Ask HN: Who Is Using XMPP? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who Is Using XMPP?

24 pointsnunobrito12 comments

Hello,

Are you using XMPP?

If so, what are your favorite servers to connect?

I was I heavy XMPP user back in the 00s. But on the whole it never really took off, and when Google killed XMPP support in their chat it was a severe blow. As for why it didn’t reach a larger userbase, I think the reasons that Moxie described in The ecosystem is moving[0] are spot on.

[0] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

I use JMP.chat[0] for my primary phone number. Being able to text from my PC with a real keyboard is very convenient. If I ever bite the bullet and use Discord I want to set up Slidcord[1] so that I don't have to use a separate app. I'm still figuring out how to migrate people to XMPP natively.

[0]: https://jmp.chat [1]: https://slidge.im/docs/slidcord/main

Doesn't Discord require every user to create a new account, even if they're already using Discord in some other community? So when they say "a Discord server", they really mean it--they're like droplets running independent deployments or whatever (albeit managed/hosted instances run by and upgraded by Discord the company); not like subreddits, right?

So isn't the best way to migrate people to XMPP to prop up a Discord clone that's as close a copy as the Discord-clone community can manage, and then tell all the people "Join my Discord server", with the trick being that it's really your server, not Discord's, and that server is powered by XMPP?

> Doesn't Discord require every user to create a new account, even if they're already using Discord in some other community? So when they say "a Discord server", they really mean it--they're like droplets running independent deployments or whatever (albeit managed/hosted instances run by and upgraded by Discord the company); not like subreddits, right?

No, it works exactly like subreddits. One of the major lock-ins Discord has is that all the communities are there, and people access them all with one account and one app. It's very convenient, which, as RMS says, is a bad thing when it comes to proprietary software.

>Doesn't Discord require every user to create a new account, even if they're already using Discord in some other community?

No, the same account is used. You get prompted to choose a nickname each time you join a server though.

>So when they say "a Discord server", they really mean it--they're like droplets running independent deployments or whatever

No, they're probably all run on the same compute. The "official" name for a discord server from the API documentation is actually a "discord guild" and it works pretty much like a subreddit.

I still see XMPP mostly used in self-hosted or privacy-focused setups rather than mainstream chat.

Prosody has been the easiest server to run in my experience — lightweight and minimal maintenance. ejabberd seems preferred when scalability or clustering is important.

What keeps XMPP interesting is the federation model. Running your own server while still communicating across domains feels closer to email than modern messaging platforms.

Last week I selfhosted Snikket: https://snikket.org, me and my partner use it to text. It has been smooth, everything works without issue: read receipts, audio/video calls, status.

Several years ago I put up an XMPP server (Prosody) to chat with some friends in a private group, and it's still going strong. Years ago we used to have a mailing-list to keep in touch, but that eventually went quiet. I had run an XMPP server ~10 years ago (ejabberd), but that was before mobile chat utterly displaced everything else, it never took hold among my friends, and I stopped using it when Google Talk stopped federating, cutting me off from most of the people I had been occassionally chatting with.

The modern chat experience is all about the clients, and the mobile clients in particular, especially push notification support and seamless setup, so direct comparisons with XMPP to Matrix, et al, kinda misses the point, IMO. Conversations is a really amazing Android client. Our one iPhone member is content with Modal (I use the desktop version sometimes, but it's clearly designed for the iPhone). A new member uses, I think, Gajim on Windows; they don't want the distraction of chatting on their phone.

I host a bunch of other services on OpenBSD, all using the integrated base daemons--httpd, OpenSMTPD, NSD, etc--that sandbox themselves. I was hesitant to run a daemon like Prosody that didn't integrate OpenBSD security features, so I wrote my own module (mod_unveil) that uses pledge and unveil to sandbox Prosody: https://github.com/wahern/prosody-openbsd Most Prosody users host on Linux, and many of them seem to use Docker containers, which presumably offers some isolation, but I can't really speak to it.

The only non-private, large group chat I've joined recently has been the Prosody support MUC. I'm not a chat power user, but it seems to work just as well as any large chatroom. I've was content with ntalk and IRC back in the day, so I don't really get all the chat protocol bike shedding. In any event, I expect XMPP momentum (such as it is) to outlast all the interest in Discord, Matrix, etc.