-hood things are also built on top of XMPP.

telesilla 1mo ago

Google & XMPP standards foundation develop the very useful Jingle XEP, so XMPP is linked to the history of Google Voice and whatever Google Talk/Chat turned into, maybe somehow inspiring Google Meet? Jingle was also inspirational to WebRTC signalling.

1970-01-01 1mo ago

XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. And it is champion by default, which is kind of the point here. All other popular systems and servers went defunct; it will never be taken over by BigCo and left to rot. Here's to 25 more years!

grumbel 1mo ago
> XMPP is the pinnacle of chat that just works. Not my experience. I had to give up on it since it was just completely flooded with spam, and unlike mail readers that have ways to mitigate it, XMPP clients were ill prepared. Might still work if you keep your address hidden, but as chat-like alternative to a public email it just stopped working years ago.
- fluoridation 1mo ago
  What do you mean? You have to accept a friend request before someone can message you. It's more spam-resistant than email, not less. That said, I don't know if there's anything that prevents spamming friend requests.
  - grumbel 1mo ago
    And how am I going to find the valid friend requests under the hundreds of spam ones? I used it just like a chat version of public email, for bug reports and such, so I don't know who is going to message me beforehand.
    - fluoridation 1mo ago
      Fair enough. I've only ever used XMPP when Google chat used it and at work in the days before Slack.
    - ezst 1mo ago
      You can mediate friends requests by having servers generate an invite link, you can generate QR codes your friend can scan on a side channel, ... There are ways

writtenone 1mo ago

Are there any XMPP clients with the UX and privacy of Signal? All of them seem to look like they're from the 00s!

pantalaimon 1mo ago
https://dino.im/ https://dino.im/
- writtenone 1mo ago
  Thanks! Any good Android clients? "Conversations" seems to be the best and it's nowhere near the polish of Signal & Co. crashes often, UX is clunky, family will never stick with it.
  - fishgoesblub 1mo ago
    What makes you think that? I haven't experienced, or heard of people having frequent crashes. Me and my family also use it to communicate to each other with no issues regarding the UI.
  - 4chandaily 1mo ago
    As a counterpoint, I use conversations literally every day, and cannot recall the last time it crashed. My partner and kids have used it for at least the last 7 or 8 years to communicate with me and each other. I don't claim there are no issues, but "crashes often" isn't something I would expect to hear about it. I don't find the UX to be clunky either, but I acknowledge that could just be my familiarity with the program, so I would leave that for others to dispute.
  - arendtio 1mo ago
    Crashes?!? I've been using Conversations for a long time and can't remember any crashes. Something must be wrong with your setup. For me, the bigger problem is that I was unable to get OMEMO + Apple Clients working properly. I think OMEMO 1 has some design flaws and hope that OMEMO 2 will fix those.
  - 1mo ago

fishgoesblub 1mo ago

I love XMPP and am hopeful for its future with what the teams behind Movim[0], and Fluux[1] are doing. It was a tremendous shame that Matrix didn't improve upon XMPP and instead did their own thing. I continuously wonder what would the XMPP ecosystem look like, if the millions of dollars of funding Matrix initially had (what a waste) went to XMPP instead? [0]: https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ [1]: https://github.com/processone/fluux-messenger https://github.com/processone/fluux-messenger

PunchyHamster 1mo ago
It makes sense. It's old, crufty mix of extensions, which nobody actually wants to be that modular for a chat client, because that just gets you into mess of what server/client supports
- zaik 1mo ago
  > mess of what server/client supports If you allow for independent implementations of the protocol this will always happen. Also, inventing another non-standard protocol creates even more incompatibility between clients and servers.
  - opan 1mo ago
    IRC and email worked out pretty well I think.
    - tcfhgj 1mo ago
      e-mail stuck in time still not enceypting by defaul
    - singpolyma3 1mo ago
      Yes if you never add new features eventually everyone crystallizes
- akho 1mo ago
  Matrix is in the same place wrt feature mismatches. It's a quality of the problem, not of the solution. I actually think XMPP does a better, more structured job here.

