It 100% isn't about popularity, it's about usability.
I tried to get my friends on Tox, but ultimately had to get them on Telegram because it was the only app that was truly 100% cross-platform.
I tried to get my friends on Tox, but ultimately had to get them on Telegram because it was the only app that was truly 100% cross-platform.
But let's be honest: xmpp is still not there. To have something comparable to what these clients offer you need a good number of extensions, notably (ymmv)
- Message carbons (i.e. a message reaches all online devices)
- Stream management (because without it, people are going to consider xmpp broken. "It loses my messages")
- MAM (for shared archives between clients/devices, the reason for me upgrading to an unstable server now)
Given that one of these isn't even (widely) available so far, I'd say xmpp is in a bad position. I love the idea. But it's hard to imagine that it can gain traction right now, given that the 'only' thing it has to offer against all the other systems is federation. I care about that. But .. most don't.
I was hopeful when I saw that duckduckgo[ddg], fastmail[fm] and mailbox.org[m] had public chat services. But of the three, none support standard archiving [XEP-0136] and only fastmail supports a custom form of archiving (via special emails to your fastmail-account). The latter at least gives you an option to archive chats (for eg: search) -- but it appears there's a market for a good, public and full-featured xmpp/chat service.
Most of the other public servers appear to a) be free-only -- not a business -- and b) focused on privacy. I find it a bit surprising that noone has tried launching a free+paid option -- say reserving some features for paying users (and charge maybe 1 USD/month?).
Actually, I think duckduckgo.com would be happy to "host" a services free tier -- have a trial account mode, and point user that just want a free chat service to ddg. Ddg gets more registered users, more users of their services, and those that are willing to pay for some features (eg: server side archiving, server side notes... others?) can pay a small amount for the service.
Only draw back would be no seamless transition from one to the other (change of username/domain). On the plus side, all my trial accounts can talk to each other without problem (via server side federation) -- it just works.
[ddg] https://duck.co/blog/using-pidgin-with-xmpp-jabber
[fm] https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/chat.html
[m] https://mailbox.org/en/mailbox-org-launched-secure-instant-m...
[edit: And while mailbox.org has an interesting offering, like some kind of deal with yubikey -- they seem to have neglected their xmpp setup somewhat -- there are some issues with ssl certs. Pidigin can't seem to figure out that xmpp at fastmail is chat.messagingengine.com, nor that mailbox uses xmpp.mailbox.org. Both give additional certificate errors if not adjusted. I suppose fastmail hasn't set up srv-records/dns aliases for their vanity domains (I registered mm.st -- as it was the shortest). It'd be better if one could just type in <user>@mm.st and have everything work. The bug might be in Pidgin, but fm really needs to test things. Of the three, ddg was by far the easiest to get started with -- register right in the im client (which also generates an account that works for ddg); and go.]
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
bluescat(probable google employee) says webRTC is the way things are going, so no further development on xmpp. so i think that's the explanation for no s2s tls.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/hangouts/T2t1...
xep-0136 is regarded as an overreaching fuckup that nobody will ever get right and 313 is the heir apparent, and it's yet to be delivered.
having been through a lot of this, the issue is not the servers or the features thereof, but cross platform clients which support all the features.
main piece of advice is to settle on a webclient.
Not sure what you mean by "not a good platform". Compared to what?
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.guardianp...