I personally don’t have the technical knowledge, time, or energy to take on something like this — but I was curious:
Since Matrix, XMPP, etc. already support most (if not all) of the features that Discord offers — text, voice, video, threads, bots, roles, federation, etc. — would it theoretically be possible to just replicate Discord’s UI and UX and build it on top of the Matrix or XMPP protocol instead of starting from scratch?
I mean, sure, there’d be some challenges with existing third-party clients, like
Matrix:
Element X,
Nheko,
Cinny,
FluffyChat,
XMPP:
Aparté
AstraChat XMPP Client
aTalk
Beagle IM
Bruno
Chat-O-Matic
Chatty
Conversations
Cheogram Android
but if developers and users agreed to focus on a stack — say, Matrix, XMPP, or both — couldn’t there a “Discord-like” ecosystem of compatible apps and communities?
Basically: could an open-source “Discord alternative” be built using Matrix or XMPP as the backend rather than trying to reinvent the wheel?
What are the technical or social barriers to doing that?
Stoat made a small mention in their name change blog that there’s a big update in the pipeline to bring in voice chat and screen sharing, two of the fundamental functions used by every Discord user that I know. If Stoat manages to bring those two features in at a similar parity to Discord then it’ll be a legitimate candidate for a Discord replacement.
Unfortunately, from my research most other platforms either don’t have voice and screen share at all or they do but it’s implemented in a way that’s far from optimal.