Dear members of the XMPP Community,
this week the XSF Communication Team, with me as driver and the one
taking full responsibility here, announced the "Chat of the Future
Initiative". It's true that this might have come to most of you without
much of a further notice. So, after numerous confusions and negative
reactions, I would like to mend things up by trying to elaborate,
apologize, while, at the same time, see if we can turn this into a more
suitable proposal for everyone. There are one or two proposals.
First of all, I would like to apologize if this came out of nowhere to
many of you. Just because one has best intentions, it doesn't mean it's
executed in the best possible way. I certainly take away that you would
have rather be informed earlier and filled up with more details as to
have a better understanding of the concept.
To make things better and help reassure everyone I will now try to
elaborate on the points most heavily criticized.
### Point of critique 1: Members have not been involved
* In the past we were, often times, under the impression that we
received few feedback on the work we did as well as reactions in the
mailing list or chat. When preparing this, I don't intended to put
efforts on anyone when it comes up to extensive work on pure
organization. Now, with a better grasp and understanding about the
sensitivity and expectations within the organization and community I
will try to improve.
* In addition here my question if you would have expected this to be
organized by e.g. SCAM team or so? To us, as the Communication Team,
then it's also a question about how far are we allowed to go with the
ambitions we see.
### Point of critique 2: Unclear purpose
* Intentions: I believed for a long time that we, as an ecosystem, can
and need to do more beyond single projects and developing a technology,
that is, to my impression, at risk of becoming more and more niche. We
can build the best RTC protocol and technology in the world, but if
there is few application to a significant scale - well...
* Adding a new holistic space for collaboration with the community: This
posses no harm nor threat to other spaces we actually have, and
furthermore, I believe this will provide them with more value. It is
also conceived to happen more frequently and the invites are simply a
first shot in the calendar.
* This is an offer for a talk: Online, with options to include more
people to join, and bring with them their different backgrounds and
views and ideas. People, that may struggle to participate in other
contexts. Those talks are planned to be guided by your interaction in a
collaborative space. It's for example planned to ask you about your
perspective on the status quo of the XMPP ecosystem. What are we getting
right, what are we not? Where is it that we see room for improvement?
Can we formulate any activities out of this? Where is it that we concur
a common ground to act? Over the sessions we will get a more clear
picture here and steer it together.
* Potential areas to act that have been told me as an example:
* Interoperability sessions
* Encryption (of the Future?)
* Onboarding of Developers
* XMPP Myths (you folks mentioned that two years ago)
* XMPP on iOS (or other platforms)
* ?
* (Here is already the chance for you to mention more)
* Opportunity to form and organize beyond our common horizon: Far
thinking from here, this can help us formulate more strategic thinking
and act accordingly thorough on the entire XMPP ecosystem. Building
momentum around this can also allow us to gain more interest in the
technology as well as provide us more resources etc. That is also why
its called "Chat of the Future Initiative".
* Communication: This is not barely discussions and activities on the
ecosystem in general, it should also come with benefits to your
projects. In that regard its planned with presence in the media channels
we have (and are expanding to) and offer >explicitly< participating
actors and projects. This is an opportunity for you to take advantage
out of it.
### Point of critique 3: Choice of tooling
* Without going into discussion regarding Mural again, I will try to
migrate to Draw.io (yes!), but due to performance issues, we'll use it
in an asynchronous way. Though, if you want to add your perspective,
that requires you to take the time in advance now. Thinking of it, it
might also be helpful actually. The session(s), will be the place to
discuss and focus about it.
I hope this helps to close the gap and gain your interest and curiosity.
Last point as critique back: I made mistakes here. Yes, and I'm sorry.
But some of the feedback received was certainly out of line on how we
want to communicate, at least from where I am standing. This is not the
first time that this happens and if we do not react to this as community
we will stay where we are.
With best intentions,
Eddie
On 05/01/2026 22:58, E.M. wrote:
Dear all,
the XSF Communication Team is pleased to announce a new initiative to
help evolving the XMPP ecosystem in a broader and aligned perspective.
This should cover discussions, development but also extended public
communication and presence. As this is being setup in an iterative way
its participants will be able to form and steer the collaborations
direction over time.
You can read the full blog post here:
https://xmpp.org/2026/01/chat-of-the-future-initiative/
After a number of questions let me elaborate a bit more.
So, when you join the session(s) we will have a interactive
collaboration board present where we will conduct different exercises.
We start with basically exposure and a discussion of the networks status
quo is as everyone sees it from their corner. If you have ideas of what
you would like to change, you can just propose those.
Ideas could be for example that members from the XMPP community are
interest in an organised (regular?) interoperability meeting on certain
XEPs. Others think of more engagement along encryption or building a
better landing page for developers. In the end, all those great ideas
and constructive feedback can be brought to the first session, but also
at a later point. Out of this, the round will form a collaborative
direction that anyone interested can join, commit and contribute to.
There are more and other directing and hopefully fun exercises of this
nature and we will collect, review and discuss ideas that could be worth
moving on within a couple of months. Ideas, to be shaped in smaller
activities, with no long time frames but effective outcomes that the
ecosystem benefits at user or (new) developers level.
We hope this is a motivating opportunity for the XMPP network and help
us to step ahead all together. We also believe that such a collaboration
can enable the network to evolve and gain new momentum and result in
strong benefits for all actors.
Feel free to comeback with your thoughts already.
Best regards from the Communication Team,
Eddie
