Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Alexandre Franke]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 5:57 PM, Carlos Soriano  wrote:
> Oh I actually talked with Matthew today about this and opened a new bug:
>
> https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/390 . In this
> case this is for disabling the spam filter they have so any non-registered
> user can talk with matrix users.

The issue I was talking about in my previous email is not the same
thing. I already filed a bug about it:
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/382

It affects even registered users as you’ll see in the report.

> Also regarding Michael advice of not talking to [m] users, that's semi true,
> most of us already change the IRC handler to be our regular IRC nickname, so
> for example I'm csoriano even from Matrix. Which might be an issue if we are
> missing pm's

Yes, getting issue #382 solved is quite urgent.

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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

Oh I actually talked with Matthew today about this and opened a new bug:

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/390 . In this case 
this is for disabling the spam filter they have so any non-registered user can 
talk with matrix users.

Also regarding Michael advice of not talking to [m] users, that's semi true, 
most of us already change the IRC handler to be our regular IRC nickname, so 
for example I'm csoriano even from Matrix. Which might be an issue if we are 
missing pm's



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano


 Original Message 
Subject: Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about 
communication)
Local Time: March 14, 2017 5:50 PM
UTC Time: March 14, 2017 4:50 PM
From: mcatanz...@gnome.org
To: Alexandre Franke <afra...@gnome.org>, Matthew Hodgson <matt...@matrix.org>
Desktop Development List <desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>

On Wed, 2017-03-08 at 12:15 +0100, Alexandre Franke wrote:
> Heads up on a quite important issue: some private messages from IRC
> users to Matrix users are not delivered. The IRC user won’t get
> notified and so will never know the messages were lost.
>
> https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/382

Hi,

I hit this yesterday and was planning to send a warning to this list,
but I see you've already done so. Here is a reminder. Do not attempt to
send private messages to Matrix users (people with [m] behind their
names) until this is fixed! Your messages will be *silently* dropped
without any notice to you or the intended recipient!

Michael
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Wed, 2017-03-08 at 12:15 +0100, Alexandre Franke wrote:
> Heads up on a quite important issue: some private messages from IRC
> users to Matrix users are not delivered. The IRC user won’t get
> notified and so will never know the messages were lost.
> 
> https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/382

Hi,

I hit this yesterday and was planning to send a warning to this list,
but I see you've already done so. Here is a reminder. Do not attempt to
send private messages to Matrix users (people with [m] behind their
names) until this is fixed! Your messages will be *silently* dropped
without any notice to you or the intended recipient!

Michael
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Alexandre Franke]

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 8:32 PM, Matthew Hodgson  wrote:
> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet into
> Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).

Heads up on a quite important issue: some private messages from IRC
users to Matrix users are not delivered. The IRC user won’t get
notified and so will never know the messages were lost.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/382

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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Mattias Bengtsson]

Yeah this is so awesome!

/Mattias - who just deleted his IRCCloud account

Den 3 mars 2017 1:57 em skrev "Emmanuele Bassi" :

Thanks ever so much for this work, Matthew. It's really a great
addition to the communication channels for GNOME, and hopefully people
will start using Matrix much more. :-)

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

On 2 March 2017 at 19:32, Matthew Hodgson  wrote:
> On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke 
>>> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
>>
>>
>> Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
>> blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
>> releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
>> top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
>> week. Sorry for the delay...
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet into
> Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it took so
long
> to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we expected, and we've
> spent the last month handling the traffic increases and operational
> excitements that came off the back of it.
>
> The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through
> matrix room aliases of form:
>
>  #_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org
>
> e.g.
>
>  #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>
> The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the
current
> flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via riot-web are
of
> the form:
>
> https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>
> You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax,
or
> using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).
>
> We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to
> register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.
>
> You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m]
> suffix on their nickname.
>
> Feedback very welcome!  We are still in beta, and very interested in
making
> sure it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)
>
> Matthew
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
> ___
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list



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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Emmanuele Bassi]

Thanks ever so much for this work, Matthew. It's really a great
addition to the communication channels for GNOME, and hopefully people
will start using Matrix much more. :-)

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

On 2 March 2017 at 19:32, Matthew Hodgson  wrote:
> On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke 
>>> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
>>
>>
>> Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
>> blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
>> releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
>> top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
>> week. Sorry for the delay...
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet into
> Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it took so long
> to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we expected, and we've
> spent the last month handling the traffic increases and operational
> excitements that came off the back of it.
>
> The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through
> matrix room aliases of form:
>
>  #_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org
>
> e.g.
>
>  #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>
> The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the current
> flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via riot-web are of
> the form:
>
> https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>
> You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax, or
> using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).
>
> We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to
> register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.
>
> You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m]
> suffix on their nickname.
>
> Feedback very welcome!  We are still in beta, and very interested in making
> sure it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)
>
> Matthew
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
> ___
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list



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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Debarshi Ray]

On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 05:56:25PM -0500, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list 
wrote:
> I'm missing some rooms though, like #nautilus or #gnome-photos etc

Nitpick: it is just #photos.
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Germán Poo-Caamaño]

On Thu, 2017-03-02 at 22:05 +, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
> We deliberately don't implement gravatar support as it's a bit of a
> privacy issue, given it lets gravatar track and correlate users
> across a wide range of services. I guess we could provide it as an
> option though :)

That is a nice privacy feature.

-- 
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http://calcifer.org/

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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 2:56 PM Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list <
desktop-devel-list@gnome.org> wrote:

> Excellent news we have matrix bridge, thanks Matthew!
>
> I'm missing some rooms though, like #nautilus or #gnome-photos etc. Are
> they on the bridge and the search is having problems to find them or are
> they out for some reason?
>

There is no 'pre-join' so you need to join them as the irc gateway is to
the entire gimpnet.  So do something like:

/join #_gimpnet_#nautilus:matrix.org

similar to gnome-photos.

sri


>
> Best regards,
> Carlos Soriano
>
>  Original Message 
> Subject: Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs
> about communication)
> Local Time: March 2, 2017 11:05 PM
> UTC Time: March 2, 2017 10:05 PM
> From: matt...@matrix.org
> To: Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org>
> Carlos Soriano <csori...@protonmail.com>, Desktop Development List <
> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>
>
> We deliberately don't implement gravatar support as it's a bit of a
> privacy issue, given it lets gravatar track and correlate users across a
> wide range of services. I guess we could provide it as an option though :)
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
>
> On 2 Mar 2017, at 22:02, Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org> wrote:
>
> Yeah I just did, the web app went well. I was on the train while trying.
> This is really neat stuff, will gather a bunch of feedback. So far the lack
> of automatic gravatar support comes to mind.
>
> 2017-03-02 22:00 GMT+00:00 Sriram Ramkrishna <s...@ramkrishna.me>:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 1:53 PM Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org> wrote:
>
> Tried to register through the Riot mobile app... the register request
> timed out.
>
>
>
> Try the web app version - http://riot.im/
>
> sri
>
>
> 2017-03-02 19:32 GMT+00:00 Matthew Hodgson <matt...@matrix.org>:
>
> On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
>
> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke <afra...@gnome.org>
> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
>
>
> Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
> blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
> releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
> top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
> week. Sorry for the delay...
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet
> into Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it took
> so long to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we expected, and
> we've spent the last month handling the traffic increases and operational
> excitements that came off the back of it.
>
> The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through
> matrix room aliases of form:
>
>  #_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org
>
> e.g.
>
>  #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>
> The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the
> current flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via
> riot-web are of the form:
>
> https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
> <https://riot.im/app/#/room/%23_gimpnet_%23gtk+:matrix.org>
>
> You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax,
> or using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).
>
> We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to
> register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.
>
> You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m]
> suffix on their nickname.
>
> Feedback very welcome!  We are still in beta, and very interested in
> making sure it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)
>
> Matthew
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
> ___
> desktop-devel-list mailing list
> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Alberto Ruiz
> ___
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Alberto Ruiz
>
>
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

oh excellent, thanks!



