XMPP wasn't a great protocol though... I'm not aware of a better option though. I know that something over WebRTC may not be much better, but may be the best chance of seeing something more open in the next decade again.

Every company wants their walled garden though... though there's moats stocked with alligators and piranha around them..

Do you think it's strictly that they want walled gardens? I have a feeling more large companies would support open protocols if they provided the features they needed with the efficiency to provide those services cost (and battery) effectively. It seems all the many open protocols (XMPP, Web and CalDav, etc.) are simply not efficient or feature rich enough for companies that are in a constant features escalation war with competitors.

I imagine it's that, but amplified by NIH syndrome. Something like "oh yeah we could do it with XMPP, but it's all complicated and stuff and if we just built our own protocol we'd be able to do everything we'd ever want exactly how we want it! It'll be the future!"

I've fallen victim to something similar myself many times. "Oh yeah, I could do <this> with <tool x>, but it's ugly and not how <tool x> is meant to be used! I'll just design and implement <tool y> myself to do exactly <this> and it'll be the future!" It's the temptation to make something customized for yourself and it's hard to resist. Particularly when the existing solution has some flaws, which makes the relative cost/effort of rolling your own solution seem lower (even when it inevitably turns out to still be quite high).

If they want open protocols they can propose it and work in standards bodies (IETF or other) but that would limit their flexibility. And walled garden is good to keep users.

If they are in a feature war, then it follow that the open protocols do not provide the features they want.

Well it's not like Facebook, Google et al. are making new open standards...that'd definitely be better for users than a battle of walled gardens.

No, they're all making their own. So instead of one saying, "hey, let's use something open", now we have X new proprietary protocols instead of X-1.

Try the matrix: https://matrix.org/

I found it after trying to write a reasonable XMPP client (previously commented on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772968 ) and haven't looked back since.

I use Matrix on the desktop, my ipad, and my android phone -- the much vaunted multi-device cross-platform success story that seems to be the one nice thing people have to say about facebook chat, you can have that with FOSS too! -- and just for an out-of-left-field bonus, it replaces my need for an IRC bouncer because they have a bridge for that. Finding Matrix was probably my best FOSS discovery of all 2015.

Using matrix-appservice-purple (https://github.com/matrix-org/node-purple/tree/master/appser...) one can even use jgeboski's PRPL to connect to FB from Matrix :) (although the bridge is pretty alpha right now).

(Also, thanks for the vote of confidence :D)

The people at matrix.org are attempting to create such a better option. I offer no particular opinion as to whether they've yet succeeded since I've not got around to digging into it properly.

There's also PSYC. It looks promising and stood the test when it was deployed for video broadcasting a few large events.

Unfortunately, it seems that it's in an infinite, self-proclaimed "not really ready yet" phase, and not used widely.

Signal is decent, but it relies on Google Cloud Messaging at the moment and lacks federation.

Tox is a nice experiment, but has efficiency issues and makes it hard to share messages when offline.