7 ms·

Since you mentioned the horror that is XMPP, I am glad to know that this idea and any project will fail and end up on the trashcan of internet history just like

by antocv 13y ago

Since you mentioned the horror that is XMPP, I am glad to know that this idea and any project will fail and end up on the trashcan of internet history just like all other "federation"/XMPP technologies, such as... oh wait we dont actually have or use XMPP for anything it was meant to be. Thats right, its only facebook and google internally that take advantage of XMPP while keeping the rest out. Thats what federation does and this idea is no better than jabber which we thought was a good idea 11 years ago. This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well. You know what is a good solution to the "facebook is taking over the web" Remove their like-buttons from your pages! It is all of the web devleopers of the world who chose to add facebook scripts to their webpage that are the problem. Thats what needs to be solved. Facebook wouldnt be nearly what it is if it wasnt for all those webdevs that thought it was good idea to run fb scripts and snitch out their and the webs user. This battle can be moved to the browser if need be, just run ghostry and better privacy by default, block all accessess to facebook domains form any other domains, and thats it.

forteller 13y ago
> This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well. Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc. > Remove their like-buttons from your pages! I agree we should do this. But that won't help people keep in contact with their friends. And so it won't change the thing I'm focusing on here.
- antocv 13y ago
  If your goal is to have a free and open uncontrolled, uncensored chat-system that is NSA kinda proof then lets do that, Im all for it. I just dont think XMPP fulfills the uncontrolled and uncensored and surveillence resistent parts. We need to look at web of trust, bitmessage and such instead, those are more fun problems than "to spite facebook". But sure, any solution will benefit greatly if its bundled with the browser since that appears to be the only program most users actually use on their computing devices. Imagine if Tor and a tor-relay or even tor-exit-node came preconfigured with every Firefox and turned on by default. That would be fun.
  - forteller 13y ago
    You might very well be right. Using XMPP is not important to me. The important thing is the goal of moving as many people as possible over from closed to Free/Open systems.
    - emn13 13y ago
      Free would be nice - but it's open that's the key (and if you have open, somebody will make a free version anyhow)
      - forteller 13y ago
        Free as in Freedom :)
- sigzero 13y ago
  > Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. "Is a" and "has a" are worlds apart.
- shmerl 13y ago
  > Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. I'd rephrase it. Browser is turned into a virtual operating system for millions of people already. While it can be useful, I don't really like when that trend is pushed to the extreme and everyone rushes to run everything through the browser even without clear benefits. The point of that? I always prefer standalone chat clients (as well as e-mail clients and etc.). If some chat service can't interoperate with standalone clients, it's garbage. Facebook can by the way, since they do use XMPP. Their problem is unwillingness to support federation. They are too selfish. So I never use their service (nor do I use their social network anyway).
  - forteller 13y ago
    You have to remember that just by being a person who read Hacker News you are not a regular person. I really don't mean to be harsh, but it doesn't much matter what you prefer or that you find this trend of running things in the browser problematic. What matters is what normal people do. People who don't even know what a "client" in computer lingo means. Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems and over to the open ones. And that is only going to happen if the open systems are easier to use and more accessible than the closed ones. I am aware of the fact that Facebook uses XMPP (I mention it in the post). Still, extremely few people use it through a client. They use it through fb.com.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      > Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems It's trickier than that. There are many open and federated XMPP services around, including those with web clients / interfaces available. Options are around. It's the sabotage of federation by "big" players which is a problem (or sabotage of interoperable protocols altogether).
icebraining 13y ago
Thats right, its only facebook and google internally that take advantage of XMPP while keeping the rest out. Thats what federation does Counter-example: email.
- e12e 13y ago
  ... and VoIP?
  - wmf 13y ago
    Is there much VoIP federation going on? My impression is that VoIP providers still interop through the PSTN.
- dspillett 13y ago
  Caveat: email as we know it developed in frontier times when things could grow organically and/or by general consensus rather than being driven by commercial needs. The frontier days for this sort of communication are over for the most part. Anything that shows signs of being significant will get jumped upon by commercial entities who will try to direct it in a manner that helps their larger goals (and if we are more cynical, expressly in a manner inconvenient to their competitor's goals) potentially (in fact most likely) at the expense of the overall scheme (despite publicly doing it to "help the users/community/public". Anything new now has forces acting to shape it (for better or, often, for worse) that email never had to contend with until it was so widespread no one entity or collection of entities could wreck it for everyone (despite the best efforts of some such entities!).
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    well, the new frontier is "dark mail" or more generally "dark net" where interoperability again is the key [as the only way to grow. It is like natural evolution - any non-interoperability efforts will just not grow, and only an interoperability based effort will produce the critical mass]. It is organically decentralized and by its nature a user is the owner of its data even though actual [meaningless to 3rd party] bits may be stored by one or spread around multiple distributed providers ("dark money" style as if you BT wallet is encrypted and replicated though the BT network itself). Content mining and "user is the product", and thus FB and Google as we know it, would be for some time problematic at best and it will be some time before segmentation era of the new net dawns and new Serge/Larry/Zuckenberg appear :)
X4 13y ago
I have studied XMPP and the whole protocol stack, compared to everything else I could find out there (in a paper I'm working on). However, the conclusion is that XMPP is not worth the an investment although it looks really fascinating at first and second thought. It's pretty much doable with simpler web technology, webstandards also help to keep out the madness that XMPP calls standards.. The biggest selling points of XMPP are that everbody already has XMPP. The counter argument that weakens this position is that everybody already has email, an IP and a phone number too.
shmerl 13y ago
XMPP/Jabber itself is not a bad idea at all. As well as federation. Companies who sabotage XMPP federation by not adopting it (M$, Yahoo, AOL etc), or backing off from it (Google) or proliferating new incompatible junk (Whatsapp and other monstrosities) are a bad thing.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  That's ridiculous. Someone comes up with a spec, and if a company doesn't redo their systems to implement it and connect to others with it, they are sabotaging it?
  - shmerl 13y ago
    They are sabotaging the only interoperable open and free protocol (which is an Internet standard developed through IETF). Did they propose anything better? Not even close. Even Google which boasts that their Hangouts are superior and thus can't use XMPP didn't open their protocol. So who cares if it's better then? E-mail is way far from perfect, yet it's open and interoperable. So everyone supports it. XMPP is the only developed analog for instant messaging. And all those selfish jerks of companies can't agree to support it. Or develop anything better if they don't like it.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      You're not even speaking coherently. They aren't sabotaging it by not adopting it. That's just called... not adopting some arbitrary spec. Being published by the IETF doesn't mean anything. The IETF has a spec for SIMPLE, too. Should we blame all XMPP networks for sabotaging that "standard"? Why should a third party have to do something just because you don't like how they run their own networks?
      - shmerl 13y ago
        > They aren't sabotaging it by not adopting it. Oh, really? Inaction can be damaging as well. In this case - it's sabotage. Since you bring SIMPLE, which of these major closed networks support it?