basilgohar 1mo ago

I loved using XMPP and used to run my own server and even had the apps that would send notifications from my phone for different events over XMPP (forgot the name at the moment). I'm all-in on Matrix right now and use it for my family but it's a far cry from the usability that XMPP had. I am still hopeful that Matrix can live up to its promises but perhaps XMPP will always be around if that doesn't work out. Who knows!

wycx 1mo ago
MAXS? As far as I can tell, it is broken by newer versions of Android.

bborud 1mo ago

If only they had avoided XML. XML drove away a lot of people who would otherwise have been interested early on. (I once found myself in the same meeting as two of the people who made the mistakes that meant you couldn’t just pipe stuff through an XML parser and hope it worked. I tend to speak my mind)

tolerance 1mo ago

I had a good technical experience using XMPP once but the community I found using it was an obscure one and I haven't come across another instance of others using it since. No matter how useful a tool is the main hurdle is adoption. This sort of retrospective is useful from an advocacy point of view.

abound 1mo ago

I recently migrated from Google Voice to jmp.chat, which is a telephony/SMS/etc bridge to XMPP. I use Dino on my laptop, and Cheogram on my phone, and the experience has been quite nice and seamless. Next step is to host my own Prosody server and import my whole Google Voice history.

unethical_ban 1mo ago

I think of Matrix as a protocol + client/server suite; an open standard with official software backing it and a number of parallel implementations. When I wanted to stand up an independent server that could do most of what Discord does for communities, Matrix was the easy find. Encrypted chat, e2e support, and encrypted voice and video chat rooms with screen share. I admit I didn't research "XMPP-based discord alternative" but maybe that says something about the ecosystem's health.

Daunk 1mo ago

XMPP always seemed great, buy I have yet to find a client that can replace Telegram's client on both desktop and mobile.

nik_ca 1mo ago
I use 'Conversations' (from F-Droid) on my Android and self-hosted 'XMPP Web' on my PC https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web This combination covers 99% of my needs.

colechristensen 1mo ago

My first task at my first real tech job was setting up an ejabberd server

pavo-etc 1mo ago

I have recently picked up XMPP as my agent communication layer, and its worked great. Each pi agent is given an account and wrapped in an XMPP client[0] that lets it speak to me and other agents when needed. This has worked well since I can spin up new accounts on demand and I can use existing server software (ejabberd, perfect) and clients (Fluux, great; Conversations, okay). I've had to make a few custom modifications to each client to make agent comms a bit nicer (e.g. exposing status messages more prominently since I use that to expose current agent commands), but the XMPP layer has had pretty much everything I could have wanted. Controlling a chat service is a bit intoxicating, I'm now using it as my notification service over a bunch of different projects. I used Google Chat way back, its nice that the tech is still around and great as ever. [0]: https://github.com/zachpmanson/pi-msg https://github.com/zachpmanson/pi-msg

gatlin 1mo ago
Amazing! Perhaps my project here would interest you. Also do you have bonjour support? https://github.com/gatlin/pii https://github.com/gatlin/pii
- pavo-etc 1mo ago
  Pii is interesting! pi-msg doesn't support bonjour, I'm running it on a nixos server (nix is the real secret ingredient of my whole setup) the xmpp server is the same machine as the agents. I'm almost always on a different network to the one where the server is. If the server goes down the agents and ejabberd are coming down simultaneously.
tehnoslow 1mo ago
Cool use case with the agents, hadn't thought of that
dhc02 1mo ago
This is really neat. I've recently been watching people use custom pi harnesses and thinking of jumping in, but I was dreaming of a way to do essentially what pi-msg does so that I could drive it remotely in a more full-featured way. Thanks for sharing.

dpc_01234 1mo ago

Any Android XMPP client recommendations? I tried one, then it's fork Monocle, and none of the seem to be able to handle simple notifications correctly.

