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1. MattJ (mattj@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 23-Jun-2023 21:01:37 UTC MattJ

   Just for the record: what Google/FB did to #XMPP was not 'embrace, extend, extinguish'. I bring this up because people are focusing on FB developing a divergent protocol/extensions. Maybe that's a valid concern, but it's unrelated to XMPP.

   While Google Talk was actively developed, Google folk actively participated in the community. In fact they contributed important extensions such as Jingle, the protocol we still use today for audio/video calls in XMPP, and other bits and pieces.

   (cont...)

   • soloojos (Mastodon Uruguay) repeated this.
   • MattJ (mattj@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 23-Jun-2023 21:01:43 UTC MattJ

     in reply to

     The big problem was simply that these were the largest nodes on the network. They had so many users, they had nothing to lose by putting up the walls and shutting out what was (to them) a small minority.

     The answer to this problem is nothing to do with the protocol, but just ensuring that the network is diverse and distributed, not centralized in one or two seats of power. Now how to actually do that, is a harder question. But it's the one we should be discussing.

     soloojos (Mastodon Uruguay) repeated this.
   • MattJ (mattj@floss.social)'s status on Friday, 23-Jun-2023 21:02:05 UTC MattJ

     in reply to

     For example, when I started work on Snikket, a project to make XMPP easier, I deliberately chose to focus on helping people establish small servers, based on existing social relationships. I specifically did not want to become just another large public service, partly due to what happened with Google Talk.

     A large network of small nodes is more robust against disruption. It's what any healthy decentralized network should be aiming for. Applies to XMPP, Fediverse and the internet in general.