XSF Discussion - 2017-01-16


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  308. Ge0rG

    Hmm, sending mail to standards@ from this broadband connection is a challenge. Looks like anti spam measures gone wrong. But with a DNS tunnel to my own infrastructure it should have worked now.

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  325. moparisthebest

    Ge0rG, do you send mail directly from your laptop instead of a server? hardly any mail servers will accept mail if at minimum your reverse dns doesn't match your domain

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  327. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, no, the ISP here is blocking outgoing mail to foreign MTAs.

  328. moparisthebest

    like port 587/465 ?

  329. moparisthebest

    this is why I added sni multiplexing to sslh, smtp.example.org:443 goes to postfix, www.example.org:443 and example.org:443 go to nginx, imap.example.org:443 goes to dovecot

  330. moparisthebest

    evil ISPs only see https

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  334. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, not the worst of ideas. I'm usually running openvpn on tcp/443

  335. moparisthebest

    sslh multiplexes openvpn too

  336. moparisthebest

    I recently switched from openvpn which isn't pure tls, to ocserv which is pure tls and dtls and *so far* it's been great

  337. moparisthebest

    it's not even been a week yet though so we'll see :)

  338. moparisthebest

    it's terrible to only expect tls over port 443 to work, but that's how it is at the moment :(

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  352. Ge0rG

    Unfortunately it's very hard to configure a VPN service from a mobile device, without having qwerty.

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  356. intosi

    *cough* Hacker's Keyboard *cough*

  357. Guus

    ralphm: any news on fosdem accomodations?

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  359. dwd looks at his qwerty keyboard on the tablet.

  360. Ge0rG

    intosi, I've tried it once and wasn't quite convinced. It's also not trivial to change the keyboard between what I use normally and a special one for SSH

  361. Ge0rG

    dwd, is it a physical keyboard?

  362. dwd

    Ge0rG, Yeah. Xperia Z4, so a netbookish keyboard.

  363. intosi

    And how is changing keyboards on Android not trivial? It's two clicks.

  364. dwd

    Ge0rG, Also, switching keyboards is *really* easy on recent Androids.

  365. Ge0rG

    I accidentally used the wrong From on my last standards@ mail. Is a list admin reading here and could approve, please?

  366. Guus

    I quite dislike the new default google board thingy. My text prediction suddenly fails to work half of the time, which is annoying.

  367. Ge0rG

    dwd, only if you have the notification enabled

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  372. intosi

    No, it's on screen whenever there's a keyboard.

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  374. dwd

    Ge0rG, Bottom right corner for me. Not a notification.

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  378. Ge0rG

    dwd, hmm.. Nothing for me with CM13

  379. Ge0rG

    Or should I send a second copy of the mail with the right From?

  380. dwd

    Ge0rG, Soft/onscreen action bar?

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  383. dwd

    Ge0rG, If your phone has hardware action buttons, then I imagine it won't be able to add anything else there...

  384. intosi

    https://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/styles/larger/public/article_images/2014/11/keyboard-button.png?itok=q4vTrQOw

  385. intosi

    Has been there for ages

  386. Holger

    It's there for me on CM13 as well. Either way it would be nice if you could configure the keyboard choice per app ...

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  390. mathieui

    iirc you can long-press on a key on the soft keyboard in CM13/14 in order to get that

  391. mathieui

    or even earlier

  392. mathieui

    yeah, the comma key

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  397. Arc_Candy

    hmm

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  399. Ge0rG

    I've got the arrow keys there, but not the switch button...

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  462. Ge0rG

    Somebody forwarded stpeter's weak moment to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13411735

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  466. waqas

    I wouldn't call that a weak moment. Messages from stpeter typically come after significant thought.

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  471. dwd

    The two are not mutually exclusive.

  472. dwd

    Ge0rG, FWIW, I thought it'd take less time than that.

  473. Ge0rG

    waqas, I found the question rather demotivational and a bit trolling, and it seems to imply that he hasn't actually looked into why Signal is conceptually inferior. Our maybe it's part of some sophisticated plan to Make XMPP Great Again, and I just missed the point.

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  476. waqas

    dwd: That's fair

  477. Ge0rG

    dwd, at least it made #1 on the front page, as opposed to most of my writing.

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  479. waqas

    I agree with most of the thread (despite some folks being conflicted)

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  482. waqas

    dwd, Ge0rG: I may have skimmed some messages, so maybe missed it, but it seems like both of you directly answered the "Why is XMPP good?" question, and not the "What are we doing here?" one. They are not the same.

