Dave: yes, the Matrix 3rd party ID to Matrix-ID mapping service is currently logically centralised. The good news is that the service is entirely optional and you don't have to use it, and indeed in practice today nobody does: as of today everyone uses Matrix IDs to talk to each other. Matrix IDs themselves are completely decentralised, just like Jabber IDs, and are indeed fully partitioned by domain. I'm afraid you're the one shamelessly spreading the FUD here :D That said, if you have suggestions on how to decentralise a 3rd party ID to JID or Matrix ID mapping database, we'd love to collaborate on it, given the user discovery problem is an open issue for both XMPP and Matrix.
In terms of whether XMPP and Matrix are competitors: personally, I don't think of it that way. They have utterly different semantics and features. Matrix is fundamentally a decentralised object database with pubsub; XMPP is an extensible message-passing system. It might be worthwhile trying to play nice together rather than flaming each other - for instance, one of the folks in the Matrix community is writing an XMPP<->Matrix bridge that could benefit both ecosystems.
I'd also point out that there are loads of chat use cases where XMPP is currently miles better than Matrix - Matrix is inherently a heavier protocol due to all the state synchronisation, and if you want to just chuck messages around the place then I'm sure there are super-speedy mature XMPP servers that let you do so.
The idea that Matrix is branding for a commercial outfit is pretty ridiculous for anyone who's actually spoken to or worked with us :) I guess we're lucky that we've got corporate sponsorship to let us run around and try to tell folks that we exist, but the whole project is entirely transparent and open in every sense of the word I can imagine. Please stop hating and consider embracing the existence of a complementary open initiative rather than getting all defensive all the time...
OK, so your website claims that identity mapping is an integral key feature, so if I'm spreading FUD I apologise for repeating what's on your website.
As to whether XMPP and Matrix are competitors, you make direct comparisons between them (with incorrect assertions that have been pointed out to you before), and since you attack XMPP constantly on Twitter et al, I take it you think it is a threat.
Specifically, from your website's FAQ:
- There's around four or five XMPP/Web implementations allowing you to easily speak XMPP from a browser, but the two most popular with web developers seem to be stanza.io and xmpp-ftw - the latter is JSON objects via HTTP/Websocket.
- Most server implementations cluster, so a chatroom is highly available across multiple physical servers within the same domain. This latter restriction can be avoided using FMUC.
- Hedging your comments with "(without extensions)" is crass, since there are many extensions that have very wide support.
- Talking about a minimal baseline is at best ignorant, at worst deliberately misleading. Chatrooms aren't in our baseline, but that doesn't mean we should ignore them.
- "Not particularly suited to mobile". We've actively worked on push recently, but on Android it's really optional. As for bandwidth efficiency, you use HTTP, so that's laughable - as noted above, stanzas go across HF radio in their native format just fine.
Yes, you can chuck messages around fast in XMPP. You can also chuck messages through pubsub systems very fast in XMPP.
So Matrix is a brand with no legal entity behind it, where the people operating it and controlling the specification seem to be entirely employed by the same company who owns the domain and sponsors an extensive publicity campaign? I shall never suggest it's merely branding for a commercial outfit again, my deepest apologies for having clearly misunderstood the situation.
As for getting defensive, I admit that too, but it's quite common when being attacked.
I'm pretty sure we don't claim identity mapping anywhere as an integral key feature; if we do, it's a mistake. We always decoupled the identity mapping layer from the core messaging layer to avoid the Hard Problem of decentralised identity mapping blocking the core protocol, and we haven't even specified it yet (that chapter of the spec is blank).
In terms of whether we've been doing some kind of Evil Disinformation Campaign against XMPP, looking at https://twitter.com/search?q=%40matrixdotorg%20xmpp&src=typd... if anything it seems like we're pretty supportive of XMPP: "@usetalky stanza.io looks lovely.", "@Nyssen11 converse looks pretty. we (or someone) will write an xmpp s2s <--> Matrix bridge soon, i'm sure.", "For sure XMPP is doing cool new stuff too - FMUC, XMPP-FTW, Buddycloud etc." etc etc. We even promote XMPP alongside Matrix: "Metadata privacy & federation with legacy networks are mutex. If you want metadata privacy @GNUnet ftw. For fed, Matrix or XMPP?"
The only valid beef I'm seeing is https://twitter.com/ckoehncke/status/588341851360518144/phot... which missed that XSF had published a Push XEP a few weeks earlier (sorry!), and ".@rikardlinde @davewiner Matrix is pure HTTP & decentralised convo history: no single silo/point of control. Jabber MUCs = single chatserver", which was admittedly ambiguous and misleading thanks to the 160 char limit and I subsequently clarified; the intention was to point out that MUCs = single logical chatserver locked to a single domain (ignoring FMUCs).
In terms of the FAQ - as per our current twitter convo I'm updating it in realtime to incorporate your POV.
