Actual it is the other way around. Most people are d***s. They just go with the flow without educating them selves or thinking about their actions and the impact it could have. And when things go south, it is always the fault of the other people. Never realizing their own mistakes.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

Of course not. Actually, I would prefer to outsource it too, just like I did with e-mail. But I do know that if this e-mail provider messes things up, I can switch to another easily or indeed host it myself if needed. Too bad they don't provide jabber-services as well, I'd gladly pay for it.

Yes, people expect these things for ""free"" these days. But as mentioned before by other and by me there are plenty free jabber-services available. Google just used to be one of them.

I do stand by my own opinions, and I do try to educate people *when* I think there is some possibility they will listen to me. I have converted people to open source software even by not giving them another choice so that they can see for themselves why this is better.

On the other hand I refuse to do lectures or remote technical support to people I don't care about that I might have to communicate with. Trying to convince somebody to switch must come easy. Not all the people want to tinker with technology and most don't even know what an open standard is.

I understand that it might be less hard than I originally thought to make somebody switch to jabber but it still isn't painless. Skype is there and you just need a username. Whatsapp doesn't even need a username. Messing with server configuration is hard for some people especially if they carry various devices.

Even FSF recognized that making everyone switch is hard and they decided to make a free swf renderer (gnash) and not convince everybody to switch.

While romantic and ultimately Good, converting everybody to jabber today, after Google dropped it, is just a dream. Think of something else.

I know that but for me its not only about chat protocol.

I want something fully open some kind of "safe open community" were I can safely store everything online cryptated and only share stuff that a want to share to others. No damn marketing **** on the site. Ofcource that is not possible without some kind of fee. But I would be willing pay a montly/yearly fee for that community and payment using bitcoins to make it even more easier instead of todays unsafe card crap.

And because the community would use open rotocols it would support any existing devices. No inlock depepend on what device you have!

Creating a XMPP/jabber account isn't that hard. For example with Pidgin you just enter a nickname and a server (hot-chilli.net, jabber.org or whatever). Tick create account box, press OK and you're all set.

It's not any harder to start using than walled services, less advertised maybe so average joes don't flock to it. No problem with that though. My friends and family can contact me via XMPP if they want to. Maybe few GTalk users will be cut off from my contacts list due to google's new course, but ultimately that's their choice (to select non-interoperable server).

I share ajalkane's view in that I don't want to actively push my choices to other people. Everyone can use whatever service/OS/color of shirt they feel comfortable with as long as it doesn't limit my freedom of choice.

They did implement it (Mistral I think, I definitely remember using since the 770 days) but it's one of many things that got "fixed" in Fremantle.

Good :-)

I don't know, I think when your communications provider suddenly and deliberately drops the ability to communicate with half your contacts is exactly the right moment to switch. What's the alternative, convince everyone else to join Google hangover? Yeah, right.

Don't aim to convince everyone to use XMPP. Just use it yourself. Same goes for example for open source / decentralized social networks vs. closed monstrosities like Facebook. You can hardly convince the majority to join Diaspora / Libertree and etc. But you can use them yourself.

Of course if you can convince someone who accepts your arguments - why not. Some people aren't opposed to better alternatives, they might just be unaware of them.

Related interview from Eben Moglen:

http://betabeat.com/2011/12/in-which...g-on-facebook/

this situation with google dropping support for xmpp federation has made me sad, because what really is the alternative to encouraging your friends to use xmpp compatible chat - if you wish to:

• be able to chat without being dependent on specific company
• be able to chat with end-to-end encryption (not necessarily always, but should need ever be)
• be able to chat anonymously

related; initially i was excited about #hemlismessenger, but it seems they will not support xmpp federation either.