Slack now concentrates HipChat and Stride users

This has been announced, as a partnership between Slack and Atlassian. HipChat and Stride users will be migrated to Slack. End of this story.

Slack-HipChat-Stride

Most of the too many Team Chat actors will disappear thanks to darwinism applied to IT ecosystem. With Slack consolidating its leadership on the market, the natural selection will accelerate.

Most of the Team Chat players joined the bandwagon, because it is the first generation of Instant Messaging that monetises. Most of the Team Chat players only cloned a subset of what makes Slack pretty good, none have really innovated on top of it.

So, we see one more massive centralisation of users, under a proprietary silo, that is not even reliable…

The true awakening of XMPP

2016 is definitely the year of the awakening of XMPP. It is already mid-year, but here is what happened already, and what we can do next.

Matthew Wild: non-tech requirements

At the FOSDEM 2016 and XMPP Summit 19, Matthew Wild, lead developer of Prosody, pushed the XMPP community into « Exploring the non-technical requirements of open communication« , which lead to the creation of a very small website (although unmaintained), but still a very strong initiative: modernxmpp.org. As an XSF Council member, Matthew opened up minds with this thinking out of the box.

Nicolas Vérité: 3 generations of IM

I did my part, by contributing to the wake up call, with « The state of XMPP and instant messaging, The awakening« , followed by « Welcome to the third generation of Instant Messaging! » part 1 (1st and 2nd gen of IM) and part 2 (3rd gen of IM, synthesis matrix), and « 3 gens of IM, next steps for XMPP« . I believe this had its positive effects as well, as some items were actively discussed forward at the XMPP Summit 20 (hosted by Atlassian, makers of the 3rd gen IM HipChat, based on XMPP), and the feedback from the nice guys of Tigase said: « The most prevalent topic at the summit was the future of XMPP communication, and how it can fit into the third generation of instant messaging. ».

Daniel Gultsch: mobile XMPP

Daniel Gultsch, lead developer of Conversations.im Android client, has written a thought-provoking piece on « The State of Mobile XMPP in 2016« , pointing at strengths and weaknesses, and debunking some misunderstanding.

Georg Lukas: easy XMPP

Today, it is Georg Lukas, pointing out « Easy XMPP« , with « Easy Onboarding » and « Easy Roster Invitations« . To quote Georg, « After reflecting upon all these things though I must say that I am surprised how much low-hanging fruit we’ve ignored over the last decade or so ».

Outcome?

It is clear that these many wake up calls have echoed with each other. We have quite a clear path, that may need a little refinement. Now it is a matter of priorities and formalisation, given the limited resources we have…

Is it time we start to write a vision statement and a roadmap for the next 6 to 12 months?

3 gens of IM, next steps for XMPP

Since the publication online of the slides of my talk at FOSDEM 2016, right after the XMPP Summit 19, I have developed the three generations of IM in text:

Before you go on this current article, please really do read those « 3 gens of IM » articles pointed before.

Ready?

After such a market observations for months and years, with analysts, with customers and prospects, with developers worldwide, users of all sorts, startupers, agile and lean startup practitioners, I think we can tell what XMPP specs, clients, libraries, and servers makers need to work on…

What we need to develop as specs in priority:

  • full text search of archive;
  • in-chat media, with previews (HTTP file upload is only a good beginning);
  • MUC without disruption: recover your archive while you were offline (MIX is going slowly and is too heavy+complex);
  • group voice and video;
  • stickers, maybe;
  • easily recover and change passwords like any modern app through an SMS or email.

Service administrators need to deploy massively MAM and Carbons, for multi-device experience.

The top priority for all client developers:

  • really, really go full flat design;
  • desktop clients need to really, really go single-window;
  • implement and use MAM and Carbons, and enable those by default;
  • presence and roster should be pushed back a little from the user interface, in favor of discussions/conversations.

Recovered trust and motivation on XMPP and RTC

After the XMPP Summit and the FOSDEM in Brussels this week-end (on Thu 28 + Fri 29 and Sat 30 + Sun 31), I can now expose and share my feelings.

Having been an XMPP evangelist for many years, at some point I simply lacked motivation and belief. Since I was hired at Erlang Solutions as a Product Owner for the MongooseIM XMPP server, I met a highly competent and clever team. I was wondering since, if I should wear again my promoter hat. Now I know.

