XSF Discussion - 2019-03-13

Ge0rG: well yeah, there's still no reasonable choice for MacOS, I think.

Anu needs another pair of hands

> Anu needs another pair of hands +1

Ah, yes. I was talking to people that were interested in providing those

I'll try to revive that effort.

I've never spoken to Anu, I think. He's not in this MUC, I think. Is he still travelling?

Can anyone introduce me?

Guus, he is usually here monal@chat.yax.im (I don't know him personally either)

There's a comment of a guy called Mark Nottingham on the comments section of that article, and he says: "I talk to various parts of the IETF Jabber mafia about this, and they can give detailed reasons about why XMPP failed. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have learned; we're still building federation-optional systems like WebRTC." I wonder if anyone here is one of those `IETF Jabber mafia` and knows why XMPP failed

Thanks Seve

I do not know who Mark Nottingham is. I wonder who he refers to (and chooses to keep talking with people he chooses to characterize as 'mafia')

because one doesn’t turn ones back to family?

yeah, the naming is very important to discuss

when in fact his conclusion is correct

federation leads to a marginal network in the worst case and to a power-law network with too-big-to-fail supernodes in the best case

and nothing in between

👍

and yeah, regarding wtf is Mark: https://datatracker.ietf.org/person/Mark%20Nottingham

Thanks

Oh, he even appears as one of the contacts on that article :)

Grr, dwd, now I have to spend most of the day writing a response to your MIX braindump

It was a good braindump

It was, but there's so much there. I am probably going to do a separate response on the PubSub/MAM thing.

Because that's a whole discussion just by itself.

I'd say that any braindump that makes Ralphm spend an entire day is pretty successful 🙂

I know Mark slightly. In as much as I've had a beer with him before. The mafia is probably Peter and Joe.

if he continues to engage them, then 'mafia' was more sarcastic than an indication of discontent, then?

ralphm, To make it clear, I don't know which parts of that brain dump are hills I wish to die on yet.

Guus, Remember that nobody uses XMPP, except for the people that do. Mark, on the other hand, works in the web, so has a different view of what constitutes success.

Mark is the guy that oversees .well-known URI registry, also link relation registry. Not some random guy :)

Also HTTP 2, etc.

Also depreciating X- http headers

Yep.

Maybe he thinks that xmpp should be managed by ietf, not separate organization (just a guess)

That's the reason XMPP failed?

No, lack of good clients is a reason xmpp failed. Why this question now?

I'd argue that XMPP didn't fail.

Maybe it fails on certain aspects

Wiktor, well, you seem to know him very much, and my question was about he says XMPP failed.

I was referring to "jabber mafia" previously.

but it certainly does not fail as a whole,.

I know him because I've seen his name here and there. I don't know him personally.

The only reason why I asked about his wording was to figure out if he holds a grudge, or was semi-jokingly referring to people.

What's the relationship between the XMPP mafia and the xmpp memorial society ?

I don't know in case you're asking me. That's why I used "just a guess".

Guus, I think Peter and Joe are his friends, so he can afford those words

zinid good, thanks.

like calling another WG is mafia, I think it's pretty much normal in those circles

I understood mafia as just the people that care about that, nothing else. But I was quite interested in knowing the detailed reasons about XMPP as he says. Sad that we don't have members of that mafia here

zinid that makes sense, yes.

Seve, because XMPP didn't attract as much attention as HTTP?

Seve I think you should become part of the mafia 😉

Seve, Mark is from HTTP mafia btw

be our wiseguy! 😉

I will get in there and take all their secrets!

zinid, yes, I realize that now, reading a bit :D

(Although I don't see why they should be compared)

Oh, now I found and read the actual comment by Mark: > I currently use Monal and am not terribly happy with that, which is probably why I don't log in much these days. So it's a "lack of good client" problem after all...

The iOS situation is sad.

I can totally see why people feel XMPP failed. There was a lot of excitement, mind-share if you will, for having XMPP succeed as the SMTP of chat, as well as the use cases for non-chat. Google got on board, several of the other large companies did XMPP (Google, Microsoft Lync, Nokia, Orange, Facebook). Some federated, others not so much. All of the big IM systems around 2008 were ready to federate, but no-one wanted to go first. And then business decisions, not technical issues, undid most of that.

Zash, It's interesting because I thought it's iOS where people pay for apps.

Like Sam, having a full roster of people that then diminishes because of that really sucks and contributes to your view on the technology.

And the client situation on MacOS has always been a problem, but I cannot oversee how much of that impacted the success of XMPP in general.

Wiktor: Huh. Monal is free?

Zash: yes, that's a problem. It should be paid and developed like a normal app (just a random advice)

Tell the dev. "If Conversations can be $5, so can Monal!"

I want to note that the years around 2008 was a time where *many* interesting new protocols around social popped up (webfinger, activity streams, oauth, openid, etc.) and then 'something' happened that destroyed momentum.

ralphm: xmpp problem stems from years of slumber. It's slowly getting better with new XEPs, new client features, etc.

ralphm: all of them work over http:)

Well in 2008, XMPP was a solved problem. Why do anything when it was perfect! :)

Zash: 👍

Then smartphones came along and ruined everything

Exactly. For some definition of "ruined".

Zash: I definitely think that smartphones is related to the 'something'

Wasn't our multi-device support always horrible and the problem just hidden by nobody having multiple devices?

On Android it got better, no need to ditch xml or rework the protocol. Clients are working fine, low battery usage, useful features.

That's basically the same thing, I think 🙂

It was fine.. if you managed it correctly.

The n900 had it all though, XMPP fully integrated in the calling and messaging infrastructure. Jingle calls with GTalk/Hangouts.

Holger: totally

But I'm with @Wiktors train of thought, I think. To be more successful, it helps (or maybe even is required) that people start making money from their efforts.

But I'm with Wiktor 's train of thought, I think. To be more successful, it helps (or maybe even is required) that people start making money from their efforts.

I can at least not see how you can give enough attention to things while also being able to earn enough money to feed your family.

Wiktor: the problem, though, is that if Linux and Android are the primary places where things do work properly, but not on MacOS and iOS, this affects a particular influencial set of people.

