> - They talk about evaluating extensions but extensions was one of the things I raised as being a turn off.
They can be daunting at the start (as it is with learning any new technology ecosystem), but once configured; it's not something one thinks about.
> - They talk about clients, but there's no shortage of other chat solutions out there with decent clients these days. A list of platforms and links to clients doesn't tell me whether XMPP clients are buggy or well polished. Let alone why I should use XMPP over another solution with a well polished client.
My personal favourite is conversations.im, but these days, with the notable exception from Pidgin, they all tend to interoperate fine. iOS clients still has issues with push notifications (thanks to the OS level) that are being fixed: https://snikket.org/blog/snikket-ios-public-release/
> - They talk about privacy but even on XMPP that's not a given and there are other solutions out there if you're interested in privacy.
Disagree on this point:
- Other solutions generally require a number or email address. On XMPP, you can simply create an account by pointing a client at a server and asking for an account (you can even create a completely random pseudonym).
- Other solutions do not generally allow you to self-host (Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, etc), so they're not private even to begin with.
- Other solutions don't generally have the flexibility of federation to let you talk to other servers (such as Mattermost).
- XMPP clients also have optional support for Tor, and servers can be hosted on hidden services and can talk to servers over Tor too - which is much better than Signal and others should you desire an elevated level of privacy (I do not bother with this point, but if I met someone who did - good to have as an option)
- Things like Briar that do P2P do exist, but their clients are lacking in other areas such as voice calls, multi-platform support, etc.
> - They talk about voice and video calls, and that at least is new from when I last tried. So that's one thing in favour of your point. However I already have a half a dozen platforms that do that -- platforms that already have my friends and family on it. Why should I set up another? And moreover how am I going to convince my friends and family to install this other chat client if you can't even convince me, a fellow technology geek, to try it?
It's just chat at the end of the day, and as I said - I did not want to rely on a third-party for something as crucial as my personal, private comms.
Another thing that I enjoy about XMPP is that the clients support multiple accounts as a first-class feature (something you cannot do on Signal/WhatsApp). Theoretically; from the same app; I could have accounts for personal, work, a neighborhood chat, and an account over at sfconservancy[1], whilst being able to enable/disable as and when I want to.
This last point is more pertinent as people become fatigued and bored of having to have multiple apps for different contacts across multiple platforms (a pain point made worse as new chat apps come into life every other year and contacts decide to move over). In my case, I know that there will be open-source XMPP clients that I can use to log into my server and still have the same contact list.
Tools like https://quicksy.im/ also exist to make it easier for normal people to adjust to an XMPP client before moving them over to non-number based accounts.
[1]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jun/21/chat-options/