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message 

Subject: Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about 
communication)
Local Time: March 3, 2017 12:02 AM
UTC Time: March 2, 2017 11:02 PM
From: afra...@gnome.org
To: Carlos Soriano <csori...@protonmail.com>
Matthew Hodgson <matt...@matrix.org>, Desktop Development List 
<desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 11:56 PM, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list
<desktop-devel-list@gnome.org> wrote:
> I'm missing some rooms though, like #nautilus or #gnome-photos etc. Are they
> on the bridge and the search is having problems to find them or are they out
> for some reason?

The bridge is for a whole network, not per room. The rooms that appear
in the directory are just the ones for which at least one Matrix user
already joined (so they are “known”). You can join any room as Matthew
described with #_gimpnet_#ircchannelname:matrix.org

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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

Excellent news we have matrix bridge, thanks Matthew!

I'm missing some rooms though, like #nautilus or #gnome-photos etc. Are they on 
the bridge and the search is having problems to find them or are they out for 
some reason?



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano


 Original Message 
Subject: Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about 
communication)
Local Time: March 2, 2017 11:05 PM
UTC Time: March 2, 2017 10:05 PM
From: matt...@matrix.org
To: Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org>
Carlos Soriano <csori...@protonmail.com>, Desktop Development List 
<desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>


We deliberately don't implement gravatar support as it's a bit of a privacy 
issue, given it lets gravatar track and correlate users across a wide range of 
services. I guess we could provide it as an option though :)

--
Matthew Hodgson
Matrix.org


On 2 Mar 2017, at 22:02, Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org> wrote:


Yeah I just did, the web app went well. I was on the train while trying. This 
is really neat stuff, will gather a bunch of feedback. So far the lack of 
automatic gravatar support comes to mind.



2017-03-02 22:00 GMT+00:00 Sriram Ramkrishna <s...@ramkrishna.me>:





On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 1:53 PM Alberto Ruiz <ar...@gnome.org> wrote:

Tried to register through the Riot mobile app... the register request timed out.



Try the web app version - http://riot.im/

sri






2017-03-02 19:32 GMT+00:00 Matthew Hodgson <matt...@matrix.org>:

On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:


On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke <afra...@gnome.org>
Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?

Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
week. Sorry for the delay...


Hi all,

We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet into 
Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread). Sorry that it took so long to 
happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we expected, and we've spent 
the last month handling the traffic increases and operational excitements that 
came off the back of it.

The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through matrix 
room aliases of form:

#_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org

e.g.

#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org

The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the current 
flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via riot-web are of 
the form:

[https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/%23_gimpnet_%23gtk+:matrix.org)

You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax, or 
using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).

We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to 
register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.

You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m] suffix 
on their nickname.

Feedback very welcome! We are still in beta, and very interested in making sure 
it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)

Matthew

--
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Matrix.org
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Alexandre Franke]

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 11:56 PM, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list
 wrote:
> I'm missing some rooms though, like #nautilus or #gnome-photos etc. Are they
> on the bridge and the search is having problems to find them or are they out
> for some reason?

The bridge is for a whole network, not per room. The rooms that appear
in the directory are just the ones for which at least one Matrix user
already joined (so they are “known”). You can join any room as Matthew
described with #_gimpnet_#ircchannelname:matrix.org

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GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Matthew Hodgson]

We deliberately don't implement gravatar support as it's a bit of a privacy 
issue, given it lets gravatar track and correlate users across a wide range of 
services. I guess we could provide it as an option though :)

-- 
Matthew Hodgson
Matrix.org

> On 2 Mar 2017, at 22:02, Alberto Ruiz  wrote:
> 
> Yeah I just did, the web app went well. I was on the train while trying. This 
> is really neat stuff, will gather a bunch of feedback. So far the lack of 
> automatic gravatar support comes to mind.
> 
> 2017-03-02 22:00 GMT+00:00 Sriram Ramkrishna :
>> 
>> 
>>> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 1:53 PM Alberto Ruiz  wrote:
>>> Tried to register through the Riot mobile app... the register request timed 
>>> out.
>>> 
>> 
>> Try the web app version - http://riot.im/
>> 
>> sri
>>  
>>> 2017-03-02 19:32 GMT+00:00 Matthew Hodgson :
>>> On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
>>> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke 
>>> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
>>> 
>>> Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
>>> blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
>>> releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
>>> top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
>>> week. Sorry for the delay...
>>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet into 
>>> Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it took so 
>>> long to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we expected, and 
>>> we've spent the last month handling the traffic increases and operational 
>>> excitements that came off the back of it.
>>> 
>>> The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through 
>>> matrix room aliases of form:
>>> 
>>>  #_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org
>>> 
>>> e.g.
>>> 
>>>  #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>>> 
>>> The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the current 
>>> flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via riot-web are 
>>> of the form:
>>> 
>>> https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org
>>> 
>>> You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax, or 
>>> using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).
>>> 
>>> We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to 
>>> register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.
>>> 
>>> You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m] 
>>> suffix on their nickname.
>>> 
>>> Feedback very welcome!  We are still in beta, and very interested in making 
>>> sure it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)
>>> 
>>> Matthew
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Matthew Hodgson
>>> Matrix.org
>>> ___
>>> desktop-devel-list mailing list
>>> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
>>> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Alberto Ruiz
>>> ___
>>> desktop-devel-list mailing list
>>> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
>>> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Alberto Ruiz
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Re: irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 11:32 AM Matthew Hodgson  wrote:

> On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:
> >> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke 
> >> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
> >
> > Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
> > blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
> > releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
> > top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
> > week. Sorry for the delay...
>
> Hi all,
>
> We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet
> into Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it
> took so long to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we
> expected, and we've spent the last month handling the traffic increases
> and operational excitements that came off the back of it.
>


Thank you for setting this up!  Much appreciated.

sri

>
>
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irc.gimp.org is now available via Matrix (was: Re: Thoughs about communication)

[Matthew Hodgson]

On 03/02/2017 15:57, Matthew Hodgson wrote:

On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke 
Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?


Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up
blocked on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new
releases for FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's
top of the IRC bridging backlog and we should get to it early next
week. Sorry for the delay...


Hi all,

We've finally set up a bridge hosted by matrix.org that links GIMPNet 
into Matrix (as per the earlier bits of this thread).  Sorry that it 
took so long to happen: FOSDEM ended up being even crazier than we 
expected, and we've spent the last month handling the traffic increases 
and operational excitements that came off the back of it.


The bridge has been set up to provide access to all of GIMPNet through 
matrix room aliases of form:


 #_gimpnet_${channelname}:matrix.org

e.g.

 #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org

The easiest way to use the new bridge is probably through Riot, the 
current flagship Matrix client: URLs for direct access to a room via 
riot-web are of the form:


https://riot.im/app/#/room/#_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org

You can also join using "/join #_gimpnet_#gtk+:matrix.org" style syntax, 
or using the graphical room directory (button linked from the bottom left).


We haven't turned on guest access on the bridge, so users are forced to 
register an account (and go through a captcha) before joining channels.


You can spot folks connecting via Matrix as by default they have a [m] 
suffix on their nickname.


Feedback very welcome!  We are still in beta, and very interested in 
making sure it fits the bill for communities like GNOME :)


Matthew

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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Alberto Fanjul Alonso]

Hi Matthew, everything well in FOSDEM? Hope so. Is there any plans or
schedule for matrix bridge? Just curious

El vie., 3 feb. 2017 a las 16:58, Matthew Hodgson ()
escribió:

>
> > On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke  wrote:
> >
> > So we don't have to/can't choose channels that are bridged. Not in a
> > whitelist fashion. We can however mark specific channels as private
> > (for those with sensitive discussions).
> >
> > Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?
>
> Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up blocked
> on FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new releases for
> FOSDEM and are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's top of the IRC
> bridging backlog and we should get to it early next week. Sorry for the
> delay...
>
> M
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Matthew Hodgson]

> On 3 Feb 2017, at 13:00, Alexandre Franke  wrote:
> 
> So we don't have to/can't choose channels that are bridged. Not in a
> whitelist fashion. We can however mark specific channels as private
> (for those with sensitive discussions).
> 
> Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?

Nothing blocking at all; it's all on our side, which has ended up blocked on 
FOSDEM - we've had to prioritise a sprint to ship new releases for FOSDEM and 
are currently all on trains to Brussels. It's top of the IRC bridging backlog 
and we should get to it early next week. Sorry for the delay...

M

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Matrix.org
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Alexandre Franke]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list
 wrote:
> Should we go ahead then? Sri, let's go with #gnome and #engagement for now?
> If the bridge works out well, we can move more channels to it soon.

As Matthew said:
> There may be some confusion here about the dynamics of Matrix bridging. In
> practice, when bridging to IRC, Matrix just acts as a big decentralised IRC
> bouncer. It connects on a per-network, not a per-channel basis, and the
> Matrix users who pop up on IRC look and feel like a normal IRC client
> connection... because they are. It just happens to be that the client is
> running on a Matrix/IRC bridge and syncing that user's history into Matrix
> for them.

So we don't have to/can't choose channels that are bridged. Not in a
whitelist fashion. We can however mark specific channels as private
(for those with sensitive discussions).

Matthew, anything blocking the bridging on our side?

-- 
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GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

A clarification:
By "moving more channels to it" I mean "implement the bridge in more channels" 
if we see it is successful and we like the outcome. I didn't mean to retire IRC 
channels at all.



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano

 Original Message ----
Subject: Re: Thoughs about communication
Local Time: February 3, 2017 1:43 PM
UTC Time: February 3, 2017 12:43 PM
From: desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
To: Sriram Ramkrishna <s...@ramkrishna.me>
Desktop Development List <desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>

Heya,

Should we go ahead then? Sri, let's go with #gnome and #engagement for now? If 
the bridge works out well, we can move more channels to it soon.

I believe only thing needed is Matthew to set it up in matrix.org and gimpe.net 
opers set it up the bridge right?



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano


 Original Message ----
Subject: Re: Thoughs about communication
Local Time: January 27, 2017 7:03 PM
UTC Time: January 27, 2017 6:03 PM
From: s...@ramkrishna.me
To: Allan Day <allanp...@gmail.com>
Desktop Development List <desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>





On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:55 AM Allan Day <allanp...@gmail.com> wrote:




On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna <s...@ramkrishna.me> wrote:
...






My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea of 
depending on a web app like riot. It's like admitting that we've lost the whole 
application space and that we're going browser. I know that is not what is 
intended, but that will be the perception.

I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating a 
viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web app. 
Maybe that means some kind of contest or something. I'm not really worried 
about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard, but the design 
one that shows the advantage of running something native should be a challenge 
that we need to meet head on.




...

While a native chat application would be nice, making it a requirement would be 
a real mistake in my opinion. A couple of reasons for that:

It isn't that I want to make it a requirement. It's more of a challenge given 
the prevalence of web based applications. I just want to make sure that we are 
aware that we are doing that in this particular instance.







First, chat is fragmented. There's no common standard, and whatever we choose 
is going to be one player among many. That puts it in a different category from 
many of our core applications.

A good point. I suppose in this case, nobody will be happy because potential 
contributors would be unhappy that we didn't pick the chat program they are 
using. I know a number of us are using telegram since last GUADEC on occasion.






Second, the GNOME developer community is already spread too thin. One of the 
most pressing questions we have right now is how we can focus our efforts on 
critical areas. In order to do that, we need to leverage other projects and 
initiatives when it benefits us. Because when we try to do everything in house, 
it hurts us, whether it's maintaining our own infrastructure, writing our own 
tools, or implementing every app ourselves. We end up being stuck behind the 
curve.

Yes, I am aware of that and I will always rush first to champion the leveraging 
of other groups and organizations. The social aspects of that is that we also 
become insular when we need to be forging relationships with the groups around 
us.







Obviously we're a community project and people will work on whatever itch they 
want to scratch. I wouldn't discourage someone from working on something if 
that's what they want to do. But that's different from making native apps a 
hard requirement in cases like this.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to make it a hard requirement, at the moment, 
I just want to get it working and we'll figure out the client part at a later 
date. Today, most people are used to using chat applications either from phone 
or from their desktop using a web browser so I see no pressing need to put 
resources into a client unless it's just a fun project.







We need to learn to tread lightly, embrace new things, and recognise that we 
can't do everything ourselves. If we do that, I think we could find ourselves 
in a pretty exciting place.

I agree completely.

sri






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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

Heya,

Should we go ahead then? Sri, let's go with #gnome and #engagement for now? If 
the bridge works out well, we can move more channels to it soon.

I believe only thing needed is Matthew to set it up in matrix.org and gimpe.net 
opers set it up the bridge right?



