Meanwhile, XMPP OTR and SRTP on SIP have been around for a decade. Too bad half a billion people are using a proprietary non-ineroperable chat mechanism with no idea what WhatsApp is logging and with no assurance of the continued availability of the service.
WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype, etc are all cancer on interpersonal communications by trying to make it a profit center. They destroy user freedom, they severely limit communication, and they do it while making you think its worth your money when you could host your own XMPP server and delegate with an entire network of chat servers.
And no, I do not mean your grandmother should host an XMPP server.
Facebook gets props for using XMPP in its messaging implementation, even if they crippled it by not letting users message outside Facebooks network.
Disclaimer: I'm hosting my own 'friends and family' XMPP server, XMPP clients are the only mobile IM apps I use. In the shelf next to me I have an outdated 'Programming Jabber' book. I want XMPP to be the solution.
If I compare the XMPP feature set with what people around me are doing with WhatsApp though..
- Without optional features (stream resumption?) you have flaky connections/lose messages, even today
- people tend to use WhatsApp etc to send inline media, be it pictures or videos. How would you do that with XMPP, without controlling the client (I run pidgin. Might be on bitlbee?).
- Having more than one device? Tablet and phone? You probably now want carbons (works reasonably well with some rough edges, but some clients don't support them) and likely would like to see your message history on both clients (-> a shared archive).
If the last point, security issues notwithstanding, makes sense/seems plausible, XMPP doesn't seem to offer a decent solution right now. MAM [1] seems to be the answer, but is experimental and .. well - there's no support for it yet.
Yes, I would love to see a world in which XMPP succeeds. But right now it's not practical as far as I can tell.
WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype, etc are all cancer on interpersonal communications by trying to make it a profit center. They destroy user freedom, they severely limit communication, and they do it while making you think its worth your money when you could host your own XMPP server and delegate with an entire network of chat servers.
And no, I do not mean your grandmother should host an XMPP server.
Facebook gets props for using XMPP in its messaging implementation, even if they crippled it by not letting users message outside Facebooks network.