Modern XMPP project discussion - 2025-04-17

> I mean, I guess there's "a lot" and "a lot", it's no Python or Matrix foundation God I wish all the people who donated to Matrix would have donated to XSF and XMPP clients instead…

>> I mean, I guess there's "a lot" and "a lot", it's no Python or Matrix foundation > God I wish all the people who donated to Matrix would have donated to XSF and XMPP clients instead… We could still migrate the Matrix network to XMPP. A merge request could add XMPP to the servers. If all features are implemented that Matrix uses and servers just speak both, there could be a transition period and then the old protocol could be dropped.

(Not insinuating this would be a weekend project)

It's happening the other way around..

erebion: i afraid matrix includes things like html5 and javascript

Nope, it does not

My client does not show any websites

see Matrix Widget API

Yeah, well, that's just a website, that can be opened in a browser

Anyway, if a smaller Matrix server project got an MR for additional XMPP support, I bet they would acxept that

that's not, IIRC they have matrix-specific things exported to DOM/JS

Synapse only if every other server does that already and their customers also request that feature.

> that's not, IIRC they have matrix-specific things exported to DOM/JS Whatever, barely anyone uses that widget stuff

Not the right thing to start with

it was the only way to do calls until recently

It's all more broken than I thought

I never noticed, the Android apps do not make it look like a website is involved

also i think there's about 0.5 FOSS matrix servers maintained these days, so just make Synapse accept it (boils down to convincing New Vector)

They will accept it once a lot of requests are made

Those will come once other servers have it

Smaller projects are more likely to accept that

other servers are effectively dead

I know quite a few people hosting dead servers then

yeah there are some jabberd2 instances too

I may not understand matrix fully, but isn't it a synchronized message store vs xmpp being a transport protocol?

So bridging is/was an important goal (bridging as many messaging systems as possible) for matrix

but the c<->s protocol is nothing like xmpp, afaik

Roughly, yes. It's a decentralized graph, similar to how something like git works. XMPP does hop-by-hop delivery instead, with synchronization built on top of that.

(And I think Element (the only full featured client?) _is_ in fact a web app. (Chrome/Electron-based, if I understand correctly)

Yes, the desktop version is Electron last I looked (years ago tho)

Ejabberd does have some plans to add Matrix c2s support at well apparently

I worked on a mod_c2s_matrix for Prosody, and all I managed to do was crash a few Matrix clients :)

And at the time, Element was doing stuff that wasn't yet in the spec, and it was all a bit messy so I gave up

They filed a bunch of spec bugs based on my feedback, but I didn't follow much after that

I decided it's simpler and more efficient to just focus on improving the XMPP side

yeah. Honestly a while ago I thought the Matrix apps were better, but right now not really

At FOSDEM someone came to the XMPP stand, and tried to show me their Matrix app, but after it spent well over 10 minutes loading, we gave up. Network conditions at FOSDEM are often not great, but their XMPP app was working fine.

I wanted to like matrix more than I do. Too many glitches with reading peoples messages, sometimes even trying to read my own. And Electron doesn't really improve my mood either.

I think both ecosystems have stuff they need to improve, but at this point I'm more happy than ever that I'm working on the XMPP side

Of course, I understand xmpp has its share of omemo synching issues also when participating with mutliple devices in encrypted group chats.

It just has worked better for me than matrix, but I use both.

The "sync issues" (assuming you mean not being able to read history before you added a device) is not even a bug, it's the whole design of OMEMO. It's supposed to prevent someone from reading past conversations in case of a compromise.

But it turns out that nobody actually wants this behaviour in practice :)

or the chaos you get when you add new devices after having verified some of them?

Matrix have methods to grant new devices access to those messages, but obviously that's quite dangerous, and those methods have had security issues which let unauthorized entities read the past messages

I'm not saying we can't also do this stuff in XMPP, but it's not a clear win, and it certainly doesn't improve the security

People want cat pictures, not security!

