Episode 193: FOSSY 2023 with Matthew Wild & Stephen Paul Weber

Guests Matthew Wild | Stephen Paul Weber Panelists Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Richard is in Portland at FOSSY, the Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference that is held by the Software Freedom Conservancy. Today, he engages with XMPP protocol experts Matthew Wild and Stephen Paul. Matthew shares about his project, Snikket, which aims to make XMPP more accessible for everyday communication among friends and family groups. Stephen introduces JMP, a project designed to facilitate connections using an XMPP based stack, allowing smoother transitions from other communication platforms. They explore why XMPP stands out against competitors, and you’ll get a glimpse into JMP’s transparent funding model, Snikket’s user base, and the open source projects it’s built upon. Our guests also discuss their future visions, highlighting the importance of open communication and the potential for growth in the XMPP ecosystem. Hit download to hear more! [00:00:48] Matthew talks about his work with Snikket, and Stephen talks about the project JMP, which helps people connect with their friends and family using XMPP based stack and transition from other communication platforms. [00:01:57] Matthew explains why XMPP is a better protocol for Snikket compared to Signal; the main reason being that XMPP is federated, giving users more choice. [00:02:42] Matthew tells us how XMPP is different from Matrix and Delta Chat. [00:04:06] Stephen agrees with Matthew, stating that JMP also supports multiple protocols and wishes to promote open communication, and acknowledges concerns around Matrix’s scalability and funding models. [00:04:47] Stephen describes JMP’s straightforward funding model with customers paying a monthly fee for their services. Matthew reveals that Snicket’s user base is hard to determine due to self-hosting and different statistics. [00:06:21] Matthew explains that Snicket is built on a variety of XMPP-based open-source projects, including Prosody, Conversations on Android, and Siskin on