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@cereal You don't need a central system, because you federate. Server A talks to server B without anyone else getting involved. Well, except the DNS system and all the routers between you.
The Identity Servers are used for mapping Matrix IDs to telephone numbers, email addresses and so on. It's completely irrelevant if you are talking to friends tech-savvy enough to tell you their matrix address, and they don't even need to understand that if you all hang out on the same server.
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@cereal How does the e-mail server a.example.com know that b.example.com exist? It doesn't really. But when alice@a.example.com want to send an email to bob@b.example.com it just connects, and hey, there's a server here. Good, I'll deliver the message.
You don't need a list. If you want to follow someone, they can tell you their address. If you want to join a room, somehow you found out the room existed, and then you just say you want to join #theroom:matrix.example.com.
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@cereal Sorry, "follow" is a bad verb, I'm mixing up my conversations. You want to chat with them.
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@notjeff @cereal Good. Then I have explained well. ;-)
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@notjeff @cereal It's partly a bunch of NIH and some outdated once-valid reasons. But also it's a base change, from talking about delivering messages to talking about syncing room state.
https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-the-difference-between-matrix-and-xmpp
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@notjeff @cereal The practical reason is the bridges that already exist. I use it instead of setting up my own IRC bouncer, that's the killer use case for me.
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@cereal @notjeff The other reason to use it is mainly network effect. A bunch of people happened to get on there, and now I already know more people who use Matrix than who use XMPP.
But I also think the mobile Riot app and the web app work very well. The mobile app is more capable than Conversations and I don't even know what XMPP web apps there are that could compare to Riot. I have looked around at screen shots but didn't try any. Maybe Kawa?
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@notjeff @cereal As long as you activate the relevant XMPP extensions for handling mobile and intermittent connections, yeah, no compelling technical reason.
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@cereal Yes. :-(
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@cereal You discover people through side-channels or through encounters in rooms. There is no central directory for e-mail either.
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@cereal e-mail is the canonical federation. There is a network of networks called the internet.
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@cereal Urgh, yes, that would not be optimal. But one could probably make it work using https://pagekite.net/ .
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@cereal The internet is a useful transport layer on top of which to build all kinds of applications, federated or not.