> At FOSDEM someone came to the XMPP stand, and tried to show me their Matrix app, but after it spent well over 10 minutes loading, we gave up. Network conditions at FOSDEM are often not great, but their XMPP app was working fine. Yup, that was me :D ↺

:)

I wish Matrix and XMPP were compatible and I could turn off my Matrix server

Single user server that uses pretty much all of 4x ARM vCPU with 8 GB RAM...

I don't even know what it's doing

Could be mining bitcoin and I wouldn't notice a difference

> Yes, the desktop version is Electron last I looked (years ago tho) But Fractal works fine. GTK app. I have to use it... Unfortunately I run the Matrix server for the German amateur radio society DARC. ↺

Three years ago we were considering some options...

We were choosing between Rocket.Chat and Matrix (Synapse, to be precise)

Unfortunately I did not think of XMPP back then

Had I thought of that...

Well, let's not cry over spilled milk...

Yeah xmpp super light in comparison

We chose Matrix over Rocket.Chat because it has more choices for clients.

In trying to encourage people to package something for start9

Will help a lot I think.

And sadly I've started something which gets more an more national amateur radio societies into it

The Belgian and Austrian societies now use it as well

Wish it was XMPP

> And sadly I've started something which gets more an more national amateur radio societies into it What's that? ↺

Well, the Matrix server. Others want to join... -_-

I know other amateur radio societies are now considering that as well

I got >5000 people into Matrix and I regret it

All that because I had forgotten XMPP existed

But two years ago I said: If anyone ever asks me again for an XMPP address, I'll set up a server again, after ~10 years.

And now I AM BACK (lol)

> Ejabberd does have some plans to add Matrix c2s support at well apparently Oh, that's interesting. Got a link? Details? ↺

> yeah. Honestly a while ago I thought the Matrix apps were better, but right now not really They were, for a while. In ~2018 Element, back then Riot, seemed revolutionary. But XMPP improved slowly but steadily while Matrix just become more shinry and bloated. ↺

millions in venture capital is a heck of a drug

> Of course, I understand xmpp has its share of omemo synching issues also when participating with mutliple devices in encrypted group chats. But not constantly. Also, haven't noticed a stuck unread status for chats that I just couldn't get rid of (other than logging out everywhere, deleting everything and signing back in) or chats that I couldn't join because joining failed and the remote server said "You're already in here, go away". I had quite a few such bugs Synapse devs looked at and just shrugged, as they had no idea. ↺

> Matrix have methods to grant new devices access to those messages, but obviously that's quite dangerous, and those methods have had security issues which let unauthorized entities read the past messages I don't want that exactly, but I like cross signing. That is the only thing I miss in XMPP that would make a huge difference for me personally. ↺

But yesterday I spoke to someone who's waiting for funding from Prav and then wants to add that to Dino.

(Automatic Trust Management, not the Matrix feature, obviously)

> millions in venture capital is a heck of a drug We should have an XMPP crowd funding website where devs can say "I would do this if I got 500 EUR" and then people can just throw money at them :D ↺

Having a clear idea of what money does makes people far more likely to donate

Cause then it feels more like buying rather than throwing money in a void, lol

tho if you want to solve problems with money, you need a lot more money, those millions run out pretty quickly if you're paying full time developer salaries

> We should have an XMPP crowd funding website where devs can say "I would do this if I got 500 EUR" and then people can just throw money at them :D There is an XSF open-collective page where you could add a project. but so far the response has been very little ↺

> Oh, that's interesting. Got a link? Details? they mentioned it as an aspirational goal in one of their blog posts. ↺

https://xmpp.org/community/fiscalhost/

Btw, I just had a phone call with my mother and she agreed US-based services are not the best right now, so...

I just got a new domain.... :D

Next XMPP server will soon exist. :D

MattJ will be happy to know that I'll try out Snicket :)

(Does that require manual updates or can I do "set and forget"?)

