On 1/16/17 10:40 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
On 16 January 2017 at 17:32, Evgeny Khramtsov <[email protected]> wrote:
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 09:28:41 -0700
Peter Saint-Andre <[email protected]> wrote:
I fully understand that XMPP can be useful for organizations who want
to develop or deploy their own messaging systems, either on-premises
or integrated with an existing system like an e-learning platform -
there are server packages you can download, libraries you can develop
on, companies you can contract with for support or consulting, and
overall it's pretty secure.
But IM companies don't choose XMPP. Whatsapp was initially build on top
of XMPP but now it's something different. New services like Slack and
Signal don't use XMPP neither. So seems like XMPP is not that featured
protocol even though there are "server packages, libraries and support".
I'd say MUC and Federation.
MUC's just not the right model anymore. (Hence we need MIX).
And if your business plan doesn't involve federation, why bother with
the additional overhead and complexity?
Individual services more or less operate on a business plan that's the
antithesis of federation - they want to get everyone using their own
service. Signal's is similar, but they want to get a sufficient
critical mass on their own service to then sell the (now proven)
technology to others.
Businesses simply buying an IM service, however, want to be able to
talk to their supply-chain, customers, and so on. So federation can
still be a selling point.
I'm still pondering all of this.
The world I work in has mostly migrated away from on-premises software,
to cloud services that are public or semi-private. I recognize that some
organizations simply can't go there - they have regulatory reasons or
security policies for not allowing any data outside of their trust
boundaries (e.g., military systems, some big companies, some smaller
companies in specific industries like aerospace or medicine). However,
such organizations are in the minority.
Although I like federation, I'm no longer convinced that it is
necessary for most people. For example, in services like Slack and
Hipchat everything is room-based, and that fits well with MUC/MIX. But
authorization for someone to join a room happens via means other than
server-to-server federation (e.g., set up a private room and invite the
external person to that room directly). Yes, this kind of workaround
isn't exactly elegant, but it mostly works for most people.
As to Signal, they appear to be a not-for-profit and to have not taken
VC money. Thus it's not clear to me that they plan to sell their overall
service to an acquiring company - the usual model these days. Perhaps
they do want to sell their technology or consulting services around
their technology as a way to become self-sustaining, but that's more of
a lifestyle business (with its own myriad challenges!) and not
necessarily a path to selling out. (BTW, if I had gotten serious about
doing something like this with jabber.org, people might be saying the
same thing about that initiative!)
Peter
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