Open Realtime

Ignite Realtime is the community site for the users and developers of open source Real Time Communications projects like Openfire, Smack, Spark, and Pàdé. Your involvement is helping to change the open RTC landscape.

Open Realtime

Latest Blog Entries
Guus der Kinderen
3

Openfire 5.0.0 beta release

It is exciting to be able to announce the immediate availability of the beta release of Openfire 5.0.0!

In this release, we have addressed approximately 125 issues! I’ll reserve the details for a blog post on the 5.0.0 (non-beta) release, but some of the important changes are:

  • We’ve dropped support for Java 11. The minimum requirement is Java 17 now
  • The embedded web server has received a major upgrade
  • Various security-related updates were applied, including library updates and code changes that resulted from an independent security audit (more on that later!)

This beta release (and some of its precursors) have been extensively tested by the developers and other members of the Ignite Realtime community. At this stage, we’re not seeing any critical issues. However, prior to cutting the full release, we prefer to have more feedback. That is where you come in!

We are looking for your help!

Please help us test this release! If you host your own instance of Openfire, please consider upgrading it to the new beta release. If you can’t, or if you’re not running Openfire but another brand of XMPP server, please do some interoperability testing with the server at igniterealtime.org.

Are you a client developer? Please see how your application behaves, when connecting to the beta (we can make available accounts for testing to help you do this).

If you’re nothing of a tech-head but can use an XMPP client, try to interact with our domain (for example, join our chatroom at open_chat@conference.igniterealtime.org) to see if there are any issues.

You can obtain the beta from our download page for beta releases or from the GitHub Releases page.

We would love to hear from you! If you have any questions, please stop by our community forum or our live groupchat. We are always looking for volunteers interested in helping out with Openfire development!

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Tags: openfire, planetjabber, release 3
Dele Olajide
5

Version 1.8.4 of Openfire Pade plugin released

I get regular requests and issues have been raised about upgrading the Jitsi meet code in the Openfire Pade plugin to the latest versions. Unfortunately, this task is much more difficult than it sounds.

Jitsi Meet has evolved a lot since the early days of WebRTC. It has moved from being a Java platform agnostic, XMPP compatible self-hosting application into a Linux cloud hosted service.
The current code still depends on our Smack project for the XMPP client, but it uses Prosody as the XMPP server with quite a few extensions and modules coded in Lua which need to be ported to Java. Apart from not having time to work on it, I have also lost the motivation to step up to the challenge as I am more interested in using WHIP and WHEP with XMPP.

Nevertheless, an issue can round last week requesting for support of AV1 codec. This sparked enough motivation for me to spend my Easter holidays trying one more time to make the upgrade happen. The bad news is that I failed yet again, but the good news is that I was able to update the existing code to support AV1. Please note that codecs have pros and cons. VP9 is probably the best all rounder. H264 is best with devices that have hardware encoders and AV1 handles low bandwidth the best.

Openfire Pade plugin version 1.8.4 now supports the AV1 codec. You get the best results with P2P calls. As it is it more CPU intensive than VP9, you make get lower frame rates on low-spec servers. The latest Jitsi code has a lot more improvements and if you really need AV1 with many participants, seriously consider deploying the Jitsi Meet self-hosted instance in a container or VM.

As always, your instance of Openfire should automatically make available to update. Alternatively, you can download the new release of the plugin at the Openfire Pade plugin’s archive page.

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Tags: openfire, smack, pade 5
Guus der Kinderen
1

New releases for Tinder and Whack!

The IgniteRealtime community is happy to announce releases for two of its projects! Both are for XMPP-libraries that we produce.

Tinder is a Java based XMPP library, providing an implementation for XMPP stanzas and components. Tinder’s origins lie in code that’s shared between our Openfire and Whack implementations. The implementation that’s provided in Tinder hasn’t been written again from scratch. Instead, code has been moved from the original projects into Tinder, preserving al of the existing features and functionality.

The v2.1.0 release of Tinder is a maintenance release. It updates various libraries that are used by Tinder, and removes deprecated, unused code. Tinder now requires Java 11 or later. The full list of changes in this release can be found in the release notes.

