Modern XMPP project discussion - 2026-02-09

i wonder how rooms would be like if one doesnt do presence-based joining. Would you basically register your jid and nickname at a pubsub node?

That's what MIX does, and GC3 is similar but you just do normal registration with the room (which is already possible in MUC)

normal registration as in membership? and thanks for any answers, from the gc3 person himself

Yes, as in membership

Membership is persistent and doesn't depend on presence, and many clients are already using this to display who is "in" a group chat ✏

i wonder what kind of constraint you have going in to this. Do you need the presence/membership thing to be mappable to the MUC model for compat?

MUC already supports this, so it's already mappable for sure

and i've heard gc3 tries to do away with roles versus affiliations (and combine them into one), is that also true? ✏

Yes, roles are less used and a bit weird in XEP-0045

i hope you'd get some kind of granular power levels implemented in there too. I think it seems easier in xmpp when it's essentially "this person with level X cannot send namespace Y"

the MUC XEP also has namespace restrictions, but I don't know if they're implemented anywhere

Stuff is being discussed for generic access control, but I don't think it's strictly in the scope of GC3, as long as GC3 will be compatible with it

i see. I guess that makes sense for a broader model

would these developments tie in with distributed rooms a lot? i've heard thats happening from watching fosdem, but i'm not sure if the two projects have anything to do with each other

> I would like to see more DNSSEC & DANE, if the current trend continues towards certificates unavailable for XMPP usages also unrelated but this makes me wonder - do xmpp clients/servers respect right now accept selfsigned certs? ideally theyd respect the flag number (with or without PKIX) and I can bring whatever certs I signed myself, but not sure about real behaviors ✏ ↺

https://badxmpp.eu/ has you covered, you can try adding an account like user@self-signed.badxmpp.eu and see how the thing reacts

thanks, gonna experiment with it

No DANE there tho

I think e.g. Poezio asks if you want to remember the public key, and then asks again every time the key changes.

stratself, as far as I'm aware the distributed rooms stuff discussed at FOSDEM is not based on an existing standard, and the folk working on that haven't been in communication with anyone working on GC3

Aren't there like 3 different XEPs for that already?

Yep

and I was planning to implement one of them (FMUC) in Prosody some day

https://xkcd.com/927/ intensifies

Don't worry, it's XML, we can do 4 XEPs at the same time

I'm talking with some friends about "groups of chats" similar to discord servers. Would xep0503 spaces or xep0508 forums be appropriate for this use case? How widely supported are they?

sonata Yes, No

Unfortunate.

This is up for debate (we spent quite some time discussing it at the recent XMPP summit)

Discord servers already map very neatly to XMPP conference servers, that's literally why they are called "servers" in Discord

XEP-0503 is basically only needed if you want to host multiple "spaces" on a single domain, but I personally would argue this isn't best practice

That is your point of view :)

Provide me a full client based way to create/destroy and administrate Spaces your way and I'll follow you without any doubts

It's been more than 5 years that we're discussing it, enough time to actually have a working implementation and specification. Now we're proposing something that actually allow a bare-minimum way of actually listing MUCs together (without solving the presence, role, member... issues) we are still having the discussion about "yes but actually XMPP services can do it".

So please, be my guest, provide me a working implementation and XEP.

I'm going 0503 way for now.

FWIW, I'm a year on with xmpp and it's my pick for messaging ecosystem but I'm actively looking for other options for org related messaging because of this gap. I currently host mattermost but looking at a migration to Zulip (coincidentally just today publicized as the destination for Mastodon's internal comms from Discord) ✏

XMPP is said to have a stronger position in personal messaging than community messaging, so yeah.

Yeah, I think that matches my experience as well. Snikket is close to drop-in for WhatsApp. I've been excited by Prose as a drop-in for mattermost/slack/etc., but the pricing/licensing is weird so I haven't even demoed it.

curiouser: and what exactly is this gap? How does it manifest as a problem for you?

The problem is discovery of related channels. One org (sailing club) has many volunteer committees, interest groups, events that should be self discoverable

And what client(s) do they currently use?

My club uses mattermost ATM. Other workable prior art I'm familiar with is Slack.

Ah okay, so not XMPP yet

Would they be on their own XMPP server, or using public servers?

No, that's the other major gap is cross platform client experience.

For my club it'd be a club server, would like if we can have members hosted elsewhere in the space if possible but less important

Most clients already have channel discovery built-in

But I think it's just that most of them don't make them as prominent in the UI as all the examples you mentioned

In Cheogram it has a "Browse space" in the channel details, in Gajim you have to click to join a new channel and then you can see/search. But all those require more effort than Mattermost or Slack.

Your use case is totally solvable without any XEPs (not that this immediately helps you)

It's just that nobody really built a client with the appropriate UI/UX so far (though there may be some close candidates depending on your criteria)

i recently saw another "i can't believe it's not discord" xmpp client, but can't recall its name. i'd like to offer it to a friend as a discord alternative. does anybody know what i'm talking about off the top of their head?

(i just realized this may not be particularly on topic, my bad)

It may be the new Process One client?

I can't remember the name

Fluux

There is also Xows but development seems stalled again and the dev has some strange ideas that make it unlikely to ever work as a normal xmpp client.

fluux is the one! thanks

i have a question about xmpp, what is the different between the core xmpp rfc/base of it wtv, and the stable standards laid out by the xsf?

> i have a question about xmpp, what is the different between the core xmpp rfc/base of it wtv, and the stable standards laid out by the xsf? XEPs build on top of the RFC standards ↺

> It's just that nobody really built a client with the appropriate UI/UX so far (though there may be some close candidates depending on your criteria) Thanks, as always, for your helpful replies. Now I just need to discover how to admin a space :p ↺

You just need your own server. A Snikket server would be a fine candidate, but the apps aren't ideal for your use case.

Have a snikket server!

I still have no idea how to create or admin a space though

The server is the space

That's the way it is in most platforms

🤯

Well then, now I don't know how to add channels that show in "browse space". I created a private group chat, a public group chat (via Monocles) and neither show when I browse space

Oh now I see the public group chat there, maybe it needed a minute or was cached or something. I don't see the private group chats that I'm a member of in the list still though