*Snikket

Pls forgive me, as someone who also speaks Swedish, "Snicket" seems to make more sense than "Snikket", lol

In English too, don't worry :) (snicket is an English word, snikket is not)

I've never come across that one

Snikket is set-and-forget but does not auto-update itself. It sends you a message with instructions when an update is available, it's just a couple of commands

if you run it with Podman you can configure it to auto-update the container

via Systemd

hiiii chat!! i've joined here because I'm wondering which XMPP clients support registrations per account invite

so which would they be, really?

since I want to help my friends out without resorting to a registration page

The easiest is probably with Snikket

https://snikket.org

but that is a server + client solution

you could probably set up something similar on a Prosody server though

not sure how up to date this still is: https://blog.prosody.im/great-invitations/

dam but yeah

> hiiii chat!! i've joined here because I'm wondering which XMPP clients support registrations per account invite why not use the http page module for prosody? ↺

wdym exactly?

luna, https://modules.prosody.im/mod_invites_page https/html page to register on using invites

its a collection of modules

as i said in prosody chat i havent gottten it working but may be a me issue

I mean... i did say "without resorting to a registration page"

oh, i mustve missed that

would be very much nice if many clients supported that out of box, and also both nice for sysadmins so you don't have to like host an entire page dedicated for it

yeah thats kinda widely accepted as just not an option, at least its somewhat in band

> you don't have to like host an entire page dedicated for it i mean prosody does manage it for you, not that hard

yaiii, fair!!

i mean i dont even think ejabberd has invites, thats just a prosody feature anyways

wait really?

thats what im told

like the account invite bit?

dam, yeah

I feel like being able to interpret account invite codes should be a nice-have in XMPP desktop clients but yeah!! would def encourage more people to join :3c

> i mean i dont even think ejabberd has invites, thats just a prosody feature anyways the xmpp: registration link to prefil the IBR should be independent of the server, but the invite token stuff if afaik not implemented in Ejabberd ↺

> the xmpp: registration link to prefil the IBR should be independent of the server, but the invite token stuff if afaik not implemented in Ejabberd yeah i meant the invite token bit ↺

the other is just a uri to tell the client what to do

> I feel like being able to interpret account invite codes should be a nice-have in XMPP desktop clients but yeah!! would def encourage more people to join :3c indeed and apparently it works nicely with Snikket, but it is just not really there yet in the wider Jabber ecosystem sadly ↺

i think the actual token bit is a mainline prosody package now, just the http page is community

https://invite.joinjabber.org also supports the IBR registration stuff in theory

but you need to craft the url parameters yourself

the easy wizard only supports user and channel invites

MattJ, have you though about adding that to the wizard?

> indeed and apparently it works nicely with Snikket, but it is just not really there yet in the wider Jabber ecosystem sadly yeah, mhm ↺

but yeah, the premise of well, account invites is for a more fine grained control :3c especially not letting malicious people take advantage of lack of detailed control over registration

I prefer keeping my XMPP server private, so I closed the registration to public BUT I will invite people personally, however I found out that it's not simple

exactly that the mentioned blog above was about aa

and you are not using Prosody?

I mean, I do use Prosody, heh!!

currently trying to help out a friend with registering on my server

does anyone happen to know how would you use xmpp: URI to register account with Conversations (the XMPP mobile client)?

apprently there's no way on mobile at least

I think that should work

and, what, Siskin is only on Apple devices

in prosody you can use ad-hoc commands to create a invite token

siskin is not snikket

i mean... that's why I was asking, I already have invite URIs but yeah

> siskin is not snikket i wasn't saying it was? it's an Apple XMPP client c: ↺

ah ok

Monal is better

Monal is well, limited to Apple devices, again

at least on first glance

ah I didn't get your question. on Android there are many good apps

https://joinjabber.org/docs/apps/android/

the question is which clients just straight up understand XMPP uri for being invited to create an account and participate