Indeed

The FOSS community has a complicated relationship with Apple

No kidding. I had a look at the laptops at the XMPP Summit. The percentage of ThinkPads was very high.

Yeah, it amused me that you mentioned that.

It's normal.

But that does not stop anyone from not-the-FOSS-community to build XMPP for Apple :(

> The FOSS community has a complicated relationship with Apple Yet, a lot of developers use MacOS for development

ralphm, I didn't get it, you mean Apple don't want good XMPP clients on iOS?

Wiktor: well, it is not that easy

zinid I wonder if that's true for the FOSS community, to be honest.

Guus, XMPP is not FOSS

Wiktor: I think that iOS actively hampered efforts to write good clients in the past, with its restrictions.

so there should be no difference

I don't see any technical reasons why it shouldn't work, especially with all these "mobile friendly XEPs"

ralphm, you mean need for push notifications?

I'm not sure why XMPP is positioned or percepted as FOSS, that's a strategic mistake

Wiktor: there were no good solutions for this initially

agreed. but there is now, and I see proofs that good mobile clients can be done

Wiktor: I agree it can be done now, but this history made it more difficult

When my company started XMPP development on mobile, they could easily use Smack on Android, but mostly had to start from scratch on iOS.

I see

I.e. the ecosystem is much less developed there.

(and/or we lucked out with Google using Java for Android)

(and/or we were lucky with Google using Java for Android)

Guus: and because of its opener nature, devices are cheaper etc.

unsure if that makes much difference. As zinid pointed out - many developers use Macs.

but that's besides the point.

Adium was nice... years and years go :)

Guus: yeah, it baffles me that there's still no decent XMPP client for MacOS, as far as I know.

Adium was always a pain, but there wasn't anything better.

(mac and google app stores hold approximately as many apps - so the ecosystem for regular developers apparently is not absent enough to make a difference)

ralphm, maybe it's a kind of echo chamber that we're in

regardless, I think we all agree that better ios/mac support is something we want.

so maybe we should stop agreeing with eachother and move on 🙂

how do we get there?

Would crowdfunding be an option, I wonder

As I wrote earlier - I think sharing ideas on how to 'make money' could be a good start.

and, although I don't want to rule out options like crowdfunding, we maybe should focus on those options that already have been proven to be at least somewhat successful.

Identify those options, and spread knowledge.

I've given a couple of examples a few weeks ago - but I think that coudl be done more structurally, somehow.

Is there something about that on a Wiki page or somewhere specific to look at it?

not that I know of (but might be a good start)

I am trying to find the logs of what I talked about here, but am unsuccessful so far

aside: http://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/ seems to have had an update, and no longer allow for join/part messages to be filtered. I kind of liked that feature.

This is what I referred to: http://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/2019-02-20#2019-02-20-5f32e6fa28106cba

Guus: Shouldn't be difficult to add. *hint*

I can't read it right now, but let's start with a page on the wiki and see where it goes from there, Guus?

I've created this placeholdeR: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Fostering_success

I can't immediately spend more time on that, without disappointing customers

:D

Guus, thank you very much :)

I think that the lack of good clients - generally, as well as in particular on Apple - is because the bulk of inward investment into the community is for servers. If you look at all the major deployers of XMPP - ganmes, military etc - tehy all develop their own clients, and do not create generalized user-level clients.

IOW, this is a matter of straightforward economics. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm very confident that the aversion in the community toward saying any particular client is good in any particular way isn't helping, since it removes incentive.

dwd, however, a lot of them fail to write a client, like 9/10 among our customers, which is quite bad

and raises the question: why do they fail?

dwd: to be clear I don't think the latter point is entirely true. Many of us believe in promoting good clients, just not using the XSF as a vehicle for that

zinid, In part, because writing clients is just hard.

dwd, true

dwd I don't think the community has an aversion towards saying any particular client is good. It's the XSF that doesn't do that, but it's fairly well known what clients are good.

(which, sadly, includes just a handful)

Guus, MattJ - insert "officially" anywhere you like.

I officially need more coffe.

I officially need more coffee.

"coffee", but that just proves your point.

part of what dwd says points out what I said about the perceived failure for some people. I.e. people working outside of games, military, have seen a degradation of the XMPP ecosystem.

I don't think that the incentive that's lost/gained by the XSF promoting individual implementations compares to those projects being able to make money from their project, to be honest.

well, the federated xmpp (aka jabber) has failed apparently

we will hardly count a million of federated users, most probably

iow: I don't think that the XSF extensively promoting some clients will have much effect.

when for gaming 1M is a good start 🙂

I have no way of telling how many users are federated right now.

Or how that changed over time.

ralphm, It'd be interesting to see if such a metric could be measured.

after "stats" XEP was deferred we now never know, that was such a mistake

Guus, I think the XSF pointing to success stories and helping to onboard users certainly couldn't hurt.

zinid, WHich one? I have only the vaguest recollection.

dwd it doesn't hurt. I don't think it will help much, either. Not to an extend that I'd be willing to open the can of worms that is neutrality.

dwd, what success stories? currently we only have a bunch of walled gardens typically with heavily modified protocol

if projects need the XSF to promote them to be successful, they won't be.

I'd love to use projects as an example of how XMPP is successful, though. But that's the other way around.

zinid, Harsh, but not a complete distortion.

I think the only success story currently is Conversations

if we're speaking about "Jabber"

So, let's reproduce that success.

time, dedication and money?

Zash, > The iOS situation is sad. Not really.

but I do believe that more people are making a living based on federated, non-walled garden solutions

we have various hosting providers, which I'd be interested in finding out if they're successful (I might be joining those, soonish, btw)

we have various contractors that make a living from doing walled as well as non-walled stuff

(me!, but I know others that I shall not name without their approval)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Yuqyud7otrjAiUNu5

so, I don't think it's al bad as you might think. But, we can, and should, improve.

Andrew Nenakhov, but no groupchat support

Indeed a client without MUC is a non-starter for me.

There will be, just not that MUC or MIX shit

Andrew Nenakhov, and how this can be promoted?