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  485. daniel

    I think the question is how can we attract more full time developers to XMPP which raises the question how can we attract more companies (that are making products for end users) to xmpp which raises the question on what business model those companies could have which ultimately ends up in the question on how can we end capitalism which brings us back to stpeters question on what are we doing?

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  489. Zash

    I for one isn't going to give up on distributed control over communications infrastructure.

  490. waqas

    XMPP is by far my protocol of choice. I believe it's better than anything which could be considered competition in quite a few ways.

  491. waqas

    But I'd also assert: If the XSF membership secretly did nothing for the past year or two, movement in the broader messaging landscape wouldn't look much different compared to what we see now.

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  493. Ge0rG

    waqas, what I'm doing here is to help client developers improve their clients so that we can compete with WhatsApp, Signal etc.

  494. waqas

    The XSF's mission is explicitly to define protocol. I don't believe protocol definition is the key problem in messaging these days.

  495. waqas

    Ge0rG: I agree with you, in case that wasn't apparent

  496. Ge0rG

    waqas, then we need to redefine the XSF's mission so it also covers UX. Many of the newly elected board and council members promised so in their election campaign.

  497. Tobias

    waqas, indeed..i think it's more a community issue than a standard organization issue

  498. waqas

    And I also believe that for software authors, protocols are a means to an end, not the end itself

  499. Zash

    Change the S back to Software?

  500. Tobias

    however there is no real community outlet/representation for XMPP

  501. waqas

    IMHO that is significantly more important than a standards body at this point

  502. daniel

    Ge0rG: I'm not sure how council or board members can create more client developers out of thin air

  503. Tobias

    Zash, or Super

  504. Tobias

    waqas, indeed..that's why I've been talking to Thijs and Peter to turn xmpp.net into such

  505. waqas

    daniel: I'd argue that they are unable to, given the stated mission and tendency to remain neutral

  506. Ge0rG

    XMPP Something Foundation. Would cover everything!

  507. Zash

    XMPP Supreme Frontier

  508. daniel

    Even the download button on xmpp.org would go against that neutrality

  509. Tobias

    XMPP Slacks Freaks

  510. Ge0rG

    daniel, what about better supporting the existing client developers with UX guidelines?

  511. daniel

    Ge0rG: who is going to implement those guidelines?

  512. waqas

    (I'm partial to calling it MIX, and then rebasing the the rest of the protocol on top of it, but that's just me; j/k?)

  513. Zash

    waqas: MIXMPP?

  514. Ge0rG

    daniel, you! And me. And all the other developers out there who suck at UX on their own.

  515. waqas

    Zash: MPP is overused ;)

  516. waqas

    daniel: One simple answer: fund raise, and pay client devs. There are other answers as well.

  517. waqas

    It doesn't take that much to achieve simple objectives

  518. waqas

    And I don't believe the objectives need be complicated

  519. daniel

    Ge0rG: don't you repeatedly state that you don't have time for that?

  520. Zash

    Start a company, raise all the funds, hire all the people, fix all the UX n' stuff

  521. Tobias

    Zash, and then do a big sellout to "non-profit" signal people ;)

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  523. Ge0rG

    daniel, and still I managed to implement a bunch of Easy * things in yaxim, just didn't release them yet.

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  533. dwd

    I've been saying for a while now that the XSF needs to stop being quite so neutral.

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  536. dwd

    I think deliberately setting out to showcase particular clients as being good examples of XMPP would be a positive thing.

  537. dwd

    And I'm somewhat fed up that all the suggestions of "The XSF doesn't have to do everything" tend to lead to nobody doing anything.

  538. Tobias

    even if it were part of the XSF mission there would be nobody doing it...i mean if somebody wanted to doing and it wasn't the XSF's mission they'd just do it..see the xmpp.net TLS analytics stuff

  539. dwd

    Well... Sort of.

  540. waqas

    dwd: It seems to me that the path of least resistance would be a sister org, and not the XSF, even if it's the same people

  541. daniel

    Tobias: well the xsf could for example make specific client / library / server (as in software) / service suggesting. That's probably not a lot of work. Just not part of their current mission

  542. dwd

    waqas, I'd agree if not for financials and legal existence.

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  544. waqas

    dwd: I'd note that an opinionated XSF would have to solve the issue of its membership having differing opinions

  545. Guus

    dwd: what or who is keeping us neutral?

  546. dwd

    Guus, Tradition, mostly.

  547. Guus

    dwd: has it been brought up in a board meeting, recently?

  548. dwd

    waqas, Yes, but we can address that by making it an awards thing, and/or making it a conformance thing.