Best regards,
Carlos Soriano


 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Thoughs about communication
Local Time: January 27, 2017 7:03 PM
UTC Time: January 27, 2017 6:03 PM
From: s...@ramkrishna.me
To: Allan Day <allanp...@gmail.com>
Desktop Development List <desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>





On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:55 AM Allan Day <allanp...@gmail.com> wrote:




On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna <s...@ramkrishna.me> wrote:
...






My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea of 
depending on a web app like riot. It's like admitting that we've lost the whole 
application space and that we're going browser. I know that is not what is 
intended, but that will be the perception.

I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating a 
viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web app. 
Maybe that means some kind of contest or something. I'm not really worried 
about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard, but the design 
one that shows the advantage of running something native should be a challenge 
that we need to meet head on.




...

While a native chat application would be nice, making it a requirement would be 
a real mistake in my opinion. A couple of reasons for that:

It isn't that I want to make it a requirement. It's more of a challenge given 
the prevalence of web based applications. I just want to make sure that we are 
aware that we are doing that in this particular instance.







First, chat is fragmented. There's no common standard, and whatever we choose 
is going to be one player among many. That puts it in a different category from 
many of our core applications.

A good point. I suppose in this case, nobody will be happy because potential 
contributors would be unhappy that we didn't pick the chat program they are 
using. I know a number of us are using telegram since last GUADEC on occasion.






Second, the GNOME developer community is already spread too thin. One of the 
most pressing questions we have right now is how we can focus our efforts on 
critical areas. In order to do that, we need to leverage other projects and 
initiatives when it benefits us. Because when we try to do everything in house, 
it hurts us, whether it's maintaining our own infrastructure, writing our own 
tools, or implementing every app ourselves. We end up being stuck behind the 
curve.

Yes, I am aware of that and I will always rush first to champion the leveraging 
of other groups and organizations. The social aspects of that is that we also 
become insular when we need to be forging relationships with the groups around 
us.







Obviously we're a community project and people will work on whatever itch they 
want to scratch. I wouldn't discourage someone from working on something if 
that's what they want to do. But that's different from making native apps a 
hard requirement in cases like this.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to make it a hard requirement, at the moment, 
I just want to get it working and we'll figure out the client part at a later 
date. Today, most people are used to using chat applications either from phone 
or from their desktop using a web browser so I see no pressing need to put 
resources into a client unless it's just a fun project.







We need to learn to tread lightly, embrace new things, and recognise that we 
can't do everything ourselves. If we do that, I think we could find ourselves 
in a pretty exciting place.

I agree completely.

sri






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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:55 AM Allan Day  wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna 
> wrote:
> ...
>
> My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea
> of depending on a web app like riot.  It's like admitting that we've lost
> the whole application space and that we're going browser.  I know that is
> not what is intended, but that will be the perception.
>
> I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating
> a viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web
> app.  Maybe that means some kind of contest or something.  I'm not really
> worried about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard,
> but the design one that shows the advantage of running something native
> should be a challenge that we need to meet head on.
>
> ...
>
> While a native chat application would be nice, making it a requirement
> would be a real mistake in my opinion. A couple of reasons for that:
>

It isn't that I want to make it a requirement.  It's more of a challenge
given the prevalence of web based applications.  I just want to make sure
that we are aware that we are doing that in this particular instance.


>
> First, chat is fragmented. There's no common standard, and whatever we
> choose is going to be one player among many. That puts it in a different
> category from many of our core applications.
>

A good point.  I suppose in this case, nobody will be happy because
potential contributors would be unhappy that we didn't pick the chat
program they are using.  I know a number of us are using telegram since
last GUADEC on occasion.


>
> Second, the GNOME developer community is already spread too thin. One of
> the most pressing questions we have right now is how we can focus our
> efforts on critical areas. In order to do that, we need to leverage other
> projects and initiatives when it benefits us. Because when we try to do
> everything in house, it hurts us, whether it's maintaining our own
> infrastructure, writing our own tools, or implementing every app ourselves.
> We end up being stuck behind the curve.
>

Yes, I am aware of that and I will always rush first to champion the
leveraging of other groups and organizations.  The social aspects of that
is that we also become insular when we need to be forging relationships
with the groups around us.


> Obviously we're a community project and people will work on whatever itch
> they want to scratch. I wouldn't discourage someone from working on
> something if that's what they want to do. But that's different from making
> native apps a hard requirement in cases like this.
>

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to make it a hard requirement, at the
moment, I just want to get it working and we'll figure out the client part
at a later date.  Today, most  people are used to using chat applications
either from phone or from their desktop using a web browser so I see no
pressing need to put resources into a client unless it's just a fun project.


>
> We need to learn to tread lightly, embrace new things, and recognise that
> we can't do everything ourselves. If we do that, I think we could find
> ourselves in a pretty exciting place.
>

I agree completely.

sri


>
> Allan
>
>
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Allan Day]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna 
wrote:
...

> My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea
> of depending on a web app like riot.  It's like admitting that we've lost
> the whole application space and that we're going browser.  I know that is
> not what is intended, but that will be the perception.
>
> I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating
> a viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web
> app.  Maybe that means some kind of contest or something.  I'm not really
> worried about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard,
> but the design one that shows the advantage of running something native
> should be a challenge that we need to meet head on.
>
...

While a native chat application would be nice, making it a requirement
would be a real mistake in my opinion. A couple of reasons for that:

First, chat is fragmented. There's no common standard, and whatever we
choose is going to be one player among many. That puts it in a different
category from many of our core applications.

Second, the GNOME developer community is already spread too thin. One of
the most pressing questions we have right now is how we can focus our
efforts on critical areas. In order to do that, we need to leverage other
projects and initiatives when it benefits us. Because when we try to do
everything in house, it hurts us, whether it's maintaining our own
infrastructure, writing our own tools, or implementing every app ourselves.
We end up being stuck behind the curve.

Obviously we're a community project and people will work on whatever itch
they want to scratch. I wouldn't discourage someone from working on
something if that's what they want to do. But that's different from making
native apps a hard requirement in cases like this.

We need to learn to tread lightly, embrace new things, and recognise that
we can't do everything ourselves. If we do that, I think we could find
ourselves in a pretty exciting place.

Allan
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Matthew Hodgson]

On 27/01/2017 16:07, Simon McVittie wrote:


As an ex-Telepathy developer, it's interesting to see the focus
swinging back towards bridges. One of the motivations for the design
of Telepathy was that XMPP claimed to have the same multi-protocol
advantages as Matrix, via bridges; but in practice (at least at the
time Telepathy started) those bridges often didn't work very well,
and they certainly didn't have "first class citizen" support for
those other protocols and their quirks. In practice they usually
ended up supporting the intersection of XMPP and the other protocol,
with a weird UX (like talking to
example%hotmail@msnbridge.example.com).


I think it's fair to say that we've tried to make bridging more of a 
first class citizen in Matrix than it is in XMPP (even the name Matrix 
is meant to allude to matrixing together different networks :)


However, it's inevitable that there's always going to be an impedance 
mismatch between the protocols.  We try to fix this by giving Matrix's 
core federation protocol the minimal set of primitives you can use to 
express higher level behaviour.  Meanwhile the actual data transferred 
can be anything you like (albeit with some schemas defined by the 
standard for IM, VoIP, file transfer, etc).


