Indeed, there are a large number of people still using Jabber/XMPP today with "popular" clients like Pidgin or Adium that haven't stayed up to date with modern advancements in messaging.
It leads many people to believe that XMPP is incapable of many of the features that are considered normal in modern messaging applications.
A hard break in the protocol would solve it (i.e. so old clients would no longer be able to communicate with new clients), but it would also frustrate and fragment the significant existing userbase. Given that open decentralized standards-based networks are something to be treasured if we're to stem the tide of proprietary walled-garden messengers, that option would potentially be shooting the open movement in the foot.
It leads many people to believe that XMPP is incapable of many of the features that are considered normal in modern messaging applications.
A hard break in the protocol would solve it (i.e. so old clients would no longer be able to communicate with new clients), but it would also frustrate and fragment the significant existing userbase. Given that open decentralized standards-based networks are something to be treasured if we're to stem the tide of proprietary walled-garden messengers, that option would potentially be shooting the open movement in the foot.
EDIT: typo