  549. moparisthebest

    as stpeter said maybe continuing to do the same thing is the mistake

  550. moparisthebest

    (remaining neutral is what I meant there)

  551. waqas

    dwd: Protocol compliance isn't a useful property. You get into subjectivity with ease of use, UX, etc

  552. Ge0rG

    dwd, IMHO we (the XSF) should create objective criteria for what an "Easy XMPP" client or server instance is and recommend those that fulfill the criteria to users.

  553. dwd

    waqas, Which is why I suggested awards.

  554. dwd

    Ge0rG, No way those will ever become anything but subjective.

  555. waqas

    And you get conflicts. e.g., I can claim that Prosody is the best XMPP server in existence, and what the XSF should promote. Other server vendors may disagree and dislike that notion.

  556. waqas

    In fact I'd say it incentivizes other server vendors to move out of the XMPP space

  557. Guus

    or step up their game...

  558. waqas

    Or at least the XSF's influence diminishes

  559. moparisthebest

    how many server vendors are there really? 3? 5ish?

  560. Ge0rG

    dwd, there are objective parts in Easy XMPP.

  561. dwd

    waqas, I don't *think* servers are where we need to be promiting specific cases, actually. But maybe we need to do things differently - a "spotlight on" feature or something.

  562. moparisthebest

    besides it's easy to focus on a particular use-case, ie for users wanting to chat I think there are 2 server choices, *possibly* 3, right?

  563. dwd

    Ge0rG, Sure. But not many. Don't get me wrong, I think your work here is very useful, and your effort is appreciated, but "ease of use" is difficult to objectify.

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  565. Ge0rG

    waqas, prosody has only alpha quality implementations of many features needed for mobile / Easy clients. What now?

  566. dwd

    moparisthebest, At least 5. More if you count the forks, which you probably should do.

  567. Guus

    there is a huge, very grey, area between "not being neutral" and "promoting a single software application"

  568. waqas

    Ge0rG: Yes, and, here, let me add this: any XMPP client that isn't good for folks with special needs is disqualified. Any client which hasn't yet received a security audit is also disqualified. Now what happens?

  569. dwd

    Guus, +1

  570. waqas

    +1

  571. waqas

    dwd: What in your experience is the cost (in time and money) of a sister org?

  572. Ge0rG

    dwd, I'm not talking about subjective "ease of use" at all, but about a set of objective UX guidelines to make the xmpp experience coherent between clients

  573. moparisthebest

    dwd, I don't mean to de-rail this discussion so ignore me if you want, but ejabberd, prosody, openfire and ?

  574. dwd

    moparisthebest, M-Link, Tigase.

  575. waqas

    Mongoose, etc

  576. Tobias

    moparisthebest, mongoose IM

  577. Guus

    the thought of two organizations doing pretty much the same thing does not sit well with me. It's going to confuse everyone that's not a member of one of those organizations.

  578. Tobias

    jabberd2

  579. moparisthebest

    m-link doesn't strike me as anything an end-user would set up right?

  580. dwd

    moparisthebest, Well, arguably, end users shouldn't setup a server at all.

  581. Ge0rG

    dwd, and my point is that such a set of guidelines is both useful and on-topic in the xsf. And objective enough to measure clients

  582. dwd

    Guus, Again, agreed.

  583. moparisthebest

    recommendations would be different for an enterprise and an end-user wanting to run their own server

  584. Guus

    (woohoo, I'm on a roll)

  585. dwd

    Ge0rG, I agree with the first, not the second. I don't think you could end up with "And therefore this client is the best".

  586. waqas

    Guus, dwd: A standards body and what is effectively an advocacy organization aren't the same thing, IMO

  587. dwd

    waqas, Yet we have always combined those before. Just that in more recent years, we've largely forgotten about advocacy.

  588. Ge0rG

    dwd, not "the best" but "good enough"

  589. tim@boese-ban.de has joined

  590. dwd

    waqas, I mean, just look at Matrix - they do exactly this combination, and it's working brilliantly for them.

  591. moparisthebest

    are you trying to sell to enterprise or people not wanting to use signal? because those are two entirely different things, the discussion seems to be the signal-alternative people?