Andrew Nenakhov, I just wonder, what should I say to users: use the one with incompatible implementation?

having a proprietary group chat smells like recreating a silo again.

Like maybe new Xabber protocol that is partly compatible with xmpp and not held back by ineffective governance. 😂

> having a proprietary group chat smells like recreating a silo again. It's not meant to be proprietary.

Andrew Nenakhov, partially compatible is a bad selling point

(what he said)

Better than the current situation.

Andrew Nenakhov, better for whom?

For users of course.

for all users, like me included?

how can I join your groupchat from Conversations, Dino or Gajim?

I fear you'll mostly fragment things further.

Probably. Our new group chat will work more or less ok on conversations, yes.

Without any modifications.

yeah, how?

and what will I see? partially working piece of shit?

In fact it's already working. Just add support@gc.xabber.com to contacts.

so it's basically GroupChat 1.0?

I mean from my perspective

I wonder how this can be selled by anyone except Xabber devs?

There is a spec online xabber.com/protocols/

Guus, wrt fragmentation: what did you expect after 3 years of no progressing MIX?

Andrew Nenakhov, What's ineffective about the governance?

We'll release standalone server that can be used on any xmpp server

zinid I'm not saying I'm happy about that. But creating a third variant does not help.

is it possible to create a MUC on this server for profanity? looking for a server that could host our channel

jubalh, Profanity in general, or the project? :-)

dwd, project ;)

Andrew Nenakhov, so you diverge and create a separate standards body with your governance? 😀

Andrew Nenakhov, I admit your work, but here is where our opinions diverge

jubalh - unsure - but why not host your own?

jubalh - unsure - but why not host your own domain?

Guus, because it's a PITA? even for me actually

Guus, because the orignal author who also owns the domain stopped hosting because he had a lot of problems with spam and idk. so i'm looking for an alternative

> Andrew Nenakhov, What's ineffective about the governance? Take that story of extending xep-0085 to send extended notifications. Recording audio, video, ... - moved exactly nowhere in almost a year despite quite pressing need

jubalh - as I'm experimenting with setting up a hosting provider, I'd consider running a service for Profanity

maybe take that out of this MUC, though?

Guus, yeah lets talk about it

jubalh isnt github and a muc enough?

kindly contact me at guus.der.kinderen@igniterealtime.org

> Andrew Nenakhov, so you diverge and create a separate standards body with your governance? 😀 A great xmpp schism. We'll denounce the council rule and install our own anticouncil.

ta, for me github is enough. but i got several requests whether we could have a MUC for users

Andrew Nenakhov, 😀

zinid, we'll invite you to it. All developers are welcome who want to build something working

Andrew Nenakhov, I'm not interested in fragmenting infrastructure

The MUC can be hosted on any server. Just announce it on github.

worst case I can go to the IETF directly

ta, just looking for a suitable server. wasnt sure if i can just create a MUC on any and they have to accept it. so i wanted to ask first

The profanity.io domain should be saved though i think.

Andrew Nenakhov, So you made a suggestion, I offered a counter-proposal that would (I think) be acceptable, and you... did nothing. And it's me that's being ineffective?

I'm ok with that counter proposal actually. Anything that works is ok. But it's still ineffective way that bloats the specification.

Those matrix guys aren't exactly wrong with criticism of specs, cause Instread of amending one simple xep we create yet another xep

nah

and to fix that, you create yet another one.

Recent example: xep166 that is incompatible with push

the problem is that someone cannot come to agreement 🙂

To fix it we need deferred 353

https://xkcd.com/927/

and so far Matrix community is in agreement, and we are constantly fighting

We'll use that 353, ok, but it's not exactly healthy process that bloats standards count

Andrew Nenakhov, how are you going to address those problems in *your* standards body? 😀

You don't need a standards committee if everyone agrees with each other

zinid, we'll rule it with an iron fist! ✊

Regarding 3 years of no progress on MIX. I think this is unreasonbly unfair.

ralphm, why? still no implementations, still the XEPs have a lot of questions, still no agreement whether it should be recommended for implementation or not

This is not easy, given what we want to achieve here, and it is not like many people have been spending time in trying to implement it, so far, but a lot of commentary about its perceived non-progress.

I'm happy with dwd's message yesterday, and will use my day to respond to his implementation experience with my own.

I never said standards are easy, but this must have sane deadlines

zinid: I very much disagree.

I know that

I see that 🙂

because, well, the XSF is just a standards body, blah-blah-blah

ralphm, I think it's reasonably fair, actually. Designing MIX with a fork-lift upgrade was a mistake we should - I should - have seen from the outset. We also took far too long to get a reasonable upgrade pathway from MUC.

dwd: oh, I agree that in its current state we well never get a decent migration path, and I thought we made some headway at the Summit.

ralphm, Had we had those two from the outset - so a MIX could be accessed by MUC clients, or MIX clients on non-MIX servers - the upgrade path would have been simpler, and a lot more incentive around for people to move on with deployment.

zinid: I'm not sure what you think the XSF *should* be doing, but I don't think that attempting to set deadlines to the creation of a standard, to a loosely connected set of people that voluntarily do what the XSF is currently doing, is a good approach. I'm happy for people to attempt other protocols.

I don't think deadlines are a good solution - but I do think that explicitly taking into account the time-to-adoption as a factor of the XEP would be a good idea.

Many protocols we have standardized at the XSF were one of several. MUC has seen several iterations, so has Disco, PubSub, media streaming. In the end, implementation experience decided what we went with.

ralphm, I'm not going the deadlines should be written in stone, that's way I said "sane", not 10 years

*not saying

Guus: we already do have this. Before a XEP goes Final, it must have multiple implementations.

If there's commentary about the slowness of getting widely used specifications to Final, that's entirely valid.

ralphm that's to late in the process.

Guus: it depends on how you look at it, and I disagree.

I disagree with your disagreement 🙂

but, sure.

Guus: it is not the case when a group of people wants to work on MIX, other people can't work on other solutions in the same problem domain. I welcome this, and in the end running code will strongly affect the outcome.

It is not that the XSF is mandating all efforts to go into MIX.

