Duckduckgo has their own XMPP server you can signup for, its what I use for everything. Not sure what extensions it supports (or lack thereof) since I only use it for single user chats.
Note to those setting up new XMPP accounts: DuckDuckGo has a solid XMPP server[7] available for public use. They do their damnedest to protect privacy also, from what I understand.
I recently started looking into XMPP again a few days ago. I have a few ideas for projects built on top thereof.
Can anybody recommend XMPP servers? I know duckduckgo has an XMPP service up and running, but I can't seem to find any relevant API documentation. All I found was this [0], which doesn't go into details about encryption settings and isn't very useful for programmatic interaction.
Very cool, although it could probable use a name. Maybe "DuckDuckChat"? "DuckDuckGo XMPP Service" is not going to be used by all but the most technical of users I think...
Even "DuckDuckGo Jabber Service" is better, XMPP just sounds so unfriendly.
You know, I've always been planning to set up my own xmpp server, so I haven't looked to hard at the public offerings. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any good list over public service providers -- one that includes things like does the server support server side archiving etc.
I was hopeful when I saw that duckduckgo[ddg], fastmail[fm] and mailbox.org[m] had public chat services. But of the three, none support standard archiving [XEP-0136] and only fastmail supports a custom form of archiving (via special emails to your fastmail-account). The latter at least gives you an option to archive chats (for eg: search) -- but it appears there's a market for a good, public and full-featured xmpp/chat service.
Most of the other public servers appear to a) be free-only -- not a business -- and b) focused on privacy. I find it a bit surprising that noone has tried launching a free+paid option -- say reserving some features for paying users (and charge maybe 1 USD/month?).
Actually, I think duckduckgo.com would be happy to "host" a services free tier -- have a trial account mode, and point user that just want a free chat service to ddg. Ddg gets more registered users, more users of their services, and those that are willing to pay for some features (eg: server side archiving, server side notes... others?) can pay a small amount for the service.
Only draw back would be no seamless transition from one to the other (change of username/domain). On the plus side, all my trial accounts can talk to each other without problem (via server side federation) -- it just works.
[edit: And while mailbox.org has an interesting offering, like some kind of deal with yubikey -- they seem to have neglected their xmpp setup somewhat -- there are some issues with ssl certs. Pidigin can't seem to figure out that xmpp at fastmail is chat.messagingengine.com, nor that mailbox uses xmpp.mailbox.org. Both give additional certificate errors if not adjusted. I suppose fastmail hasn't set up srv-records/dns aliases for their vanity domains (I registered mm.st -- as it was the shortest). It'd be better if one could just type in <user>@mm.st and have everything work. The bug might be in Pidgin, but fm really needs to test things. Of the three, ddg was by far the easiest to get started with -- register right in the im client (which also generates an account that works for ddg); and go.]
The XMPP network needs more independent servers run by trusted entities, so I welcome this very much (I've been trusting DuckDuckGo with my searches for some time now).
XMPP is standard. Grab a client for the platform of your choice [0], open an account on ddg.gg (duckduckgo's xmpp server), and you're done. I personnally use pidgin on the desktop and chatsecure on Android.
The only thing XMPP is lacking is marketing. Multi-billion-dollars-level marketing; shouldn't be too hard to do, right ?
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