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Just for the record: what Google/FB did to #XMPP was not 'embrace, extend, extinguish'. I bring this up because people are focusing on FB developing a divergent protocol/extensions. Maybe that's a valid concern, but it's unrelated to XMPP.

While Google Talk was actively developed, Google folk actively participated in the community. In fact they contributed important extensions such as Jingle, the protocol we still use today for audio/video calls in XMPP, and other bits and pieces.

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#XMPP

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MattJ
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The big problem was simply that these were the largest nodes on the network. They had so many users, they had nothing to lose by putting up the walls and shutting out what was (to them) a small minority.

The answer to this problem is nothing to do with the protocol, but just ensuring that the network is diverse and distributed, not centralized in one or two seats of power. Now how to actually do that, is a harder question. But it's the one we should be discussing.

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MattJ
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For example, when I started work on Snikket, a project to make XMPP easier, I deliberately chose to focus on helping people establish small servers, based on existing social relationships. I specifically did not want to become just another large public service, partly due to what happened with Google Talk.

A large network of small nodes is more robust against disruption. It's what any healthy decentralized network should be aiming for. Applies to XMPP, Fediverse and the internet in general.

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MattJ
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And to circle back to the start of the thread: if we can avoid reaching this super large node situation, the ease of an 'embrace, extend, extinguish' attack on the network protocol by such nodes is diminished significantly.

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MattJ
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@ChrisWere That's why I focus on existing social groups for Snikket. My family Snikket server is of value to all of us. If I was running the service for strangers, I'd be less inclined to keep it running when times got hard. But yeah, I hear you.

Note though, large services are far from immune to shutdowns. Happens to commercial and non-commercial services all the time.

Anyway, I did spend quite some time working on https://docs.modernxmpp.org/projects/portability/ to try to improve the story when a service goes away.

Account portability - Modern XMPP

docs.modernxmpp.org
@Chris Were 🐧📰🌱☕

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