[free-software-melb] Recommendations for XMPP servers

2013-06-21 Thread Ben Finney
Howdy all,

What are good recommendations for people to set up a hosted XMPP account?

XMPP URL:http://xmpp.org/ is an open-specified, federated, standard
URL:http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2004-10-04.shtml real-time messaging
protocol. Consequently there are numerous free-software XMPP services
and clients that can talk with each other.

As we discussed briefly at this month's Free Software Melbourne meeting
(2013-06-20), Google Talk uses XMPP. But existing accounts are now
URL:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging
being migrated from Google Talk to Google Hangout, which uses a
proprietary non-standard protocol and operates only on Google servers.
There are no free-software clients, and obviously no services provided
by anyone other than Google.

So in order for XMPP to continue we need to have clear recommendations
for good servers to switch to. What servers are good to recommend to our
friends who are Google Talk refugees?

-- 
 \  “Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done |
  `\for me?” —Groucho Marx |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney

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Re: [free-software-melb] Recommendations for XMPP servers

2013-06-21 Thread Andrew Spiers
I see CCC.de also run ejabberd. I think that is a large site.
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Re: [free-software-melb] Recommendations for XMPP servers

2013-06-21 Thread Ben Finney
Ben Finney ben+freesoftw...@benfinney.id.au
writes:

 So in order for XMPP to continue we need to have clear recommendations
 for good servers to switch to. What servers are good to recommend to our
 friends who are Google Talk refugees?

I wasn't specific enough here: I mean “which services are good to
recommend”, i.e. recommendations to give to people who aren't going to
set up their own server softweare but want an existing, hosted service
where they can get an XMPP account.

-- 
 \  “Those who write software only for pay should go hurt some |
  `\ other field.” —Erik Naggum, in _gnu.misc.discuss_ |
_o__)  |
Ben Finney

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Re: [free-software-melb] Recommendations for XMPP servers

2013-06-21 Thread Adam Bolte
On 21/06/13 19:22, Brian May wrote:
 On 21/06/2013 6:51 PM, Ben Finney ben+freesoftw...@benfinney.id.au
 wrote:
 I wasn't specific enough here: I mean “which services are good to
 recommend”, i.e. recommendations to give to people who aren't going to
 set up their own server softweare but want an existing, hosted service
 where they can get an XMPP account.
 
 I use jabber.org.au
 
 See https://jabber.org.au/ from memory.

I run my own XMPP server (ejabber), but I have people on my roster that
use the DuckDuckGo XMPP servers at dukgo.com.

Setup instructions here:
https://dukgo.com/blog/using-pidgin-with-xmpp-jabber

Information about the privacy policy in place (which appears to be one
of the best) down the bottom of this post:
https://dukgo.com/blog/xmpp-services-at-duckduckgo

I feel that having a well thought-out privacy policy is very important,
particularly for a communications service - and it's something that
jabber.org.au seems to lack. There are two concerns I have with
DuckDuckGo's XMPP offering however:

1. DuckDuckGo is a US company. If they aren't logging anything and you
trust the encryption in place, that perhaps may not be too concerning.

2. The DuckDuckGo XMPP service uses a self-signed certificate, and no
fingerprint is provided. This would seem to introduce some risk of a man
in the middle attack.

Due to concern 2, I find DuckDuckGo currently difficult to recommend
(but I don't know anything better to suggest). Hopefully they sort it
out soon.

-Adam




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