4 ms·

> "We're trying to create a new type of IT company, one that never focuses on maximising profits, but instead provides value to society," This is dreadful. The

by zanny 12y ago

> "We're trying to create a new type of IT company, one that never focuses on maximising profits, but instead provides value to society," This is dreadful. The Free software movement has existed for decades and Telegram brings nothing new to the table that Google hadn't already a decade ago (open yet crippled protocol, proprietary servers). There is nothing new here, besides the fact that Telegram basically makes no money. Which is also nothing new, since Google Talk and Voice never made money either! I don't mind it, because we know the protocol and can reengineer the clients easily in the event they betray their users trust. It is much better than WhatsApp or Skype being a whole-pipe black box. But at the end of the day, XMPP has existed, has improved, and today provides all the features of all these other messaging transports and more, the problem is there is no money to be had in providing an easy signup XMPP service, so nobody advertises them. Which makes Telegram perplexing, because their only valuable resource is their userbase, and they are not directly monetizing it at all. Contrast that with Duckduckgo having an XMPP server @dukgo.com that basically got a blog post and hasn't been talked about much since, that I use all the time on all my devices. But fundamentally none of this absolves how stupid all these companies re-implement a wheel poorly (XMPP) because the old wheel is so well known and understood that you can't lock people in or profit off the users using it.

deleted 12y ago
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vbezhenar 12y ago
XMPP have troubles with synchronizing chats between clients, with push notifications, with user-friendly mobile clients. I like XMPP, I did set up my own server, but I finally abandoned it. It's usable only with one client, preferably on desktop.
- catern 12y ago
  >synchronizing chats between clients, The Carbons XEP[0] is now fairly widely supported and does exactly this. >user-friendly mobile clients. Conversations[1] is excellent and is free software. >push notifications The centralized system of push notifactions on Android and iOS is not yet supported, it's true, but XMPP with its extensions has pretty good support for battery-constrained devices with intermittent network connections. I use XMPP across multiple devices with my own server to communicate to other people running their own server and it works great. Setting up your own server is extremely easy ("apt-get install prosody" works out of the box on Debian; stay away from ejabberd which is a pain) and I highly recommend it. [0] http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conve...
  - vbezhenar 12y ago
    Thanks, I'll look into that. I'm more interested with iOS and OS X apps (though Pidgin works well for OS X). And iOS doesn't permit messaging apps to work in background as far as I know, so push notifications are needed for comfort work. Though I'm usually near my laptop and probably can live without them.
  - rakoo 12y ago
    > >synchronizing chats between clients, > The Carbons XEP is now fairly widely supported and does exactly this I'll add MAM (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html) for messages you didn't receive because one of your resources was offline, which Conversations does, along with at least Gajim. > The centralized system of push notifactions on Android and iOS is not yet supported It's coming (http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html)
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    Not to diminish the good sides, but multi-device XMPP experience is a quite complicated matter even today. For example, you'll have to give up on OTR, and you'll have to choose the software carefully.
    - StavrosK 12y ago
      You don't really have to give up on OTR, but OTR has to get a lot more user-friendly for that use case. Right now it breaks all over the place, and with some really obvious bad UX, too.
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by zanny 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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vbezhenar 12y ago

XMPP have troubles with synchronizing chats between clients, with push notifications, with user-friendly mobile clients. I like XMPP, I did set up my own server, but I finally abandoned it. It's usable only with one client, preferably on desktop.

catern 12y ago
>synchronizing chats between clients, The Carbons XEP[0] is now fairly widely supported and does exactly this. >user-friendly mobile clients. Conversations[1] is excellent and is free software. >push notifications The centralized system of push notifactions on Android and iOS is not yet supported, it's true, but XMPP with its extensions has pretty good support for battery-constrained devices with intermittent network connections. I use XMPP across multiple devices with my own server to communicate to other people running their own server and it works great. Setting up your own server is extremely easy ("apt-get install prosody" works out of the box on Debian; stay away from ejabberd which is a pain) and I highly recommend it. [0] http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conve...
- vbezhenar 12y ago
  Thanks, I'll look into that. I'm more interested with iOS and OS X apps (though Pidgin works well for OS X). And iOS doesn't permit messaging apps to work in background as far as I know, so push notifications are needed for comfort work. Though I'm usually near my laptop and probably can live without them.
- rakoo 12y ago
  > >synchronizing chats between clients, > The Carbons XEP is now fairly widely supported and does exactly this I'll add MAM (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html) for messages you didn't receive because one of your resources was offline, which Conversations does, along with at least Gajim. > The centralized system of push notifactions on Android and iOS is not yet supported It's coming (http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html)
- drdaeman 12y ago
  Not to diminish the good sides, but multi-device XMPP experience is a quite complicated matter even today. For example, you'll have to give up on OTR, and you'll have to choose the software carefully.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    You don't really have to give up on OTR, but OTR has to get a lot more user-friendly for that use case. Right now it breaks all over the place, and with some really obvious bad UX, too.

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