That said, we've already hit some limits on bridging semantics - e.g. on 
the IRC bridge, we directly bridge messages seen on an IRC channel 
through to the mapped room on Matrix.  But some ircds support 
chanop-only messages in a channel, leaving us with a dilemma on Matrix 
as we don't support per-message ACLs yet (although it's planned). 
Similarly, Matrix's bans currently only act per-user, rather than the 
exotic set of per-hostmask/ident/IP/nick that ircds support.


So, our attitude is to try to expose the richest possible set of 
semantics over the bridge, but accept that it's never going to be 
perfect.  If you want to do some exotic IRC ban on the IRC manifestation 
of a conversation, then it's time to fire up an IRC client (or inject it 
as raw IRC via the Matrix bridge).



Telepathy never actually reached its potential for
first-class-citizen support for protocols other than XMPP either,
unfortunately. The majority of paid development time went into the
commercially-relevant protocol, which at the time was Google Talk's
dialect of XMPP, and the protocols that weren't part of anyone's
product just didn't keep up.

There was also the problem of impedance mismatch between protocols,
which bridges and libpurple seem doomed to suffer too. Parts of
Telepathy are as weird as they are specifically so it could support
quirks of a particular protocol, like IRC (unique identifiers are not
persistent, presence subscription doesn't exist), XMPP (chatroom
names are meaningful to humans, except when they aren't), MSNP (a
private conversation is just a chatroom that happens to only have two
participants), SIP (there is presence but it's (claimed to be)
patent-encumbered), ...


It's worth noting that Matrix handles all of the mismatch examples given 
there okay - or at least doesn't make them any worse; they are all 
'perimeter mismatches' due to limitations of the remote protocol, but 
can be expressed okay over Matrix's common language.  (For instance, 
Matrix does the MSNP thing of making even 1:1 chats a room that happens 
to have 2 participants, rather than making the more limiting and 
opinionated choice that 1:1s are an entirely separate primitive).





Trying to support 20 different protocols really took its toll on
the Empathy user experience. Requires manpower.


I'm not sure that trying to support the same number of protocols via
bridges would actually make the UX any easier; but I can see that
having a small number of explicitly-supported protocols, and leaving
the rest requiring manual setup or tolerating a weird UX (or both),
would probably help.


A big difference between Matrix and the libpurple or telepathy (or haze) 
approach to multiprotocol support is that Matrix obviously does the 
bridging serverside, and we've tried to make it as simple as possible. 
For instance, a basic Slack bridge is about 100 LOC:


https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge/blob/master/HOWTO.md

So hopefully it's possible to build out quite a huge ecosystem of 
bridges for different protocols; for instance in the last month we've 
seen community contributions for iMessage, Telegram (3 different impls 
in different languages), Gitter and more.  We also have a fledgling 
matrix-appservice-purple which goes and wraps up libpurple itself as a 
Matrix bridge (and supports Skype) - although that one is in need of a 
maintainer :(


Anyway, hopefully this gives a bit more context on where Matrix's 
bridging is headed (apologies if we're getting off-topic...)


M

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Matrix.org
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Alexandre Franke]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Matthew Hodgson  wrote:
> There may be some confusion here about the dynamics of Matrix bridging. In
> practice, when bridging to IRC, Matrix just acts as a big decentralised IRC
> bouncer. It connects on a per-network, not a per-channel basis, and the
> Matrix users who pop up on IRC look and feel like a normal IRC client
> connection... because they are. It just happens to be that the client is
> running on a Matrix/IRC bridge and syncing that user's history into Matrix
> for them.
>
> One can lock a bridge to a particular channel, but generally that's missing
> the point.

That raises the following concern: we have some channels which are
semi-private. They are commonly used by well defined groups for
sensitive conversation (that part I assume is not a problem as you
could have an invitation only room or a similar protection) but from
time to time people are temporarily invited to join those rooms to
discuss a particular topic. In such a case, sending the guest any
history is not desirable. Can Matrix handle this situation?

-- 
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GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

Hi Matthew!

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:43 AM Matthew Hodgson  wrote:

> On 26/01/2017 22:52, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> >
> > It would be really awesome to have a GNOME Chat app based on Matrix.
> > Instead of implementing support for multiple protocols in the app,
> > like we did with Empathy, it would focus on doing one thing well --
> > Matrix, both text and video chat (OK, two things) -- and then the
> > quality of the support for other protocols would depend on the
> > quality of Matrix bridges and would not be something the app has to
> > worry about. Trying to support 20 different protocols really took its
> > toll on the Empathy user experience. Requires manpower. Maybe someone
> > will see this mail and become interested. Maybe not.
>
> On the Matrix side: whilst I haven't played with it myself,
> matrix-glib-sdk (https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/matrix-glib-sdk) was
>

We''ll take a look at it.


> looking like quite a good foundation for a GNOME Matrix client.  As I
> understand it, the only reason that Gergely stopped work on it was that
> the impedance mismatch between Matrix & Telepathy was too great -
> specifically, Telepathy lacked support for eventually consistent
> infinite history which is one of the main defining properties of Matrix.
>
>
I think it is clear that neither he nor us should worry about Telepathy and
he should feel free to develop without any regard to Telepathy.


> I suspect that resuming work there (potentially by Gergely, if he saw
> interest from the wider GNOME community) is very much an option, and
> obviously we'd support this as much as we can from the Matrix core team.
>

There are two of us who are interested in writing a client.  We would be
happy to work with Gergely on creating something that would work
sufficiently well for the GNOME community.


>   The Matrix client-server API has not changed much over the last 11
> months, other than the addition of end-to-end encryption (although this
> is still somewhat in flux whilst in beta).
>

We will keep that in mind.


> Meanwhile, we'd be well up for running an official gimpnet Matrix<->IRC
> bridge on matrix.org; we'll get one set up next week assuming that
> sounds good.  I'm assuming that if we connect via IPv6 we don't even
> need a dedicated I:line.
>
>
So for now, let's focus on having an interface to the #engagement and
#gnome channel and a #gnome channel on freenode.  I will respect Carlos's
wishes on not having an interface on #newcomers until he feels it is ready
to do that.

If anybody want to volunteer a channel for iniital bridging, please speak
up and we will add it.  #gnome-hackers was mentioned before, but I don't
think that is sufficiently a good place to land people from matrix IMHO due
to cultural differences and honestly it is a place for our devs to hang out
as a social channel.  Like Carlos, I'll figure out when is the right time
to add it.

If you can document here how to access it from riot.im, that would be
appreciated.  We'll try to put it in the wiki at some point.

