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XMPP doesn't (to my knowledge) have any good, standardized way of dealing with offline communications and catching up with messages.
SIP tried to do too much, was overly complex, XML-based and ended up doing none well enough to establish itself as a market/community favourite. "Nobody" outside telecoms does SIP, and I think that tells all one needs to know wrt market-penetration.
These days I'm rooting for matrix[1]. Matrix seems to solve the issues people want IM to solve, it federates, and supports bridging to other types of networks which aren't matrix-based.
It's not perfect. It may not be the final IM-solution to rule them all.
But for me at least, it's a good, working solution towards a federated, decentralized (in the original sense, not crypto hog-wash sense) solution to the IM needs I have.
It might "just" be one step towards a better solution, but I'm sure the experiences people have with using and developing matrix is crucial in forming the solution-space in the right direction.
We're not going to get to a decentralized and "good enough" solution unless someone is willing to walk down this road and take the first bumps for the team.
> and supports bridging to other types of networks which aren't matrix-based
Turn any XMPP client into that fancy multiprotocol chat app that every cool kid want.
> Signal, Telegram, Discord, Steam, Mattermost, Facebook, Skype
Spectrum is an open source instant messaging transport. It allows users to chat together even when they are using different IM networks.
https://github.com/louiz/biboumi
Biboumi is an XMPP gateway that connects to IRC servers and translates between the two protocols. It can be used to access IRC channels using any XMPP client as if these channels were XMPP MUCs.
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I'm using all of those daily to connect to all my other accounts, Slidge is the most modern one and is having lots of features ported to the modern XMPP extensions.
> and supports bridging to other types of networks which aren't matrix-based
Turn any XMPP client into that fancy multiprotocol chat app that every cool kid want.
> Signal, Telegram, Discord, Steam, Mattermost, Facebook, Skype
Spectrum is an open source instant messaging transport. It allows users to chat together even when they are using different IM networks.
https://github.com/louiz/biboumi
Biboumi is an XMPP gateway that connects to IRC servers and translates between the two protocols. It can be used to access IRC channels using any XMPP client as if these channels were XMPP MUCs.
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I'm using all of those daily to connect to all my other accounts, Slidge is the most modern one and is having lots of features ported to the modern XMPP extensions.
Alright, let me throw my hat into this ring with a totally unfinished idea. I started working on a design for something called the Micro Communication Protocol (MUCP) [1]. It's a header based protocol that's transport agnostic and focuses on service-to-service communication. An early prototype existed in Micro [2] but I'm primarily focused on redesigning the protocol before re-implementing it. Micro was geared towards API first services but I'm looking to expand the scope and try to build a UI layer on top. Most of the protocols focused very much on communication between people but I think if you focus on service-to-service communication more broadly it opens up the avenue to all sorts of multiplayer collaboration.
- [1] https://github.com/micro/network/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md
I looked into this. It seems that things changed since I last looked. The public repo hasn't been updated in a year: https://gitlab.com/escargot-chat/server
I wonder why they closed the source. Even if there is no 'benefit' to the team, sharing the source guarantees the longevity and preservation of MSN Messenger. That benefits the future.