> Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens.

To me it feels like the open standards never really kept up with the times, which in a way paved the way to walled gardens by the giants (and, in case of Slack, not so giants) to fill the gap which the open standards refused to fill.

I mean, sure IRC is awesome, text-only, channels, but emojis are limited to ASCII, inline GIFs are non-existent, and file-sharing (and/or storage) is rather clunky from what I remember from the old times.

And then we have XMPP which doesn't support things like video or voice calling (or at least it didn't last time I checked) and it's not very surprising that companies just capitalize on that and make their own platforms.

Don't take me wrong though... it creeps me out how the company where I work trusts Slack with reams and reams of confidential documents, but I guess it's convenient to an extent which no other platform is.

> And then we have XMPP which doesn't support things like video or voice calling

The Jingle extension is about a decade old and it's what Google based its support on. They even played ball for a while and released a good quality open libjingle, then decided that fighting spam from the other open XMPP networks is not worth their time and killed the whole openness concept - despite being an orders of magnitude simpler problem than email spam.

I think now the only escape from the walled gardens is regulatory pressure forcing interconnect of the larger players (Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc.) at least at text chat level.

XMPP is a bit complex, and suffers from some problems derived from too much flexibility. The mandatory part of the protocol is too small. This could be fixed by creating a meta XEP that lists all XEPs needed by modern clients.

However, it's a very capable protocol. Just see how nice conversations.im is. It doesn't even use GCM, and both latency and energy usage are fantastic.

Such a meta XEP exists already: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0387.html#im

If you use a client that conforms to the Advanced Client requirements of the IM and Mobile Compliance Suites (with a similarly up-to-par server), you will have a very good experience.

The problem is that selection is still limited if you factor in OMEMO support (end-to-end encryption):

https://omemo.top/

Recommendations for good clients for desktop systems? Maybe my google-fu is particularly weak today, but I couldn't find a clear statements which clients outside conversations.im fullfill those (obviously only the IM suite, since mobile wouldn't apply)

https://gajim.org/ tends to be best for desktop (binaries exist for most desktop OSes).

For macOS, you may want to try Adium or Psi. Or you can use https://movim.eu/ which, though a web client, has fairly good feature support as well.

I second Gajim especially 1.0.0 version that looks good. There is also https://dino.im but that's still in alpha.

thanks you two, will give Gajim a try!

Remember to install some essential plug-ins (OMEMO, HTTP Upload, URL image preview, etc.) for the best experience :)

> I think now the only escape from the walled gardens is regulatory pressure forcing interconnect of the larger players

Sounds good on paper, sure, but ultimately it will end up being a predictable bureaucratic mess, causing more harm than good:

a) The mandatory 'open' standard that gets produced will end up being designed by committees of management teams from 6-7 major companies, each with their own list of feature requests and no central 'vision'.

b) A lack of a cohesive strategy and (critically) a lack of real incentives by the members to partake will result in endless delays, slow moving technological progress, layers of old cruft that never gets removed, and toxic political infighting causing confusion among vendors.

c) The standard ends up being so complex and involved that it isolates other small/medium sized players (or large foreign players) from joining in, eliminating the 'openness' the original regulation envisioned and crippling competition.

d) Ultimately reduces the ability for developers to get paid via monetization and grow via capital investments in the US, as non-regulated open-source projects (or foreign private apps) gain a major advantage of not having to be forced to use the standard. Cannibalizing the market the big players spent so much time/money building.

It's not just about good intentions and spotting a tough problem, it's about whether they can realistically and effectively achieve the end goals...

TLDR: open-source and the global nature of technology, lack of incentives, design by committee, regulatory agencies staffed by the very same companies it's regulating, etc, etc will result in the crippling of innovation and harm the quality of chat apps in the US.

I don't expect US to move a finger on the issue - all major players are american. However, something like USB charging was imposed by the EU with great success, ending a massive source of e-waste and proprietary cruft manufacturers imposed onto consumers. For EU, the economic motivations to force american companies open to European competition would be very tempting and the consumer benefits significant.

The takeaway from the USB success is not to design a new protocol by committee, rather pick a mature open standard - for textual chats there are several mature ones.

You mean like what happened to the web ? I'm a bit tired that every time someone suggests a new regulation/standard on HN, someone feel smandated to explain why regulations are bad and why neo liberalism is awesome.

