As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP.
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As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.
I consider this a failure on our part but I don’t really know what to do about it. Most arguments against #XMPP don’t hold if you’re building from scratch anyway:
• #Conversations_im looks very outdated: OK, but you are developing your own clients anyway.
• XMPP doesn’t have an SDK: Neither does your #ActivityPub or email stack
• OMEMO is insecure and I would prefer #MLS: Yes, let’s work on that together and you’ll still benefit from XMPP’s 100+ solved IM problems.
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@daniel I think people have never truly forgiven XMPP for being an XML based protocol.
@mariusor @daniel what would've been a better alternative?
Stop Telling Us XMPP Should Use JSON
XML vs. JSON: Stop Worrying About the Wrong Layer
ProcessOne (www.process-one.net)
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@daniel
I'm guessing there are complex problems in IM space that they don't realize they'll have to solve from scratch, which XMPP already solved for them.What are these problems?
@wolf480pl yes I think that is a huge part of the problem. It is very easy to completely underestimate the complexity of Instant Messaging. Sending a message from A to B seems like something every software developer can write before lunch and people don’t see how it can and will rapidly escalate from there.
But I don’t know how do communicate that to other people.
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@mariusor @daniel what would've been a better alternative?
Stop Telling Us XMPP Should Use JSON
XML vs. JSON: Stop Worrying About the Wrong Layer
ProcessOne (www.process-one.net)
@joshix based on what's popular today: JSON.
(I'm joking, my assumption is that they chose what was the best alternative at the time. As far as I know JSON hadn't been described by Crockford at Jabber's inception)
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I consider this a failure on our part but I don’t really know what to do about it. Most arguments against #XMPP don’t hold if you’re building from scratch anyway:
• #Conversations_im looks very outdated: OK, but you are developing your own clients anyway.
• XMPP doesn’t have an SDK: Neither does your #ActivityPub or email stack
• OMEMO is insecure and I would prefer #MLS: Yes, let’s work on that together and you’ll still benefit from XMPP’s 100+ solved IM problems.
@daniel The big plus of #DeltaChat is that the infrastructure is already there. Infrastructure is a big part of the problem. And obviously using mail for that is only for people born before 2000.
Second is branding: When people hear #XMPP they hear 20 years of failure of implementing robust solutions both server-side and client-side. People just don't know that after 20 years there now are server and client solutions really working.
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@daniel The big plus of #DeltaChat is that the infrastructure is already there. Infrastructure is a big part of the problem. And obviously using mail for that is only for people born before 2000.
Second is branding: When people hear #XMPP they hear 20 years of failure of implementing robust solutions both server-side and client-side. People just don't know that after 20 years there now are server and client solutions really working.
@lazarus @daniel #XMPP is still a thriving ecosystem with lots of good FOSS developers doing interesting things.
XMPP is also used under the hood in tons of products needing instant messaging even if they are not advertised as XMPP clients, or do not federate. But look at #Matrix, only 25% of matrix servers federate.
Anyway, all three share a strong focus on protocols, but there is a big difference: https://chatmail.at does not expose protocols to client developers, just a Rust SDK.
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As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.
@daniel@gultsch.social The Lemmy developers have added a user profile field where you can enter a Matrix account. It would certainly be better to also add a link to XMPP, and I believe this would be the most viable way to immediately achieve secure communication in the Fediverse.
However, it's always helpful for someone to try to "reinvent the wheel": diversity is a very prolific mother of solutions to problems that don't yet exist.
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@lazarus @daniel #XMPP is still a thriving ecosystem with lots of good FOSS developers doing interesting things.
XMPP is also used under the hood in tons of products needing instant messaging even if they are not advertised as XMPP clients, or do not federate. But look at #Matrix, only 25% of matrix servers federate.
Anyway, all three share a strong focus on protocols, but there is a big difference: https://chatmail.at does not expose protocols to client developers, just a Rust SDK.
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@dragospirvu75 @matrix @delta @lazarus The way to achieve interoperability is to stop reinventing the wheel and agree on one standard. Implementing three protocols is completely unfeasible and unnecessary. This worked 20 years ago with MSN, ICQ and AIM when IM protocols had a lot less features and no E2EE. Doesn’t work today.
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As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.
