RE: Discontinuing XMPP support after IETF 115

["Maisonneuve, Julien (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay)" <julien.maisonneuve@xxxxxxxxx>]

If IETF had been serious about keeping Jabber useful, it would have offered hosting jabber accounts, or even created them automagically with datatracker accounts.

It’s true that clients were not always easy to configure and some fell in disuse but there were lots of them and recommending the best would have solved the problem for most.

But the biggest hurdle were the jabber accounts, with servers disappearing or just not working.

This path was not taken, and now we are relying on a third party service for which longevity and data safety are unclear.

A missed opportunity ?

Julien.

 

From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Sylvain Baya
Sent: Friday, September 9, 2022 11:41 AM
To: IETF Community <ietf@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Discontinuing XMPP support after IETF 115

 

Dear IETF Community,

Please see my comments below, inline...

Thanks.

Le vendredi 9 septembre 2022, Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx> a écrit :

Hi Sylvain,

thank you for this data point.  Yes, XMPP the protocol is alive and well.

 

Hi Carsten,

...and thanks for your useful clarifications, brother.

 

 

 

The discussion in this thread, besides really being of very little use, conflates the trajectory of XMPP the protocol with that of “Jabber”.

 

...i agree, we should differenciate those usecases 

along the discussion; because different usecases 

are mostly results of operational implementations.

 

 

 

When we say “Jabber”, we think about people who have Jabber accounts on some public Jabber server that is part of a single global Jabber network.

 

Why? Internet Society could not simply launch its 

own instance which would be used at least by all  

its child Orgs and particularily IETF's participants...

 

...same apply to an instance of FLOSS versioning 

service (git-powered) :-/

 

 

 

 

These people are using client software to access their Jabber account and send and receive messages.

 

So! the need of public server instances; for people

who are longtime users of the Jabber's service...

 

 

 

Jabber is a user service, a bit like the way e-mail is a user service.

 

...thus your good point on centralization issues.

 

 

 

XMPP is a protocol, a bit like SMTP being a protocol.
Both protocols are strongly associated with a specific user service (*), but the protocol and the traditionally dominant user service are not the same.

The Jabber user service is what’s waning, for two reasons:

— Jabber servers vanishing, making it harder for people to have and maintain “my Jabber account”.
— Client implementations getting harder to configure and use; general bitrot in the presence of new OS versions and other changes to the protocol landscape.

While the e-mail user service is in an interesting global transition, it does not experience these two specific effects at the same level of impact, so the intensity of this development is a thought-provoking diagnostic for Jabber.

 

Many thanks, once for your detailed clarifications 

on the very issue.

 

Hopefully, IETF-ISOC would consider to self hosting

some of the useful service they (or communities) 

are actively using.

 

Thanks.

 

Shalom,

--sb.

 

 

 

Grüße, Carsten

(*) (To complete the analogy on the other side, SMTP of course can be used (and is being used) for other things than the e-mail user service I described.  While under heavy competition from HTTP callbacks, this type of SMTP communication continues being used.)

--

Best Regards !
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