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?


Yes?