It wasn’t interoperable enough with the wide cornucopia of devices in the group. We’re talking Mac, pc, android 6 thru to 15 and a few more besides.

It wasn’t that XMPP was incapable, it’s that the client matrix was too uneven across the wide range of devices I needed to support.

IRC was simpler, lighter, easier to diagnose, and had clients for basically everything. Plus most of us were familiar with IRC from back in the day.

I also already had Janus for video chat set up, plus Tailscale already hooked into the pi, so most of XMPP’s extra machinery solved problems I no longer had.

TL; DR easier to host on pi, easier for client devices, less moving parts.

Personally, I just really like the look and feel of motd

Yeah I’m using motd as well and it’s the best one, I only wish it wasn’t made with AI…

XMPP is not good. The clients are poor. The core server requires a bunch of extensions to do basic stuff like sync history with clients. I have my gripes with Matrix but I ran right back to it after trying xmpp for a month. Yes I tried the distros etc etc, the stack is too old and people aren’t modernizing it.

I don’t understand why people keep bringing it up as if it is a viable modern replacement for Matrix, it isn’t.