Happy New Year: Celebrating 21 Years of Innovation with ejabberd

[badlop]

This article was originally published in the blog Happy New Year: Celebrating 21 Years of Innovation with ejabberd

Time flies, and it's hard to believe that ejabberd, our beloved open-source project, celebrated its 21st anniversary last November 16th! It's a milestone that we've proudly highlighted over the years – remember the 4th, 10th, 18th, and 20th anniversaries? Well, 21 is just as significant, marking over two decades of innovation and community effort.

In honor of this remarkable journey, we've launched a new section on the ejabberd Docs site, showcasing a timeline of all ejabberd releases alongside their major advancements. This walk down memory lane is not just nostalgic, but a testament to continuous improvement and adaptation. Check out the ejabberd roadmap to witness our evolutionary path.

2023: A Year of Significant Progress

Reflecting on the past year, ejabberd has seen substantial growth and development with three key releases:

• Version 23.01: Introduced an innovative MQTT bridge, offering users and devices the ability to use either XMPP, MQTT, or both using the same credentials. This feature leverages the same scalability & clustering features that made ejabberd famous, enhancing flexibility and user experience in communication protocols.
• Version 23.04: Enhanced chatroom functionalities with support for XEP-0425 (Message Moderation) and Real-Time Block List in MUC rooms, ensuring a safer, more controlled messaging environment.
• Version 23.10: Focused on user experience improvements by adding support for XEP-0402 (PEP Native Bookmarks) and XEP-0421: Occupant Id.

Looking Ahead: What is Coming to ejabberd in Early 2024

As we step into the new year, our roadmap is already filled with exciting updates. The upcoming ejabberd releases are set to include:

• RFC 9266: Introducing Channel Bindings for TLS 1.3, enhancing security and reliability.
• XEP-0388 (Extensible SASL Profile - SASL2)
• XEP-0440 (SASL Channel-Binding Type Capability): These updates are aimed at bolstering our authentication mechanisms.
• XEP-0386 (Bind 2): This is going to reduce the connection time for clients. This is especially important if you are using XMPP to connect from a mobile network.
• XEP-0424 (Message Retraction): Further enhancing user control over their own message, with the ability to ask for deletion.
• Automatic SQL Schema Creation and Update: Streamlining database management.
• Commands API Versioning: Ensuring better compatibility and flexibility for developers.
• Support for Elixir 1.16.

But that's not all. In our continuous effort to share the advancements of ejabberd Business Edition with a wider audience, we have some exciting news for early 2024:

• Matrix Protocol Bridge: Initially available exclusively for our supported customers, the Matrix protocol bridge will be integrated into the ejabberd Community Edition. This integration marks a significant step in expanding our interoperability and connectivity options.

We will also be adding significant scalability improvements in ejabberd Business Edition:

• Database Sharding for Scalability: Understanding the challenges of large-scale deployments, we are introducing database sharding features for our supported customers. This enhancement will significantly improve scalability, especially in scenarios where the database becomes a bottleneck.

The "Invisible Leader"

As we reflect on our milestones and look ahead, we owe immense gratitude to our community. Your support and feedback are the pillars of ejabberd's success.

Looking into 2024, we're set to strengthen ejabberd's presence and affirm ProcessOne's role as the "invisible leader" in Instant Messaging. With exciting developments on the horizon, we're eager to make the next year a landmark for ejabberd.

Your continued feedback is vital as we forge ahead. Together, let's shape 2024 into a remarkable year for ejabberd and our community.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Here's to an innovative 2024!