Semaphor 1mo ago
Never had notifications issues with conversations.
opan 1mo ago
Seconding Conversations, though I wish it'd let me disable relative timestamps.

_carbyau_ 1mo ago

When I ever have time... 1. Gain/find-someone-with crypto library use knowledge. 2. Jabber client with Iroh networking and E2EE. 3. Completely remove XMPP server dependence. 4. Allow users to exchange Iroh-Node-ID outside of jabber (QR code, other secure channels?), store in Jabber contacts. 5. Develop from there. Calendar usage, multiparty, backups. But I have neither the time nor the knowhow right now.

bobanrocky 1mo ago

We use xmpp for our company’s IOT product suite. Works quite well with its presence and messaging capabilities .. Backend runs ejabberd.

grumbel 1mo ago

Looking at my complete grey friends list in Pidgin, with not a single user left active, it looks like everybody left around 8-12 years ago. Many of the old servers are offline as well.

krisgenre 1mo ago

In 2009, I worked for a company that was developing a modified version of Ignite Realtime's Spark IM client and I have vague memory of sending messages to Gtalk from it. Because of Google's support, XMPP was all the craze back then. It's great to see that Openfire (Ignite Realtime's XMPP server) has had a release even last week! https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/ https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/

Dormeno 1mo ago

Why is every XMPP client a worse experience than Telegram? I don't get it.

edhelas 1mo ago
Define worse
- Dormeno 1mo ago
  This is not an exhaustive list, just stuff off the top of my head. Finding/viewing/sharing/joining chats Adding users (can't find them, invites not being received, etc) Broken messaging (messages not arriving, formatting not being handled or handled the same way, even on the same XMPP server!) OMEMO issues (key exchange not working, or OMEMO keys getting lost or something when both clients involved were working perfectly fine the day before - Telegram's E2E doesn't break randomly and no, there isn't a MitM issue) Clients asking for encryption, but then get mad because you're using Thunderbird's XMPP implementation and complain they don't like the encryption supported by Thunderbird. Not being able to disable encryption on some clients (I actually rather not have encryption anymore because of all the problems) Multi-device messaging issues (fresh chats can have messages going to one device but not the one the user is active on or history synchronisation) Mobile notifications inconsistently working, even when using external push messaging providers (it works consistently always on Telegram, it's even more consistent with Matrix, even though Matrix has more push disadvantages) Client crashes (I can't even remember when Telegram last crashed, but Pidgin crashed on me today and it has only a single XMPP account on it) Clients failing to connect without useful information (Siskin no longer connects to my account and the only indication is that the "enabled" button becomes disabled, despite the account working on other clients and devices) UI lockups (Miranda NG, Psi, Gajim, and Pidgin all tend to become unresponsive for short periods of time, probably a blocking wait being imposed in the UI for some reason?) Common issues that every modern messaging application has, like voice and video, are barely supported overall despite being fully supported in the XMPP standards (file sending is even an issue for Thunderbird) There is next to no failure recovery on most XMPP clients. Anything that fails on Telegram will try to recover and resend without needing the user to intervene and helpfully displays it's working on it.

grugdev42 1mo ago

XMPP is great. You can own your whole stack with no commercial restrictions. If you're coming from Slack, this plugin is a game changer: https://modules.prosody.im/mod_slack_webhooks https://modules.prosody.im/mod_slack_webhooks sudo prosodyctl install --server=https://modules.prosody.im/rocks/ https://modules.prosody.im/rocks/ mod_slack_webhooks

ee334y5rthsrth 1mo ago
tox is this same, but you dont need install any program. just start

ee334y5rthsrth 1mo ago

show me one agent who use jabber for communications with user

n3storm 1mo ago

I am the designer of Coccinella logo, if anybody remembers... Developer sadly died, but project was so ahead of its time I can believe sell point today is still an online shared canvas...

n3storm 1mo ago

These Christmas I am asking for a one binary rust XMPP server and I'll be back.