Howdy all, What are good recommendations for people to set up a hosted XMPP account? XMPP <URL:http://xmpp.org/> is an open-specified, federated, standard <URL:http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2004-10-04.shtml> real-time messaging protocol. Consequently there are numerous free-software XMPP services and clients that can talk with each other. As we discussed briefly at this month's Free Software Melbourne meeting (2013-06-20), Google Talk uses XMPP. But existing accounts are now <URL:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging> being migrated from Google Talk to Google Hangout, which uses a proprietary non-standard protocol and operates only on Google servers. There are no free-software clients, and obviously no services provided by anyone other than Google. So in order for XMPP to continue we need to have clear recommendations for good servers to switch to. What servers are good to recommend to our friends who are Google Talk refugees? -- \ “Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done | `\ for me?” —Groucho Marx | _o__) | Ben Finney
We have been using ejabberd at Vpac for years. It works well with little maintenance. we don't use any fancy features.
Ben Finney <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> writes:
So in order for XMPP to continue we need to have clear recommendations for good servers to switch to. What servers are good to recommend to our friends who are Google Talk refugees?
I wasn't specific enough here: I mean “which services are good to recommend”, i.e. recommendations to give to people who aren't going to set up their own server softweare but want an existing, hosted service where they can get an XMPP account. -- \ “Those who write software only for pay should go hurt some | `\ other field.” —Erik Naggum, in _gnu.misc.discuss_ | _o__) | Ben Finney
On 21/06/2013 6:51 PM, "Ben Finney" <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
I wasn't specific enough here: I mean “which services are good to recommend”, i.e. recommendations to give to people who aren't going to set up their own server softweare but want an existing, hosted service where they can get an XMPP account.
I use jabber.org.au See https://jabber.org.au/ from memory.
On 21/06/13 19:22, Brian May wrote:
On 21/06/2013 6:51 PM, "Ben Finney" <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
I wasn't specific enough here: I mean “which services are good to recommend”, i.e. recommendations to give to people who aren't going to set up their own server softweare but want an existing, hosted service where they can get an XMPP account.
I use jabber.org.au
See https://jabber.org.au/ from memory.
I run my own XMPP server (ejabber), but I have people on my roster that use the DuckDuckGo XMPP servers at dukgo.com. Setup instructions here: https://dukgo.com/blog/using-pidgin-with-xmpp-jabber Information about the privacy policy in place (which appears to be one of the best) down the bottom of this post: https://dukgo.com/blog/xmpp-services-at-duckduckgo I feel that having a well thought-out privacy policy is very important, particularly for a communications service - and it's something that jabber.org.au seems to lack. There are two concerns I have with DuckDuckGo's XMPP offering however: 1. DuckDuckGo is a US company. If they aren't logging anything and you trust the encryption in place, that perhaps may not be too concerning. 2. The DuckDuckGo XMPP service uses a self-signed certificate, and no fingerprint is provided. This would seem to introduce some risk of a man in the middle attack. Due to concern 2, I find DuckDuckGo currently difficult to recommend (but I don't know anything better to suggest). Hopefully they sort it out soon. -Adam
participants (4)
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Adam Bolte -
Andrew Spiers -
Ben Finney -
Brian May