The motivation presumably is that if people start using Signal, but half their messages don't arrive because their contact is using a half-baked third-party client that hasn't kept up with Signal's development, then that's a great way to lose potential users.
Instead I lose half my messages because the desktop application won't sync correctly and/or corrupt its database every other week.
Surely there's a version header in the protocol that could be used to reject outdated clients outright?
That wouldn't be much of an issue if the official clients worked better and had the features I expect from a modern IM client. For instance I never really considered using a third party Telegram client because the official one works really well in my experience.
But apparently proper syncing will have to wait while they implement a cryptocurrency payment system. Priorities.
I won't presume the relative weighting of motivations, there's a notable blog post here [0] that elaborates on Moxie's dislike for federation. E.g.:
> So long as federation means stasis while centralization means movement, federated protocols are going to have trouble existing in a software climate that demands movement as it does today.
While my initial reaction was "omg, I hate it", I don't 100% disagree. I think one of the biggest drivers for adoption in Matrix world would be a streamlined on-boarding to a central server (matrix.org?), so that it "just works" by default. Like the front page of Reddit, get people in the ecosystem, then they can discover the subreddits and engage more deeply with the platform.
Vinnl|4 years ago
simias|4 years ago
Surely there's a version header in the protocol that could be used to reject outdated clients outright?
That wouldn't be much of an issue if the official clients worked better and had the features I expect from a modern IM client. For instance I never really considered using a third party Telegram client because the official one works really well in my experience.
But apparently proper syncing will have to wait while they implement a cryptocurrency payment system. Priorities.
abstract_put|4 years ago
> So long as federation means stasis while centralization means movement, federated protocols are going to have trouble existing in a software climate that demands movement as it does today.
While my initial reaction was "omg, I hate it", I don't 100% disagree. I think one of the biggest drivers for adoption in Matrix world would be a streamlined on-boarding to a central server (matrix.org?), so that it "just works" by default. Like the front page of Reddit, get people in the ecosystem, then they can discover the subreddits and engage more deeply with the platform.
[0]: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
eptcyka|4 years ago
idclip|4 years ago
JeremyNT|4 years ago