Conversation and forks should be able to do that

then how do you do that in Conversation?

also _forks?_

you send and xmpp: link via email etc and the person clicks on it

not directly in app?

see link above, Cheogram and Monocles are nicer forks of Conversations

> not directly in app? how would that work? ↺

by pasting the link...? what else would you do?

it should be as simple as when getting the XMPP URI, just paste it and bam, now you're registering

if you have the link already you can click on it, no?

the invite page also used to have a QR code for scanning

i don't think we're on the same line, what I mean is that when you execute a command with, for example Gajim, for creating account invite, you get invite URI that you can share with someone

I think Snikket still uses that

and I was asking basically which clients understand invite URI

Conversation and forks do

afaik

are there even guides exactly for that?

like, visually?

for Snikket maybe

otherwise it is a bit complicated to craft that invite URI

but Snikket is both a server and a client

I just want clients only...?

if you know the righ URI syntax you can use https://invite.joinjabber.org

that one is about creating XMPP links...?

https://github.com/modernxmpp/easy-xmpp-invitation

it's just a nice landing page for sharing xmpp uris

of course you can also just manually type the right URI

yeah but I don't understand where we're going

or manually create a QR code with it

I already have invite URI...

What I want to know is how you can use them in clients

Like, step by step

such as for Conversations

if you have such a link you just click on it and it will open the client

like, the ones that start with `xmpp:...`

yes

alright, but why can't you basically do that inside the client though?

if one also does it by clicking on it, why not even type it inside the client?

there is no input field in the client and that would be way more complicated than just clicking, no?

...users should be able to have multiple ways, plus clients have like already implemented input

"why should we do that, one is enough" is not always a good rationale

plus clicking on it would still mean it would need to be interpreted

I don't get what the advantage would be. if the user requires to type the full address of the server they can also do it in the normal registration field, no?

why should it be any different from say, pasting the invite to a group chat to a field, and joining immediately? ✏

yes that is what it does, when clicking on the link

but in Gajim you can also copy and paste that in a field, and it works also

no idea, maybe

https://upload.i.love.possums.lgbt:5281/file_share/06801936-caf3-7230-b826-b11a86469571/669928df-4421-4a9a-9a31-ffcaef08196d.png

"You also can enter an XMPP address."

my point is that users also should be able to enter XMPP URIs, even for account invites

for the registration page, you could also do "Got an account invite? Type the XMPP URI here." and it wouldn't be any different from the fields for registering for public server

except it's just one field and when it succeeds, it leads you further to creating your own account

but the XMPP uri for the invite includes all the details you need for normal registration. so there is no difference to typing that

and why type if you can just share the link to click or scan a qr code with it?

> and why type if you can just share the link to click or scan a qr code with it? that's just straight up dismissive ↺

I just don't understand, sorry

> but the XMPP uri for the invite includes all the details you need for normal registration. so there is no difference to typing that ah okay, but all one has to do then is to remove the xmpp: and replace it with username instead? ↺

how would you do that in practice?

just a normal in app registration

you type the server and it asks for a user name

what if the server is closed for registration?

except if invited with account invite?

ah, ok. well for that it only works with a link you click or scan via an qr code

welp, yeah

you would need to ask the Conversation dev if they can add an extra field in the registration form to type a invite code, but I suspect they will be equally perplexed why that would be needed

wouldn't that same logic apply to XMPP URIs for joining group chats?

you don't need invite codes for that

i mean some apps don't make xmpp uri clickable so having an easy way to paste it in somewhere makes sense

discord let's you paste in invite links too

> discord let's you paste in invite links too that was the point as well ↺

it should be more accessible but yeah

> discord let's you paste in invite links too because discord doesn't use xmpp: or similar links, so they have no choice ↺

also, a lot of other places do deal with invite codes though

i mean they just use regular urls for invites which is more supported than xmpp uris