  592. daniel

    dwd: +1

  593. Ge0rG

    dwd, what we want is a set of clients supporting the common UX, where a user can make an informed decision based on further features

  594. moparisthebest

    for signal-alternative you'd only recommend clients implementing the *new* stuff, omemo etc

  595. moparisthebest

    it'd be a short list currently

  596. waqas

    Ge0rG: At that point… why have separate clients, and not push for resources to be pooled, and all but the chosen one be retired? That's where things get interesting :)

  597. waqas

    That may not be a bad thing, but it's a significant thing

  598. moparisthebest

    well the people writing python probably don't want to write C++, and vice versa

  599. waqas

    And Conversations is in Java I believe

  600. moparisthebest

    yep

  601. jcbrand has left

  602. moparisthebest

    and currently I think conversations and gajim are the only omemo clients, but many others seem *close*

  603. tim@boese-ban.de has joined

  604. daniel

    moparisthebest: there'd be a lot of features where you just don't have a choice. You can't recommend pidgin for example just because it has a great ux if it doesn't even do carbons

  605. Ge0rG

    waqas, separate clients are good. Having a filter based on interoperability and basic UX for beginning users is even better

  606. tim@boese-ban.de has joined

  607. daniel

    A lot of features are just essential

  608. moparisthebest

    I know of at least chatsecure on ios, movim, swift? probably many more

  609. waqas

    daniel: How do you define essential? Are emojis essential?

  610. moparisthebest

    yea daniel

  611. daniel

    And if you trim the list down to clients that support those essential features your possible list instead very long

  612. moparisthebest

    I would think most would agree carbons would be more important than emojis waqas

  613. daniel

    waqas: well I imagine the compliance suite is a good start for essential features

  614. moparisthebest

    but it is an organization with members, I suppose we could vote :)

  615. waqas

    IMHO a XEP based checklist approach to software assessment would fail

  616. Guus

    there's no one-size-fits-all definition

  617. daniel

    waqas: it can't be the only criteria

  618. daniel

    But it can be a baseline

  619. waqas

    To Ge0rG's point, good UX matters more than most other things

  620. Guus

    heck, most of my work nowadays involves an XMPP implementation that has zero relation to instant messaging.

  621. Ge0rG

    waqas, then we need better XEPs.

  622. moparisthebest

    but imho you need to cut requirements to exactly what you are doing, like alternative to signal/whatsapp etc, then you can make decent recommendations

  623. tim@boese-ban.de has joined

  624. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, so what's the list of recommended WhatsApp alternatives in xmpp land?

  625. waqas

    Think of web browsers. Defining HTML is great. Users for the most part didn't pick which browser they were going to use based on how compliant the browser was.

  626. moparisthebest

    at this exact moment in time? I guess it's only conversations and gajim

  627. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, gajim is a nightmare. You can't give it to normal people.

  628. moparisthebest

    and as you said gajim doesn't have the greatest i-know-nothing-about-xmpp setup

  629. daniel

    waqas: no ux doesnt matter more than basic functionality like receiving messages when logged in with multiple devices

  630. moparisthebest

    I agree, so fix it

  631. daniel

    Sorry. Ux is important. But there are some features you just can't be missing

  632. waqas

    daniel: I'd disagree with that. Good UX is superior to most other things.

  633. dwd

    Ge0rG, No, it's (mostly) fine once setup. Which is, as you know, our black spot.

  634. Ge0rG

    daniel, one could argue that receiving messages is part of the UX.

  635. waqas

    A limited set of very polished features will likely win from a userbase standpoint over a lot of badly implemented ones.

  636. dwd

    waqas, daniel - You're in agreement with each other.

  637. waqas

    Indeed, violently so :P

  638. daniel

    waqas: receiving messages is part of the ux

  639. Ge0rG

    dwd, which is never achieved by regular people

  640. moparisthebest

    so what I haven't seen is anyone argue conversations is a bad client with bad ux, it's always the opposite

  641. moparisthebest

    so maybe the list only has conversations on it, for now...

  642. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, yes, and this is sad for xmpp

  643. daniel

    Technically not compliant by the way because of the avater thing

  644. moparisthebest

    so then you add a nice 'welcome to xmpp' onboarding dialog for gajim, and add it to the list Ge0rG , etc

  645. Zash

    The set of essential features vary depending on who you ask

  646. moparisthebest

    it's not *so* sad by the way, most of the phone messengers only work sanely on a phone anyhow right?

  647. moparisthebest

    I'm pretty sure all of them currently *require* a phone anyhow

  648. waqas

    Note that in terms of user base, you'd have a much harder time convincing advanced XMPP users vs non-XMPP users, because of preconceived notions and expectations. Same would be true for developers.

