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> The latter is hard to do: push is highly centralized, which is really bad for self-hosted/open source software

Why is this the case? I would have thought it's the same in principle whether it's a central Slack server, or a central FooMumble server running Let's Chat.

(Difficulty of implementation might be high, but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about?)

There are basically two options and they both suck. Either publish one app and distribute the push notification cert (terrible idea) or each hosted site needs it's own cert and thus an Apple account/published app (pain in the ass).

Gotcha, I didn't realize that APNS was involved here. :)

Push is fairly easy to do. There are JS libs for both Google and Apple push services. The hardest part is getting all of your Apple certs setup correctly. Then you just create a simple Cordova app to register devices.

Private/direct messaging is the next big feature we will be adding :)