XMPP Service Operators - 2025-12-03

Anybody here from jabber.de? Again down. Again I have to explain, why XMPP is not grab, and fight against the idea switching to WhatsApp, Signal or whatever.

So this is no issue with my client ... When I setup XMPP for anyone, then at my server. This ensures that I am able to resolve issues. And yes, it absolutly looks like the jabber.de admin is unqualified.

I think currently conversations.im is doing a really good job.

I could say the same for the old jabber.de admins. There is a reason why I still have an old and less and less used account there. There was just no handover to a suitable new admin. I don't know what will happen with Conversations (client and server) when Daniel Gultsch leaves this field. ✏

> Anybody here from jabber.de? Again down. Again I have to explain, why XMPP is not grab, and fight against the idea switching to WhatsApp, Signal or whatever. although unreliable operators are a big concern, I do not believe you should justify moving to a proprietary platform and or a centralised closed off platform (such as signal) because jabber.de went down. Everyone here (who can speak) is an operator, instead of the defeatism why not do something about it yourself? ✏ ↺

Are there paid xmpp servers?

ademir, yes, for instance at JabberFR we have the jabberfr.org domain which is reserved to our adherents, starting from 5€ per year.

It doesn’t give you anything different from the free jabber.fr domain, except you support us.

> So this is no issue with my client ... > When I setup XMPP for anyone, then at my server. This ensures that I am able to resolve issues. And yes, it absolutly looks like the jabber.de admin is unqualified. Also I don't think it is right to criticise others abilities here either. Its not always the admins fault, datacentres go down, hosting providers pull out, bgp peers upstream drop, not to mention people have a life, and you can't expect someone giving up their time and money to host a public provider to be at the same level as a for-profit business. ↺

> It doesn’t give you anything different from the free jabber.fr domain, except you support us. Cool! ↺

> Are there paid xmpp servers? There is a few which have been around. Conversations for example will host it for you: https://account.conversations.im/domain/ (note this is to host your own domain, not to get an account on an existing domain) ↺

sven222: there are a lot servers with more uptime then jabber.de If I had friends on that server I would see if they were willing to switch to something else.

> I think currently conversations.im is doing a really good job. Unfortunately this is causing a lot of centralisation. It is not as significant as Matrix where almost everyone uses matrix.org, however a significant portion of major channels are made up by JIDs from conversations.im ↺

> It doesn’t give you anything different from the free jabber.fr domain, except you support us. You could provide priority support or something as a bonus? ↺

A casual reader could conclude from the conversation here that there are only two or three relevant XMPP domains. That's far from the truth, there are _a lot_ of different XMPP domains. I think that with XMPP, we are far from a risk of having a centralized user base.

This website lists a large number of domains that can be used for public accounts: https://providers.xmpp.net/ - there are a lot of existing domains that are _not_ on that website (but that could still be usable to you). In the end, hosting your own server somewhere could also be an option.

There are literally thousands and thousands of XMPP servers out there - many of those don't offer public signup, and many of those aren't part of the federated ecosystem - but still, it shows that XMPP is anything but centralized.

> A casual reader could conclude from the conversation here that there are only two or three relevant XMPP domains. That's far from the truth, there are _a lot_ of different XMPP domains. I think that with XMPP, we are far from a risk of having a centralized user base. Theres lots of servers but the share between them isn't so even. I personally think its mainly down to the popularity of conversations.im, everyone uses a mobile phone these days and while clients like gajim have no affiliation with any of the providers, conversations.im defaults to themself, ditto monocles. I believe this is why when I see JIDs in MUCs I am in, it is mainly monocles or conversation JIDs. ↺

The world is mobile centred, and people are lazy, why research other providers when the default is solid and just works?

I'm not saying that there's an even distribution of users on domains, but having an uneven distribution is a far cry from being centralized. As an aside: you're convoluting the brand of client with the domain that's being used. There surely will be a tendency for users of particular clients to flock to the same domain, but I don't expect that to be anywhere near an absolute amount.

If you look at https://xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im/ you see how distributed connections is - granted, this graph doesn't show how many people live on each node, but it does show that the little bit of the federated domain that's mapped here (which is just a _fraction_ is heavily interconnected (which suggests that it is fragmented).

> There are literally thousands and thousands of XMPP servers out there - many of those don't offer public signup, and many of those aren't part of the federated ecosystem - but still, it shows that XMPP is anything but centralized. My point wasn't to call XMPP centralised, its protocol by design isn't as you are pointing out here. My point was that although the protocol can be decentralised, you tend to still get a few really popular servers, and then hundreds of smaller servers. I do not believe this is exactly bad, but when you have people criticising other servers like they are right now, and then saying "conversations is solid", others viewing this will second guess the provider, and hop to what is deemed "better". ↺

I understand. I'm not saying that some servers are more popular than others, but I do expct that the real-world distribution of users over servers is a lot more diverse as what I think your assumptions are.

> Also I don't think it is right to criticise others abilities here either. Its not always the admins fault, datacentres go down, hosting providers pull out, bgp peers upstream drop, not to mention people have a life, and you can't expect someone giving up their time and money to host a public provider to be at the same level as a for-profit business. There are many sources for issues and there are admins that can name the problem. And there are servers with good and bad reputation. But jabber.de never provides a post mortem or anything except the vague issue with the disks that they *once* reported.

