The XMPP Newsletter October 2023

Welcome to the XMPP Newsletter, great to have you here again! This issue covers the month of October 2023. Many thanks to all our readers and all contributors!

Like this newsletter, many projects and their efforts in the XMPP community are a result of people’s voluntary work. If you are happy with the services and software you may be using, please consider saying thanks or help these projects! Interested in supporting the Newsletter team? Read more at the bottom.

XSF Announcments

CertWatch

Recently, an XMPP service was targeted by a so-called machine-in-the-middle attack (MitM). To reduce the risk of such attacks in the future, an early stage service called CertWatch has been published by our community. This service is created and kindly provided by Stephen P. Weber (singpolyma). Find more details below.

XMPP Summit 26 & FOSDEM 2024

The XSF is planning the XMPP Summit 26, which is to take place on February 1st & 2nd 2024 in Brussels (Belgium, Europe). Following the Summit, the XSF is also planning to be present at FOSDEM 2024, which takes place on February 3rd & 4th 2024. Find all the details in our Wiki. Please sign-up now if you are planning to attend, since this helps organizing. The event is of course open for everyone interested to participate. Spread the word within your circles!

XMPP Vision & Strategic Workshop

Join the upcoming XMPP Vision & Strategic Workshop to discuss and understand our community better! We also asking ask for your input on different topics with focus on the future of our federated network and technology. The workshop will take place on Tuesday, 14th November 2023, 6:00 - 9:00 pm UTC. This event will take place online and will be held in English (details to follow). Everyone is welcome - please spread the word! If you have questions please write us in the XSF chat.

XMPP and Google Summer of Code 2023

The XSF has been accepted again as a hosting organisation at GSoC 2023, receiving two slots for XMPP Contributors.

On Dino:

• Windows support for Dino
• Windows woes

On Moxxy:

• The first blog post, detailing the plan to implement basic group chat functionality.
• The second blog post, describing the plans to bring a basic implementation of XEP-0045 into Moxxy’s XMPP library moxxmpp.
• The third blog post, sketching the frontend implementation plan.
• The fourth blog post, concluding with Moxxy’s completed MUC support.

XSF Fiscal Hosting Projects

The XSF offers fiscal hosting for XMPP projects. Please apply via Open Collective. For more information, see the announcement blog post. Current projects:

• Mellium Co-op

XMPP Events

• Berlin XMPP Meetup (remote): monthly meeting of XMPP enthusiasts in Berlin, every 2nd Wednesday of the month
• XMPP Italian happy hour: monthly Italian XMPP web meeting, starting May 16th and then every third Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM (online event, with web meeting mode and live streaming).
• JabberFR and Libre en Communs will be present at the Capitole du Libre conference in Toulouse, France, on November 18-19th.

Videos

• Ok, but what is XMPP? - an easy to follow introduction to XMPP.

Articles

• XMPP—the Universal Technology for Instant Messaging
• Attack on an XMPP Server and and a new tool called CertWatch: Recently, the XMPP service at jabber.ru was targeted by a so-called machine-in-the-middle attack (MitM). To reduce the risk of such attacks in the future, an early stage service called CertWatch has been published by our community. This service is created and kindly provided by Stephen P. Weber (singpolyma).
  • Many articles have been published around this incident. Three blog posts on the topic are presented here:
    • jmp.chat on Machine-in-the-middle Detection and Monitoring for XMPP Servers
    • snikket.org on the jabber.ru MITM attack
    • Mitigating the Hetzner/Linode XMPP.ru MitM interception incident
  • Other media representation:
    • Bruce Schneier: Messaging Service Wiretap Discovered through Expired TLS Cert
    • Lauschangriff auf russischen Jabber-Server in Deutschland: Wer steckt dahinter? [DE]
    • Russischer Messaging-Dienst wurde in Deutschland abgehört [DE]

In other news:

• EuGH-Gutachterin: Deutschland darf Encrochat-Daten aus Frankreich beziehen [DE]

Software News

Clients and Applications

• Two months after the last release, Gajim 1.8.2 comes with better support for gateways, improved group chats, an easy way to change the font size, and many small fixes.
• After several months of hard work Monal 6.0 was finally released. This version comes with new artwork by Ann-Sophie Zwahlen, support for Audio-Calls funded by EU’s NGI Assure via the NLnet Foundation and many, many other improvements and bugfixes. The full list of changes can be found in this blog post.
• monocles chat 1.7.5 to 1.7.7 have been released. monocles chat 1.7.5 is now available on F-Droid, while 1.7.7 is only available on Codeberg yet. These releases come with many design improvements to meet modern messaging clients. There are also many new settings, like custom backgrounds, the often requested option to switch between round and square avatars (in 1.7.7), and the introduction of Material Design 3. Stay tuned for a final release 1.8 in November!
• Conversations 2.12.12 has been released, which brings support for Private DNS (DNS over TLS), a themed launcher icon, and a fix for a rare permission issue when sharing files on Android 11+.
• Cheogram 2.12.8-3 has been released, coming with bugfixes and calling stability improvements.

