3 ms·

I can see this being utilized by Google users who still need to use XMPP. With Google removing XMPP support from their messaging services, users will need to f

by prg318 13y ago

I can see this being utilized by Google users who still need to use XMPP. With Google removing XMPP support from their messaging services, users will need to find a new XMPP server, and DuckDuckGo fits the bill.

claudius 13y ago
There are quite a few other public XMPP servers at [1]. Personally, I’ve used jabber.ccc.de for a few years but found it to become unreliable in late 2011 and then decided to host my own, first using Prosody, then ejabberd. Works like a charm. Being a search engine is not exactly a prerequisite to running an XMPP server. :-) [1] http://xmpp.net/ http://xmpp.net/
- MattJ100 13y ago
  Now I want to know why you switched away from Prosody. It's not something we see happen often :) Anything we can fix?
  - npsimons 13y ago
    I was about to say "not packaged for Debian", but apt-cache has proven that to be a false statement. Can't say why I personally (not the GP) went with ejabberd as my first choice; I just picked it at random, and it worked well enough. I will have to look into Prosody. Thanks!
  - claudius 13y ago
    Clustering. My server was down[0] for a few hours once and so was my XMPP account. After it was back up, I got a small VPS from a friend to act as a backup/fallback/redundancy-whatever. ejabberd offers that out-of-the-box, meaning that I now have two ‘nodes’ hosting my XMPP domains – if one of them goes down, I either don’t notice at all (if I was connected to the other one) or just have to tell Pidgin to reconnect. s2s connections will similarly just reconnect/don’t notice. I liked Prosody better, though, and the arcane failure modes[1] of ejabberd still annoy me. So if you get that into Prosody (or did, I didn’t check in the last year or so), I will definitely consider switching back. [0] Apparently Strato thinks you’re being attacked if a large stream of UDP packets from the 26C3 network hits your server. And I was just using my VPN… [1] I recently moved that VPS and failed to adapt iptables rules on the other host. Instead of telling me that it couldn’t connect (at maximum log verbosity), ejabberd just did nothing/crashed. I can’t exclude an oversight on my part, but the failure to log anything was rather annoying.
    - MattJ100 13y ago
      Ah, clustering. Understood, and entirely justified. Prosody clustering is on the roadmap, but it's a tricky problem to solve properly (and I don't think anyone has to date). We've even had people switch from ejabberd clusters to Prosody, as ejabberd's clustering wasn't working out for them anyway (it seems to be designed more for spreading load than increasing availability). Our view is that we wanted to get the foundations of the server right before we began tackling such complex problems. Nevertheless I look forward to welcoming you back some time soon :)
      - claudius 13y ago
        If ejabberd starts up, I found it to work rather nicely, so it is not a big problem to me. But I wish you the best of luck with Prosody, as I said, I really liked it at the time and I trust it only got better :) – regarding the ‘soon’, 2015 is likely an optimistic estimate given Debian release schedules etc…
p4bl0 13y ago
There already are plenty of way to get an XMPP account. I'm going to advertise the one which comes with FSF memberships [1] :-). [1] https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits
HyprMusic 13y ago
The convenience of Google talk supporting XMPP, for me anyway, was the ability to talk to other people already using Google Talk through the XMPP protocol, and the ability to use XMPP clients.
- davidw 13y ago
  While we're talking about externalities, this is what's known as the network effect, or positive network externalities. The value is not that someone has an XMPP server, the value is in having an XMPP server that everyone uses.

by prg318 13y ago

claudius 13y ago

There are quite a few other public XMPP servers at [1]. Personally, I’ve used jabber.ccc.de for a few years but found it to become unreliable in late 2011 and then decided to host my own, first using Prosody, then ejabberd. Works like a charm. Being a search engine is not exactly a prerequisite to running an XMPP server. :-) [1] http://xmpp.net/ http://xmpp.net/

MattJ100 13y ago
Now I want to know why you switched away from Prosody. It's not something we see happen often :) Anything we can fix?
- npsimons 13y ago
  I was about to say "not packaged for Debian", but apt-cache has proven that to be a false statement. Can't say why I personally (not the GP) went with ejabberd as my first choice; I just picked it at random, and it worked well enough. I will have to look into Prosody. Thanks!
- claudius 13y ago
  Clustering. My server was down[0] for a few hours once and so was my XMPP account. After it was back up, I got a small VPS from a friend to act as a backup/fallback/redundancy-whatever. ejabberd offers that out-of-the-box, meaning that I now have two ‘nodes’ hosting my XMPP domains – if one of them goes down, I either don’t notice at all (if I was connected to the other one) or just have to tell Pidgin to reconnect. s2s connections will similarly just reconnect/don’t notice. I liked Prosody better, though, and the arcane failure modes[1] of ejabberd still annoy me. So if you get that into Prosody (or did, I didn’t check in the last year or so), I will definitely consider switching back. [0] Apparently Strato thinks you’re being attacked if a large stream of UDP packets from the 26C3 network hits your server. And I was just using my VPN… [1] I recently moved that VPS and failed to adapt iptables rules on the other host. Instead of telling me that it couldn’t connect (at maximum log verbosity), ejabberd just did nothing/crashed. I can’t exclude an oversight on my part, but the failure to log anything was rather annoying.
  - MattJ100 13y ago
    Ah, clustering. Understood, and entirely justified. Prosody clustering is on the roadmap, but it's a tricky problem to solve properly (and I don't think anyone has to date). We've even had people switch from ejabberd clusters to Prosody, as ejabberd's clustering wasn't working out for them anyway (it seems to be designed more for spreading load than increasing availability). Our view is that we wanted to get the foundations of the server right before we began tackling such complex problems. Nevertheless I look forward to welcoming you back some time soon :)
    - claudius 13y ago
      If ejabberd starts up, I found it to work rather nicely, so it is not a big problem to me. But I wish you the best of luck with Prosody, as I said, I really liked it at the time and I trust it only got better :) – regarding the ‘soon’, 2015 is likely an optimistic estimate given Debian release schedules etc…

p4bl0 13y ago

There already are plenty of way to get an XMPP account. I'm going to advertise the one which comes with FSF memberships [1] :-). [1] https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

HyprMusic 13y ago

The convenience of Google talk supporting XMPP, for me anyway, was the ability to talk to other people already using Google Talk through the XMPP protocol, and the ability to use XMPP clients.

davidw 13y ago
While we're talking about externalities, this is what's known as the network effect, or positive network externalities. The value is not that someone has an XMPP server, the value is in having an XMPP server that everyone uses.