by antocv 13y ago

forteller 13y ago

> This is a bad idea because a web browser should not become a chat or client as well. Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. So since the browser already is the only chat client tons of people use, why not make it a client for a Free/Open chat system instead of Facebooks chat system, that they control, censor, give access to to NSA, etc. > Remove their like-buttons from your pages! I agree we should do this. But that won't help people keep in contact with their friends. And so it won't change the thing I'm focusing on here.

antocv 13y ago
If your goal is to have a free and open uncontrolled, uncensored chat-system that is NSA kinda proof then lets do that, Im all for it. I just dont think XMPP fulfills the uncontrolled and uncensored and surveillence resistent parts. We need to look at web of trust, bitmessage and such instead, those are more fun problems than "to spite facebook". But sure, any solution will benefit greatly if its bundled with the browser since that appears to be the only program most users actually use on their computing devices. Imagine if Tor and a tor-relay or even tor-exit-node came preconfigured with every Firefox and turned on by default. That would be fun.
- forteller 13y ago
  You might very well be right. Using XMPP is not important to me. The important thing is the goal of moving as many people as possible over from closed to Free/Open systems.
  - emn13 13y ago
    Free would be nice - but it's open that's the key (and if you have open, somebody will make a free version anyhow)
    - forteller 13y ago
      Free as in Freedom :)
sigzero 13y ago
> Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. It's called Facebook. "Is a" and "has a" are worlds apart.
shmerl 13y ago
> Well, the browser already is a chat client for millions of people. I'd rephrase it. Browser is turned into a virtual operating system for millions of people already. While it can be useful, I don't really like when that trend is pushed to the extreme and everyone rushes to run everything through the browser even without clear benefits. The point of that? I always prefer standalone chat clients (as well as e-mail clients and etc.). If some chat service can't interoperate with standalone clients, it's garbage. Facebook can by the way, since they do use XMPP. Their problem is unwillingness to support federation. They are too selfish. So I never use their service (nor do I use their social network anyway).
- forteller 13y ago
  You have to remember that just by being a person who read Hacker News you are not a regular person. I really don't mean to be harsh, but it doesn't much matter what you prefer or that you find this trend of running things in the browser problematic. What matters is what normal people do. People who don't even know what a "client" in computer lingo means. Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems and over to the open ones. And that is only going to happen if the open systems are easier to use and more accessible than the closed ones. I am aware of the fact that Facebook uses XMPP (I mention it in the post). Still, extremely few people use it through a client. They use it through fb.com.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    > Those are the majority, and if we want them to use Free and Open systems (which is my whole point here), then we have to create those systems in a way normal people will start switching from the closed systems It's trickier than that. There are many open and federated XMPP services around, including those with web clients / interfaces available. Options are around. It's the sabotage of federation by "big" players which is a problem (or sabotage of interoperable protocols altogether).

