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Comment by zaik | Hacker News Reader

I became unhappy with WhatsApp some time ago and decided to go all-in on XMPP. It's the internet standard for IM after all and I strongly feel we need more standardization instead of the wide fragmentation with so many proprietary apps and custom protocols. I'm quite happy so far. I'm hosting my own server for my extended family and also got ~20 friends to get standard XMPP addresses.

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20 friends is very impressive! Do you have any tips for how to do it? If you don't mind me asking, do they also use it to chat amongst themselves / group chats etc - or only with you?

I also recently set up a server, and have convinced my partner and immediate family to join, but I feel I'm going to struggle to get my friends to do the same. Any tips on what works and what doesn't are greatly appreciated :)

I don't use anything else, and people get tired of sending me emails rather quickly... Also after you have some number of people with XMPP addresses you actually start to feel some network effect! I suspect most people just use it with me, but I have seen some friends who didn't know each other before to use it. Since they were in the same group chat this likely was just the easiest option, instead of asking me for their telephone number.

Interesting to note that WhatsApp started as a modified Mongoose IM.

@wut42: No, it was ejabberd! - https://docs.ejabberd.im/use-cases/

Mongoose IM is a fork of ejabberd: - https://www.ejabberd.im/ - https://github.com/processone/ejabberd

Ah thanks for the precision. I'm not exactly sure to be honest of the lineage of whatsapps/mongoose, some sources says it's based from Mongoose and/or had involvement from Erlang Solutions that ended up in Mongoose.

Anyway Mongoose and eJabberd have an amazing lineage and track record of uses and forks :)

I joined WhatsApp in late 2011 and left in late 2019. We always said we started with ejabberd and then replaced everything over time to get our system. I'm not sure about engagements with Erlang Solutions. I think that may have predated me, or it may have just not included me as I never did much with our chat server.

Facebook's chat system was built up with the same pattern: start with ejabberd, replace what you need to, eventually it's not the same at all (FB rewrote in C? because they couldn't hire Erlang people. WhatsApp rewrote in Erlang because Erlang is a very good fit for a chat app, and hired non-Erlang people and gave them Erlang books). I think RiotGames started with ejabberd as well.

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