I did not test #matrix yet; is the development far enough to move non-nerds to it? Is it easy enough and reliable enough to be used by average non-nerd users?
I mean in terms of simplicity.
Can you recommend it?
Currently using #xmpp, but especially encrypted group chats on #iOS (zom / chatsecure) do not work very well with #omemo encryption.
@Billie
I do not recommend switching all the communications to it immediately… but to try it, and see for yourself. — The rationale behind all these novel instant messaging systems (#Matrix, #Tox, etc.) seems to be that #IRC, #XMPP and so on are fairly old by now, and the respective protocols grew too big and became too complicated to support them in software and add new functionality. — Revolutionary approach over evolutionary: that kind-of makes sense sometimes.
@amiloradovsky Thanks a lot for clarifying! I will stick to #xmpp for the moment, as end-to-end encryption is much a priority for me. But for sure I'll try out #matrix!
@amiloradovsky Yes, thanks, just reading the HP matrix.org and there seems to be an #android riot app.
[…] #IRC, #XMPP and so on are fairly old by now, and the respective protocols grew too big and became too complicated to support them in software and add new functionality.
XMPP developer here. XMPP is indeed old in computer time, but I don't see why this is a problem (HTTP is old, HTML is old, TCP/IP are old, SMTP is old, Javascript is old, C/C++ are old, so what?). But I can tell that the protocol is not "too complicated" and new functionalities continue to be added.
@Goffi
Thank you for your informed opinion.
I'm actually trying to figure out whether #Matrix etc. are reinventing the wheel, or there's indeed something that cannot be implemented within the #XMPP family any easily.
By now I'm fine with XMPP, and, just like @Billie, value the encryption over other features.
But I'm also curious what the other, more "revolutionary", systems have to offer.
@amiloradovsky @Billie you're welcome. They are going their own way, but there is nothing that can't be implemented in XMPP. Their web interface is nice looking, but the same thing is actually possible with XMPP (check #Movim for instance, I'm myself developing a web interface which is really advanced). The main difference is that they have paid developers working full time, something really rare in XMPP client world (less in servers).
@Goffi @amiloradovsky
I have a #movim account and know it, yes :-) In my opinion, #xmpp is a good protocol and with #otr and #omemo it has everything one needs for secure chatting.
The downside is, that not all clients support everything the same way (well, that is of cause the nature of it!), so sometimes you run in things that do not work very well together.
Beginners / non-tech folk gets disappointed too fast if things do not run out of the box.
I'll give you an example in my next toot
Example:
#xmpp chat groups with #omemo encryption run perfect, as long as #android devices use the #conversations app.
As soon as you get #iOS folk to join with the #chatsecure / #zom apps, things get messed up, you get unencrypted messages etc. because the #iOS apps seem to only partly support this (XEP-0384 I guess).
Then, as a consequence, they say #whatsapp runs better 😟
In addition, you need to carefully look what the server supports.
HELP! 😉
@Billie @amiloradovsky OMEMO is still work in progress, and using it for group is not specified. Still really recent stuff, and it take time to stabilise, that's normal but I understand that's frustrating. But if you compare with Whatsapp, compare with one client talking with same one and not 2 different clients. Having different software is a big advantages that Whatsapp has not.
@Goffi @amiloradovsky I know this and that is why I am using it.
I am fully aware of all the advantages.
The advantages are big. No doubt. They make me sleep well at night.
But, sometimes, it is complicated to explain all this to non-tech folks. It really is. And that is all I complain about.
I appreciate your work for #xmpp, #movim and similar things very much.
But it is not always easy to convince people to prefer it over proprietary & centralized stuff like whatsapp/facebook.
@orbifx @amiloradovsky @Billie I actually see XML as an advantage. It has namespaces, it's readable (if properly indented and colorized), and has proper typing. In addition XMPP use it in a simplified way (no attributes namespaces for instance), which make the whole thing quite easy.
@amiloradovsky @Billie about other things, the client I'm working on is experimenting in many ways : social network, forum, file sharing, tickets/merge requests handling, photo albums, etc.
@Goffi
Hmm, the URL in your bio doesn't have a TLD… Not sure what that means :)
@amiloradovsky that means that I forgot it and you're the first one to tell it to me, thanks ;) it's https://salut-a-toi.org indeed. You can check my blog on https://www.goffi.org/ if you want details (which is run on #XMPP via Salut à Toi).
@Goffi
OK. Did a little shout out. But screw up the mention…
https://functional.cafe/users/amiloradovsky/statuses/100102840780174399
@amiloradovsky nice thanks, we don't have a lot of visibility (and we are not on fb/twitter/github), so this help :)
@Billie
I used it a little, but not very extensively. It seems at least not less friendly for non-techies than #XMPP and the like — installing Riot.im and registering an account on Matrix.org doesn't require writing any configuration files or scripts… :)
AFAIK, end-to-end encryption is not considered stable ATM (marked as experimental).
P.S. Again, AFAIK, #OMEMO in general is supported rather poorly across XMPP clients, but I didn't have problems with it in Conversations.im.