> I understand. I'm not saying that some servers are more popular than others, but I do expct that the real-world distribution of users over servers is a lot more diverse as what I think your assumptions are. We all float different communities, I can't speak on behalf of all, but it is a concern when the channels I am in and administrate, most of the JIDs come from 1 or 2 servers. ↺

So all I am saying is lets not criticise other providers publicly, the decision should be left down to the user.

The users that don't understand what's going on? They blame the system (XMPP).

I agree - instead of focussing on one poorly maintained domain, lets point users at the many others that offer a better level of service.

I don't focus on poorly maintained servers - I just prefer telling people why to avoid certain things.

> The users that don't understand what's going on? They blame the system (XMPP). flinging mud doesn't fix the problem. Point the user to providers.xmpp.net, anything A/B ranked is a safe choice. No mud flinging or shilling of a specific provider required. Considering jabber.de is rated D, with not much information about their structure, a user will quickly identify the issue themself. ↺

I just checked 5 users in the conversations channel for their jid. These 5 had all domain names I didn't even know, non the same and non was conversations.im. That's much more decentralized then I would've thought.

A possible improvement for the site could be to provide uptime metrics too

> I just checked 5 users in the conversations channel for their jid. > These 5 had all domain names I didn't even know, non the same and non was conversations.im. > That's much more decentralized then I would've thought. /me shrugs ↺

maybe I am wrong and its not as common as in the circles I am in, but thats besides the point

With FOSDEM coming up (where I want us to show off the dimensions of the XMPP federated network), this is a good time to ask people once again to sign up their domain at https://xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im/ - these days, most modern XMPP server have the required support (which may or may not need a configuration tweak).

The people running providers have their own channel I think. You could ask them there for your feature request if you like

> With FOSDEM coming up (where I want us to show off the dimensions of the XMPP federated network), this is a good time to ask people once again to sign up their domain at https://xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im/ - these days, most modern XMPP server have the required support (which may or may not need a configuration tweak). I cant be arsed to setup pubsub, its not something I require but iirc its required for this. :) ✏ ↺

But I do like the graph, seen it go around many circles, even people outside of XMPP admire it.

I am still thinking about a BSD+XMPP talk at some point, but theres another topic I want to talk about first, so maybe in 2027 :)

Hope to see more XMPP folks at FOSDEM this year :)

I'm kinda surprised that you're running without pubsub in the first place. I thought it was more or less required ot have somewhat of a modern IM experience with many clients, these days.

I picked some random A rated server at providers.xmpp.net and it has a bus factor of one. While there are good admins, this is exactly the start of the long term issue that could go worse at some time. And the rating does focus on technical aspects except for "free of charge". Can I recommend this list to a beginner? No.

iirc the providers website is mainly there for client builders, to allow them to automatically populate UI elements that give end users an option to create a new account somehwere.

> I picked some random A rated server at providers.xmpp.net and it has a bus factor of one. While there are good admins, this is exactly the start of the long term issue that could go worse at some time. And the rating does focus on technical aspects except for "free of charge". Can I recommend this list to a beginner? No. Its the best we have... whats the alternative? ↺

> I'm kinda surprised that you're running without pubsub in the first place. I thought it was more or less required ot have somewhat of a modern IM experience with many clients, these days. Prosody does "pep" but not full pubsub. I have pubsub loaded only for that nice graph too ↺

Oh, that's a distinction that in my head doesn't exist - but yes, that would explain it.

And lets be honest, theres no other platform currently where you can have as much choice on who to sign up with than XMPP. Providers already provides a good amount of information. How do you rank "technical aspect", do you expect a operator to do a XSF endorsed certification exam to ensure you know your stuff?

> Oh, that's a distinction that in my head doesn't exist - but yes, that would explain it. :) ↺

> Its the best we have... whats the alternative? Different rating method? If I filter for bus factor 2 or more, then there are 5 A servers left and 7 other servers. That's not much.

> How do you rank "technical aspect", do you expect a operator to do a XSF endorsed certification exam to ensure you know your stuff? Ask the providers.xmpp.net authors

> > Its the best we have... whats the alternative? > Different rating method? If I filter for bus factor 2 or more, then there are 5 A servers left and 7 other servers. That's not much. You seem to expect for-profit level hosting, from a bunch of volunteers. For most people I would assume this is good enough, but if not you can always pay for snikket hosting. ↺

No, I just expect hosting that does not randomly stop to exist. That is two or more volunteers working together, as e.g. at anoxinon.me

more bus factor, more trust needed, more people who can be compromised with ssh access... its not as simple as slap more people onto a problem.

I know. But bus factor two is not that risky. I am not talking about bus factor 20 that proffesional hosting could have.

I am considering opening up one of my servers as a public provider, but as I have complained about before, the legal burden of that is the blocker. The server has a bus factor of 2-3.

Theres many factors to this problem.

I want to stay at invites only, but maybe opening invites power to users

I see anoxinon.me admins in this room. Maybe they know more regarding this (for Germany).

A potential test would be to throttle sign ups to 20/day, and see what happens

have a strict 6-12 months deletion period for inactivity

> I see anoxinon.me admins in this room. Maybe they know more regarding this (for Germany). im UK based, and if I did, would be the first public provider hosting in the UK (at least to be declared on the providers list). ↺

However, I have a lot of legal paperwork to read through, and a lot of potential paperwork to fill out, and its something I have been putting off even looking into.

> iirc the providers website is mainly there for client builders, to allow them to automatically populate UI elements that give end users an option to create a new account somehwere. 👍 ↺

Jabber.de is still down?