Recently I was locked out of my own Ghost blog platform because they decided they were going to add Email 2FA. I also cannot add any other authors because that requires email verification.
Today I was looking at installing Bonfire and came across this:
Bonfire requires working email for user signups, password resets, and notifications. Most installations will need email configuration before the instance is usable.
Setting up email is a pain in the ass, costs money, is dependent on 3rd parties, violates privacy, and is just completely unnecessary. Why wouldn’t you give users the option to not use it? It’s infuriating!
And you know this since you’ve written code to manage both on different environments, right?
Also, whatsapp supports all kinds of “bots” and it has absolutely massive userspace compared to pretty much any other instant message application. It doesn’t matter if you create the perfect protocol and platform for this kind of thing if there’s 7 people globally using it.
You don’t have to write code to configure Matrix/XMPP.
You keep saying this as if user adoption is the only thing that matters. 99% of self-hosted stuff has tiny “userspace” so I don’t know what you’re on about.
You do realize that the developers need to write code to configure a Matrix/XMPP module? The module doesn’t just appear out your immagination.
Then it will need to be maintained as security holes are discovered.
Tell me again why developers should spend the time and resources to maintain a feature that at best will have a marginal impact on the userbase, over focusing on the core of the project.
How you imagine things send messages to reset your passwords, sending notifications and whatever is currently managed via email than some piece of code creating and sending messages, managing possible errors with them and potentially also monitoring/logging the message traffic for statistics or debugging?
User adoption matters if you want your thing to be actually useful for the actual users. And supporting any messaging system requires effort, so it makes sense to spend limited resources on a thing which has the biggest userspace. If you want to run matrix server which has you and your dog using it, go ahead, but don’t be surprised if you want to contact your neighbor and he’ll look like you have two heads when you start to explain how to reach you.
It makes zero sense to spend any resources on adding compatibility with proprietary and malicious protocols, regardless of “userspace”.
I had a look at the system, and it is a commercial product, I would imagine that their customers have requested these features.
Since you are a customer, why not request your features to be added as well?
Or, better yet, since you have explained that creating an XMPP/Matrix module as an alternative to email requires no coding, and the plattform is open source, why not just slap it together yourself?