Could we assume that we all understand the downside of regulations ? but that we still suggest some when the market fall into a bad optimum (bad for the consumer). If you don't agree that the market is stuck in a bad place, fine you can argue that.

cornholio brings up a really good point. The fact that Whatsapp and other messaging apps have significant more European marketshare and growth rates than in other parts of the world could make an EU regulation's effect felt around the world, much like the USB one.

And this is what happened back in the day. AOL was forced to add interoperability with competitors. But our government today is unwilling to step in front of corporations on behalf of the people.

HN readers don't all have the same government. I assume you mean the US one. The EU has in some cases proved to be willing to confront corporations and/or to defend some consumers right. Not always or in the most efficient way, but here's hoping that it will continue and improve on that path.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

I'm well aware, and really happy about the work the EU's competition commission is doing. Unfortunately, for US-based corporations, global change is unlikely to happen until the US steps in.

What would be the advantage of adding tighter voice/video support to XMPP, vs just using links to sip: URIs? A major point of open standards is that you can use use them together with other open standards.

> Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens

Slack is showing that the usefulness and popularity of a chat app has exactly 0% to do with whether it uses an open or closed protocol.

It's all about product design and user interface.

And the failing of the walled gardens is that you can't choose the product design and user interface you want and use it to talk to everyone.

Slack provides IRC relay, which initially was almost feature complete, but got out of date with time.

Anyway, in some time Slack will probably fade away as quickly as it appeared, further contributing to the problem grandparent noticed and you seem to misunderstand.

And the more i read about Slack the less i want to touch it.

Emoji, gifs, fuck off.

Signal and WhatsApp require a smartphone though, so not fully cross platform, and tied to their (closed) client software. Not sure if Telegram requires a smartphone too, but it does seem to require a phone number at least.

I had signed up for Telegram on a phone, so can't say whether you can sign up w/o a phone (I think it would require SMS verification).

It doesn't need you to be logged in on any phone however. You can use just the desktop app. In fact I am on some really crowded and hyperactive Telegram groups so can't even imagine keeping it on my phone. Besides not a single one of my IRL friends use Telegram. I see 3-4 names, maybe they had signed up once.

A smartphone isnt required, only a telephone number for authentification.

> A smartphone isnt required

It is for Whatsapp. Not only for sign-up, but actually all communication on the web version goes through the app running on your phone. The web "session" times out constantly, so I'd have to re-pair it with my phone all the time. If I still decided to use whatsapp.

To be really pedantic; a smartphone is not required for WhatsApp. You can activate a Google voice number with a landline, then use your Google voice number to activate WhatsApp running in BlueStacks or your emulator of choice.

Source: I did this for a few months. I'm not quite sure why...

A smartphone OS is required for whatsapp

> [A]ctually all communication on the web version goes through the app running on your phone.

How on earth does that work? Say my phone's on data, my laptop's on my home wifi with NAT. How does Whatsapp on the web reach my phone?

Your phone connects to WhatsApp's servers. So does your laptop. The bridging is likely done server-side. I assume this is done because WhatsApp is (probably) using end-to-end encryption, so everything must be ran by your phone (which is the only place where your private key is stored) in order to encrypt the messages.

It works impressively well, though -- I use it far more than I do the mobile client directly.

The problem is that you need to own that same phone number permanently. Phone numbers are tied to exactly one SIM card, which is tied to exactly one telco in one country. Too many ties.

Threema doesn't require a phone number but it's not free.

Depends on a country, in Sweden you can move your mobile number to any telco, and anyone can look up your number and your home address using something like [0]. But yes, it is still tied to a country.

- [0] https://hitta.se

Yes, what I meant to say is that the SIM card is tied to exactly one telco at any particular time. It's also tied to one device at a time.

Perhaps one of the virtual SIM card offerings would work with Signal though.

I'm juggling too many SIM cards and phones already. I don't want any new dependencies that complicate matters further.

You only need the sim card active to activate your signal with that number. After that you don't have to be connected to a cell network at all.

But I still need to keep the SIM card active or I could never switch phones (or reinstall the phone OS) without losing my Signal identity.

I cannot ever let go of the phone number I used to activate Signal. In practice, that means I need to keep paying for a phone tariff I may no longer want.

True. I was assuming most people have at least one phone number they want to keep long term (even if it's not always active with their cell). Note though that signal will also work fine with non-traditional services that provide free or much cheaper phone numbers like google voice (US), skype, or twilio.

