dutchboy / openfire Goto Github PK

This is warning to all who consider using Openfire.

I have spent a week on installing it. Successfully.
With external authentication with Keycloak, MySQL, etc.

This sounds pretty straight forward, but it isn't. Believe me, I had to dig in and search for hours to get it working. Openfire itself is poorly documented.

I left some notes and questions on their self-maintained "community board". At first, I was hopeful, but scrolling through ancient cries for help from other members, I started to realize "there's no one there"... The members who cried for help, moved on to other projects, abandoning the ship.

Later on, I even emailed the "lead developer" himself. After yet another no-response, I did some research.

1. Of their 84 contributors, only one has committed three changes the last 18 months.
2. The lead developer himself does not mention anything about being so on his own LinkedIn curriculum.

My own conclusion is that the project Openfire is practically dead. One week of investment down the drain.

Frustrated, I (reluctantly) started a new Ubuntu VM and installed MongooseIM.

Very reluctant, because I thought I had to learn yet another language, Erlang.

But.... Within a half an hour, I got MongooseIM working with Keycloak, with PEMs (CA SSL certificates) and really, a whole lot more. The documentation at MongooseIM is really amazing.

Why am I writing this?... Pure frustration? Yes... I normally never ever spend time on "bad energy". My goal now is just to warn others up front, hoping nobody else will loose a week on Openfire, a 10 year old project. The direct reason I started to write this monologue is that I just got an automated email from the "community board" of Openfire, telling me I have abused their terms - they just deleted my account. So, that's the reason no one will ever find any negative points on their silly system. They prefer to spend lots of time searching for it.... Hmmmm....

So - MongooseIM is the way forward. Openfire is dead.