Surely not, no

So, I am happy to work on MIX, and people that like to see more implementations can work on it.

Well, in that light Andrew Nenakhov s MUC spec is a good idea. 🙂

MUC-replacement*

kindly submit it as a XEP. 🙂

yes

I also said the same to the ESL people that did MUC Light.

ralphm, my vision of the XSF is to point into the right direction of the standardization process, otherwise I see not point in the XSF, as I said I can work with the IETF directly

really, how are you different from the IETF currently?

as a developer I don't care about promotion and endless meetings yielding into nothing

zinid: we are a standards body dedicated to XMPP. So I agree we are similar to the IETF.

you're now EXACT copy of the IETF

What do you mean with 'now'?

after you reformatted from JSF to XSF

zinid: I think you have a twisted view of the JSF.

I have a good view, I remember it circa 2004

Besides the name, the XSF didn't change in direction.

it does in practice

back then the specs were designed by the people from the XSF, I could come, report about problem and it's fixed, and now?

I've been on the Council between 2004 and 2013.

And the process hasn't changed, and specs were designed by people in the community.

sure, and there were a lot of productive work, done mostly by Peter and friends, they didn't redirect me to "hey, do it yourself"

ralphm, the analogy: I started an OSS project, but I don't write code, I only accept PRs - that's the current state of the XSF, it was *different* back then

zinid: yes Peter indeed did a lot of things, because he happened to be payed by his employer to do this.

This was not a function of the XSF, but rather of a very active person being able to dedicate his time to it.

ok, maybe that, but I don't care that much why it was the way it was

zinid, see, they support my idea of anticouncil

So if your point is, the pace of things in the XSF changed since Peter moved to other things, I agree.

okay, let's say that's my point, so the XSF has bus factor = 1?

I'll raise some more funds, hire you, and together we will rule the galax^Wxmpp

zinid: but do you really feel it is unreasonable to ask people in the community to put in effort to change things? The Council's job, for example, is not to create standards, it is to assist the process of getting them there.

ralphm, and the whole point of the XSF is now?

still the same as ever

why should I work with the XSF?

Soo why don't we get the 0085 standard "there" to meet modern requirements?

maybe we will just resurrect xmpp wg at the ietf?

You don't have to, and indeed some people have instead opted to go to the IETF directly with a draft.

ralphm, so the only your answer is "go do it in a different place" without convincing me as a developer?

No, that's not what I said.

but I'm not convinced, really, why shouldn't I go directly to the IETF?

or even better, maybe we will move the process to the xmpp wg?

that will be fair and my complaints will become invalidated

zinid: If you want something to happen at any standards organization (the XSF, the IETF, IEEE, or wherever), you will have to put in work to create your proposal, convince people to support your ideas, find people to give their view on things, and get people to implement it.

ralphm, and? how the XSF will help me?

please don't abstract

zinid: the XSF is not a magical group of people that just do things on your behalf. The Council is an elected set of individuals that want to dedicate time and their expertise to help out (other) people to create good standards. You could be one of them.

ralphm, I think zinid's point is that XSF could (should?) just be replaced by IETF WG and everything else would stay the same (process etc.), so there are no advantages of having XSF over XMPP WG... that's how I get it

Wiktor, right

and the current situation is even worse: if I say wtf is matrix.org - I'm replied "and wtf is XSF"?

and when I say I'm working on the IETF specs - that will sound much more solid

To whom?

ralphm, to the XMPP opponents

and I cannot use the argument that Matrix is a non-standard body

I don't work on XMPP to appease its opponents.

but I digress actually

ralphm, sure, but when you have business you kinda deal with competetors

anyway, so what stops the XSF to move the process to the IETF entirely?

XMPP as a platform is on fire. And many here refuse to accept it.

If you have a business you should spend money on marketing yourself, not negative marketing on your competitors.

I'm unhappy because I want to create great federated chat products, but can't do it with current xmpp standards.

Andrew Nenakhov: because of the XSF?

Zash, I think that's zinid's idea, having XSF inside IETF would give XMPP better position, that XEPs are developed inside IETF not XSF

better image* or however one would put it

sure, IETF is an "industry standard", that's pure marketing thing

I think creating great federated chat products is not related to where the standards have been defined.

general words again

you're dropping some obstacles to make a general claim which sounds valid

ralphm, we can create great products on our own set of standards. Yes.

zinid: I'm just giving you my perspective. I think the idea that labeling a standard XSF or IETF doesn't necessarily help to actually get traction or success. I think that working on standards within the XSF helps with getting insight of people that have worked on similar problems, but in the end it comes down to people (XSF or not) having to put in the work.

and my question still holds: what makes the XSF a lot more different than XMPP WG at IETF?

> helps with getting insight of people that have worked on similar problems like in the ietf xmpp wg mail list? 😉

Yes, they are functionally equivalent.

okay, I see

Except the IETF XMPP WG isn't a thing right now, and the XSF is.

why? because it's formally concluded?

we can call it xmpp-ng!!!

people at the ietf like this -ng stuff 😀

What difference would that make?

You could do a new XMPP WG at the IETF, but I wonder if that would help you in any way.

As likely the same (active) people would get involved.

ralphm, just like the XSF doesn't help me like at all?

I'm probably not clear enough

zinid, XSF is operational, I guess people don't want change for change sake and setting up XMPP WG would be extra work that no-one wants to do (that's understandable)

XSF is just a formalisation of processes around work that needs to be done by people. You can move the process elsewhere, but you still need the people, and the process to get to a similar place.

zinid, One benefit of the XSF over the IETF is domain expertise of the Council. The Council's absolutely not perfect, but the IETF has only one person who knows anything about XMPP (or, indeed, messaging) and that itself is only by fluke.

zinid, Also, we move a lot faster than the IETF, surprising as that might seem.

Wiktor, but maybe, marketing wise, it worth the effort to move to the xmpp wg?

zinid, As an example, TLS 1.3 was approved in November 2017, but finally published in August 2018.

dwd, and we have tons of experimental or drafts being widely deployed

I recall that drama

Just got back from lunch.

zinid, A benefit of doing (more) work in the IETF is greater visibility, particularly within that group. I would like to encourage people to do that where it makes clear sense (like security areas). Your recent work is a good candidate here, I did wonder about pushing that way, venue-wise.

