6 ms·

I would like to know how this is different from jabber/xmpp and how likely it is that these differences are worthwhile. They say their API is more "pragmatic" a

by Sarien 12y ago

I would like to know how this is different from jabber/xmpp and how likely it is that these differences are worthwhile. They say their API is more "pragmatic" and writing a full-blown XMPP client certainly is very tricky but I wonder if improving the way XMPP works wouldn't ultimately create a better result. After all, a lot of thought and experience has by now gone into it.

pessimizer 12y ago
http://matrix.org/blog/2014/09/03/hello-world/ http://matrix.org/blog/2014/09/03/hello-world/ http://matrix.org/docs/spec http://matrix.org/docs/spec http://matrix.org/docs/howtos http://matrix.org/docs/howtos http://matrix.org/docs/api http://matrix.org/docs/api
- Sarien 12y ago
  I intentionally did not try to answer the question myself because I assume there are people who are much more familiar with the details of the XMPP protocol and much more suited to making a comparison. So fuck you and your shitty rtfm answer. I can't just read that and find out myself. Just like a bunch of satellite images would not answer my question what the weather will be like tomorrow.
  - dang 12y ago
    > So fuck you and your shitty rtfm answer Nothing of this on Hacker News, please, regardless of how unhelpful someone else's comment may have been.
    - zo1 12y ago
      It's better than a downvote, if you ask me. A downvote is an anonymous put-down, and that's why people use it to punish anyone that disagrees with them, or if they don't like someone's opinion. Perhaps if down-votes were displayed, and people could respond. Dunno, perhaps we're over-complicating it.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        A downvote is a tool to provide community management of the signal-to-noise ratio on HN. Encouraging noise to trigger more noise would not be an effective means of serving that purpose.
        zo1 12y ago
        That's not been my experience with downvotes here so far. I've regularly had meaningful comments, that would have been seen as "conversation" in a normal context, get downvoted here. Now I don't know what "noise" that got rid of, but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes and/or ignore my comment.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > I've regularly had meaningful comments The fact that you thought they were meaningful does not mean that others found them as meaningful contributions to the discussion. > but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes Downvotes (because the fact that they have been given is visible and, with a small number, the comment text's visibility is not reduced much) do encourage others to moderate -- either with downvotes or upvotes. If they are piling on with downvotes, that's perhaps a signal that lots of people here think your comment is inappropriate. I've had lots of posts of mine draw both hostile responses and a few downvotes -- but most of those get reverse by upvotes quickly. On the rare occasions where I've gotten more than a few downvotes that haven't been quickly countered by upvotes, I've usually been able to see a plausible explanation other than simple disagreement why people would see the post as not a substantive addition. And that's been true of most of other people's posts I've seen downvoted more than slightly, so I am not inclined to think that there is a broad, general problem with downvoting on HN.
        ThomPete 12y ago
        I think this is true when discussions tend to be quantifiable areas. But I have seen and experienced downvotes purely based on disagreement about political opinion which is why I wish downvotes mandated a comment as to why the downvote is happening. Other than that I agree with you.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Lots of drama here. >I would like to know how this is different from jabber/xmpp and how likely it is that these differences are worthwhile. I thought the question was fairly content free, and something that someone would be able to answer themselves if they had enough knowledge of XMPP to actually care, and 10 minutes to read the announcement blog. >I wonder if improving the way XMPP works wouldn't ultimately create a better result. After all, a lot of thought and experience has by now gone into it. A vague objection and a truism. Sorry if you felt bullied or something.
oddvar 12y ago
The main issues with XMPP that drove us in this direction were: * Not particularly web-friendly – you can’t easily speak XMPP from a web browser. * Single server per MUC is a single point of control and availability * History synchronisation is very much a second class citizen feature * Stanzas aren’t framed or reliably delivered (without extensions) * Multiple device support is limited * Baseline feature set is so minimal that good user experience cannot be guaranteed * No strong identity system * Not particularly well designed for mobile use cases (push; bandwidth-efficient transports) disclaimer: I'm involved with this project!
- cursed 12y ago
  I've read through the blog, the comment would have been useful on differentiating Matrix from XMPP. Also, sort of off topic, but Skype has a XMPP bridge and WhatsApp is built on XMPP (they just don't support federation).
  - ara4n 12y ago
    Oops - I should have called it out more clearly in the blog. The biggest difference we have over XMPP is probably that messages in Matrix get synchronised over all the participants of a conversation... so you get distributed chat history for free, and no single points of failure on group chat (as you do with XMPP MUCs). And obviously Matrix is plain HTTP+JSON rather than messing around with XML. One of the reasons we built Matrix is because, in practice, pretty much all the current big players started off using XMPP for developing their chat solutions: Google Talk was originally XMPP; I believe Facebook Messenger was built out at first on ejabberd; WhatsApp was originally XMPP etc; even APNS was originally XMPP! But ALL of them have ended up mutating it to a proprietary closed standard - and nobody has even tried open federation other than Google's misadventure with Talk. So, unfortunately, it seems XMPP hasn't ended up being the interoperable web-for-IM that we all hoped. Now, I have absolutely no idea if Matrix will be more successful in solving the problem; the hope is that by keeping it simple and using HTTP APIs there's more of a chance that players of all sizes will start exposing Matrix APIs for federation. Only time will tell. It's also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is a relatively recent potential obstacle: given iMessage and Telegram etc are all end-to-end encrypted, for them to ever federate with Matrix we'll need to support the same semantics and crypto. Hopefully we're going about this the right way (although end-to-end crypto isn't formally specified or implemented yet), but will be an interesting challenge. And one that XMPP hasn't tried to solve at all, as far as I know. (disclaimer: Matrix is my fault)

by Sarien 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

http://matrix.org/blog/2014/09/03/hello-world/ http://matrix.org/blog/2014/09/03/hello-world/ http://matrix.org/docs/spec http://matrix.org/docs/spec http://matrix.org/docs/howtos http://matrix.org/docs/howtos http://matrix.org/docs/api http://matrix.org/docs/api

