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Now, there are good and bad answers that I can provide here. Bad: Lots of things you take for granted if you look into WhatsApp/Hangouts/Telegram et al are ext

Now, there are good and bad answers that I can provide here. Bad: Lots of things you take for granted if you look into WhatsApp/Hangouts/Telegram et al are extensions, lots of these extensions are optional, lots of optional extensions are not supported in a coherent way. Somewhat bad: Archives had a decent XEP, but it's not 136. It's 313 (which I mentioned above, MAM). You probably won't find any improvements in 136, it's - as far as I can tell - considered superseded, although 313 is still not really available (which is the reason for me listing this as 'bad'). Good: Running your own server is trivial. Really. People always say that running a mail server is hard and - maybe it is. It certainly has a number of issues you can run into. Running an XMPP server? Install, configure, done. Easy. Give it a try this weekend?

e12e 11y ago
Well, the "bad" is still better than using WhatsApp (or whatnot) -- even if there's only one combination of foss-cross-platform-client-x and foss-server-y that work together to give what's needed -- the protocol(s) are documented, and the implementations are available. Thanks for the reality-check on server-side archiving :-/ As for running the server being trivial: I can believe that (I do run my own mail). I'm not really in a hurry to set it up for myself -- I have most people I chat with on xmpp (still!) on fb -- and they won't be moving any time soon. I'll set it up as I move into my new dedicated server. My current "main" vps is running Debian oldstable lts, and I really don't want to set up anything new on that box, as I'm transitioning away from it. After playing with Pidgin on windows (for testing the above), I've been playing with the idea of forking it and ripping out all the non-xmpp stuff, and maybe trimming the (G)UI/UX a bit too. I should perhaps mention that when I occasionally do chat with people it's usually over IRC w/IRSSI.
- darklajid 11y ago
  My server of choice would be prosody, and if you're willing to try the (unreleased) 0.10 you'd even get the archive options listed above. Plus, it integrates rather cleanly with a good number of systems, in my case it's using dovecot as authentication agent for example (and therefor relies on virtual users specified ~elsewhere~). It can work. And it's really not hard. It's just not seamless, unfortunately.
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  > the implementations are available. the clients are categorically awful :) re forking:pidgin and libpurple are huge. focussing on webclients first and pidgin gajim etc afterwards is a better bet.
  - e12e 11y ago
    I don't really need a web client. At any rate, I have chatsecure for Android -- a good command-line client with a way to access logs would be nice -- but a GUI app would also work.
    - throwawayaway 11y ago
      given federation is going the way off the dodo, if you do decide to set up a server, you are going to need people on that server to talk to. or else it's an echo chamber. so while it may be that you have a client that you use for android, if you want to talk to other people, you are going to need a client that supports the features they want. what i am telling you is, is that the clients are a crapshoot that all support their own subsections of features. finding clients that people will use, for every platform is a massive timesink. my advice therefore, is to pick a nice webclient.
      - e12e 11y ago
        > given federation is going the way off the dodo I'm not sure what you mean. Sure facebook and to a lesser extent google are wilfully screwing their users for no good reason (well no good reason for the users). But mailbox.org, fastmail and duckduckgo all federate just fine with each other. It's not like I'm expecting whatsapp to suddenly enable xmpp and server federation over ssl (does anyone know why google doesn't just turn on ssl for server federation? I could understand killing xmpp, but why keep federation, but refuse to use ssl, on this one service?). Suprisingly, I can't seem to find anyone that both provides on-line registration, federation and a web client... In my case, I assume the more pragmatic route would be to set up a gateway to gtalk and fb, leaving me to use whatever client(s) I enjoy. I suppose I might host a public web client as well... but I don't see who would use that, rather than just send me an email, sms or call.

e12e 11y ago

Well, the "bad" is still better than using WhatsApp (or whatnot) -- even if there's only one combination of foss-cross-platform-client-x and foss-server-y that work together to give what's needed -- the protocol(s) are documented, and the implementations are available. Thanks for the reality-check on server-side archiving :-/ As for running the server being trivial: I can believe that (I do run my own mail). I'm not really in a hurry to set it up for myself -- I have most people I chat with on xmpp (still!) on fb -- and they won't be moving any time soon. I'll set it up as I move into my new dedicated server. My current "main" vps is running Debian oldstable lts, and I really don't want to set up anything new on that box, as I'm transitioning away from it. After playing with Pidgin on windows (for testing the above), I've been playing with the idea of forking it and ripping out all the non-xmpp stuff, and maybe trimming the (G)UI/UX a bit too. I should perhaps mention that when I occasionally do chat with people it's usually over IRC w/IRSSI.

darklajid 11y ago
My server of choice would be prosody, and if you're willing to try the (unreleased) 0.10 you'd even get the archive options listed above. Plus, it integrates rather cleanly with a good number of systems, in my case it's using dovecot as authentication agent for example (and therefor relies on virtual users specified ~elsewhere~). It can work. And it's really not hard. It's just not seamless, unfortunately.
throwawayaway 11y ago
> the implementations are available. the clients are categorically awful :) re forking:pidgin and libpurple are huge. focussing on webclients first and pidgin gajim etc afterwards is a better bet.
- e12e 11y ago
  I don't really need a web client. At any rate, I have chatsecure for Android -- a good command-line client with a way to access logs would be nice -- but a GUI app would also work.
  - throwawayaway 11y ago
    given federation is going the way off the dodo, if you do decide to set up a server, you are going to need people on that server to talk to. or else it's an echo chamber. so while it may be that you have a client that you use for android, if you want to talk to other people, you are going to need a client that supports the features they want. what i am telling you is, is that the clients are a crapshoot that all support their own subsections of features. finding clients that people will use, for every platform is a massive timesink. my advice therefore, is to pick a nice webclient.
    - e12e 11y ago
      > given federation is going the way off the dodo I'm not sure what you mean. Sure facebook and to a lesser extent google are wilfully screwing their users for no good reason (well no good reason for the users). But mailbox.org, fastmail and duckduckgo all federate just fine with each other. It's not like I'm expecting whatsapp to suddenly enable xmpp and server federation over ssl (does anyone know why google doesn't just turn on ssl for server federation? I could understand killing xmpp, but why keep federation, but refuse to use ssl, on this one service?). Suprisingly, I can't seem to find anyone that both provides on-line registration, federation and a web client... In my case, I assume the more pragmatic route would be to set up a gateway to gtalk and fb, leaving me to use whatever client(s) I enjoy. I suppose I might host a public web client as well... but I don't see who would use that, rather than just send me an email, sms or call.