What is the benefit from moving to an ietf workgroup?

Guus: what dwd says

Visibility within the ietf?

zinid, But I have, equally, had a huge amount of push-back when i've done this before, with people telling me that I'm doing process for process sake. But I get that all the time anyway. :-)

So typically we ventured out to the IETF for things like SASL, TLS, nameprep/précis, DNS related issues

dwd, and will XSF help me with the IETF bureaucracy? Like resurrecting the WG, IANA contacts? I bet it won't

zinid: you keep mentioning you want help, but what do you expect others to do for you, exactly?

zinid: what do you want to achieve?

ralphm, I don't ask the XSF anything to do already, you just said me that's pointless

so I use it as a very slow wiki to publish my XEPs

thanks at least for that

I didn't say the XSF is pointless, that's *your* opinion.

okay

zinid, The XSF has resisted, in the past, having a formal Liaison with the IETF - but we could do that. That would give us a more fomralised pathway through to the IESG etc.

And also, I didn't say I (or even the XSF) didn't want to help you.

zinid: it just seems that you want something different. Faster, or in another way. But it is not entirely clear to me what.

zinid, In turn, a liaison relationship would allow the XSF to do a lot more to actively help steer XMPP work through the IETF.

dwd, sorry, I don't understand what you're saying, I'm not into bureacracy of the IETF, but I'm aware of the XSF's one

but seems like yeah, I need to deal with that eventually

zinid, Effectively, a formal relationship with the IETF where they recognise us and have a defined contact for combined work.

zinid, As opposed to now, where while several senior IETFers are current or previous XSF participants (and often members), there's no formal relationship, and so no way for "The XSF" to do things like request the WG is reopened.

zinid, GIven there's active XMPP work going on in the IETF now, this seems like something we should explore.

dwd: I think a Liaison is not a bad idea in itself. How does it help zinid, though?

Is it fair to summarize the discussion up til now with "Zinid is unhappy with the slow bureaucracy of the XSF, and suggests we replace the XSF with an IETF workgroup to speed things up" ?

dwd, goot to know

Guus, I actually admit that IETF bureaucracy is worse, please don't misunderstand me

ralphm, It'd help him navigate some of his RELOAD work through, if we wanted to do that. Or at least help us highlight the work in the right places there. Similarly, it'd give MILE and SACM a pathway through to request reviews on their XMPP work.

zinid then I don't understand the reason for your suggestion. Or I don't understand your suggestion itself, maybe.

Guus, FWIW, I understood his comments to be about exploring ways to improve the standards process and the outcome of it, and not any particular concrete suggestion.

dwd: to be honest, even the Board got involved with his RELOAD work, and even though it might have been slowish, we discussed https://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/eax-car.html and requested modifications.

I'd like to understand how we are *not* helping.

ralphm, Yes, understanding how the XSF could help more is indeed useful.

So is the idea to look at how the IETF has structured their processes for that?

ralphm, But I don't think that needs to be a particularly adversarial process.

No, the idea is that we first understand the problem, before we jump to solutions.

Problem Statements are good

Guus, The XSF's process is essentially a streamlined version of the IETF's, with various tweaks to promote safe early adoption.

dwd: agreed. And if I came across as adversarial, that was not my intent.

Yes, I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind this discussion

I'm not suggesting any change or solution at this point

I simply want to understand what all of this talk is aiming to achieve.

ralphm, Sometimes, the best way to uncover a problem is to see what solutions people propose. :-)

ralphm, From there, one can explore their rationale for the solution, and see what the problem might be.

If the XSF (or bodies within) is preventing people to move forward, I'd to like to see how we can help that. But similarly, if people have a different perception on what the XSF does, I'd like to help explain that

As a developer, I'd be happy with xsf that I could ask, "I need to send recording video notifications instead of just typing", and would be told, "ah cool, we'll add XEP-0499 chat notifications subtype", I say "cool!" and implement it

Andrew Nenakhov: ok, but

Doesn't the XSF do exactly that - likely not for that exact feature that you're looking for, but for 100's of others?

Andrew Nenakhov: why would it then not be ok to ask for a contribution to the document to that effect?

on top of that, the XSF facilitates a process in which you can add specifications for the feature that you're missing in such a way that it can be adopted by everyone that's interested.

Andrew Nenakhov: do I understand correctly that you expect the XSF to whip up a spec for a suggestion for something like this?

That would be more of what I would expect of a standards body. Maybe after a discussion.

Isn't that _exactly_ what the XSF does?

Andrew Nenakhov: I'm asking because indeed that kinda happened before. People would suggest things, and Peter would go and create a spec for it as Author, and submit it to, well, himself as Editor, and then get it to Council, where he'd (also) vote on it.

ralphm, eax-car is actually would be a very good help from the XSF, but I was asked to do moar bureaucracy, and to spend several weeks forming business rules of CA coordination, which I can only copy from the CA/B Forum's requirements. So even here useless. And that's absolutely not for RELOAD, I described it in details in my email, but still nobody reads

whatever

you supply a suggestion (in the form of a XEP). The XSF discusses it. It gets published.

ralphm, I decided not to work on the XEP. Let it be just random collections of CA certificates on every client

zinid: well, it would have been great that have given that feedback after our meeting. This is the first I hear about you not being happy about what we discussed.

and my EAX technical XEPs I will discuss with the Council

ralphm, yes, what you describe about Peter would make me more happy that necessity to write own XEP. I can probably do that and will do that in the future, if it's necessary.

zinid, if you think that any feedback that we give is pointless, yeah, then I can see how that frustrates you.

Andrew Nenakhov: ok, so then indeed it seems to be an expectance mismatch. The XSF does not create new XEPs. It adopts them and manages the process of making it a good protocol by using the expertise of the Standards JIG (basically everyone in the XMPP interested in standards, on the standards mailinglist) under the guidance of the Editor and Council. So indeed we currently *do* expect people to write XEPs themselves.

I for one, think it offers value - yes, it slows things down, but it will also prevent issues down the road.