Thanks for reaching out to us, Matthew, we appreciate it!

sri




> thanks,
>
> Matthew
>
>
> --
> Matthew Hodgson
> Matrix.org
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Matthew Hodgson]

On 26/01/2017 22:52, Michael Catanzaro wrote:


It would be really awesome to have a GNOME Chat app based on Matrix.
Instead of implementing support for multiple protocols in the app,
like we did with Empathy, it would focus on doing one thing well --
Matrix, both text and video chat (OK, two things) -- and then the
quality of the support for other protocols would depend on the
quality of Matrix bridges and would not be something the app has to
worry about. Trying to support 20 different protocols really took its
toll on the Empathy user experience. Requires manpower. Maybe someone
will see this mail and become interested. Maybe not.


On the Matrix side: whilst I haven't played with it myself, 
matrix-glib-sdk (https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/matrix-glib-sdk) was 
looking like quite a good foundation for a GNOME Matrix client.  As I 
understand it, the only reason that Gergely stopped work on it was that 
the impedance mismatch between Matrix & Telepathy was too great - 
specifically, Telepathy lacked support for eventually consistent 
infinite history which is one of the main defining properties of Matrix.


I suspect that resuming work there (potentially by Gergely, if he saw 
interest from the wider GNOME community) is very much an option, and 
obviously we'd support this as much as we can from the Matrix core team. 
 The Matrix client-server API has not changed much over the last 11 
months, other than the addition of end-to-end encryption (although this 
is still somewhat in flux whilst in beta).


Nachat (https://github.com/Ralith/nachat) and Quaternion 
(https://github.com/fxrh/quaternion) show the potential for writing 
native Matrix clients with Qt - and it'd be great to see a GTK equivalent.


Meanwhile, we'd be well up for running an official gimpnet Matrix<->IRC 
bridge on matrix.org; we'll get one set up next week assuming that 
sounds good.  I'm assuming that if we connect via IPv6 we don't even 
need a dedicated I:line.


thanks,

Matthew


--
Matthew Hodgson
Matrix.org
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Carlos Soriano via desktop-devel-list]

Hey Sri,

I want to see this happen too and I encouraged Alberto to start this thread, he 
proposed the same as you, using #newcomers channel as one of the precursors, 
since is one of the first channels for new people.

However, I think #newcomers is not the best place to experiment, things are 
alteady all confusing and hard (from a newcomer perspective) and adding two 
ways of communication and in the experiment phase is going to make it worse.

Instead we can add #gnome-hackers or so, where there are quite a few people (I 
would love to have #nautilus too, regular contributors agreed on 
experimenting), and once we agree on matrix or whatever then switch #newcomers 
to matrix or whatever as single documented way of comunication.

Just my 2 cents :)

Carlos Soriano
 Original Message 
On 26 Jan 2017, 21:56, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:




On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:47 AM Allan Day < allanp...@gmail.com> wrote:





Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important 
consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different directions 
here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier between us and all the 
existing Free Software contributors/projects who are also using IRC. On the 
other hand, for contributors who are used to modern tools, IRC probably feels 
like a huge step backwards - it isn't user friendly, isn't attractive, and it 
doesn't work well if you're not in one of the time zones that are popular with 
our community.


In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor tech which 
has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a relatively isolated 
server, so we miss out on the additional traffic we might get on Freenode.


Let me add my two cents here. I've been wanting to do something like this for 
some time and as Allan has alluded to, there has been discussions amongst 
engagement team people around this.

My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea of 
depending on a web app like riot. It's like admitting that we've lost the whole 
application space and that we're going browser. I know that is not what is 
intended, but that will be the perception.

I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating a 
viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web app. 
Maybe that means some kind of contest or something. I'm not really worried 
about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard, but the design 
one that shows the advantage of running something native should be a challenge 
that we need to meet head on.

That said, we'll table that bit for now. I have talked to Andrea Veri, they are 
kind of low on sysadmin resources and probably can't help in the immediate 
future in implementing something.

Seeing as I have some free time; I asked Andrea if it was okay if I could 
spearhead this particular project. A good way introduce myself back to devops 
after a long hiatus. He seemed to agree, so I can start looking into at least 
creating the irc bridge between matrix and some specific rooms - #engagement, 
#newcomers, and #docs. I've picked these as the kind of contributors we have 
tend to be quite varied, but also there are differences in culture and 
etiquette between irc and these other technologies that can be disruptive.

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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Alexandre Franke]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 10:52 PM, Michael Catanzaro
 wrote:
> It would be really awesome to have a GNOME Chat app based on Matrix.

It would indeed.

> Instead of implementing support for multiple protocols in the app, like
> we did with Empathy, it would focus on doing one thing well -- Matrix,
> both text and video chat (OK, two things) -- and then the quality of
> the support for other protocols would depend on the quality of Matrix
> bridges and would not be something the app has to worry about.

Depend on the quality *and* existence.

> Trying
> to support 20 different protocols really took its toll on the Empathy
> user experience. Requires manpower. Maybe someone will see this mail
> and become interested. Maybe not.

Agreed. I thought one of the arguments in favour of keeping Telepathy
around was the support for some “uncommon” protocols that are not
really supported elsewhere though? [0]

One feature that Telepathy also brings, which I find really
interesting, but which sadly hasn't really gained any traction, is
tubes. Would it be interesting and feasible to extract/port that
feature and ditch the rest of Telepathy?

Another question your proposal raises is if, providing someone
eventually volunteers to do the work, the GNOME Shell maintainers
would accept patches to drop current Telepathy-tied chat integration
and replace it with a Matrix-tied alternative.

[0] One possible answer would maybe be that those networks don't have
the critical mass required for us to spend our rare workforce on and
that we expect third party (libpurple-based?) clients to take care of
that market.

-- 
Alexandre Franke
GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 1:52 PM Michael Catanzaro 
wrote:

> On Thu, 2017-01-26 at 20:56 +, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:47 AM Allan Day 
> > wrote:
> > > Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important
> > > consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different
> > > directions here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier
> > > between us and all the existing Free Software contributors/projects
> > > who are also using IRC. On the other hand, for contributors who are
> > > used to modern tools, IRC probably feels like a huge step backwards
> > > - it isn't user friendly, isn't attractive, and it doesn't work
> > > well if you're not in one of the time zones that are popular with
> > > our community.
> > >
> > > In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor
> > > tech which has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a
> > > relatively isolated server, so we miss out on the additional
> > > traffic we might get on Freenode.
> > >
> >
> > Let me add my two cents here.  I've been wanting to do something like
> > this for some time and as Allan has alluded to, there has been
> > discussions amongst engagement team people around this.
> >
> > My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the
> > idea of depending on a web app like riot.  It's like admitting that
> > we've lost the whole application space and that we're going browser.
> > I know that is not what is intended, but that will be the perception.
> >
> >
> > I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into
> > creating a viable chat client that works and is designed as a
> > competition to a web app.  Maybe that means some kind of contest or
> > something.  I'm not really worried about actually writing one after
> > all matrix is an open standard, but the design one that shows the
> > advantage of running something native should be a challenge that we
> > need to meet head on.
>
> It would be really awesome to have a GNOME Chat app based on Matrix.
> Instead of implementing support for multiple protocols in the app, like
> we did with Empathy, it would focus on doing one thing well -- Matrix,
> both text and video chat (OK, two things) -- and then the quality of
> the support for other protocols would depend on the quality of Matrix
> bridges and would not be something the app has to worry about. Trying
> to support 20 different protocols really took its toll on the Empathy
> user experience. Requires manpower. Maybe someone will see this mail
> and become interested. Maybe not.
>
>

