Re: Let's blow some new life into this community group

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Niels Ole Salscheider
<niels_ole@salscheider-online.de> wrote:
> [Michiel: You might want to send your original mail to the list, too...]

oops! here it is:

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Niels Ole Salscheider
<niels_ole@salscheider-online.de> wrote:
> In fact, I really like that idea: XMPP is already a widely used protocol for
> chat and provides federation. Why don't we just add functionality to store
> additional information on the XMPP server (e. g. address book, calendar,
> relations to other people, public keys, your vcard, ...) and to use Activity
> Streams over XMPP ("Inbox")?

well, i see several reasons why we would want to do everything with
xmpp, mainly that it's well designed for what most of what we want to
do, and it already works in buddycloud, but assuming that we want this
to work in the browser and not require a desktop software install, i
also several reasons why maybe xmpp is not the best choice for
everything:

- unlike http, xmpp doesn't work directly from the browser, so you
need bosh or xmpp-over-websocket.
- even if you use bosh or xmpp-over-websocket, you need to connect to
your own server and use that as a proxy for the server that has the
information you need
- even if you bosh or x-o-w, you will still need a web app that gets
loaded either as a web page or a packaged in-browser app.
- it also seems to be harder to set up and maintain, at least for me
(my erlang skills are rather poor)
- it introduces 2 extra hops: Alice's browser, Alice's server, Bob's
server, Bob's browser. With a custom protocol and websockets it would
be possible for Alice's browser to send directly to Bob's server, but
bosh/x-o-w do not seem to support this. And once we have webrtc (iirc
it's planned for Q4 of this year) we can do directly Alice's browser
-> Bob's browser, after a handshake. That will be really fast, and
also cheap on server load.
- i am not aware to what extent it's possible to host data on an xmpp
server. Also, if i'm viewing images on your server, and they come in
over a websocket (after having unnecessarily gone through my server),
then they would need to travel through the javascript runtime to make
it into the DOM. it just all becomes a bit of a hack.
- we are trying to extend the web, which as Melvin said is http-based.
redesigning the web with xmpp-over-websockets replacing http seems
like reinventing the web-wheel. but as i said, this is with the
assumption that we want something that works in browsers; if we want
to make it a native app then these arguments don't apply.
- i am not aware to what extent it's possible to queue messages on the
server in xmpp when you're offline. i think i heard they will be
queued on the sending server?
- we should, i think, wherever possible try to describe what is
happening instead of prescribing what should happen. If we look at the
web, then people have made personal web pages since long before
MySpace. i think xmpp is mainly used for chat, and not for hosting
photo albums etcetera. so if we now start telling everyone 'you should
do this, because it is what we decided', then we run the risk that
people simply won't listen to us. the easiest way to make sure people
do what you say, is to make sure you say what they do. :)

this list is a bit long so you may think i'm not a fan of xmpp. i am
actually a big fan of xmpp, and of buddycloud in particular. i just
think xmpp has its merit for chat, just like http has its merits for
document hosting.

as for smtp, i think it's hard to be a fan of smtp (and running a
mailserver with traffic is a lot more difficult and more frustrating
than running an xmpp server), but it's extremely widespread, and it is
a federation protocol that has always worked, and that already
integrates with both Google and Facebook. i think if the federated
social web is going to work and not be/stay a niche thing, then it
should try to integrate (or at least bridge) with those two biggies as
much as possible, so smtp for private messages and xmpp for chat both
seem like a quick win there.

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2012 17:41:17 UTC