> So indeed we currently *do* expect people to write XEPs themselves. And the incentives?

zinid: I agree with Guus, and I think it is reasonable to write up details on what you expect the XSF to do in practice, before asking it do it.

I'm out for a dentist appointment.

also, regarding my "frustration", I can work with the Council, it's not pointless, but the whole XSF with its board is useless, sorry

zinid: people have different incentives to write specfications, and then also for submitting them to a standards body. This is up to you. I can only comment on what we then will attempt to facilitate.

zinid: the Council is the most important part of the XSF indeed. The Board is primarily there for having a legal structure to do our work in, regarding funding of resources (like website, mailinglists), having a process for electing the Council from a membership, and facilitating events like the Summit.

ralphm, actually this situation is kinda uneven. We write software , we write XEPs, and then XSF will decide if it's accepted or not. Kinda not cool.

Andrew Nenakhov, +1

Andrew Nenakhov: there is *no* requirement to have your extensions approved by the XSF before you can use them.

If all xsf does is approval, maybe we can join efforts with zinid and have our own anticouncil. ?

ralphm, thus we will have his non-standard imlementation, great

Andrew Nenakhov, I'm not going into anticouncil!!! 😀

Andrew Nenakhov, even working with IETF turtle would be much less effort

zinid: so either you work with a standards body, and then have a document vetted by hopefully more people, or you don't. Also, a standard is only a standard if it is used by multiple parties, not if we rubberstamp it.

ralphm, I got your point, yes, clearly

I just disagree

Being published by the XSF doesn't force anyone else to implement it.

zinid: so what *do* you expect then?

ralphm, the DIRECTION

what's the decision on MIX? should we stop accepting hacks and patches to MUC?

because the XSF is supposed to be clever, it should analyze current adoption and decide

zinid: it seems that MIX is not in a place where it could replace MUC. There are a few people that have slowly started working on implementations (my team, isode, dwd), and there's probably still work to do.

ralphm, good to hear you started, I finished already 🙂

Having Someone™ with a vision and enough energy to be driving would be good, but hard to produce in a volonteer based org.

Zash, then no point pretending?

My personal opinion is that there are a lot of good things in there, but it is lacking in a proper upgrade path, unclear in some areas (that e.g. dwd has pointed out yesterday).

in my book, the best the XSF can do is to move process to the IETF

for example to help me working with the IETF

(since you asked what help I wanted)

it's not solely because of me of course, before you start ranting 🙂

moving to the XSF will bring more recognition to the XSF and XMPP

currently XSF is like "who is it?"

zinid: I'm sad about you feeling I'm ranting. I'm trying to help understand what issues you have with the XSF, the Board, or me.

zinid: I have seen some epressions of frustration by you and Andrew Nenakhov over the last few months, and I thought this was as good time as any to see if I can get it resolved.

so I suggested the solution

I will have zero complaints then

zinid: if your suggestion is closing up shop and moving to the IETF, I'm not sure how that is constructive.

I will just work within WG discussing technical stuff

ralphm, marketing wise

I don't see the marketing angle at all.

ralphm, okay

I think you just don't want to see, I understand that you like all this XSF community around you, and you're the chair

I.e. I don't see how it helps you that the rubberstamp is from the IETF rather than the XSF. Who would actually care about this, and is this really a problem we need to address?

zinid: well, I like the community, I don

't care that I am the Chair. I'm happy that I can help the community in that role.

If if the reverse isn't true, I'd do other stuff

Like help out with Council, or the Editors

my customers actually care, because when I say we support "industry standard" we're lying, XSF is not accepted as a standards body, unlike IETF

Why are you here then?

nice question 🙂

sorry for disturbing your bubble

zinid: for all things XMPP, I'd say we've been generally accepted as the body that defines its "industry standards".

It is not like there's a vote on which standards bodies are 'real' or not.

marketing wise there is

zinid: so if the IETF would say: for all your XMPP business go to the XSF, it would help?

who will read what they say? the customers will read I E T F.

means no vendor lock-in, good

The IETF doesn't make standards. Everyone using the specifications is what makes it into standards.

> The mission of the IETF is to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet.

yeah, also the IETF allows for publishing drafts outside of WGs that are not really vetted

“The XMPP Standards Foundation (also known as the XSF and formerly the Jabber Software Foundation) is an independent, nonprofit standards development organisation whose primary mission is to define open protocols for presence, instant messaging, and real-time communication and collaboration on top of the IETF’s Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP).”

XMPP is an IETF standard, but you can still build lock-in, not federeate etc.

Zash, are we talking about marketing here?

or do you think I don't know what you're saying?

Are we?

I can write in my facebook blog "I create standards", does it count?

Zash, well, yes, we're talking about marketing until you chimed it

asking me stupid question about "why I'm here"

Ignore me then

XMPP is an IETF standard. Us acting as a IETF workgroup would not add much on top of that in the sense of marketable exposure.

zinid: also note that RFC 6120 points to the XSF in several places, like section 8.4, that among other things says: “An extension element or extension attribute is said to be "extended content" and the qualifying namespace for such an element or attribute is said to be an "extended namespace". Informational Note: Although extended namespaces for XMPP are commonly defined by the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) and by the IETF, no specification or IETF standards action is necessary to define extended namespaces, and any individual or organization is free to define XMPP extensions.”

okay, you disagree with everything I say, I disagree with everything you say, we should probably stop here

zinid: so you can write "I develop protocols" on facebook. Whether they become standards, is to be seen. As I mentioned before, a specification becomes a standard because of being used by multiple parties, not because of the rubberstamps on it.

zinid: I'm sorry about that. Thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view, though.

I agree that it would be great to have a better documented common vision of where xmpp is moving, and it would be great to have council members working full time on xmpp. Unfortunately, the latter is not going to happen.

I believe someone said that the council was more active in the past, rather than just voting on things

Yes. And having council members being paid for that task immediately brings up conflicts of interest.

Zash: I don't feel that the Council is now less productive than when I was on it (for 8 years).

I'd love people being payed by their employer to be able to spend time on the volunteer efforts in the various roles at the XSF.