  649. moparisthebest

    and those don't really matter, they are already here and have preferred clients

  650. waqas

    +1

  651. moparisthebest

    no offense at all to terminal clients, but are the people that use them setting them up for their mom or wife anyhow? I doubt it

  652. moparisthebest

    those just never make the list and that's fine :/

  653. waqas

    moparisthebest: I've heard of at least one attempt…

  654. moparisthebest

    sounds rough

  655. daniel

    moparisthebest: well if you have categories for platforms you might as well have a special posix / shell platform

  656. daniel

    That won't hurt anyone

  657. moparisthebest

    not sure you want to confuse people though, as long as it's hidden enough

  658. intosi has left

  659. waqas

    Ha, well, the primary audience is Windows users :)

  660. moparisthebest

    the guys who xmpp in tmux already know how to find good clients

  661. moparisthebest

    unfortunately yes I'd agree with that :)

  662. daniel

    People who use cli clients usually tend to do excessive research anyway. So they probably don't need a recommendation

  663. intosi has joined

  664. waqas

    Windows, Android, iOS, OS X. Linux you can mostly ignore? :P

  665. moparisthebest

    :'( still agreed

  666. daniel

    Isn't windows dead?

  667. Tobias

    just ignore the desktop, most messages are exchanged via mobile devices anyway

  668. Tobias

    :P

  669. waqas

    daniel: with a 90% desktop userbase still I believe, yes, quite dead

  670. Guus

    On xmpp.org, should we emphasis projects (clients/servers/libs) that are popular, or active, in some kind of semi-objective measurement (install-base, download, project activity on github)?

  671. waqas

    The Linux XMPP space is over-served. The other more popular OSs are very underserved when it comes to XMPP clients.

  672. moparisthebest

    because it's mostly devs who know xmpp is objectively superior to anything else anyhow :)

  673. moparisthebest

    same people who use linux desktops because they are objectively superior

  674. moparisthebest

    so what about at the top of xmpp.org something like 'Download to chat' link?

  675. moparisthebest

    that would list currently conversations

  676. moparisthebest

    again devs can find their own stuff, enterprise users do more research anyway, etc

  677. waqas

    moparisthebest: So.. opinion pieces on XMPP clients? :)

  678. Valerian has left

  679. moparisthebest

    sure waqas , how else does a random user find a client and sign up?

  680. waqas

    One interesting thing is non-XMPP clients get a ton of press. New version of the Skype client coming out? Tons of multi-page articles.

  681. ralphm has joined

  682. waqas

    And amazingly, people seem to not dwell on and care about protocol, but about actual UX and functionality :)

  683. Ge0rG

    Maybe a good web client would solve the desktop problem for xmpp.

  684. ralphm has joined

  685. moparisthebest

    yea isn't that what we've been talking about? putting clients with good UX and functionality for (skype|signal|whatsapp)-alternative on xmpp.org ?

  686. waqas

    Even for google chat and such, the articles were all about audio quality, memory usage, emoji support, etc, and didn't seem to really mention of care that there was XMPP somewhere underneath :)

  687. waqas

    And IMO they were right, because those quality of life things are what would matter to users they were targetting

  688. ralphm has joined

  689. moparisthebest

    devs care that it's xmpp underneath, my wife/mom just like that it works well

  690. moparisthebest

    still if I had just told them to sign up for xmpp, we'd still be using SMS

  691. waqas

    moparisthebest: Are devs the primary audience? Or is your wife/mom?

  692. ralphm has joined

  693. moparisthebest

    I think currently it's just for devs, and there should be a link/page for the wives and moms

  694. ralphm has joined

  695. xyz has joined

  696. Ge0rG

    We need to address the moms and wives, and give them an easy way to get on board.

  697. waqas

    Well, the hard question is how do you incentivize them?

  698. waqas

    A new client can be hard work. What's the carrot to lure them with?

  699. moparisthebest

    because it works great

  700. moparisthebest

    and looks good and such, I guess

  701. waqas

    Erm, so does whatever existing client they are using

  702. moparisthebest

    don't people 'try new apps' all the time?

  703. waqas

    Somehow they need to learn about this new client we are promoting. And no, moms aren't browsing xmpp.org looking for client recommendations :)

  704. moparisthebest

    they are if someone tells them to try xmpp I guess

  705. moparisthebest

    which I used to do but lately I've been saying try conversations, or trying to

  706. waqas

    And next they have to think it's cool enough that they should take the effort to try it, AND they should take the effort to get someone else they know to try it (because it's useless if it's just them alone…)

  707. waqas

    Now, does any existing XMPP client fit that description?

  708. waqas

    Name a single one, on any platform

  709. moparisthebest

    also someone good with words, ie not me, should try a quick blurb to explain that it's better because it's like email, not one company controls everything

  710. moparisthebest

    probably

  711. moparisthebest

    ie federation, but that word probably means nothing to them so it shouldn't be used

  712. daniel has left

  713. moparisthebest

    waqas, how is that different than signal/skype/whatsapp? no one installs those without someone saying 'install X to chat with me'

  714. waqas

    Erm, I don't think the 'not one company' rhetoric resonates that well. Though you could get political, and make it the anti-political-party-X client. That'd get you some users.

