
XMPP – Myths and Legends - octosphere
https://xmpp.org/about/myths.html
======
rhn_mk1
> XMPP is unreliable without a bunch of extensions.

and

> XMPP typically uses reliable stream transports, so even without extensions
> it's pretty reliable.

are really saying the same thing. TCP doesn't protect from losing data that's
been sent but never received due to dropped connections, which in practice
happens a lot, especially in the mobile world. That even seems to be
acknowledged in the explanation. A more honest answer would just point out the
extensions.

Apart from that, I agree. Hopefully XMPP in the IM protocol incarnation can
reunite the pitiful, broken up messenger world.

~~~
SllX
> Hopefully XMPP in the IM protocol incarnation can reunite the pitiful,
> broken up messenger world.

This doesn’t happen in a world where SV sets the standard.

First, it was a mistake to use XML. The issues with XML are well known so I
won’t rehash them here, but if you really want some reading material, this[0]
will suffice.

Second, end-to-end encryption by default is a critical necessity for any new
standards. Having a central server to handle the key exchange is less than
ideal, but still better than a total lack of encryption in most private
communications because there is no shortage of entities looking to collect any
kind of plain text traveling across the internet. At the very least, we can
still make it expensive to process the private communications of private
citizens.

Third, nobody makes money from IM being an open standard. The only ones with
anything to gain from open standards IM are the people sending messages and
potential new entrants into a market. Critically this leaves out existing
interests with their own lock-in, app and sticker stores and payment
processing services. You can’t make something like Animoji or Memoji a selling
point for a new phone if you can suddenly use those features from a Samsung or
OnePlus. It also leaves out VCs which are more interested in a good ROI than
upending the world of messengers to make it a better place. The alignment of
interests just isn’t there.

Fourth, for any kind of federated messenger system to take off and _stay_
federated, you would need to be able to run your own server to connect to
maintain your online presence, and make your own client to access your server.
Not everyone would do this, and not everybody would have to, but you would
most likely run into the issue of not enough people choosing to, with not
enough back ends or front ends being developed and only a handful of the ones
that are being worthwhile to actually use. Then once you decided there’s a
better way to do X and try to change the standard to reflect this improvement,
you would see delays in actually implementing this new method across different
servers and clients causing the stack to become fragmented and frayed on both
ends. Oh and this still doesn’t really make anybody enough money to actually
be worth the effort.

In the end XMPP failed to shake up the messenger world because it just wasn’t
a great standard, and any commercial interests that brought it to the mass
market eventually phased out support because maintining even an XMPP gateway
just wasn’t worth the opportunity costs and labour for what amounted to an
extra bit of technical debt that hardly anybody even used. It didn’t make
money, and it’s only real feature was an anti-feature to interests demanding
some kind of lock-in.

Strangely enough you probably could use a blockchain to resolve some of the
issues I raised, but you would still have to contend with the issue of making
money and convincing enough people or coercing enough entities to actually
make it into _the_ messenger standard. Why bother when you could just use
Slack with its craptastic Electron clients or iMessages or whatever the Google
Messenger-of-the-Day is? Or whichever Messenger basically replacesd SMS in the
country you live and any supplementary messenger you might need is right there
in the App Store?

[0]
[http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML)

~~~
u801e
> Third, nobody makes money from IM being an open standard.

Email is an open standard and there are companies that make money off of it.
NNTP is an open standard and there are companies that offer accounts for a
monthly or yearly fee. An open standard does not preclude a business from
making money on a service.

~~~
rakoo
It's a little bit different though: both SMTP and NNTP existed way before big
commercial companies made money on the internet, so by the point they started
to bludgeon they had to adapt to the existing standards or die.

Today the companies rule first, so they have the capability (and it's actually
easier for them) to do anything non-standard. There is very little chance one
will do that.

~~~
u801e
I didn't think of irccloud.com when I posted earlier, but they do offer paid
accounts as well (which actually is a counter-example to the original claim
that "nobody makes money from IM being an open standard").

------
edhelas
Happy to see that link on HN :) I've been pretty much pushing XMPP for past
decade, especially to show that it can also be used as a really decent base to
do social networking (we didn't waited for ActivityPub to do federated social
protocols, everything is pretty much there with Pubsub + Atom for more than 15
years).

I am working on Movim ([https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/)) to bring the
"modern XMPP" in a web platform for all with IM and social features built in
:)

