
Happy Birthday, XMPP: 20th Anniversary of Jabber - ge0rg
https://fr.movim.eu/?blog/debacle%40movim.eu/happy-birthday-xmpp-20th-anniversary-of-1st-jabber-server-IBmtu8
======
jeremie
I’d say that it feels like just yesterday, but it totally feels like decades
ago :)

I’m very lucky to still be close with so may of the truly amazing individuals
that helped build Jabber, and over the years deeply honored by all those that
spoke to me about how it inspired them.

While at the surface it may seem like all of our efforts had little impact on
the big “messaging silos”, I am most proud of how much Jabber/XMPP has made it
easy for anyone to build/host/extend a messaging and presence service. Twenty
years ago the concepts and architectures were opaque, now they’re commonplace.

Happy Birthday!

~~~
ge0rg
Hey Jeremie! It's really awesome to have you here!

I've tried to dig up some more historical background besides of the Slashdot
announcement, but failed. Do you happen to have an old copy of the 1999
changelog / code base (maybe a backup of the CVS or SVN server), just out of
historical interest. The archive.org history only goes back to around 2004.

Also it's really amazing how far you've been looking into the future back
then...

~~~
dwaite
FWIW, the
[https://github.com/mawis/jabberd/](https://github.com/mawis/jabberd/) logs go
back to 2000.

------
yosamino
I really like that xmpp is experiencing a sort of revival at the moment.

Not maybe in terms of user-base, but Conversations for android is really good,
on iOS ChatSecure has some issues, but is usable. OTR encryption is being
replaced by OMEMO, and that actually works. I can use and try out clients to
my hearts content, with messages being synchronized between them.

That I can run my own server on prosody or ejabberd is really great as well.

And since we're back to "Hey can we you use Signal/Threema/Whatsapp/Viber ?"
anyhow, it's actually relatively easy to slide in the next option:

"Hmmm, why don't we use ChatSecure ?"

Thanks everyone for making it happen.

~~~
starsinspace
I gave Jabber another chance a while ago... using both ChatSecure on the phone
and Gajim on the computer (phone+computer logged in on both ends of the
conversation). Unfortunately it was a complete failure. Message arrival was
flakey. Some messages arrived only on the computer, others only on the phone.
Conversations were sometimes one-sided, with one half on phone, other on
computer. Not usable for chat. All around, I have to sadly say (after 15+
years of Jabber use) that this is what I'm used to with Jabber, and that I
honestly cannot recommend it to friends :-/

~~~
SamWhited
I haven't seen anything like this in ages; what server and clients were you
using? Between the history feature most things support and message carbons you
should just get every message everywhere reliably (and that's what happens out
of the box for me with most setups).

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funkaster
This is great news. I'm finishing a messaging app for a non-profit and I
decided to use xmpp (openfire) for the backend and it was really a time saver
(the full stack is React Native (typescript), ruby (jruby + sinatra for api),
openfire for messaging). I really like how easy is to extend and customize
xmpp to suit your needs. Here's to another 20 years!

~~~
Whatitat90
This sounds exciting! But I guess this is closed system and it's not possible
to see at least a screenshot?

~~~
funkaster
I can share screenshots for sure. I was thinking of opensourcing the project
after it was done, but will need some time to clean it up a bit. I will for
sure write a blog post about it when it's done (next few weeks)

~~~
jcbrand
If you let me know about the blog post, I'll include it in next month's XMPP
newsletter.

[https://xmpp.org/newsletter.html](https://xmpp.org/newsletter.html)

My contact form:
[https://opkode.com/contact.html](https://opkode.com/contact.html)

~~~
funkaster
I'll make sure to contact you! thanks!

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motorpsycho
Does anyone know what happened to Jeremie Miller's telehash project? The
protocol looks promising, but not much happened lately.

[http://telehash.org](http://telehash.org)

[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/A-P2P-Digital-Self-
with-...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/A-P2P-Digital-Self-with-
TeleHash)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uslYWTOtGpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uslYWTOtGpw)

------
Nux
We need to move away from Hipchat at work and really wanted to use xmpp, but
was super let down by the iOS clients, it can't be used in production.

Android - thanks to Cobversations and Xabber, is really ok, PC is ok (Gajim),
but we couldn't migrate due to the 3 iOS users in the team. Duplicate msg and
all sorts of weird behaviour and errors made it a no go.

We ended up with the shitty MS Teams in the end; comes free with our
office365, has working notifications across platforms and can do messaging and
file transfers without issues.

I dream of a future where xmpp is an option.

People who have to gain from that: please fix the iOS side of things.

~~~
tracker1
I know it's not open... but I personally really like Teams, especially if you
use some of the integrations, wiki and files.

~~~
therealidiot
I hate it, I find the UI clunky and slow. Most annoying is having to fake an
Edge user agent to get incoming calls to work (using Chrome on Ubuntu) but
having to use the normal UA at other times as it breaks my messaging history
otherwise

------
jcbrand
As luck would have it, the XMPP newsletter was also sent out today:
[https://xmpp.org/2019/01/the-xmpp-
newsletter-4-january-2019/](https://xmpp.org/2019/01/the-xmpp-
newsletter-4-january-2019/)

------
sublupo
How would you compare xmpp to matrix? Are they both similarly secure,
distributed, and open source?

~~~
theamk
From what I see, XMPP is "message delivery" while matrix is " eventually
consistent global db with pubsub semantics"

The difference becomes relevant when you have multiple or offline devices.
XMPP may not deliver messages to some of the devices (for example, if message
carbons are not supported by client). Matrix will not drop messages -- it may
take some time, but eventually all devices will see all the messages.

------
marclaporte
WikiSuite is full on XMPP. This page explains why XMPP and Openfire, Converse
and Pàdé and not all the other options: [http://wikisuite.org/Why-
Openfire](http://wikisuite.org/Why-Openfire)

------
bhhaskin
I have been looking into building a XMPP server and client lately. Mainly
cause the ones out there aren't super great.

~~~
jcbrand
Before doing that, please consider contributing to an existing project first.
There are many out there and they'd love more contributors.

~~~
ape4
Which is the best XMPP server?

For the server mentioned here...

OpenFire = written in Java

Prosody = Lua

Ejabberd = Erlang

~~~
Whatitat90
Prosody is small and works for most people. Ejabberd is what powers production
servers of bigger operators, it's also used in MMORPGs.

------
ppjet6
Cake!

As I said in another thread, glad to see the community is still active.

------
jugg1es
I wish Hacker News would do a better job of insulating me from feelings of
senescence. This makes me feel damn old.

------
goffi
And 20 years later, this is published on an XMPP based blog engine, quite a
nice way to celebrate :)

------
crankylinuxuser
Speaking of protocols, aside IPFS, what open protocols have come out in the
last 5 years?

~~~
Whatitat90
Matrix, a competitor to XMPP is 4 years old [0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_\(protocol\))