  715. moparisthebest

    I'm under the impression a lot of users have 3+ chat apps installed

  716. waqas

    moparisthebest: Signal isn't in the same league as Skype and Whatsapp. Skype and Whatsapp delivered multiple things users wanted that weren't widely available at the time.

  717. Guus has left

  718. Ge0rG

    Signal is actually used exactly by our core audience, and they are better at it than we are.

  719. waqas

    Skype has MS behind it, and they've been pushing it for ages. You can have high quality (not really these days…) audio and video calls with it

  720. xyz has left

  721. waqas

    WhatsApp in many areas was replacing SMS (and then platform providers picked up on that, now Messages on iOS and Hangouts on Android are trying to compete in that area)

  722. xyz has joined

  723. ralphm has joined

  724. waqas

    I don't like Skype's UX. I also think Skype has better UX than any audio/video supporting XMPP client I've tried or heard about.

  725. Ge0rG

    I've tried to replace SMS with XMPP since 2006. It was hard.

  726. waqas

    Very hard

  727. waqas

    Ge0rG: And I don't believe you got a ton of help in doing so. Thanks for the hard work.

  728. moparisthebest

    I openly admit I haven't the slightest clue about good UX :)

  729. moparisthebest

    but yes as Ge0rG said I think xmpp has the most to 'win' by targetting signal users

  730. Ge0rG

    moparisthebest, that's not what I said.

  731. moparisthebest

    if you are privacy concious and such, it's far better, especially if the UI is up to par, like with conversations

  732. waqas

    Yes, but what do users have to win? Users are lazy and selfish.

  733. Holger

    Ge0rG: Indeed; if anything, our niche for XMPP federation is geeks and their friends, i.e. Signal users. Those who we might convince that walled gardens are bad.

  734. waqas

    IMO users winning is first and foremost. If it ever becomes users vs XMPP, XMPP needs to lose.

  735. moparisthebest

    they win an axe not being held over their head forever

  736. moparisthebest

    the axe being signal could just turn everything off at any moment, or change or do whatever, and they are locked in tight

  737. Ge0rG

    Holger, nope. We need to make xmpp apps easy enough for mom and wife. And then use the Signal crypto nerds as multiplicators.

  738. waqas

    Holger: Is that what we would settle for then? Just the user base that case about walled gardens? That's a very tiny fraction of the human population.

  739. waqas

    I agree with Ge0rG

  740. Holger

    Ge0rG: Totally agreed that we need to make XMPP apps easy enough for mom and wife, so Signal user's moms and wifes will use it.

  741. Holger

    Ge0rG: We won't go beyond that, just like Signal doesn't go beyond that.

  742. waqas

    I care way less about 'crypto nerds', they are already over-served IMHO, and too prone to bike-shedding

  743. Holger

    Ge0rG, waqas: Unless a large company decides to push XMPP like Google did back then.

  744. waqas

    Holger: Indeed, and the XMPP community disliked them for it

  745. moparisthebest

    waqas, except at this exact moment the suggestion for crypto nerds and moms/wives are the same, conversations

  746. Holger

    waqas: Yes, I think there's no commercial incentive behind federation in the current situation, so I see no path to get a user base larger than a very tiny fraction of human population. Unless we escape capitalism (as Daniel suggested).

  747. moparisthebest

    maybe it changes later, but that's a problem for later

  748. xyz has left

  749. xyz has joined

  750. waqas

    moparisthebest: Well, whatsapp and many others exploded in popularity without having a massive corp behind them. Most messaging systems were tiny companies that got bought after they became big.

  751. Holger

    waqas: The community disliked Google back then?

  752. moparisthebest

    and except signal they had great UX (supposedly?) first and no encryption

  753. Holger wasn't part of the community back then, and wasn't aware.

  754. moparisthebest

    which points where we should lean probably, even though like I said it's the same client

  755. daniel has left

  756. waqas

    Holger: They didn't participate in the standards conversation that much, and there were some protocol bugs in their implementation that they were slow in fixing. They had also disabled s2s encryption, but the community sentiment was negative even before that happened.

  757. Holger

    I see.

  758. daniel has joined

  759. waqas

    And I mean the XSF community, not the broader XMPP community. Almost everyone had more gchat contacts in their XMPP roster than non-gchat.

