Who Is Using XMPP?

Favorite server is localhost

I was I heavy XMPP user back in the 00s. But on the whole it never really took off, and when Google killed XMPP support in their chat it was a severe blow. As for why it didn’t reach a larger userbase, I think the reasons that Moxie described in The ecosystem is moving[0] are spot on.

[0] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

Last week I selfhosted Snikket: https://snikket.org, me and my partner use it to text. It has been smooth, everything works without issue: read receipts, audio/video calls, status.

Using with JMP.chat/Snikket for family.

I use JMP.chat[0] for my primary phone number. Being able to text from my PC with a real keyboard is very convenient. If I ever bite the bullet and use Discord I want to set up Slidcord[1] so that I don't have to use a separate app. I'm still figuring out how to migrate people to XMPP natively.

[0]: https://jmp.chat [1]: https://slidge.im/docs/slidcord/main

Several years ago I put up an XMPP server (Prosody) to chat with some friends, and it's still going strong. Years ago we used to have a mailing-list to keep in touch, but that eventually went quiet. I had run an XMPP server ~10 years ago (ejabberd), but that was before mobile chat utterly displaced everything else, it never took hold among my friends, and I stopped using it when Google Talk stopped federating, cutting me off from most of the people I had been occassionally chatting with.

The modern chat experience is all about the clients, and the mobile clients in particular, especially push notification support and seamless setup, so direct comparisons with XMPP to Matrix, et al, kinda misses the point, IMO. Conversations is a really amazing Android client. Our one iPhone member is content with Modal (I use the desktop version sometimes, but it's clearly designed for the iPhone). A new member uses, I think, Gajim on Windows; they don't want the distraction of chatting on their phone.

I host a bunch of other services on OpenBSD, all using the integrated base daemons--httpd, OpenSMTPD, NSD, etc--that sandbox themselves. I was hesitant to run a daemon like Prosody that didn't integrate OpenBSD security features, so I wrote my own module that uses pledge and unveil to sandbox Prosody: https://github.com/wahern/prosody-openbsd Most Prosody users host on Linux, and many of them seem to use Docker containers, which presumably offers some isolation, but I can't really speak to it.

The only non-private, large group chat I've joined recently has been the Prosody support MUC. I'm not a chat power user, but it seems to work just as well as anything else. I've was content with ntalk and IRC back in the day, so I don't really get all the chat protocol bike shedding. I expect XMPP to outlast all the interest in Discord, Matrix, etc.

I use Gajim which is a linux desktop implementation of XMPP.