[Semaphor]

> Snikket

I once looked into that and it just confuses me, it’s XMPP but requires an invite? And the snikket client only works with snikket servers, yet it’s actually all based on prosody and conversations? Everything about the project has alarms going off for me.

[MYEUHD]

You're supposed to self-host it (or rent a hosted instance). But rather than having open registration (or creating accounts beforehand and sending the credentials), you generate invites and send them to your contacts. The invites onboard the users to install the app.

The Snikket client works with any XMPP server, and the Snikket server works with any XMPP client.

The Snikket clients are soft forks of existing clients. The reason of their existence is having consistent branding.

In fact, I recommend using Monal as an iOS client instead of the Snikket iOS one.

Note: you can set up invites on any regular Prosody / ejabberd server.

https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_invites

https://docs.ejabberd.im/admin/configuration/modules/#mod_in...

[MattJ100]

I'm the founder of both the Prosody and Snikket projects. Sorry about triggering alarms :) I can try to explain...

Prosody is a popular choice of XMPP server software. It's used for all kinds of stuff, from self-hosted chat servers to powering Jitsi Meet, to Internet-of-Things applications.

Prosody is extremely flexible, and has a bunch of configuration options that allow you to adapt it and extend it however you want. For some people, this is ideal. Those people should continue using Prosody.

Snikket has a different scope. It is specifically an answer to a question like "How can I easily make a self-hosted WhatsApp/Signal for my family/friends using open-source software?"

- Snikket contains Prosody, for the core chat part. But it's Prosody with a very specific configuration, and the configuration is part of the project, it's not intended to be modified by the person deploying Snikket. They only need to provide the domain name.

- Snikket also includes additional components that a modern chat service needs. For example, it includes a STUN/TURN server to ensure that audio/video calls work reliably (again, preconfigured).

- Snikket provides its own apps, which are tested and developed in sync with each other and with the server. This avoids the common problem of incompatibilities that occur when you have an open ecosystem such as XMPP, where different open-source project developers may develop features at different paces, leaving users to figure out which ones support which feature. It also solves the discoverability and decision fatigue for users (searching "Snikket" on an app store will get you an app that you know is compatible with your Snikket server, you don't have to go through a list of XMPP clients and figure out which one is suitable).

- Snikket servers are not designed to be open public servers (these are an administrative nightmare). Instead, your server is closed and private by default. As the admin, you choose who signs up to your server by sending invitation links. The invitations also serve to simplify the account setup process - no need to prompt users to "choose a server", etc. They just need to provide a username.

Projects such as Conversations differ by running a single public server (conversations.im) and guiding people to sign up on that server, or choose one of a long list of free public XMPP providers. In some cases that's all what you want. But onboarding a group of people that way is not fun (for example, they all have to share their addresses with the group add each other to their contact lists one-by-one - Snikket makes discovery of contacts within the same server automatic).

Beyond these things, Snikket is all open-source and XMPP. But there is a focus on making a good polished and secure "product", if you like, rather than supporting the entire diverse XMPP ecosystem which includes a range of software of varying quality (weekend projects and more recently, 100% vibe-coded clients). For example, Snikket servers require certain security and authentication features which some older codebases that have fallen far behind modern XMPP standards (think Pidgin, etc.) simply don't support today.

> it’s actually all based on prosody and conversations?

As mentioned, I develop Prosody. I also collaborate with the Conversations developer and other XMPP projects. There's nothing shady here. The goal is just to make a best-in-class XMPP project that solves one particular use case (and it was primarily my own use case to begin with of course - I wanted to move my family off WhatsApp).

[Semaphor]

Ohh, wow. First off, thanks for prosody, been using it for several years, ever since I switched from my early 2000s jabber.org account to selfhosted.

And yeah, I get what you are saying, I'm using it the same way you envision snikket, just for my wife and I. Considering how much time I spent on the initial setup, I can very much see wanting a preconfigured version.

I guess the site was just too "non technical" and went over my head when I tried to grok it (before, a while ago, and now before writing the comment), the lack of a download option for the client on the snikket site combined with repeatably talking about invites just rubbed me wrong.

As I have already setup my server, and have gajim/conversations (which afaik are the best modern Windows/Android clients, for Windows probably even the only one storing modern xmpp) for desktop/mobile, I have no need for snikket, but my view now went from negative to very positive ;)

[MattJ100]

You're welcome!

I'm still experimenting with the messaging on the Snikket website. However my general approach with the site was to pitch Snikket to people who don't know what XMPP is, which is, frankly, the majority of people. Instead, I wanted to focus on explaining features it enables rather than protocol details. But I'm aware it has caused a lot of head-scratching among people who already know Snikket uses XMPP :)

I see Snikket as kind of a gateway into the XMPP ecosystem for people who are unfamiliar with it. After all, if you're already familiar with XMPP then the chances are you'll probably be happier with Prosody or ejabberd, and you'll already have opinions about which clients you want to use (e.g. the upstreams of Snikket).

[e12e]

Does snikket recommend/facilitate federation with other servers?

[MattJ100]

Yes, definitely. To me, the idea of a chat server that doesn't federate is as absurd as setting up an email server that doesn't federate. I understand that today people know more contacts with email addresses than XMPP addresses, but if we ever want to free ourselves from the current walled gardens, we need to stop treating chat as something that only happens in walled gardens.

Some people get worried about the idea of "federation", thinking that it somehow means their server is less private, and their data is being spread across a mesh of servers, and stuff like that. That's true in some decentralized/distributed chat protocols, but not in XMPP. Connections between servers only happen on-demand, similar how when you send email between different email providers, they will connect to each other to deliver the messages.

However we do have a feature which allows disabling federation access for specific accounts, for example to prevent kids from communicating with anyone outside their own Snikket server. This is a feature I want to expand on, so that you can permit communication with a limited number of approved contacts on other servers.

[rw_grim]

I am the current lead developer of Pidgin, and would like to reinforce the level of collaboration in the XMPP world. Even with Pidgin being very far behind in XMPP (and everything else) everyone has been very helpful as we're trying to catch back up and answering questions about the prosody instance we run ourselves.

[philsnow]

This is a great explanation; Prosody/ejabberd seem to kind of be "everything to everybody" but because they are so general it's hard to know if they're a good fit for any one particular purpose.

Snikket seems to just be a focus or lens on Prosody that answers that question for the mission statement you gave.

[andrewflnr]

This project is exactly what I hoped existed. Thanks!

[Trollmann]

Invite only isn't that unusual for personal/friend&family servers. The author also set that in their prosody config. The snikket client works with many different XMPP servers, why wouldn't it? As you mentioned it's based on Conversations and for iOS on Siskin.