Mastodawn

Curious as to why #xmpp has not replaced #irc on libera for the open source community.
Nothing against IRC, but given the more federated nature of XMPP, why are projects not adopting it? What hidden barriers does it have?
Is it just a case of this: https://xkcd.com/1782/

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xkcd

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Michela Marie 🇨🇦Mar 4

@jmmonteiro I think part of why XMPP has not been adopted by the open source community as much as IRC is probably because to use IRC, they only need register a channel on Libera or OFTC — reliable chat networks that already exist, work well, and are operated by non-profits in the public interest — specifically for use by open source projects. I believe there aren’t so many similar XMPP networks, though a number of open source projects actually do communicate over XMPP on their own servers.

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João Mar 4

@michelamarie
Makes sense, but after the implosion of #freenode, I'm surprised projects didn't decide to have more control over their official channels.
#XMPP servers are pretty lightweight, so I assume it wouldn't be a big barrier to host one and federate.

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Michela Marie 🇨🇦Mar 5

@jmmonteiro That’s true, but maintaining an XMPP server would still be some effort and cost, while a great many open source projects have very little of both — often just one or a few part-time volunteer contributors, and no or very little money. Libera has a different structure to Freenode, and they can be relied on. Also, it wouldn’t be incredibly difficult to move these support and development conversions to a different forum later, if that is needed again in the future.