(Resending because I messed up the mailing list)
Time for some cope seething over one of your blog posts.
I agree that Matrix is bloated, but I disagree with basically every
other point you made against it and for XMPP.
> The Matrix protocol is very complex and unorthodox, which means that
independent developers looking to develop a server software for it are
looking at a large amount of work and testing.
What you're saying about effort would be true for anything, including a
complete, usable XMPP server. In terms of the Matrix landscape I see
more actually impressive/usable projects than I've seen in the XMPP world.
> XMPP by contrast is another decentralized chat protocol that is far
simpler to write for due to its straight-forward usage of XML files.
> a more "universal" and KISS-like standard (XMPP)
It's simpler because you can skip massive parts of the spec simply
because they're optional. The extensibility is the Achilles Heel of
XMPP. Most of my experience on XMPP was people arguing with others about
having OMEMO enabled, and having half my messages telling me my client
doesn't support OMEMO, and the other half being split between my
devices. If you're implementing XEPs that bring it up to parity to
Matrix I'd say it's just about as complex, if not more.
Since Matrix requires the entire spec with few exceptions (i.e. you
don't need push notifications for web clients) you see more features
being implemented more quickly. This makes it far more "universal" than
XMPP could really ever be.
XMPP lacks decentralization in the same way Matrix does. If a server
hosting a room goes down or they decide to block it, it will continue to
exist. This is in contrast to XMPP where if a server goes down so does
the room. XMPP is about as decentralized as ActivityPub, which is to say
it really isn'
> In summary, XMPP is better than Matrix for those who are worried
about the long-term sustainability and future of such a complex protocol
(Matrix)...
A protocol can't be sustainable if it's dead and unusable. So little
progress yet so little stability.