@daniel Someone have to solve https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ issues first
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@daniel Someone have to solve https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ issues first
@tris two things: I already said in my follow up post that if someone wants to build their own clients on top of XMPP and prefers MLS over OMEMO, the XMPP community is very open to that. A protocol is much more than just the encryption. They would still benefit from all the other things XMPP has solved.
A lot of what's in that blog post is ill-informed and bordering on disinformation and fear mongering.
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@tris two things: I already said in my follow up post that if someone wants to build their own clients on top of XMPP and prefers MLS over OMEMO, the XMPP community is very open to that. A protocol is much more than just the encryption. They would still benefit from all the other things XMPP has solved.
A lot of what's in that blog post is ill-informed and bordering on disinformation and fear mongering.
@daniel Ah, fair, their work for E2EE Fedi looks interesting: https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification
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@daniel Ah, fair, their work for E2EE Fedi looks interesting: https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification
@tris there are three actively developed protocols for federated instant messaging (XMPP, Matrix, Deltachat). At least one of them is very open to new developers and new ideas and has a structure in place to collaboratively work on those ideas and bring various stake holders together. With no disrespect to that individual I don't see why there needs to be a forth protocol loosely based on ActivityPub.
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@tris there are three actively developed protocols for federated instant messaging (XMPP, Matrix, Deltachat). At least one of them is very open to new developers and new ideas and has a structure in place to collaboratively work on those ideas and bring various stake holders together. With no disrespect to that individual I don't see why there needs to be a forth protocol loosely based on ActivityPub.
@tris Soatak is an expert in cryptography. I’m not. I’m more than happy to stand on the shoulder of giants when it comes to E2EE. That’s why we used the Signal Protocol 10+ years ago for #OMEMO and are now looking towards #MLS. However, good, interoperable protocol design is so much more than just E2EE. And maybe I've learned a thing or two about protocol design in my career that they don’t necessarily know.
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@tris there are three actively developed protocols for federated instant messaging (XMPP, Matrix, Deltachat). At least one of them is very open to new developers and new ideas and has a structure in place to collaboratively work on those ideas and bring various stake holders together. With no disrespect to that individual I don't see why there needs to be a forth protocol loosely based on ActivityPub.
@daniel @tris I'm also genuinely surprised that people believe that ActivityPub, a protocol even named after its purpose, to publish activities, is a good protocol to pursue private instant messaging. The goals of those two couldn't be more detrimental.
I do see a purpose of being able to reuse your "ActivityPub identities", which actually are just WebFinger identities. Maybe someone should specify how to discover XMPP accounts via WebFinger and push that as a solution for AP messaging?
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@daniel @tris I'm also genuinely surprised that people believe that ActivityPub, a protocol even named after its purpose, to publish activities, is a good protocol to pursue private instant messaging. The goals of those two couldn't be more detrimental.
I do see a purpose of being able to reuse your "ActivityPub identities", which actually are just WebFinger identities. Maybe someone should specify how to discover XMPP accounts via WebFinger and push that as a solution for AP messaging?
@pixelschubsi @tris Yes, agreed. Tremendous value in reusing identities and login credentials. Big skepticism with regards to using AP as a protocol. One can probably kinda make it work… But why? What’s the benefit?
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@pixelschubsi @tris Yes, agreed. Tremendous value in reusing identities and login credentials. Big skepticism with regards to using AP as a protocol. One can probably kinda make it work… But why? What’s the benefit?
To preface — I'm in agreement that ActivityPub probably isn't the best protocol to use for instant messaging. There's a lot of FUD still being spread about XMPP and I am outside of most of those discussions. NodeBB only supports AP at current.
That said, there's interest in pursuing AP as a delivery protocol for instant messaging because integrating a separate protocol is a heavy lift for everybody involved. It's a heavy lift if you already support AP, and it's a heavy lift when you support no federating protocols at all. Imagine a site looking to federate... now they have to use AP+XMPP? AP+Delta? etc...
Setting aside all the existing reasons why AP isn't ideal, I will say this... It clears the baseline expectations:
- Messages can get sent via AP
- Messages can be privately addressed via existing AP addressing mechanisms
That's it. The rest is icing. Really important icing, but for 99% of conversations, icing.
- Messages can get sent via AP