I would support that as well.  In any case, if a developer wants to do it
that would be awesome.  It seems that if we have 'wants/needs' we should
advertise that we are looking for people to do that?  Especially if we can
get resources from both GNOME and Matrix communities to make this happen.

sri


> Michael
>
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Thu, 2017-01-26 at 20:56 +, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:47 AM Allan Day 
> wrote:
> > Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important
> > consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different
> > directions here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier
> > between us and all the existing Free Software contributors/projects
> > who are also using IRC. On the other hand, for contributors who are
> > used to modern tools, IRC probably feels like a huge step backwards
> > - it isn't user friendly, isn't attractive, and it doesn't work
> > well if you're not in one of the time zones that are popular with
> > our community.
> > 
> > In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor
> > tech which has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a
> > relatively isolated server, so we miss out on the additional
> > traffic we might get on Freenode.
> > 
> 
> Let me add my two cents here.  I've been wanting to do something like
> this for some time and as Allan has alluded to, there has been
> discussions amongst engagement team people around this.
> 
> My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the
> idea of depending on a web app like riot.  It's like admitting that
> we've lost the whole application space and that we're going browser. 
> I know that is not what is intended, but that will be the perception.
>  
> 
> I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into
> creating a viable chat client that works and is designed as a
> competition to a web app.  Maybe that means some kind of contest or
> something.  I'm not really worried about actually writing one after
> all matrix is an open standard, but the design one that shows the
> advantage of running something native should be a challenge that we
> need to meet head on.

It would be really awesome to have a GNOME Chat app based on Matrix.
Instead of implementing support for multiple protocols in the app, like
we did with Empathy, it would focus on doing one thing well -- Matrix,
both text and video chat (OK, two things) -- and then the quality of
the support for other protocols would depend on the quality of Matrix
bridges and would not be something the app has to worry about. Trying
to support 20 different protocols really took its toll on the Empathy
user experience. Requires manpower. Maybe someone will see this mail
and become interested. Maybe not.

Michael
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:47 AM Allan Day  wrote:

>
> Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important
> consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different
> directions here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier between us
> and all the existing Free Software contributors/projects who are also using
> IRC. On the other hand, for contributors who are used to modern tools, IRC
> probably feels like a huge step backwards - it isn't user friendly, isn't
> attractive, and it doesn't work well if you're not in one of the time zones
> that are popular with our community.
>
> In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor tech
> which has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a relatively
> isolated server, so we miss out on the additional traffic we might get on
> Freenode.
>

Let me add my two cents here.  I've been wanting to do something like this
for some time and as Allan has alluded to, there has been discussions
amongst engagement team people around this.

My two cents, and bear with me on my slight rant - I really hate the idea
of depending on a web app like riot.  It's like admitting that we've lost
the whole application space and that we're going browser.  I know that is
not what is intended, but that will be the perception.

I'd like to do this, but I'd like to start putting resources into creating
a viable chat client that works and is designed as a competition to a web
app.  Maybe that means some kind of contest or something.  I'm not really
worried about actually writing one after all matrix is an open standard,
but the design one that shows the advantage of running something native
should be a challenge that we need to meet head on.

That said, we'll table that bit for now.  I have talked to Andrea Veri,
they are kind of low on sysadmin resources and probably can't help in the
immediate future in implementing something.

Seeing as I have some free time; I asked Andrea if it was okay if I could
spearhead this particular project. A good way introduce myself back to
devops after a long hiatus.  He seemed to agree, so I can start looking
into at least creating the irc bridge between matrix and some specific
rooms - #engagement, #newcomers, and #docs.  I've picked these as the kind
of contributors we have tend to be quite varied, but also there are
differences in culture and etiquette between irc and these other
technologies that can be disruptive.

sri
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Adrian Perez de Castro]

Hello all,

On Fri, 13 Jan 2017 09:40:43 -0600, Michael Catanzaro  
wrote:
> On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 23:45 +1100, George Barrett wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 08:37:30AM +, Alberto Fanjul Alonso
> > wrote:
> > > Hi, hackers
> > > 
> > > Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?
> > > 
> > > - signal https://whispersystems.org/
> > > - telegram https://telegram.org/
> > > - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
> > > - gitter https://gitter.im/
> > 
> > None of these platforms have an official Telepathy protocol implementation.
> > That people will have a lessened ability to access chat already seems like a
> > non-starter.
>
> I've been assured that Matrix works well enough via telepathy-haze,
> although I've never tried it myself and wouldn't want to recommend it.
> Anyway, telepathy has been unmaintained for years and is frankly
> totally dead, so the real problem here is that GNOME Shell still uses
> Telepathy at all.

There's telepathy-cauchy [1] (a connection manager) and matrix-glib-sdk [2].
Unfortunately the repositories have not had any activity in the last month —
though if integration with Telepathy is a must, they do look like a great
starting point to give them some love and ensure they work with the current
Matrix HTTP API.

> (This is a real shame, by the way. If only somebody cared enough to
> maintain it)

:-(

> > > pros/cons irc:
> > > 
> > > pros:
> > > 
> > > - is widespread
> > > - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
> > 
> > I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
> > platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their workflow,
> > they probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly
> > became a stumbling block.
> > 
> > In terms of universality, the only chat platform rivalling IRC (that I can
> > think of, at least) is XMPP. I don't know enough about it to seriously
> > recommend it, though; does it support the requested features?
> 
> Matrix solves this by bridging to both IRC and XMPP, so you can
> continue using your existing client.

...or use a Matrix client like Riot to connect via bridges to IRC, XMPP, and
so on. Right now I am using Riot (in Revolt) to be available at the same time
in IRC (Freenode, OFTC, Mozilla), some Gitter rooms, and of course few Matrix
rooms as well. It just feels right :-)

> As far as GNOME integration, our Telepathy integration in GNOME Shell
> has been very lacking since GNOME 3.8 and probably worse than no
> integration since GNOME 3.16. I would really, really like to see a
> decent GNOME Chat app, or just improved Empathy, but in the meantime
> we're already in a very bad position with Telepathy.
> 
> (And don't say "Polari"... unfortunately, as Polari can only handle
> IRC, it's not an option for those of us who need to use any other
> protocol.)

I always thought that it's a bit of a pity that Polari does not handle
Telepathy CMs other than the IRC one. It would be *so* fitting to have it
handle e.g. XMPP MUC and Matrix rooms...

> > > - signal is aware of privacy
> > 
> > What does this mean? If the plan is that public chats are logged, is there 
> > any
> > room for privacy considerations? I'm probably misunderstanding, but being
> > privacy-aware seems moot in this instance.
> 
> Signal offers end-to-end encryption. So does Matrix. I don't know how
> this feature interacts with chat room logging (though I'd presume that
> the developers are not stupid).