It is true though that you do need to maintain a phone number. That is one of the trade-offs they made to allow it to actually be usable. I have not seen a better solution for encrypted communication yet.

How does the phone number tie-in make it usable? Phone numbers and SIM cards are about the most user hostile thing I can possibly think of.

What's wrong with the way Threema does it for instance, which is essentially to bind the identity to a key pair that you can back up?

Threema appears to optionally do the exact same thing. Signal eschews the flexibility to ensure more universal usability by being able to assume that anyone who uses signal can be associated with their phone number. An assumption that holds for the vast vast majority of potential users.

I don't see how making phone numbers mandatory makes Signal easier to use at all. There must be another reason for this restriction. Some say it's for spam protection.

Signal will work with Google Voice, but as far as I can tell you still need a smartphone to use it. Without that, you can't even set up an account because you need to scan an OCR code first.

No, you can change the number associated with your Telegram account.

I was talking about Signal. Sorry I didn't make that clear. The phone number is your identity. Changing it means reregistering with a different number.

[Edit] And I think it's essentially the same with WhatsApp, only they now make it a less manual process.

Ah, I should have mentioned that I was talking about Telegram in my original comment, too. Can't edit it anymore :/

In these cases you could use a https://jmp.chat/ phone number.

No smartphone is required for JMP, only an XMPP client (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352711 for some client options).

A smartphone isn't required for Telegram either.

Incorrect. Whatsapp refuses to open on my iPad and isn't even available in the App Store. The only reason it got on there was a glitch in Apple's app sync which must've auto-downloaded it since I have it on my iPhone.

Sorry, I was talking about Telegram. Should have made that more clear.

You do need one to set it up, right? I had to scan a QR code displayed on my desktop with my phone. (I could continue to use the desktop app while my phone was being repaired, though, which was great.)

No, you can do the complete setup with the Telegram desktop app, but you need a device which can receive SMS or a phone call.

Oh hmm, looks like I got tangled in the threads - I thought we were discussing Signal. My bad!

Ah I see ;) Yeah the QR code scanning sounded like Signal / WhatsApp, never heard of that method in a Telegram app.

Wire doesn't. It uses the same protocol as Signal, has mobile, desktop and web apps and the source is on Github.

I'm using Signal on my linux desktop right now. It appears to be a packaged webpage but it works fine and is linked to my phone and laptop.

All it require is a phone number, besides it's Snowden approved :)

You're using signal in a browser on your linux desktop. Poke me when there's any way to connect via bitlbee or libpurple, like there is for ICQ, jabber, etc.

They lose all credibility when they force you to reveal your phone number. Doesn't matter who endorses it.

They are entirely honest about their trade-offs. While those trade-offs may be deal-breakers for you, it should bolster their credibility.

I'd just like to add that one of the key things I love about the current crypto craze is the fact that it gives us something that never existed before - the capability to monetize protocols. I know that most ICOs will fail, but through this process we might get something that solves this shitty situation with chat applications.

Perhaps try Skype lite? It has almost zero bloat, and has been working flawlessly for all my needs.

"Introducing Skype Lite Built for India - Chat and share with friends."

it appears to exist only for Android phones.

It's nothing but a joke that you'd have to switch to a "lite" version that is built explicitly for India [because of bad infrastructure] just to make it work in a country with much better infrastructure.

It's like buying a low-end car built for Indian market, because your regular car doesn't fit on the narrow roads in the US, the fuel consumption is too high, it leaks oil constantly and there is no service because nobody cares.

This is a worthless analogy, because some software is paired down and is "built for india" it sucks?

A paired down debloated skype sounds like a godsend to me.

...that's not what they were saying at all. The insults were being heaped on the 'normal' skype.

And skype lite is definitely lacking in configuration, like the ability to make emoticons less annoying.

(I've also switched to skype lite for the remaining two chats I'm in that use skype, now that the slightly-older android version stopped connecting and the newest interface is amazingly painful and laggy.)

It that like the Facebook Lite app that's geofenced to emerging countries? How bloated an app has to be to make a company with the size of M$ to create an alternative client?

I (relatively) happily use the Facebook Lite app in Ireland where I got it from Play Store. I'm not sure we're emerging from anything.

There're thousands of companies in Russia using Telegram as main communication tool.