As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP.

As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.

@daniel
I'm guessing there are complex problems in IM space that they don't realize they'll have to solve from scratch, which XMPP already solved for them.

What are these problems?

@daniel I think people have never truly forgiven XMPP for being an XML based protocol.

I consider this a failure on our part but I don’t really know what to do about it. Most arguments against #XMPP don’t hold if you’re building from scratch anyway:

• #Conversations_im looks very outdated: OK, but you are developing your own clients anyway.

• XMPP doesn’t have an SDK: Neither does your #ActivityPub or email stack

• OMEMO is insecure and I would prefer #MLS: Yes, let’s work on that together and you’ll still benefit from XMPP’s 100+ solved IM problems.

@mariusor @daniel what would've been a better alternative?

Stop Telling Us XMPP Should Use JSON

XML vs. JSON: Stop Worrying About the Wrong Layer

ProcessOne (www.process-one.net)

@wolf480pl yes I think that is a huge part of the problem. It is very easy to completely underestimate the complexity of Instant Messaging. Sending a message from A to B seems like something every software developer can write before lunch and people don’t see how it can and will rapidly escalate from there.

But I don’t know how do communicate that to other people.

@joshix based on what's popular today: JSON.

(I'm joking, my assumption is that they chose what was the best alternative at the time. As far as I know JSON hadn't been described by Crockford at Jabber's inception)

@daniel

@mariusor @daniel JSON is worse and has less features

@joshix I am making jokes not technical decisions. Hold off on the snark please.

@daniel

@daniel@gultsch.social The Lemmy developers have added a user profile field where you can enter a Matrix account. It would certainly be better to also add a link to XMPP, and I believe this would be the most viable way to immediately achieve secure communication in the Fediverse.

However, it's always helpful for someone to try to "reinvent the wheel": diversity is a very prolific mother of solutions to problems that don't yet exist.