mewmew
@luna @allison @cadence > Jabber generates a lot more traffic than it necessarily should and will not perform well when users have many friends or enter huge chatrooms.

probably not a consideration of people who wrote XMPP, given, well, XMPP
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Nobody [Linux Walt Alt (@lnxw37a2)]
@mewmew As a user of both XMPP and Matrix (multiple servers and clients for each), it is apparent that for similar post volume, XMPP is more performant. I don't know why Matrix people feel they have to hate XMPP. Their main competition is Discord, not XMPP, and they're losing badly.

Matrix would do better if they built an XMPP bridge into the server, so that each Matrix room was also available as an XMPP MUC, because the energy spent on trashing the other open protocol could be spent catching up to Discord, Mattermost, etc.

@luna @allison @cadence
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Wolf480pl
Follow

@lnxw37a2 @allison @mewmew @luna @cadence
IIRC at the very start they had a FAQ why do we need a new protocol and can't just use an existing one, and they argued that XMPP's architecture causes some unfixable issues. So in a way, XMPP being bad justifies Matrix's existence. If they didn't hate on XMPP, they'd have to admit the whole new protocol is a wasted effort.

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @lnxw37a2 @allison @luna @cadence well, XMPP does suck enough to justify Matrix's existence though. evidenced by everyone building on Matrix and not XMPP
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
you mean "everyone who builds on Matrix is evidence" or "everyone builds on Matrix, and nobody builds on XMPP, which is evidence" ?

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 the latter.

I can get my family on Matrix. there's no way I'm getting them on XMPP. Matrix clients are more user-friendly, and the protocol is more useful.
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2

>the latter

But it's false.
There are a bunch of people building on XMPP, and a few days ago I've seen Tigase publish their implementation of MIX.

ICYMI, MIX is a replacement for MUC, but based on pubsub and aiming for a more Discord/Slack/Matrix-style experience (with history and all that).

Also, some of popular proprietary chat apps (forgot which) use XMPP internally.

Both of these show that XMPP is a viable base to build a modern chat on.

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mewmew

@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 oh wow someone built a third type of muc, this one’s gonna work :cirno_doubt:

Also, some of popular proprietary chat apps (forgot which) use XMPP internally.

no, because they don’t federate which is the whole point here

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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2

Your other argument - convincing faimly, user-friendliness, etc - are more about the clients and top-level features, not really about the core protocol.

And you're right, XMPP's ecosystem with the mess of extension sucks.
But that doesn't mean Matrix couldn't use XMPP core and build their extensions and clients on top, achieveing the same result without making the latency skyrocket

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 Matrix actually doesn't have latency issues. Synapse does. the protocol is fine.

there's a lot of work on writing non-Synapse Matrix that won't have the latency issues.
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2

> oh wow, someone build a third implementation of Matrix server, this one's gonna work

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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
srsly though:

Even if this is an implementation issue, they wouldn't have it if they built on top of XMPP, because then they could just extend/fork ejabberd or Tigase or sth.

By choosing to develop their protocol from scratch, they opted in to that mountain of work that they have to do before they have a solid implementation.

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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
Also, if Matrix's federation works the way I think it works, they have an unfixable DDoS amplification vector built into the protocol, which manifests in a non-malicious way whenever a small instance tries to join a big room.

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 full-mesh isn't inherent in the protocol, no
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
Are webhooks inherent in the protocol?

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 full mesh is your issue, isn't it?

I still don't see how this is even a problem given that it a. only effects things that are not Matrix homeservers b. is somewhat hard to pull off and c. doesn't even work well given the nature of backoff
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
> DNS rebinding

But ok, if they have a reasonable back-off, it should be ok after they stop being full mesh.

Still, an idle TCP (or even websocket) connection from the subscriber to the publisher would be preferable to webhooks IMO.
Or do they already do that?

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 that's been under consideration, you could probably ask in the spec room. I don't remember the reason for not doing that.
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Wolf480pl

@mewmew @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2
Ok, so they have a chance to end up with a decent, scalable protocol. And after a few trials and errors they'll probably have a performant and reliable implementation.

I think by that time MIX will be widely implemented, possibly with nice clients with Matrix/Discord-like UX.

Does that mean Matrix was wasted effort? Not necessarily.
But I don't think Matrix is significantly better than XMPP overall. It wins in some areas, loses in others.

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mewmew
@wolf480pl @allison @luna @cadence @lnxw37a2 we'll see
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