Servers

• ejabberd 23.10 has been published and brings support for XEP-0402: PEP Native Bookmarks, XEP-0421: Anonymous unique occupant identifiers for MUCs, and includes many bugfixes.
• isode announced their M-Link 19.4 Limited Release

Libraries & Tools

• As mentioned above, the CertWatch service has been published.
• nbxmpp 4.4.0 and 4.5.0 have been released, which bring support for XEP-0440: SASL Channel-Binding Type Capability and include some bugfixes.

Extensions and specifications

The XMPP Standards Foundation develops extensions to XMPP in its XEP series in addition to XMPP RFCs.

Developers and other standards experts from around the world collaborate on these extensions, developing new specifications for emerging practices, and refining existing ways of doing things. Proposed by anybody, the particularly successful ones end up as Final or Active - depending on their type - while others are carefully archived as Deferred. This life cycle is described in XEP-0001, which contains the formal and canonical definitions for the types, states, and processes. Read more about the standards process. Communication around Standards and Extensions happens in the Standards Mailing List (online archive).

Proposed

The XEP development process starts by writing up an idea and submitting it to the XMPP Editor. Within two weeks, the Council decides whether to accept this proposal as an Experimental XEP.

• Communicate & Ask to AI
  • This document defines a protocol for asking questions to an artificial intelligence or requesting it to make predictions.
• HTTP Online Meetings
  • This specification defines a protocol extension to request URLs from an external HTTP entity usable to initiate and invite participants to an online meeting.

New

• No new XEPs this month.

Deferred

If an experimental XEP is not updated for more than twelve months, it will be moved off Experimental to Deferred. If there is another update, it will put the XEP back onto Experimental.

• No XEPs deferred this month.

Updated

• Version 0.3.1 of XEP-0377 (Spam Reporting)
  • Add XML Schema. (egp)
• Version 0.4.0 of XEP-0424 (Message Retraction)
  • Remove the dependency on XEP-0422 Message Fastening.
  • Use ‘id’ attribute on ‘retracted’ element instead of a child element.
  • Clarify business rules regarding which ‘id’ to use to refer to the retracted message. (jcb)
• Version 0.3 of XEP-0458 (Community Code of Conduct)
  • Address substantive feedback from JC Brand; add Peter Saint-Andre as co-author to help address future feedback. (psa)

Last Call

Last calls are issued once everyone seems satisfied with the current XEP status. After the Council decides whether the XEP seems ready, the XMPP Editor issues a Last Call for comments. The feedback gathered during the Last Call can help improve the XEP before returning it to the Council for advancement to Stable.

• Community Code of Conduct
  • This document describes the XMPP Standard Foundation’s Code of Conduct. This Last Call begins today and shall end at the close of business on 2023-11-30.

Stable

• No XEP moved to stable this month.

Deprecated

• No XEP deprecated this month.

Spread the news

Please share the news on other networks:

• Mastodon
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Lemmy instance (unofficial)
• Reddit (unofficial)

Also check out our RSS Feed!

Looking for job offers or want to hire a professional consultant for your XMPP project? Visit our XMPP job board.

Newsletter Contributors & Translations

This is a community effort, and we would like to thank translators for their contributions. Volunteers are welcome! Translations of the XMPP Newsletter will be released here (with some delay):

• English (original): xmpp.org
  • General contributors: Adrien Bourmault (neox), Alexander “PapaTutuWawa”, Arne, cal0pteryx, emus, Jonas Stein, Kris “poVoq”, Licaon_Kter, Ludovic Bocquet, melvo, MSavoritias (fae,ve), nicola, XSF iTeam
• French: jabberfr.org and linuxfr.org
  • Translators: Adrien Bourmault (neox), alkino, anubis, Arkem, Benoît Sibaud, mathieui, nyco, Pierre Jarillon, Ppjet6, Ysabeau
• German: xmpp.org and anoxinon.de
  • Translators: Jeybe, wh0nix
• Italian: notes.nicfab.eu
  • Translators: nicola
• Spanish: xmpp.org
  • Translators: daimonduff, TheCoffeMaker

Help us to build the newsletter

This XMPP Newsletter is produced collaboratively by the XMPP community. Each month’s newsletter issue is drafted in this simple pad. At the end of each month, the pad’s content is merged into the XSF Github repository. We are always happy to welcome contributors. Do not hesitate to join the discussion in our Comm-Team group chat (MUC) and thereby help us sustain this as a community effort. You have a project and want to spread the news? Please consider sharing your news or events here, and promote it to a large audience.

Tasks we do on a regular basis:

• gathering news in the XMPP universe
• short summaries of news and events
• summary of the monthly communication on extensions (XEPs)
• review of the newsletter draft
• preparation of media images
• translations
• communication via media accounts

License

This newsletter is published under CC BY-SA license.