In terms of whether we are a Nefarious Corporate Conspiracy: We're in the process currently of splitting out Matrix.org as an independent UK Limited By Guarantee company with not-for-profit statutes of incorporation to act as the neutral guardian of the Matrix standard. I guess this is a bit like how IBM split off the Eclipse brand into being the proper Eclipse Foundation. So yes, from my pov we're not 'branding for a commercial outfit', given 100% of the IP for the project is permissive-licensed opensource and the project is non-profit rather than commercial. Meanwhile, increasing amounts of the Matrix ecosystem are being contributed by the community (like the aforementioned XMPP<->Matrix bridge ;) Anyway, this will all be clearer once we have our separate legal entity - apology accepted for misunderstanding the situation :D
"""
Users in Matrix are identified via their matrix user ID (MXID). However, existing 3rd party ID namespaces can also be used in order to identify Matrix users. A Matrix "Identity" describes both the user ID and any other existing IDs from third party namespaces linked to their account.
Matrix users can link third-party IDs (3PIDs) such as email addresses, social network accounts and phone numbers to their user ID. Linking 3PIDs creates a mapping from a 3PID to a user ID. This mapping can then be used by Matrix users in order to discover the MXIDs of their contacts.
In order to ensure that the mapping from 3PID to user ID is genuine, a globally federated cluster of trusted "Identity Servers" (IS) are used to verify the 3PID and persist and replicate the mappings.
Usage of an IS is not required in order for a client application to be part of the Matrix ecosystem. However, without one clients will not be able to look up user IDs using 3PIDs.
"""
OK, so aside from that last paragraph, that reads very integral. If it's just a case of "you have an identity at a domain" by default, and the 3PIDs are all an extension^Woptional-feature-that's-part-of-the-baseline, then what's the "strong identity system" you claim XMPP is lacking?
Actually if you read through that Twitter search, you see a bunch of XMPP folk getting annoyed at you for "half-truths, as usual", you referring to XMPP as a failure, you claiming that only the baseline counts, you claiming that MUC - universally and interoperably supported in every server (and every client that wants it) - is fragmented.
If this is you being supportive, I'd hate to see your actual disinformation campaigns.
Now, if you actually want a constructive conversation, that's great, but trolling just isn't the way to do that.
If you'd like a case where I suspect that Matrix models better, it's that ad-hoc, "ungoverned" multiparty chats work better in Matrix than XMPP.
That's because XMPP's multi-user chat model is (intentionally) based around IRC-channel-like models, where there's a single identity and authority. As I understand Matrix (and I don't claim expertise here), Matrix instead models a multi-party chat as simply a conversation involving multiple parties.
As the spec says, the ID service is optional. We haven't even bothered speccing it because the current logically-centralised thing is placeholder until we find a good decentralised solution. "Strong identity system" simply refers to mandating public key infrastructure both for servers and clients. For servers it's implemented via perspectives as per http://matrix.org/docs/spec/#retrieving-server-keys. For clients it's currently being defined for our new E2E stuff; we'll publish the key management APIs over the next few weeks.
I'm afraid I do believe that XMPP has failed in providing a ubiquitous (i.e. as ubiquitous as the web or email) open federated ecosystem for realtime comms, otherwise we wouldn't have tried to build Matrix. Obviously we may fail too, but hey, might as well try. Sorry if you consider this opinion trolling :)
In terms of "only the baseline counts" or "MUC is fragmented", I'm either mis-communicating or you're misunderstanding. I do think XMPP suffers from too low a baseline of functionality (as do others on this thread seemingly), and I think that the various alternative group chat technologies on XMPP (e.g. MUC v FMUC v Buddycloud) between them cause fragmentation, in that conversations can get stuck in one protocol inaccessible to another (please correct me if I'm wrong).
And yes, Matrix models multi-user chat as 'simply' a distributed datastructure replicated over multiple servers with eventual consistency, using decentralised ACLs to maintain authority in the chat.
Dave: yes, the Matrix 3rd party ID to Matrix-ID mapping service is currently logically centralised. The good news is that the service is entirely optional and you don't have to use it, and indeed in practice today nobody does: as of today everyone uses Matrix IDs to talk to each other. Matrix IDs themselves are completely decentralised, just like Jabber IDs, and are indeed fully partitioned by domain. I'm afraid you're the one shamelessly spreading the FUD here :D That said, if you have suggestions on how to decentralise a 3rd party ID to JID or Matrix ID mapping database, we'd love to collaborate on it, given the user discovery problem is an open issue for both XMPP and Matrix.
In terms of whether XMPP and Matrix are competitors: personally, I don't think of it that way. They have utterly different semantics and features. Matrix is fundamentally a decentralised object database with pubsub; XMPP is an extensible message-passing system. It might be worthwhile trying to play nice together rather than flaming each other - for instance, one of the folks in the Matrix community is writing an XMPP<->Matrix bridge that could benefit both ecosystems.
I'd also point out that there are loads of chat use cases where XMPP is currently miles better than Matrix - Matrix is inherently a heavier protocol due to all the state synchronisation, and if you want to just chuck messages around the place then I'm sure there are super-speedy mature XMPP servers that let you do so.
The idea that Matrix is branding for a commercial outfit is pretty ridiculous for anyone who's actually spoken to or worked with us :) I guess we're lucky that we've got corporate sponsorship to let us run around and try to tell folks that we exist, but the whole project is entirely transparent and open in every sense of the word I can imagine. Please stop hating and consider embracing the existence of a complementary open initiative rather than getting all defensive all the time...