Slack's XMPP fails

At work we're unfortunately using Slack for single and group chats. Most people use its web interface, some installed their web interface into a memory and CPU hogging electron desktop application. ​

I've been using the Psi XMPP client because I also have other networks to connect to. But now Slack told me We will close the gateways on May 15th, 2018. The bullshit about how the XMPP protocol isn't suited for their needs, which is a total lie. ​

The truth is that they did not care at all about their Slack gateway. I opened a number bug reports, and not a single one of them got fixed: ​

1. Joining Chatrooms with Psi+ XMPP client not possible
   Support Request #583350, 2015-10-19 ​

   The point is that using an account's "service discovery" window, you can see all chatrooms - but you can't join them there. ​

   Slack's suggested workaround was to use the "Join Group Chat" menu item and manually type all the chat room information to join. ​

   ​

2. XMPP: Automatically join chatrooms
   Support Request #585019, 2015-10-20 ​

   It's currently not possible to automatically join chatrooms when connecting with an XMPP client to slack. This means I have to spend 2 minutes each day connecting to each chat room manually and having to remember all the chat room names. ​

   This is because slack does not implement XEP-0048 (Bookmarks), which would allow my XMPP client to store bookmarks and the auto-join setting for a chatroom. http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0048.html ​

   ​

   Their answer: ​

   Unfortunately we do not support gateway bookmarking and currently have no plans to because not all XMPP clients support it. ​

   ​

   ​

3. XMPP: profile image very low-res
   Support Request #594033, 2015-10-27 ​

   The profile images of users that get transferred via the XMPP gateway are of very low resolution. I can hardly recognize the people on the images in my XMPP client. ​

   It was never fixed. ​

   ​

4. Show offline contacts as "offline" in XMPP, not as "away"
   Support Request #584247, 2015-10-19 ​

   Slack people who are not logged on are shown as "away" in my XMPP client. This means they are still shown in the list of chat contacts. ​

   I'd rather see them as "offline", so that they don't even show up in the list of contacts. If I wanted to see them, I can still "show offline contacts". But as it is, the "away" status of in-reality-logged-off-people is bothering me. ​

   ​

   They responded and told me that they can't do that because on XMPP you can't message users that are away - which is a flat lie. ​

   Then they said there are some XMPP clients that don't support the chat-to-offline-people feature, but didn't mention which clients this should be. ​

   The issue was never fixed, my roster was basically unusable with 100+ people always being shown. ​

   ​

5. XMPP gateway: Profile empty
   Support Request #583343, 2015-10-16 ​

   The XMPP profile is empty; I don't see my colleague's full names - only their nick names. The e-mail address field is also empty. ​

   I debugged the issue, and found: ​

   The XML when requesting the vCard contains the <FN> within the <PHOTO> XML tag, which is wrong. It should be outside the PHOTO tag. ​

   They never fixed it. ​

   ​

6. XMPP: profile image very low-res #2
   Support Request #1323705, 2017-05-02 ​

   I opened that because the original issue could not be commented on after 1.5 years of inactivity. I never got a response. ​

   ​

7. XMPP: Automatically join chatrooms #2
   Support Request #1323707, 2017-05-02 ​

   I opened that because the original issue could not be commented on after 1.5 years of inactivity. I never got a response. ​

   ​

8. XMPP gateway: Profile empty #2
   Support Request #1323704, 2017-05-02 ​

   I opened that because the original issue could not be commented on after 1.5 years of inactivity. I never got a response. ​

   ​

9. xmpp gateway: <photo> in presence all have the same image
   Support Request #1377805, 2017-06-22

   I'm using Psi+ version 1.0.9 to connect to the slack xmpp gateway. All people in the contact list have the same picture.

   This is because the XMPP gateway sends the same photo for all people - see the attached XML file with some presence information. All have the same photo tag content:

   <photo>sha1-hash-of-image_208073</photo>

   They told me they can't reproduce the issue with other clients and did not even look at their XMPP XML that clearly shows the problem.

   Of course it was not fixed.

   ​

Slack never wanted to have a good XMPP gateway. Now that they are big enough to fail, they can shove this decision down their user's throat and shut XMPP and IRC gateways down. ​

I'll do everything I can to get my workplace to switch away from Slack. ​