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by puzzlingcaptcha 2178 days ago
I run my own ejabberd instance for a group of friends and it obviously works.

I do manual account creation and know people there (or they are vetted by my friends). The server federates with any other server that supports s2s encryption so they can talk to whoever they want.

On windows probably the most mature client is Gajim. You can use it on Linux too, but there are more alternatives (such as the more modern Dino.im) On Android there is the excellent Conversations, with a few more to choose from. Or you can go with a platform-independent web-based client and use Movim. All support OMEMO. I am not invested in the Apple ecosystem so I don't know about that (Beagle IM? Monal?).

Typically the XMPP naysaying is a mix of bad experiences in the past and NIH syndrome. Things like server-side message archiving, message carbons, message delivery receipts or MUCs are long solved. You want to make a stand for open, federated internet you need to put your money where your mouth is.

About the only sore points are cross-platform VoIP (Windows lacking here) and direct file transfers (SOCKS5 bytestreams are wonky which leaves http uploads) although arguably neither have to be a part of a chat application.

1 comments

Good reply, thanks. I am very pro #XMPP. Which is also why I yearn for a couple real areas of improvement & focus:

* MIX. there's a new standard for group-chats/rooms that is far less ad-hoc/special-case, that uses other XMPP extensions (XEPs) very well & enables features people expect in chat these days. it's a good standard. MIX (XEP-0369) support is still alpha level or non-existent. this is needed for a quality experience, with reactions, chat history, & as a technical advancement out of a bad shifty early legacy solution.

* Video. There are not a lot of video supporting clients. I think the spec is mostly ok for 1:1 video. But "Muji" multi-user video got demoed a decade ago & works but is more or less unimplemented. This is not cool. I think Muji also should probably be rebuilt anyways atop MIX.

* web integration. i'd like to be able to use my XMPP account online in a well-defined way. xmpp should start to define ways to make user accounts also OpenID Connect (OIDC) providers, & begin to define interoperation for webrtc & XMPP & the web to work together harmoniously.