Re:Overrun With Messaging Apps
by dpritchett on Friday December 06, 2013 @01:52PM
(#6862815)
Google killed Talk (XMPP), replaced it with hangouts, and is suddenly offering to replace my SMS app and send them all through hangouts. I get that this works as a direct competitor to Messages, but I'd really rather just see Jabber or something like it here.
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I agree. I'm pretty much okay with any standard, as long as it's, well 'standard'. It just seems a bit ridiculous to have all these different apps essentially doing the same thing, but with different front end interfaces, and unable to communicate with each other.
XMPP is standard. Grab a client for the platform of your choice [0], open an account on ddg.gg (duckduckgo's xmpp server), and you're done. I personnally use pidgin on the desktop and chatsecure on Android.
The only thing XMPP is lacking is marketing. Multi-billion-dollars-level marketing; shouldn't be too hard to do, right ?
XMPP is not technically well-suited to mobile devices. It was designed with a base-level assumption that any client will maintain a constant TCP connection in order to receive messages. This doesn't fit well with mobile devices, which spend most of their time 'off' and try to have as little software running concurrently as possible in order to save battery life. Some mobile XMPP clients have come up with various clever workarounds, but all of them are hacks. For example, by keeping the 'real' XMPP connection open indefinitely on a remote, third-party server, and then communicating with the mobile app using a custom proprietary protocol that doesn't have this assumption.
A new protocol is needed. In fact, just the other day there was a story on HN where the original creator of XMPP said the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6849755 The merits of his proposed solution are another matter, though.
So, BOSH [0], aka XMPP-over-HTTP ? Originally intended to allow XMPP in the browser, it turned out [1] to be solving a lot of other problems, including the frequent disconnections of a smartphone.
[0] http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0206.html [1] https://metajack.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/xmpp-is-better-wit...
Re:Overrun With Messaging Apps
by chrisballinger on Friday December 06, 2013 @03:10PM
(#6863420)
We are working on a federated, protocol agnostic push server design here: https://github.com/ChatSecure/ChatSecure-Push-Server/tree/ma...
Re:Overrun With Messaging Apps
by kazagistar on Friday December 06, 2013 @03:50PM
(#6863697)
XMPP never got to the point where it was good enough at video, audio, or even large chatrooms, and so other chat clients took the initiative.
There are plenty of reasons XMPP succeeded where it succeeded and failed where it failed.
I don't recall if this made the HN front page, but there was some news this week of interest: http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/4/5173726/you-have-too-many-...
edit: ugh, jer beat me to it by hours