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Comment by xiaomai | Hacker News Reader

Several years ago I was looking for something to use as a family chat server. Many of my friends/coworkers were using Slack/etc., but since my immediate family members didn't already have a preferred chat app, I was hoping to self-host something open-source. Matrix was under very active development at the time and I was pretty excited about the prospect of using it. Matrix didn't even have E2EE yet (I think it was under development), and that really wasn't a feature I needed or cared about (disappointing to read about all the trade-offs involved in this post though). The computational/storage costs for Matrix really were way too burdensome though. I ended up going with Jabber (Snikket). A jabber server costs essentially nothing to run. Highly recommend.

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I don’t really have a dog in the fight so to say (aside from running a relatively large IRC network for the passed 22 years)…

But I really do wish we had doubled down on XMPP. It was nearly everywhere in the late-00’s early-10’s. If we could have just solved the mobile case (which, was solved, just not in popular server versions) then we would have been in a better place today.

Hatred of XML has cost us so many wonderful things, the one that hurts me most is SMF (the solaris init system) which obviated the major issues people have with systemd. Except because it’s using XML people would rather carve off a limb over seriously considering porting it.

Now that i'm looking back at xmpp, i agree that i wish we would have doubled down on xmpp - either to make some things easier for hosting, etc. And, yeah, its funny that you mention about the hatred of xml...i never loved it, but never hated it. Same with json, etc....To me they're just data formats...but so much dislike seemed the cool thing to do back in the day. Ah, well.

It’s so easy to host, and I once implemented a partial in-browser client (using, basically, a web bridge that I also wrote on the other side) in no time, starting from not knowing a single thing about it aside from having used xmpp chat clients in the past. Like getting to the point of status online/offline indicators showing up and messages passing was so easy. I get that I was a far cry from supporting things like encryption extensions, but it’s a great sign when going from nothing to having at least some of a protocol working takes very little time.

The web platform’s still (for now) really good and fast at working with xml. Kinda wild we ended up with json everywhere.

You say that but has XMPP really improved over the past 10-20 years? The same issues plague it still.

because all the investment (and, crucially: time) has gone elsewhere.

I thought I was clear about that?

SMF also has not moved in 15 years.

would XMPP 2.0 still be compatible with XMPP?

Sure, just standardise a set of XEP’s and ensure federation has some strictness in which XEP’s are used.

My point was that "lack of investment" doesn't explain the standstill. If that would be the determining factor IRC should not have seen or should not be seeing any progress either. But we actually do have IRCv3 extensions and quite a few new implementations here and there.

There's something else hindering XMPP that it stands so still, alternatively it simply can't be improved.

People are pathological about IRC (I am one of them), and there’s a small but motivated handful of us.

XMPP doesn’t have those people, because there’s little nostalgia and an “ick” feeling about XML.

All those people would rather work on Matrix.

> ...The computational/storage costs for Matrix really were way too burdensome though. I ended up going with Jabber (Snikket). A jabber server costs essentially nothing to run...

Your experience seems to mirror my own. I still use matrix very little, but have defaulted to use xmpp. Well, really returned to it after so many, many years away from xmpp. I tried prosody, but then after a multi-server cleanup killed it off. I think it was fine. Up next, i'd like to try either self-hosting my own ejabberd server, or if i don't want manage yet another host might consider the paid option of Snikket...or maybe go through jmp.chat which if i recall correctly includes xmpp hosting with some jmp chat paid plan, etc.

> my immediate family members didn't already have a preferred chat app

I am curious, how is this possible? Most non-techies seem to use the app that matches the app that is the most popular one in their area/demographics. For most, that would be Whatsapp i guess. How did you sell your app to your family?

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