Snikket is an ambitious project to build a new kind of XMPP-based messaging platform.
Until now, the XMPP ecosystem has been very fragmented - a collection of projects with a mixture of different designs, terminologies and quality. Diversity is excellent, and the foundation of any healthy ecosystem. But we also need to have some amount of consistency. Snikket aims to provide this consistency, and provide a friendly entrance to the world of XMPP.
Snikket aims to:
The primary use case for Snikket currently is secure personal messaging. That is, we are aiming to provide an open alternative to proprietary messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and Telegram.
Snikket is currently not aiming to be a replacement for enterprise/team chat solutions such as Slack, Discord, RocketChat or Mattermost. This may change in the future as resources allow, but right now we want to focus on doing one thing and doing it well.
This section gives a high-level overview of some of the largest tasks on our roadmap. It is an evolving document, and will be updated as the project progresses.
Providing a client for Apple devices is currenly one of the priority items for the project, to allow Snikket to be usable by a broader audience.
None of the existing open-source clients currently meet the requirements of a Snikket client. Achieving this goal will require investment in additional features and UX work in one of these clients.
Siskin is currently the most likely candidate, but there are a number of issues that need to be resolved first.
Currently operating the Snikket server requires a number of tasks to be performed using command-line tools, such as creating an invitation and managing users. The goal is to provide a very straightforward web interface for common administrative tasks.
Similarly to the web admin dashboard, there are certain actions that a Snikket user should be able to make without assistance from the server administrator. This includes:
Work on this has begun at snikket-web-portal!
There are a number of potential places where Snikket can be better integrated, e.g. self-hosting services and distributions such as YunoHost and Sandstorm.io.
As a first step towards accessing Snikket from non-mobile platforms, we intend to launch a web client for Snikket.
We welcome contributions of all kinds! You can help support the project by:
We’re always happy to hear from people, join the community!