[jdev] obtaining XMPP accounts

[Justin Karneges]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015, at 01:04 PM, Kevin Smith wrote:
> On 8 Dec 2015, at 21:01, Dave Cridland <dave at cridland.net> wrote:
> > On 8 December 2015 at 20:53, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at stpeter.im> wrote:
> > On 12/8/15 1:07 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
> > 
> > Certainly I do have the feeling that as an
> > end user, obtaining an XMPP account is now very hard, with the effective
> > closure of end-user services from jabber.org <http://jabber.org> (the
> > obvious go-to public server) and the dropping of XMPP by Google Talk -
> > 
> > I'm not sure I'd say "very hard" - there are still plenty of servers listed at xmpp.net. Could it be easier? Probably. It might be good to have a page about that at the new xmpp.org website.
> > 
> > By comparison to ${ARBITRARY_IM_SERVICE}, yes, I think it is very hard. Our on-boarding process is nothing like as easy as the somewhat commonplace "Download app, run app, do some registration dance" - instead it's "Download app, go to some website, go to some other website and try to figure out how to create an account, configure app."
> > 
> > It was better - for the user - when XEP-0077 was commonplace, since at least a client should ship with a list of servers. Of course, that level of simplicity brought its own problems, but I think we could make that process a lot smoother without compromising security entirely.
> 
> I think there’s a fair argument for simply having an advertised HTTPS
> endpoint for servers that clients could then present to the user. It’s
> not as satisfying to do it out of band, but it’s also very often what
> these easy-to-register-with apps do, and it’s somewhat richer than 77.

To me, the big issue with registration is making it easy for a user to
determine which server is right for them. It's a decision most of us
wouldn't take lightly. The user needs to realize it's more than just a
JID domain name selection, but a relationship that they are entering
into with the service provider. I like the idea of tossing the user to a
website because it helps start building that relationship.

*crawls back into cave*