  760. waqas still has @gmail.com contacts in his roster

  761. moparisthebest

    so what harm would there be in recommending clients on xmpp.org for new users coming from whatsapp/signal exactly?

  762. moparisthebest

    besides the , well the xsf hasn't done it before, argument

  763. waqas

    moparisthebest: IMO xmpp.org in its current form is useless, because no-one goes there.

  764. moparisthebest

    so adding new pages wouldn't hurt then :P

  765. winfried has joined

  766. moparisthebest

    if I try https://duckduckgo.com/?q=xmpp+account&t=ffsb&ia=web jabber.org is the first result for me

  767. moparisthebest

    and the first link there is to xmpp.org looks like

  768. moparisthebest

    it then goes on to mention a ton of clients I've never heard of or know to be abandoned, and link to http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/clients/

  769. daniel has left

  770. waqas

    moparisthebest: Most people are not actively searching for "xmpp account", are they? :)

  771. moparisthebest

    possibly

  772. waqas

    But I'm getting ahead of myself. Yes, I think a page like that is a fine thing to do.

  773. waqas

    So, you've got conversations on Android. Now what's your pick for iOS, Windows and OS X?

  774. Holger

    jabber.at had a go at it: https://jabber.at/clients/

  775. moparisthebest

    not sure there are good choices there

  776. moparisthebest

    I don't know enough to say, again I'm terrible at good UX and only use a linux desktop :)

  777. waqas

    Useless ;)

  778. Holger

    My recommendations would be different from jabber.at's though :-)

  779. waqas

    Ha

  780. waqas

    What are your recommendations?

  781. dwd

    Windows clients all seem to be multiprotocol.

  782. dwd

    Apple clients are universally shit. In the case of iOS, that seems to be due to the background apps restriction.

  783. waqas

    Gajim on Windows… has it improved much? It was incredibly crashy back on the day when I tried to use it on Windows, but that was years back

  784. moparisthebest

    that doesnt' seem so bad Holger I like the little table

  785. dwd

    No idea why OS X clients are all awful (to Apple fans, I mean).

  786. dwd

    waqas, I don't think it's actually maintained anymore.

  787. Ge0rG

    dwd, ChatSecure is getting better on iOS.

  788. waqas

    What's a good Windows client these days for normal people?

  789. dwd

    waqas, Pidgin, probably?

  790. dwd

    waqas, I mean, it's not great. But still.

  791. moparisthebest

    I wonder how much Objective-C would be required to convert Conversations to iOS

  792. xyz

    Pidgin seems to be easier

  793. waqas

    Back in the day I used to like Pandion quite a bit. Then I found that security issue and it was unmaintained.

  794. Holger

    waqas: Well personally I'd recommend Swift over Gajim, Monal over ChatSecure, and Poezio on the console. But those choices aren't obvious of course. I think such a page is good either way.

  795. moparisthebest

    with something like xmlvm or the billion other things like that

  796. dwd

    waqas, Or Swift.im. Although that does seem very marmitey.

  797. dwd

    waqas, Oh, Pandion was maintained again, briefly.

  798. dwd

    moparisthebest, Oh, and doesn't ChatSecure use the Conversations library now?

  799. waqas

    IMO if there's one client that deserves to be revived and reconstructed, it's Pandion :)

  800. moparisthebest

    I didn't think there was a conversations library

  801. waqas

    It was the *only* client that my non tech friends ever commented about being nice to use

  802. moparisthebest

    oh unless you mean, chatsecure for android was going to be a conversations fork before it was abandoned

  803. dwd

    Ah, possibly.

  804. waqas

    The only other client that non-technical people liked in the XMPP space was the gchat desktop client.

  805. xyz has left

  806. xyz has joined

  807. moparisthebest

    the @gmail.com people I know chat on google's web interface, or used to

  808. moparisthebest

    not positive it still works

  809. dwd

    My mu used the desktop client.

  810. dwd

    Not that my mum is exactly non-technical.

  811. moparisthebest

    my wife is throwing my sister-in-law a baby shower, and the invites said rsvp to mywifesname@ourlastname.org , and the sister-in-laws mom messaged her on facebook saying she got an error when she tried to visit the mywifesname@ourlastname.org website....

  812. moparisthebest

    I guess people with that level of technical skill will never use an xmpp client... :)

  813. daniel has joined

  814. waqas

    moparisthebest: She knew what a website was and how to visit it! That's amazing. Most people of that age likely may not know how.

  815. daniel has left

  816. dwd

    Well, maybe, with a decent Web UI.

