Post AzFwWyYT5EHjaikmuW by whitequark@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by whitequark@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AzDYEbMFnvBbDbpISO by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-10-14T22:12:00Z
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@aperezdc incredible. thank you for this cursed knowledge
(DIR) Post #AzDYEcEUYGZTvpCbzs by ge0rg@chaos.social
2025-10-14T22:32:44Z
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@whitequarkIt's getting worse. #xmpp also powers Google Cloud Printing and a bunch of games / platforms, including the Nintendo SwitchSources linked in https://xmpp.org/uses/internet-of-things/#realized-example-projects and https://xmpp.org/uses/gaming/The numbers are probably a bit out of date, but it's hard to get them from projects that merely mentioned their foundation once in the beginning... @aperezdc
(DIR) Post #AzDYEdEWpcC92EE9h2 by q3k@social.hackerspace.pl
2025-10-15T00:56:30Z
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@ge0rg @whitequark @aperezdc I also vaguely remember working on some SDN-class IP routers where the control plane used XMPP for IPC/PubSub (within a single host, but I think they had Ambitions).Also somewhat related, I think Twitch chat used to be built around IRC IIRC (heh)?
(DIR) Post #AzDYEduiIlwH93xqRk by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2025-10-15T01:15:32.915532Z
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@q3k @ge0rg @whitequark @aperezdc Twitch chat is still IRC, in fact it's quite funny how they adopted some of the IRCv3 stuff, specially capabilities so that clients can opt into more twitch specific events.
(DIR) Post #AzFwWtiD5a6gZUGztw by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-10-13T12:07:19Z
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"The modern Firebase Cloud Messaging is actually still XMPP-based to this day, though. Of course, it has been separated from Google Talk now."man, what??
(DIR) Post #AzFwWv9BklHV1Ru3ai by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-10-15T02:47:33Z
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@whitequark Not surprising. XMPP is a pretty nice protocol as a control-plane messaging system. eJabberd is increasingly optimised for this kind of use (and even talks MQTT as an alternative!). It's only chat where XMPP is not a good choice.
(DIR) Post #AzFwWwH1Z78wW2ZpRY by josephholsten@mstdn.social
2025-10-15T19:24:17Z
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@david_chisnall @whitequark Is there a good choice?Or are you saying this like “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried”Knowing only IRC, XMPP & SMS at the protocol level, I know my opinions aren’t contemporary.
(DIR) Post #AzFwWxPDM9Hy1jPsqe by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-10-15T23:03:16Z
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@josephholsten @whitequark XMPP was great for what we thought we were designing: email with low-latency delivery and better security for communicating between people using servers run by trustworthy people. The threat landscape has changed a lot since then and XMPP does not provide the privacy guarantees that should be table stakes for a modern chat protocol, and cannot without a complete ground-up redesign.Signal is currently the least bad alternative, but the centralised control is a problem. Signal can threaten to pull out of a country and then do it because the Foundation has too much control over the network. In particular, their use of AGPL for the code means that they (who require a CLA that lets them relicense the code and so are not bound by it) are the only people who can distribute their app via the Apple App Store, so if they decide to remove it from a country then every iOS user is suddenly unable to access the network.It’s definitely possible to build a more robust protocol than Signal, but it has a bunch of hard research problems (a few people have tried and I haven’t had a chance to look at the details of what they’ve done).
(DIR) Post #AzFwWyYT5EHjaikmuW by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-10-16T00:16:49Z
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@david_chisnall @josephholsten Oh wow I did not realize just how sketchy the Signal situation is. I really don't like that at all.
(DIR) Post #AzFwWzW1VnvKZQcLjs by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-10-16T02:05:01Z
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@whitequark @josephholsten It's yet another case study in my 'people who choose AGPL to control their ecosystem, not to enable user freedom' gallery.It's a shame because Signal really is the least bad of the options at the moment. In particular, a modern chat system that wants to provide any kind of privacy needs to care about a passive adversary correlating messages arriving and leaving a server, and that's really hard to prevent if you don't have a very large anonymity set per server, so federation is very hard. DHT-based things can work, but hit CAP theorem problems.
(DIR) Post #AzFwX0YXdvX3nWnsIq by whitequark@mastodon.social
2025-10-16T02:08:28Z
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@david_chisnall @josephholsten mm yeah, personally I consider AGPL a regressive force on the whole for this reason and related ones.
(DIR) Post #AzFwX1irJ3NZPodd1U by shironeko@fedi.tesaguri.club
2025-10-16T04:57:17.428980Z
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@whitequark @david_chisnall @josephholsten apple have issue with agpl specifically? I thought it was all GPL software
(DIR) Post #AzH1OUUNg4zSxJZj8a by anotherposter@shitposter.world
2025-10-16T17:26:38.862770Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@david_chisnall @josephholsten @whitequark > In particular, their use of AGPL for the code means that they (who require a CLA that lets them relicense the code and so are not bound by it) are the only people who can distribute their app via the Apple App Store, so if they decide to remove it from a country then every iOS user is suddenly unable to access the network.I don't quite see how this is a problem of AGPL and not of CLA and/or Apple. How can requiring modifications to be published mean the publisher gets more power? That doesn't make any sense.
(DIR) Post #AzH1ir9p6fzz3IfdwW by anotherposter@shitposter.world
2025-10-16T17:30:20.725152Z
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@whitequark @david_chisnall @josephholsten > personally I consider AGPL a regressive force on the whole for this reason and related ones.I replied above but what exactly is the issue with AGPL? From what i can see, it's quite great. I consider the "I can't hire lawyers" point to be moot, though, since that's the whole legal system. _Any_ other license will have the same weak point; if you can't hire lawyers, you effectively don't have the law backing you up.