Whack is a Java library that easily allows the creation of external components that follow the XEP-0114: Jabber Component Protocol. This library allows you to create server-sided components of your XMPP network that can run as stand-alone processes. That’s particularly useful when you are creating functionality for which scalability configuration differs from that of Openfire, or if you want to re-use your component for XMPP servers other than Openfire!

The v3.0.0 release of Whack is a maintenance release. It improves reconnection logic (when connection to the XMPP server is lost), it no longer ships with an embedded webserver (that was old, unused, and was raising vulnerability warnings, and updates some libraries (such as Tinder) to more recent versions. The fulll list of chagnes in this release can be found in the release notes.

We would love to hear from you! If you have any questions, please stop by our community forum or our live groupchat.

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Tags: planetjabber, release 1
Guus der Kinderen
1

It’s time for real interoperability. Let’s make it happen!

When I explain to others what I do for a living, I often ask why it is that we are not surprised that one can use a Gmail account to send an email to someone who uses an Outlook account, yet many people fully accept that you can’t send a message to someone using WhatsApp from a Telegram account. We’re not surprised that we can use our phone to set up a call with someone who uses a different brand of phone (or is subscribed to a different provider), yet, for instant messaging, we find ourselves in a world of walled gardens.

Walled gardens refer to ecosystems where companies control access to their platforms and restrict users’ ability to freely interact with other services, creating barriers that prevent open communication and fair competition.

Recognizing this, legislation is slowly being put in place to improve things. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a regulatory framework established aimed at ensuring fair competition and improving the functioning of the digital economy. One of its primary objectives is to dismantle these walled gardens and promote messaging interoperability. The DMA seeks to break down barriers and ensure that users have more freedom to engage with different platforms and services, while also enabling interoperability between messaging services.

Meta (of WhatsApp and Facebook fame) is designated as a “gatekeeper” under the DMA. This means that Meta holds a dominant position in the market, controlling key access points that can potentially limit competition or consumer choice. The act outlines various obligations that Meta must comply with to ensure a fairer and more open digital environment.

The XMPP Standards Foundation is now publishing an Open Letter to Meta, to advocate for the adoption of XMPP for messaging interoperability. It argues that Meta’s proposal falls short: Meta’s current approach to interoperability, which relies on restrictive NDAs, proprietary APIs, and centralized control, is not true interoperability.

The XSF argues that Meta should adopt XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), a proven, open standard that allows for true federation, decentralization, enhanced privacy, and scalability. XMPP enables seamless communication between different services, akin to email or phone networks. Meta has previously utilized XMPP for WhatsApp and Messenger and has embraced federation for other services, showing that adoption and implementation are not only achievable, but has already been proven to work.

The XSF urges Meta to adopt XMPP for messaging interoperability to comply with the DMA and build a competitive, open messaging ecosystem. The XSF is ready to collaborate and evolve the protocol as needed.

The Ignite Realtime community is based on the strength and flexibility offered by XMPP. Projects like Openfire, Smack, Pade and Spark are direct implementations of the XMPP protocol. We have firsthand witnessed the flexibility, reliability and maturity of the protocol, and have been successfully applying it for years, if not decades. We should therefore fully endorse the XSF’s call to action!

It is time for real interoperability. Let’s make it happen!

You can find the Open Letter of the XSF here: XMPP | Open Letter to Meta: Support True Messaging Interoperability with XMPP

A accompanying technical briefing is also published: XMPP | Detailed technical briefing: The Case for XMPP – Why Meta Must Embrace True Messaging Interoperability

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Tags: planetjabber 1
Guus der Kinderen
1

XMPP Summit #27 and FOSDEM 2025

The XMPP Standards Foundation’s yearly Summit will be held on January 30 and 31st, in Brussels. The Summit is an annual two-day gathering where we discuss XMPP protocol development topics. It is a place for XMPP developers to meet each other, and make progress on current issues within the protocol and ecosystem.

Immediately following the Summit is FOSDEM. FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.

I will be present at the Summit, and a small army of Ignite community members (including myself) will be present at FOSDEM We hope to see you at either event! If you’re around, come say hi!

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Tags: planetjabber 1