Jabber/XMPP: 25 Years of Digital Independence
When it comes to digital independence, various solutions are being discussed in the field of communication and instant messaging. On the one hand, there is the reliance on proprietary APIs and providers largely built with venture capital. On the other hand, there is the complex task of developing a custom protocol from scratch. However, it might be worth taking a look at long-standing solutions that follow an actual internet standard and stand out due to numerous independent implementations.
Jabber/XMPP is one such internet standard and is "ready for prime time".
In over 25 years, the XMPP instant messaging protocol has seen its fair share of ups and downs. This talk highlights the recent history of the protocol and explains why open source alone, without federation and vendor-independent standards, is not enough for true digital sovereignty. The current status quo of XMPP is showcased through modern features like emoji reactions, moderation, read state synchronization across multiple devices, and time zone indicators for contacts. Additionally, the presentation offers a look ahead at upcoming protocol extensions and the initiative to return to the IETF with "XMPP 2.0" to update the existing RFC standards. Finally, the talk demonstrates why XMPP is a solid foundation for custom chat products and why it is rarely worth developing a new protocol from scratch for this purpose.
Hi, I’m Daniel 🤝
I’ve been a freelance software developer for 15+ years. My main interests are in open standards and communication protocols (Instant Messaging, E-mail, Fediverse). I’m the project lead on Conversations and Ltt.rs.
Most of my open source projects are hosted on Codeberg ⛰️.
I’m an active member of the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF), serving as the chair of the council and as a member of the editor team.
If you want to learn more about me checkout out my Mastodon 🦣 or my website 🌐.
Marvin has been a free software developer for 20 years. He has been developing and contributing to interoperable instant messaging solutions for a decade, joined the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) seven years ago, and has served on the XSF Council for the past five years.