That's mostly how the IETF works

It is how all standards bodies work.

Although, of course, some of them have entry fees for organizations to be able to participate.

Our Summits are notoriously cheap compared to the IETFs :) ✏

and the outcome of your meetings?

And less humming

drinking beer? I'm not against beer, but that's probably not the goal

zinid: I found our meeting useful, and just assuming we just drunk beer is not a very good argument.

There's beer at IETF meetings too

ralphm, useful? I don't know, where to read about that?

just my voice from the floor

zinid: we even allowed people to remotely participate.

that's impressive 😀

On the positive side: we have working calls on iOS. Can so done at XSF resurrect xep-353? 0166 doesn't cut it.

*can someone

Andrew Nenakhov, nobody can, do it yourself or GTFO

that's the official position

But it's in deferred state

Andrew Nenakhov, take the authorship

zinid: I'd have loved you to have been there, physically or remotely.

I assume it's the council that moves XEPs between states?

Andrew Nenakhov: we've recently made a change to XEP-0001 to deal with orphaned specs.

Andrew Nenakhov, yes, because the author's inactivity, so it requires new authorship to move it back

zinid: it *doesn't*

ralphm, so you changed that?

zinid, actually I'd rather change 0166 than support 0353

zinid: yes, I actually wrote the text for it.

okay, I misread that

Andrew Nenakhov: Is 0353 in need of anything specific or could it be advanced as-is?

zinid: but we do require someone to help guide it through the process of proposing it as Draft in case the author has abandoned it: the Document Shepherd.

Zash, my developer says he did everything as is in 0353, so it's probably good to use

zinid: the first step, in case of XEP-0353 would be to contact fippo or stpeter. Sending a message to the standards list would be good first step.

Andrew Nenakhov: for what it is worth, we did it slightly differently, with IQs, which required server support. Even if we don't end up doing it like XEP-0353 says, there's clearly a need for a solution.

Andrew Nenakhov: If they have any feedback then that would be good to share with the list. Even if it's just "It's fine, it could made Draft"

Ok.

Andrew Nenakhov: what we found is that you want to indeed share the session-initiate to all the resources, and then define how accepting the session works (there might be two resources sending a response).

The problem with XEP-0353 doesn't do that, it precedes the process.

So you get more roundtrip.

Instead, if you somehow got the payload of the session-initiate to all resources, they could already start doing things, like setting up a session with a TURN server, or something.

ralphm, we don't think that two resources sending a response is a big problem. User can't answer a call from tablet and pnohe at once. And even if he does , second device will get 'line busy' answer, I think

Sure, but it would need to be defined.

I just spoke to a colleague and he mentioned that in a previous project they actually 'just' replaced the initial iq for a session-initiate with a message to the bare JID.

ralphm: Do you do anything so that a currently offline client can later see what calls were made? Eg missed calls while being offline seems like a useful feature.

And then had some kind of conflict resolution.

Zash: yes, separately

Zash: we have this concept of CDR messages (Call Detail Record) to alert all resources of the result of a session.

This seems like something you'd get partially by using messages for initial setup.

https://ralphm.net/publications/xmpp_chat_voip/#/6/5

The CDRs are after the fact.

That is after the call has been terminated in one way or the other.

Zash, If calls are initiated by a message they'll be in message archive, I guess

But you want other clients to know which resource accepted the session-initiate.

Yes. But a proper CDR would include whether it was answered and how long the call was.

True.

Zash: indeed, as in my example

We didn't get to propose this to the XSF.

ralphm: That's from the presentation you gave at the Summit right?

Server-assisted Jingle does seem in line with the routing changes proposed.

Zash: yes

Zash: well, yes and no. Our implementation was server assisted, but I'm unsure if that's ideal.

Again because of the deployment issues (not unlike MIX)

353 + MAM could get you some of it.

I don't think XEP-0353 is the right approach though, because it precedes the actual initiation.

So a client knows it has a call, but cannot setup anything yet, because he doesn't yet have the details of the call.

Hm, and it has some overlap with SIMS

Zash: how so?

In the abstract "Jingle initiaded via <message>" sorta way.

oh

SIMS as in https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0385.html

I actually think SIMS is a very bad idea

Like yet another markup language for year 2019

Well, we used SIMS for sharing media in our app.

I don't *think* you are talking about SIMS Andrew Nenakhov ?

I don't see it as another markup, but more as a format to describe a shared image, video, audio thing.

Andrew Nenakhov, I *think* you are talking about https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0394.html Message Markup

?

We used it without the begin/end attributes on the reference container, though.

I see it as reusing the Jingle FT descriptor in

... a message

So if the objection is on that wrapper, I think that's worth discussing.

I can understand that it looks a lot bigger than OOB that's used currently with http upload, but it allows some nice things.

Those extra things were essential in building something similar to sharing media as for example WhatsApp.

Particularly thumbnails, and caption.

I think they ended up not really using the hashes for caching, although I still think they should have.

moparisthebest, SIMS is using references

<reference xmlns='urn:xmpp:reference:0' begin='17' end='20' type='data'>

Pretty much a very ugly markup language to me

Andrew Nenakhov: first of all, you don't actually have to use the begin/end attributes, and just included it as some kind of attachment.

Second, the idea of References came from how Twitter allows for marking up Tweets in their API.

Twitter did a number of changes to how they mark up their messages

Particularly useful for marking up @mentions, #hash, links, etc. in a plain-text string. Potentially after the fact.

Currently any images now are expempt from 280 char limit, they are just "added"

(much like how Slack sends a separate message when you submit a plain-text message to highlight stuff)

I'd rather resurrect xep-0071 :-/

Andrew Nenakhov: I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about this: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/data-dictionary/overview/entities-object.html

Andrew Nenakhov: sure, there are pros and cons.

But XEP-0071 didn't allow for marking up the stuff I mentioned above in much the same way.

At least not semantically.

Well at least you don't use JSON 😂

I'll think about 385.