At the XMPP Summit, a lot of discussions took place, and we definitely say we have moved one strong step forward (MIX, E2E, simpler reconnection). It has been a highly productive edition, with applied core values, such as openness, ownership and responsibility.

At the FOSDEM, three interesting talks took place

  • Daniel Pocock on network effect, and basic requirements, plus the probable freertc initiative (non-XMPP-specific)
  • Matthew Wild’s on probable modernxmpp initiative to reach masses beyond techies
  • My talk, on the three generations of IM, our own trough of disillusionment, and the clean up we need to make

If you allow me to enlarge the view outside the XMPP world:

  • The SIP community might suffer some similar illness and trough of disillusionment
  • The WebRTC is trendy but lacks features and implementations, such as signalling, for which there is still no open standard
  • Overall, the RTC communities want to to change the landscape of Real Time communications, making it more open, decentralised, privacy, security, and free/libre

I believe we have here the basis of renewal, with some initiatives that need to include a larger crowd for more feedback, in order to build a real vision.

Can you please participate in this little poll?

XMPP Summit and FOSDEM in Brussels

This Thursday 28th and Friday 29th of January 2016, it is the 19th XMPP Summit, that will be held in Brussels, and I will be there Erlang Solutions, especially with Michal Piotrowski, the tech lead of MongooseIM.

XMPP, aka Jabber

This Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st, it is the FOSDEM. I will give a talk, in the Real-Time devroom: « The state of XMPP and instant messaging, The awakening« .

Exciting XMPP news of the world!

Lots of news this week!

SPIRIT DSP released VideoMost SDK 5.0 for mobile videoconferencing service providers

VideoMost uses XMPP for signalling.

node-xmpp-core 5.0

The node-xmpp project has released node-xmpp-core 5.0.

xmppbot in PHP

xmppbot is a client for the Laravel PHP framework.

How to Chat on Livecoding.tv Using an External XMPP Client

livecoding.tv has explained in a blog post how to live chat on top of coding streams.

Roundup of the IM in Firefoex OS (french)

The french-speaking Firefox OS community has released an interesting and insightful article (in french, sorry) about the Instant Messaging apps in Firefox OS.

Do you want to read it in automated, approximately translated version?

Movim has tags

The excellent XMPP-based social network has now received the new tagging feature:

MongooseIM 1.6 is available

Check out the blog post for all the infos: MongooseIM 1.6: Riak, DevOps love, and so much more!

PBX-versie has XMPP

voipcenter.be has released version 6.0.10 of the cloud PBX, with XMPP integration, for presence and signalling.

 

Crowdfunding XMPP

Do you want to help XMPP?

Want a decentralized, encrypted, Free (as in freedom) “social” app on Android and desktop ?

The « Salut à Toi » project says:

 

Please contribute!

You can go to the crowdfunding platform, and give money to: Libervia- Ethical and Free (Libre) social network.

XMPP News! HabaHaba, Beaux Boulons, Paranoid, WP.com, DreamHost, Fastmail, Fedora

Here are the new news of XMPP!

HabaHaba.im, did you know?

The habahaba.im online service is described in the wiki:  features, sceenshots, and video. The source code is available: https://github.com/jbinary/habahaba-js. Thanks to Sergey Dobrov!

Habahaba.im frontpage Habahaba.im-frontpage

Habahaba.im chat Habahaba.im-chat

XMPP presentation: the protocole the revolutionises internet

The « Atelier des Beaux Boulons » is a non-profit FabLab in Auxerre, France, and they presente XMPP, here is the proof:

XMPP For Paranoid People

_NSAKEY has published:

The presentation « XMPP For Paranoid People » (instructive) has an 8-bits design! ;-)

The WordPress dot com bot

Did you know that xmpp:bot@im.wordpress.com notifies you via XMPP of all the comments on your WordPress.com blog?

How to send Jabber (XMPP) messages from Django

Alex Morozov blogged this:

A simple Django notification bot.

DreamHost October Newslettery: What’s That Feature?

The WTF of DreamHost: « What’s that feature? It’s XMPP!« . This points to their wiki.

Fastmail : Shutting down our XMPP chat service

Fastmail closes their XMPP server on the 31st of January 2016. Sad.

Building teams around SIP and XMPP in Debian and Fedora

Daniel Pocock tries to reproduce the Debian experience, but this time at Fedora.

Do you like these news?