We were living in the future. Around ~2010 we could use Jabber/XMPP to chat with people on various community services, Google Talk, LiveJournal talk, etc. Besides great Linux clients, macOS had iChat which supported XMPP, etc.
Yep it was great. I had one client per device. Could talk to everybody. I had a consistent UX. Sure sharing pictures and videos wasn't easy then. But also the pay to use features and dark patterns weren't an issue either.
I miss the days when our best minds developed protocols instead of products. The last 15 years has been just the commodification and destruction of everything the previous generation has built.
I'm frankly surprised email has stood up as well as it has, even if it is nearly impossible to run your own email server these days.
In the mid-to-late teens IRC was making something of a comeback and then Slack EEE'd it.
You could even use an XMPP client with HipChat for your business chat. Though, I'd argue XMPP was one of the factors that contributed to HipChat's demise (it wasn't the sole reason, but trying to scale presence via XMPP proved to be a nightmare).
> Moving to XMPP - using prosody - worked really well for messaging, but the lack of real-time notifications on Sandra’s iPhone was sub-optimal
Were they using Monal on the iPhone? I use XMPP (Prosody) with some friends. Conversations.im works really well on Android, including push notifications. But the one iPhone user, using Monal, has said notifications don't work, and I don't know how to debug. The Monal website and commit log suggests they should be working. (macOS desktop Monal works fine for me, but it's using a normal live TCP stream to receive notifications, not cell network push notifications.)
AIUI (but actual iOS developers can correct me), for Push Notifications to work on iPhones requires the system to route through the Apple-hosted Apple Push Notification (APN)
This is fairly at odds with the goal of XMPP, where the device listens to the server. But of course that model doesn't really work when the device is sleeping most of the time (and I don't know how IP or TCP connections are handled in an LTE or 5G world, but I'm sure there's a consideration there).
You need to enable a plugin in prosody for notifications to get routed via Apple’s servers. The plugin is disabled by default, but included in the default installation.
Daily user of XMPP as well since over a decade. I still call it Jabber out of habit. Prosody on server, Profanity on desktop (terminal), Monal on mobile.
I've been using XMPP since about 5 years for family texting, file/video sharing, and video calling. It works great, and I would highly recommend it.
What works for us (all android) is Prosody + Conversations app (or Blabber is a free version). There are a few guides online for how to install & configure the prosody server. It's fairly non-technical.
Honestly, it works just as well as whatsapp - except there's actual privacy between users. Family messaging is a great use-case as everyone can be on the same server.
I've been doing the same thing for my family for the last four years and it's been working really well. We're all on Android and using Conversations as well.
> Moving to XMPP - using prosody - worked really well for messaging, but the lack of real-time notifications on Sandra’s iPhone was sub-optimal, and the lack of any notifications for incoming XMPP calls on her phone was really undesirable.
A note to android users: prosody real time notifications & calls work great combined with the "conversations" app as a client. You see "user is typing", you can transfer files/photo, video. And best of all, you can do audio video calls with adaptive quality (adjusts to your bandwidth) & auto reconnects.
That post, describing why we shouldn't be using a OMEMO, is almost incoherent. It doesn't outline any problem with the implementation at all. Every criticism is a metacriticism of some sort. Very strange.
I've been a big XMPP fan, having deployed it at customer sites more than a decade ago, running my own self-hosted service for friends and family, and so forth.
I'm disappointed that the experience is still not at feature parity with proprietary solutions. For example, Conversations.im is a great Android client for XMPP, but it still does not support live location.
I maintained my XMPP account for around 5 years. Talked only to one guy there. In the end I just dumped it. The potential is great, but in reality it's a very niche thing.
[+] [-] microtonal|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bombela|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] donatj|8 months ago|reply
I'm frankly surprised email has stood up as well as it has, even if it is nearly impossible to run your own email server these days.
In the mid-to-late teens IRC was making something of a comeback and then Slack EEE'd it.
[+] [-] icedchai|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zsiddique|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] FuriouslyAdrift|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mycall|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] HumblyTossed|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|8 months ago|reply
Were they using Monal on the iPhone? I use XMPP (Prosody) with some friends. Conversations.im works really well on Android, including push notifications. But the one iPhone user, using Monal, has said notifications don't work, and I don't know how to debug. The Monal website and commit log suggests they should be working. (macOS desktop Monal works fine for me, but it's using a normal live TCP stream to receive notifications, not cell network push notifications.)
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|8 months ago|reply
https://developer.apple.com/notifications/
This is fairly at odds with the goal of XMPP, where the device listens to the server. But of course that model doesn't really work when the device is sleeping most of the time (and I don't know how IP or TCP connections are handled in an LTE or 5G world, but I'm sure there's a consideration there).
All this to say: iOS is hostile to XMPP.
[+] [-] WhyNotHugo|8 months ago|reply
You need to enable a plugin in prosody for notifications to get routed via Apple’s servers. The plugin is disabled by default, but included in the default installation.
[+] [-] daneel_w|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] johnisgood|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nadof|8 months ago|reply
What works for us (all android) is Prosody + Conversations app (or Blabber is a free version). There are a few guides online for how to install & configure the prosody server. It's fairly non-technical.
Honestly, it works just as well as whatsapp - except there's actual privacy between users. Family messaging is a great use-case as everyone can be on the same server.
[+] [-] terminalbraid|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rpdillon|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nadof|8 months ago|reply
A note to android users: prosody real time notifications & calls work great combined with the "conversations" app as a client. You see "user is typing", you can transfer files/photo, video. And best of all, you can do audio video calls with adaptive quality (adjusts to your bandwidth) & auto reconnects.
[+] [-] ColinWright|8 months ago|reply
https://mathstodon.xyz/@[email protected]/1149374...
Usage continues two years later ...
[+] [-] riedel|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rpdillon|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rlpb|8 months ago|reply
I'm disappointed that the experience is still not at feature parity with proprietary solutions. For example, Conversations.im is a great Android client for XMPP, but it still does not support live location.
There's so much potential to be better than the proprietary solutions, too, for example with OsmAnd integration (https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/issues/11).
[+] [-] zie|8 months ago|reply
I use Overland[0] and a custom server implementation that lets people I care about see where my phone is(and presumably me).
0: https://overland.p3k.app
[+] [-] rckt|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] haunter|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] grodriguez100|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rdm_blackhole|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nadof|8 months ago|reply
https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-12/BOSE%...