With References you can say: "this bit here is a hashtag, and here is a link to something useful to do with that"

I'm not entirely happy with 221 xep modification we currently is to share media files

https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f16a0abdf3f7ff84d/TKd1DfB6/IMG_20190228_161844266.jpg https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f16a0abdf3f7ff84d/1cjpVG7c/images_2_.jpg https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f16a0abdf3f7ff84d/FFCwhXmN/IMG_20190303_163919048.jpg

Or: "this piece of text really is a think that can be interpreted as a custom emoji, and here is a link to a thumbnail to replace it with when rendering on a device that can show arbitrary images (unlike, say, a console client).

Andrew Nenakhov, why resurrecting XEP-0071 instead of improving XEP-0393?

Yagiza: for what it is worth, XEP-0393 doesn't resolve this issue of References, but they can work side-by-side.

Yagiza, because 393 is silly bad horrible idea

Andrew Nenakhov, ok, XEP-0394, of course.

Andrew Nenakhov: why? It just documents some convention on how people *already* markup their plain-text.

ralphm, so, why it's a standards track, not informational or historical in that case?

Yagiza: ah, yes, that _is_ similar to References.

Yagiza: valid question, maybe because it also tells clients how they can interpret it, which is something that is not that widespread.

I.e. the difference between what users type, and what clients show.

ralphm, because markdown is a method of WYSINWYG editing, a means to encode html in a more human readable way. It is not supposed to be passed as markdown markuped text, it is supposed to be rendered into html

Nothing is perfect in this area

Zash: right

So if you format with markdown, you render html and send HTML

Andrew Nenakhov: well, outside of XMPP there are so many uses of Markdown contrary to your point, that I'm not even sure where to begin.

393 isn't Markdown tho

People even write books with markdown files as the the source

Zash: and that

Andrew Nenakhov, anyway, sending HTML version of the text along with plain text is much worse idea, than sending formatting along with the text.

ralphm, so, why XEP-0245 is informational, but XEP-0393 is standards track?

ralphm, I've seen services where you enter html formatted table and they render a markdown formatted table. Existence of such services doesn't prove anything about markdown but that the creators of service apparently forgot that you can use html to format tables directly in markdown.

ralphm: Unfortunately often mistaken for Markdown tho, which produces the same problem XHTML-IM has, due to HTML-passtrough being a feature of many markdown libraries

Zash, > 393 isn't Markdown tho Uglier, yes. Same principle, though.

Andrew Nenakhov: Roughtly what people have been using in plain text email since before I was born. Probably.

Why, if we have html, for, like, 30 years?

Andrew Nenakhov, XEP-0393 is just another LML description.

Yagiza: XEP-0245, which documents /me, is about specifying how the markup *and* implementation have been done historically. The use of /me predates XMPP, and by the time this spec was submitted, all clients already did this.

ralphm, so, why it is not hystorical?

I don't remember

Yagiza: oh wait

Yagiza: historical is for things from before we had a JEP/XEP process. I suppose it could have been historical. But it is probably Informational because it is more a best-practice kind of thing.

I think it could have gone either way.

ralphm, so, why XEP-0393 is not a best-practice of LML implementation in XMPP client software?

Yeah, I can see the argument for it being informational instead.

back. No cavities! 🙂

Guus: good for you

😁

Btw a question on 385 Sims. If I share 5 images, what's fallback behavior? It doesn't look like I can put urls to 5 shared images in <body>

Our client sent 5 images as 5 separate messages

But it is a good question.

> Our client sent 5 images as 5 separate messages We decided against such approach.

Because when we send several items we want them to be presented as nice gallery of images

It flowed naturally from our product team's requirements, so that was convenient.

Right.

And if they are separate there are weird effects when loading from message archive

Well, if the gallery also has some kind of web presence, you might be able to link to that instead.

Like we've loaded 5 most recent of 10 and gallery looks kinda broken

otherwise, I see no real alternative to include links to all images

See above.

Maybe I misunderstood, but other than it not being appealing visually, why couldn't you include 5 links in the body?

Currently we use data forms media element xep 0221 that allows us to pass metadata like size, video duration, etc, and duplicate links in body

I'm not too familiar with XEP-0221, but I remember not being a fan when I voted on it in Council.

> Maybe I misunderstood, but other than it not being appealing visually, why couldn't you include 5 links in the body? But with 0385 if I want to have just images with empty body?

Naturally with client that supports 0385 I think I can send empty body and 5 items with images and get desired behavior

Andrew Nenakhov: oh, right, that's a good point. In our case we didn't use begin/end and used the body as a fallback.

But how to provide fallback?

So our body had the urls of the images.

But you can do the same in case the client does understand SIMS, as the client could see that the body only has things being referenced and just ignore the body.

But good point.

I think that body should in all cases treated as fallback method. Obvious solution Is to add <formatted> to XEP

By point is that if the body has 'https://example.org/1.jpg https://example.org/2.jpg', and SIMS that refers to them, it would see that it is basically image + space + image, and choose to ignore it.

On the other hand, we were also going to do more rich formatting, with carrousels for images, etc. For that, maybe SIMS is less ideal as-is.

And buttons

Unfortunately we didn't get to define those fully, yet.

At some point, fallbacks become hard, and you have to admit defeat. I.e. accept that some clients will have a degraded experience.

In the case where a newer version of the client would support it, the fallback text could reference that fact instead.

It all depends on the ecosystem, in our case we controlled both client and server deployment.

We always treat body as fallback to dumbest possible client.

So pasting all links is a must.

But making advances client follow some vague rules to ignore body because it has specific type of format... No I dont think it'll work well

I'll think of it.

Do any clients support 0385? I'm not a fan of it, but if it has some spread, I might reconsider

Not sure, outside of our app

What is that app you are referring to?

The VEON app. You can no longer get it.

Oh ok.

"For many years I’ve interacted with my fellow humans, I think perhaps more than any other way, via the medium of Internet chat. But in my chat window, they’re fading, one by one. This problem is technical and personal and I felt it ought not to go unrecognized." https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2019/03/11/Lights-Going-Out

oli: http://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/2019-03-12#2019-03-12-d63cfafd77ebcb99

ralphm: thx

Some more discussion this morning, so you want yo check the next day in the archive

dwd, here?

dwd, how is it hard to reopen XMPP WG?