icebraining 13y ago

Thats right, its only facebook and google internally that take advantage of XMPP while keeping the rest out. Thats what federation does Counter-example: email.

e12e 13y ago
... and VoIP?
- wmf 13y ago
  Is there much VoIP federation going on? My impression is that VoIP providers still interop through the PSTN.
dspillett 13y ago
Caveat: email as we know it developed in frontier times when things could grow organically and/or by general consensus rather than being driven by commercial needs. The frontier days for this sort of communication are over for the most part. Anything that shows signs of being significant will get jumped upon by commercial entities who will try to direct it in a manner that helps their larger goals (and if we are more cynical, expressly in a manner inconvenient to their competitor's goals) potentially (in fact most likely) at the expense of the overall scheme (despite publicly doing it to "help the users/community/public". Anything new now has forces acting to shape it (for better or, often, for worse) that email never had to contend with until it was so widespread no one entity or collection of entities could wreck it for everyone (despite the best efforts of some such entities!).
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  well, the new frontier is "dark mail" or more generally "dark net" where interoperability again is the key [as the only way to grow. It is like natural evolution - any non-interoperability efforts will just not grow, and only an interoperability based effort will produce the critical mass]. It is organically decentralized and by its nature a user is the owner of its data even though actual [meaningless to 3rd party] bits may be stored by one or spread around multiple distributed providers ("dark money" style as if you BT wallet is encrypted and replicated though the BT network itself). Content mining and "user is the product", and thus FB and Google as we know it, would be for some time problematic at best and it will be some time before segmentation era of the new net dawns and new Serge/Larry/Zuckenberg appear :)

X4 13y ago

I have studied XMPP and the whole protocol stack, compared to everything else I could find out there (in a paper I'm working on). However, the conclusion is that XMPP is not worth the an investment although it looks really fascinating at first and second thought. It's pretty much doable with simpler web technology, webstandards also help to keep out the madness that XMPP calls standards.. The biggest selling points of XMPP are that everbody already has XMPP. The counter argument that weakens this position is that everybody already has email, an IP and a phone number too.

shmerl 13y ago

XMPP/Jabber itself is not a bad idea at all. As well as federation. Companies who sabotage XMPP federation by not adopting it (M$, Yahoo, AOL etc), or backing off from it (Google) or proliferating new incompatible junk (Whatsapp and other monstrosities) are a bad thing.

MichaelGG 13y ago
That's ridiculous. Someone comes up with a spec, and if a company doesn't redo their systems to implement it and connect to others with it, they are sabotaging it?
- shmerl 13y ago
  They are sabotaging the only interoperable open and free protocol (which is an Internet standard developed through IETF). Did they propose anything better? Not even close. Even Google which boasts that their Hangouts are superior and thus can't use XMPP didn't open their protocol. So who cares if it's better then? E-mail is way far from perfect, yet it's open and interoperable. So everyone supports it. XMPP is the only developed analog for instant messaging. And all those selfish jerks of companies can't agree to support it. Or develop anything better if they don't like it.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    You're not even speaking coherently. They aren't sabotaging it by not adopting it. That's just called... not adopting some arbitrary spec. Being published by the IETF doesn't mean anything. The IETF has a spec for SIMPLE, too. Should we blame all XMPP networks for sabotaging that "standard"? Why should a third party have to do something just because you don't like how they run their own networks?
    - shmerl 13y ago
      > They aren't sabotaging it by not adopting it. Oh, really? Inaction can be damaging as well. In this case - it's sabotage. Since you bring SIMPLE, which of these major closed networks support it?