  817. daniel has joined

  818. moparisthebest

    waqas, but when you see something@something.org shouldn't you know it's an email or JID at least and not a website? meh

  819. dwd

    waqas, My mother's 70, and can use a website just fine. Her mother, on the other hand, never got on with a mouse.

  820. moparisthebest

    dwd, yea she did message her on facebook, so whatever facebook's website messenger looks like should work

  821. dwd

    waqas, Instead, my grandmother reinstalled her machine with CP/M because it worked better.

  822. intosi

    dwd: she isn't wrong ;)

  823. dwd

    intosi, Yeah? Do you remember the command to copy a file in CP/M?

  824. intosi

    I do, as a matter of fact. It's POP

  825. intosi

    PIP

  826. intosi

    Bloody typo at the wrong time.

  827. dwd

    Right, for Peripheral Interchange Program.

  828. Zash

    Pipboy?

  829. dwd

    My grandmother liked command lines because she could write down the useful commands on a notepad beside the computer.

  830. waqas

    pip does something else these days

  831. moparisthebest

    what did she use the computer for dwd ?

  832. dwd

    moparisthebest, Word processing, mostly.

  833. Flow has left

  834. moparisthebest

    ah ok I could see that

  835. dwd

    moparisthebest, Although she also did cryptography on holleriths before, so I suppose she had some experience.

  836. xyz has left

  837. xyz has joined

  838. moparisthebest

    I'm pretty sure I had the first computer in our whole extended family and it was a 486 with windows 3.1 so we were all rather late to the game

  839. dwd

    moparisthebest, I think my brother beat me to a 486, but I overtook him with a DX2 I slammed 40M into. Can you even imagine that amount of memory?

  840. daniel has left

  841. daniel has joined

  842. moparisthebest

    my 486 had 4mb I think which was like a ton back then

  843. dwd

    Right - most machines had 4, a handful had 8, and mine had 40. Then again, I was running chat servers back then, so...

  844. moparisthebest

    oh yea I didn't have internet until like 2002, late there as well :)

  845. dwd

    Um. 1994? I think?

  846. moparisthebest

    in fact I remember when I got the computer being told about this thing where you could read newspapers for free over the phone line

  847. dwd

    Maybe 1993.

  848. moparisthebest

    like that was all it was for, reading free newspapers :)

  849. dwd

    It was basically for reading free newspapers, MUDs, BBSs, and Talkers.

  850. dwd

    But we all sneered at Talkers.

  851. moparisthebest

    I've heard of the other ones but not Talkers

  852. dwd

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

  853. Guus

    can anyone help me with getting a dev environment for the website setup?

  854. moparisthebest

    I thought IRC was around back then

  855. SamWhited has left

  856. SamWhited has joined

  857. Guus

    I followed instructions at https://github.com/xsf/xmpp.org, which gave me a running process that does not respond with a webpage

  858. dwd

    moparisthebest, IRC was around 1988, and talkers were a few years before that.

  859. dwd

    moparisthebest, But talkers survived until the mid-to-late '90's.

  860. xyz has left

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  862. dwd

    Oh, that Wikipedia page has a See Also to "Spod". I'd forgotten about that bit of slang.

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  870. Zash

    What the spod?

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  887. Ge0rG

    Wow. The momentum is gone again. That really didn't last long.

  888. Guus

    what momentum?

  889. Ge0rG

    Guus, on the ML, regarding Easy XMPP

  890. Guus

    actually, I'm wrapping up a quick xmpp.org addition, to spark some new discussion

  891. Guus

    pull request in a couple of minutes

  892. Zash

    Ge0rG, you said you had some of your ideas implemented but not released. Are there packages one can try somewhere, without setting up an android build env?

  893. daurnimator has left

  894. Ge0rG

    Zash, yes, apks on yaxim.org and Google play beta channel

  895. Ge0rG

    Zash, https://yax.im/i/#yaxim@chat.yax.im?join

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  901. Guus

    https://github.com/xsf/xmpp.org/pull/246

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  905. moparisthebest

    Guus: I like it thanks for making it more than just idle talk :-)

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  907. Guus

    moparisthebest: no problem. Please suggest improvements.

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  912. moparisthebest

    Guus: is there scripting that can be done on the site? Maybe randomly sort suggested servers to spread the load some?

  913. moparisthebest

    Possibly mention account creation is built into conversations?

  914. Guus

    I don't know. I'm not very familiar with the website source code. Just enough to make it run locally.

  915. Guus

    moparisthebest: do add the suggestions to github, if only because I am about to go to bed. 😉

  916. moparisthebest

    Guus: will do on PC tomorrow thanks :-)

  917. Guus

    Ok

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