I like XMPP. i think it's quite awesome, actually. I guess in this
post i'm gonna talk about why i think it's neat.

SIGNAL:
Most people i know use Signal. I can settle with that, as the user
experience is very smooth.

Signal is decentralized, but not federated. This is a weakness and a
strength; Users know that they can video call any other user, because
they all connect from the same server.

MATRIX:
Matrix is federated and decentralized and that's awesome, but honestly
I don't know much about it other than that Synapse is expensive and
difficult to self-host.

EMAIL:
Email is still my baby, don't get me wrong here. I love, love, love
email. I just don't want to host it personally.

I did set up SPF, DMARC, DKIM, SMTP, IMAPS, and spam filtering, but my
ISP doesn't own my IP, so they couldn't set a PTR record for
me. Because of that, I'd be unable to talk to people using gmail (or
many big name services).

Between the complexity and the overhead of self-hosting email, I opted
not to support it on cipay. I'll leave that to people who can actually
get a PTR (like tilde.town and other cute places)

XMPP:
So, the XMPP server that I run (prosody) is lightweight and easy to
get up and running. Right now it's using 35MB of memory. I only have
two users chatting on it, and I don't know how it would handle a large
userbase, but right now it's fine.

I don't want to set up a TURN server to have voice calls, because I
don't want the overhead. The downside to this is that users on other
servers can't call with users on mine, and that gives me -1 point for
user experience. Still, I think the ability for an admin to say "no"
to certain features outweighs the cons of there being slightly more
guesswork for users deciding on which server to choose.

the important fact for me is that users can talk to each other. No
matter what XMPP server you choose, You will be able to send a message
to another user, and that is good. I'd even go as far to say that that
is enough.

...

Hardware is becoming harder to manufacture, harder to find, and more
expensive to buy. I think it's important to have server software that
will run on lower-end hardware, and require less technical experience
to set up.

maybe we should stop thinking about how software will scale in in
these uncertain times, and start thinking about how things can
continue running when we inevitably downscale.

GLOSSARY:

Decentralized: Admins can host their own instance of a software
Federated: Users on one instance can talk to users on another
Signal: https://signal.org/download/
Matrix: https://matrix.org/
XMPP:   https://xmpp.org/
Email: It's email. idk what else to tell you

uh anyway that's it. dont be mean to me im just a dog haha

26-08-12