Welcome to the XMPP Newsletter, great to have you here again! This issue covers the month of December 2023 & January 2024. After a winter break we are back - a wonderful happy new year 2024 still! 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 Announcements
Happy Birthday, Jabber!
On 4th January 2024 the announcement of Jeremie Miller turns 25 and with it what would become the initiation, development and propagation of XMPP until today!
Join the endeavor for the next 25 years!
XSF Membership
If you are interest to join the XMPP Standards Foundation, please apply now.
XMPP Summit 26 & FOSDEM 2024
The XSF is holding the 26th XMPP Summit, which is to take place on February 1st & 2nd 2024 in Brussels (Belgium, Europe). Following the Summit, the XSF is also 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 and Google Summer of Code 2024
The XSF has been applying as a hosting organisation at GSoC in 2024 again. If you are interested, please reach out!
XSF and Google Summer of Code 2024
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 you can support:
XMPP Events
- 1st - 2nd February 2024: XMPP Summit 26
- 3rd - 4th February 2024: XMPP at FOSDEM 2024
- 1st February 2024: “XMPP advanced” at TroLUG [DE]: The TroLUG meets on every first Thursday at 19:00 local time online. This time we explore XMPP tools together in the online workshop “XMPP advanced”. How can I write scripts sending XMPP messages from your weather station? Join us and let’s solve trivial and advanced questions together.
- 14th February 2024: Berlin XMPP Meetup (remote) [DE / EN]: monthly meeting of XMPP enthusiasts in Berlin, every 2nd Wednesday of the month
- 16th May 2024: XMPP Italian happy hour [IT]: monthly Italian XMPP web meeting, starting May 16th and then every third Monday of the month at 7:00 PM local time (online event, with web meeting mode and live streaming).
Talks
- XMPP Italian Happy Hour Podcast [IT]: Dive into the world of XMPP with the Italian Happy Hour podcast, a monthly event derived from recorded video sessions. Each episode is dedicated to the XMPP protocol, offering insights and discussions from enthusiasts and professionals within the community. Whether you’re commuting, working out, or simply seeking to listen to interesting conversation, this podcast delivers the essence of Italian XMPP gatherings directly to your ears. Tune in at XMPP Italian Happy Hour Podcast or subscribe to the RSS feed to never miss an episode. Fediverse: @xmpphappyhour@open.audio.
- RFC 9420 or how to scale end-to-end encryption with Messaging Layer Security (MLS)
Articles
- Happy Birthday ejabberd: Celebrating 21 Years of Innovation with ejabberd
- OpenPGP published a book
- Creating the XMPP Network Graph: Visualizing decentralization with XMPP
XMPP Network Graph
- XMPP Providers Fully Automated: During the past year, the team behind the XMPP Providers project worked on automating the process of gathering data about XMPP providers.
- ProcessOne on Instant Messaging: Protocols are “Commons”, Let’s Take Them Seriously
- Easily accessible (anonymous) Converse.js webchat for prosody-hosted chatrooms
- JMP:
- Instalar un servidor privado de mensajería instantánea (XMPP) [ES]
Software News
Clients and Applications
Servers
- MongooseIM 6.2.0 has been released. XEP-0386 and XEP-0388 are now supported. The blog post shows how to use the helm chart to quickly set up a multi-node cluster connected to RDBMS without the need for persistent volumes thanks to CETS.
- ignite realtime community:
- Snikket Server - January 2024 release
Libraries & Tools
- libstrophe 0.13.0 has been updated
- slixmpp has been published in version 1.8.5
- ignite realtime community:
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.
- PubSub Server Information
- This document defines a data format whereby basic information of an XMPP domain can be expressed and exposed over pub-sub.
- Host Meta 2 - One Method To Rule Them All
- This document defines an XMPP Extension Protocol for extending XEP-0156 by modifying the JSON Web Host Metadata Link format to support discovering all possible XMPP connection methods, for c2s and s2s
New
- Version 0.1.0 of XEP-0484 (Fast Authentication Streamlining Tokens)
- This specification defines a token-based method to streamline authentication in XMPP, allowing fully authenticated stream establishment within a single round-trip. Promoted to Experimental. (XEP Editor: kis)
- Version 0.1.0 of XEP-0483 (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. Promoted to Experimental. (XEP Editor: kis)
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 0.2.0 of XEP-0483 (HTTP Online Meetings)
- Use XEP-0482 to send the meeting link to another party (do)
- 0.3.0 of XEP-0474 (SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection)
- Rework all explanations explaining why this specification is needed
- Simplify protocol (tm)
- Version 1.0.0 of XEP-0458 (Community Code of Conduct)
- Address Last Call feedback; complete a copy edit and apply clarifications in several places. Changed status to Active per Board vote on 2024-01-05. (psa)
- Version 1.1.4 of XEP-0402 (PEP Native Bookmarks)
- Recommend setting pubsub#max_items to ‘max’ instead of some arbitrary large number (egp)
- Version 1.6.1 of XEP-0198 (Stream Management)
- Clarify SASL2 and BIND2 interaction. (tm)
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.
- No last call this month.
Stable
- No XEP moved to stable this month.
Deprecated
- No XEP deprecated this month.
Spread the news
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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, Federico, Jonas Stein, Kris “poVoq”, Licaon_Kter, Ludovic Bocquet, Mario Sabatino, melvo, MSavoritias (fae,ve), nicola, Simone Canaletti, XSF iTeam
- French: jabberfr.org and linuxfr.org
- Translators: Adrien Bourmault (neox), alkino, anubis, Arkem, Benoît Sibaud, mathieui, nyco, Pierre Jarillon, Ppjet6, Ysabeau
- Italian: notes.nicfab.eu
- Translators: nicola
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.
