I like your approach

Me after completing exactly zero (0) tasks on my to do list

P2P is the answer, Matrix has been doing this for a few years

There’s Revolt and Matrix, both are open source and can be self hosted.

TIL that XMPP is defined in an RFC. You’re correct, I wasn’t aware of that. I really don’t understand why the IETF take such a decision though. I don’t know why these guys are defining high-level protocols for things like messaging at all.

But back to your earlier points:

For example you can’t have end-to-end encryption if you use a non-standard protocol

This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Matrix has E2EE while using a “non-standard” protocol. So does Signal, in fact, it created the strongest E2EE protocol out there.

VC startups like Matrix only increase fragmentation of the ecosystem

Every new project that is created increases fragmentation. So does Revolt, Discord, Skype, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc. These all use “non-standard” protocols.

Also, the author of RFC 6120 is a Cisco employee, how is a multinational corporation better than a VC-funded startup? XMPP is an open standard, just like the Matrix protocol. It doesn’t matter who created it.

That doesn’t make any sense

Nah, they have a clause in their EULA which allows this, it’s ridiculous. Piracy is the only solution.

Who defines standard internet protocols and how is XMPP one of them??? “Standard internet protocols” are DNS, HTTP, TLS, etc.

VCs suck, but Matrix is open source, everyone can self-host their own server, write their own client or even fork the entire protocol.

https://github.com/revoltchat

It isn’t proprietary either

What part of Matrix is proprietary? It’s not an app, instead, it’s an open protocol that can be used by anyone to build a messaging app or host a server.

Is this a serious question?

This is the exact same ridiculous argument that proprietary software corporations make. It never made any sense, security through obscurity will never work. Linux is open-source used on ~80% of all web servers, in your logic these servers would all be vulnerable. It just doesn’t make any sense. Linux is also used in many embedded devices and Android is based on the Linux kernel. But Android (which is also entirely open source) has one of the best security models out there.

Louis Rossmann made some amazing videos about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACX_VfsjkZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_XiaMzzZUo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWk9Zh82O4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxDDXCo7bfU

The Free Software Foundation Europe has an awesome initiative called Public Money Public Code where they try to convince lawmakers to use as much open source software as possible when using public funds. I really hope they succeed.

What is known as servers on Discord also exists on Matrix. They are called spaces and you don’t need to self-host a Matrix server to create a space. There’s also no significant learning curve, you just download Element (the most popular Matrix client), create an account and you ready to go. You can join spaces or groups from any Matrix server or message anyone on the network. Chats also make use of end-to-end encryption by default and it can even be activated for groups (wouldn’t make much sense for public groups though).

it must be doing something right in terms of being sustainable

They’re basically living off of investor money and selling user data. The former is not an indefinite solution though. And Discord Nitro is a fucking joke, the revenue generated from it will never cover the operational costs.

Matrix is a much better solution, it uses peer-to-peer technology (https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p2p-matrix/) to reduce the burden of operational costs on the team. It’s also federated, just like Lemmy, meaning anyone can host their own Matrix server and communicate with users on other servers. Running Matrix at home or on a VPS is even easier than self-hosting Lemmy. It’s also completely free and open-source and allows everyone to write their own clients. Discord on the other side is a piece of proprietary garbage/spyware and bans everyone who attempts to use a custom client. I will never understand why so many people like Discord.

I agree

Discord is an absolute piece of garbage, it’s not a good messaging app, definitely not a good place to host a community (seriously, I don’t understand why some communities saw Discord as an alternative after the Reddit API changes), and most importantly, it’s spyware. The company doesn’t have a business model and it was founded by a guy who is notorious for creating random shit that’s not economically sustainable at all. I don’t understand why anyone would use this shit. This video outlines everything that’s wrong with Discord: https://youtube.com/watch?v=uvNkdAggUGU

Switch to Revolt or Matrix

I think this is a rhetorical question