Sarien 12y ago
I intentionally did not try to answer the question myself because I assume there are people who are much more familiar with the details of the XMPP protocol and much more suited to making a comparison. So fuck you and your shitty rtfm answer. I can't just read that and find out myself. Just like a bunch of satellite images would not answer my question what the weather will be like tomorrow.
- dang 12y ago
  > So fuck you and your shitty rtfm answer Nothing of this on Hacker News, please, regardless of how unhelpful someone else's comment may have been.
  - zo1 12y ago
    It's better than a downvote, if you ask me. A downvote is an anonymous put-down, and that's why people use it to punish anyone that disagrees with them, or if they don't like someone's opinion. Perhaps if down-votes were displayed, and people could respond. Dunno, perhaps we're over-complicating it.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      A downvote is a tool to provide community management of the signal-to-noise ratio on HN. Encouraging noise to trigger more noise would not be an effective means of serving that purpose.
      - zo1 12y ago
        That's not been my experience with downvotes here so far. I've regularly had meaningful comments, that would have been seen as "conversation" in a normal context, get downvoted here. Now I don't know what "noise" that got rid of, but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes and/or ignore my comment.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        > I've regularly had meaningful comments The fact that you thought they were meaningful does not mean that others found them as meaningful contributions to the discussion. > but it sure did serve a pretty powerful way of signaling others to jump on board with the downvotes Downvotes (because the fact that they have been given is visible and, with a small number, the comment text's visibility is not reduced much) do encourage others to moderate -- either with downvotes or upvotes. If they are piling on with downvotes, that's perhaps a signal that lots of people here think your comment is inappropriate. I've had lots of posts of mine draw both hostile responses and a few downvotes -- but most of those get reverse by upvotes quickly. On the rare occasions where I've gotten more than a few downvotes that haven't been quickly countered by upvotes, I've usually been able to see a plausible explanation other than simple disagreement why people would see the post as not a substantive addition. And that's been true of most of other people's posts I've seen downvoted more than slightly, so I am not inclined to think that there is a broad, general problem with downvoting on HN.
        ThomPete 12y ago
        I think this is true when discussions tend to be quantifiable areas. But I have seen and experienced downvotes purely based on disagreement about political opinion which is why I wish downvotes mandated a comment as to why the downvote is happening. Other than that I agree with you.
pessimizer 12y ago
Lots of drama here. >I would like to know how this is different from jabber/xmpp and how likely it is that these differences are worthwhile. I thought the question was fairly content free, and something that someone would be able to answer themselves if they had enough knowledge of XMPP to actually care, and 10 minutes to read the announcement blog. >I wonder if improving the way XMPP works wouldn't ultimately create a better result. After all, a lot of thought and experience has by now gone into it. A vague objection and a truism. Sorry if you felt bullied or something.

oddvar 12y ago

The main issues with XMPP that drove us in this direction were: * Not particularly web-friendly – you can’t easily speak XMPP from a web browser. * Single server per MUC is a single point of control and availability * History synchronisation is very much a second class citizen feature * Stanzas aren’t framed or reliably delivered (without extensions) * Multiple device support is limited * Baseline feature set is so minimal that good user experience cannot be guaranteed * No strong identity system * Not particularly well designed for mobile use cases (push; bandwidth-efficient transports) disclaimer: I'm involved with this project!

cursed 12y ago
I've read through the blog, the comment would have been useful on differentiating Matrix from XMPP. Also, sort of off topic, but Skype has a XMPP bridge and WhatsApp is built on XMPP (they just don't support federation).
- ara4n 12y ago
  Oops - I should have called it out more clearly in the blog. The biggest difference we have over XMPP is probably that messages in Matrix get synchronised over all the participants of a conversation... so you get distributed chat history for free, and no single points of failure on group chat (as you do with XMPP MUCs). And obviously Matrix is plain HTTP+JSON rather than messing around with XML. One of the reasons we built Matrix is because, in practice, pretty much all the current big players started off using XMPP for developing their chat solutions: Google Talk was originally XMPP; I believe Facebook Messenger was built out at first on ejabberd; WhatsApp was originally XMPP etc; even APNS was originally XMPP! But ALL of them have ended up mutating it to a proprietary closed standard - and nobody has even tried open federation other than Google's misadventure with Talk. So, unfortunately, it seems XMPP hasn't ended up being the interoperable web-for-IM that we all hoped. Now, I have absolutely no idea if Matrix will be more successful in solving the problem; the hope is that by keeping it simple and using HTTP APIs there's more of a chance that players of all sizes will start exposing Matrix APIs for federation. Only time will tell. It's also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is a relatively recent potential obstacle: given iMessage and Telegram etc are all end-to-end encrypted, for them to ever federate with Matrix we'll need to support the same semantics and crypto. Hopefully we're going about this the right way (although end-to-end crypto isn't formally specified or implemented yet), but will be an interesting challenge. And one that XMPP hasn't tried to solve at all, as far as I know. (disclaimer: Matrix is my fault)