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[autonomo.us] dropping XMPP support


From: Danyl Strype
Subject: [autonomo.us] dropping XMPP support
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:52:22 +1200

Kia ora koutou

Have I got egg on my face! There I was on this email list defending
Hangouts as a federated system, and then it turns out that they aren't
planning to support XMPP federation:
http://windowspbx.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/hangouts-wont-hangout-with-other.html

The best case scenario explanation is that they intend to implement
WebRTC in Hangouts, and that they expect WebRTC to replace XMPP.
Placed in context of the general FaceBookization of Google services
over the last couple of years though, I'm not giving them the benefit
of the doubt. I've actively looking for free systems to replace the
things I use Google services for, just as I did with FB a few years
ago.

The question that keeps coming up for me is, how do millions of tiny
organisations co-ordinate their independent activity, to be able to
collectively compete with the dinosaurs (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google,
Amazon, FaceBook etc)? Do we need some kind of "Federated Network
Foundation" style organisation as a hub for this field, in the same
way that the Free Software Foundation, CreativeCommons, and the Free
Network Foundation are in their respective fields?

After all, the problem is not that realtime communication isn't
technically possible with free code. SpeakFreely was doing voice calls
over broadband in the 1990s, and there are various bundles of free
code floating about which implement text, voice, and video messaging,
and various protocols for federation between different clients/
servers (see:
http://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/core-us). Yet no
combination of them has yet seemed inviting enough to attract users
away from proprietary walled gardens like Skype and now Hangouts. I've
found that even technically advanced users in local organisations like
the NZ Open Source Society, and the Pirate Party of NZ, don't feel
capable of dogfooding a free code, federated conferencing system for
their own online meetings.

I'd like to set this group a challenge. What if we were to set a date
maybe a year or two hence for a global online conference, hosted
entirely on free code software, using free protocols, and open to
anyone who supports federated social networks regardless of what
platform choices they've made at the client end?

Hei kōnā
Strypey

-- 
Danyl Strype
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

"Geeks are those who partake in our culture."
- .ISOcrates

"Uncomfortable alliances are not just necessary; they reflect and
speak to the tremendous possibility of our political moment."
- Harmony Goldberg and Joshua Kahn Russell
http://www.nationofchange.org/new-radical-alliances-new-era-1337004193

"Both Marxists and Chicago-school libertarian economists can agree
that free software is the best model."
- Keith C Curtis
http://keithcu.com/wordpress/?page_id=407



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