It does: E2E crypto means that the server cannot “see” the contents of the
messages, so of course server-side history search and a couple of things more
do not work when using E2E. This is by design.

—
 Adrián

---
[1] https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/telepathy-cauchy
[2] https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/matrix-glib-sdk



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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Matthew Hodgson]

On 23/01/2017 08:05, philip.chime...@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 10:16 AM Alexandre Franke > wrote:

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:02 PM, Michael Catanzaro
> wrote:

The rest of your points are still valid, though. Sounds like they

could

be resolved by improving the Matrix website (maybe needs a big

"take me

to chat" button).


The matrix.org  homepage has two "Try Matrix Now!"
links, one in the menu (second item) on top and one in the middle of
the screen. The page that leads to has a selection of four clients
for four platforms (command line, desktop/web, ios and Android) and
only below that is there a more exhaustive list. Clicking on Riot
links to a presentation page with a link to launch it directly.

I think that's rather reasonable.


In practice we do find a lot of people manage not to find the 'try 
matrix now' links on Matrix.org, unfortunately.  Thanks both for the 
datapoints; there's a new version of the website being planned currently 
that should fix this.



I tried Riot, the web client, again today and I must say I was
pleasantly surprised! As others have noted it's improved by leaps
and bounds in one year.


yay!



Anyone else who wants to try it out, come chat in #gnome:matrix.org
! (link for web client:
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#gnome:matrix.org) You don't even need to
create an account to try it out. It's really low friction.

There are IRC bridges to freenode and moznet on matrix.org
, and you can join IRC channels on those servers
using the Matrix client. We could probably set up a bridge to
gimpnet, although I have no idea how much hassle it is to do that. If
it's not too much hassle, I'd say let's do it as soon as possible!


We'd be very haappy to run an official gimpnet bridge hosted by 
matrix.org; we'll drop by the ops channel on gimpnet to coordinate the 
details (which is basically just ensuring there's an I:line or similar 
to allow all the connections in from the matrix.org bridge instance).



I think the friction could still be reduced by quite a lot,
particularly since (for me) the main reason to direct people to
Matrix is to make chatting in the GNOME community more open to new
community members, inexperienced ones, and non-software-oriented
ones.

Here are my suggestions for reducing the friction, both for newbies
(maybe coming from Slack) and for old hands coming from IRC:

- The front page of the web site is really not suitable for us to
redirect people to as part of a "welcome to the GNOME community"
process. It's pretty sleek but its target audience is ... well ...
Matrix developers. Here is my tongue-in-cheek analysis of my thought
process on seeing it, with and without my techy hat... [1]

- The client is described as "If you like glossy and feature-rich
web clients, try Riot." In other words, "normal" unless you come from
IRC :-) As a new contributor to GNOME, am I going to be judged for
being too "glossy" and not hardcore enough if I click on that? Maybe
we could just link people directly to [2] and only secondarily to
matrix.org  if they wanted a phone app or
commandline client.


The way we normally expect people to onboard their community is to link 
straight through to a page like 
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#gnome:matrix.org like you did above.  Or 
possibly https://matrix.to/#/#gnome:matrix.org (although this needs to 
be much glossier).




- You have to turn on the RTE message editor to get some features
like emoji that people would expect coming from other messaging apps,
but it's buried in Settings and is marked "experimental". I'd suggest
we wait until it's stable and enabled by default before recommending
a switch for the GNOME community.


The RTE editor was a 2016 GSoC project which sadly hasn't quite made it 
ready to be enabled by default (and the student is now focused on 
studies).  We can try to expedite its development or find someone to 
take it over - it's just a simple matter of debugging the various 
remaining issues it has, but we've been prioritising other stuff so far. 
 Is it specifically the emoji-picker that you're after?




- Searching for information about how to connect to IRC rooms or set
up an IRC bridge on matrix.org , the best I could
find was this: [3] :-(


That's for running your own bridge.  Agreed that the UX for joining new 
channels (and in future servers) in Riot could be improved better; it's 
already improved quite a lot, but we'll be landing stuff over the next 
few weeks to hopefully make it more intuitive.




Re. the last point, I eventually discovered how to connect to
already-bridged IRC rooms though in another link posted elsewhere in
this thread [4]. After a bit of experimentation I determined that if
a particular room hasn't been used yet on the bridge, it won't show
up in search results, but you 

Re: Thoughs about communication

[philip . chimento]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 10:16 AM Alexandre Franke  wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:02 PM, Michael Catanzaro 
> wrote:
> > The rest of your points are still valid, though. Sounds like they could
> > be resolved by improving the Matrix website (maybe needs a big "take me
> > to chat" button).
>
> The matrix.org homepage has two "Try Matrix Now!" links, one in the
> menu (second item) on top and one in the middle of the screen. The
> page that leads to has a selection of four clients for four platforms
> (command line, desktop/web, ios and Android) and only below that is
> there a more exhaustive list. Clicking on Riot links to a presentation
> page with a link to launch it directly.
>
> I think that's rather reasonable.
>

I tried Riot, the web client, again today and I must say I was pleasantly
surprised! As others have noted it's improved by leaps and bounds in one
year.

Anyone else who wants to try it out, come chat in #gnome:matrix.org! (link
for web client: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#gnome:matrix.org) You don't
even need to create an account to try it out. It's really low friction.

There are IRC bridges to freenode and moznet on matrix.org, and you can
join IRC channels on those servers using the Matrix client. We could
probably set up a bridge to gimpnet, although I have no idea how much
hassle it is to do that. If it's not too much hassle, I'd say let's do it
as soon as possible!

I think the friction could still be reduced by quite a lot, particularly
since (for me) the main reason to direct people to Matrix is to make
chatting in the GNOME community more open to new community members,
inexperienced ones, and non-software-oriented ones.

Here are my suggestions for reducing the friction, both for newbies (maybe
coming from Slack) and for old hands coming from IRC:

- The front page of the web site is really not suitable for us to redirect
people to as part of a "welcome to the GNOME community" process. It's
pretty sleek but its target audience is ... well ... Matrix developers.
Here is my tongue-in-cheek analysis of my thought process on seeing it,
with and without my techy hat... [1]

- The client is described as "If you like glossy and feature-rich web
clients, try Riot." In other words, "normal" unless you come from IRC :-)
As a new contributor to GNOME, am I going to be judged for being too
"glossy" and not hardcore enough if I click on that? Maybe we could just
link people directly to [2] and only secondarily to matrix.org if they
wanted a phone app or commandline client.

- You have to turn on the RTF message editor to get some features like
emoji that people would expect coming from other messaging apps, but it's
buried in Settings and is marked "experimental". I'd suggest we wait until
it's stable and enabled by default before recommending a switch for the
GNOME community.

- Searching for information about how to connect to IRC rooms or set up an
IRC bridge on matrix.org, the best I could find was this: [3] :-(

Re. the last point, I eventually discovered how to connect to
already-bridged IRC rooms though in another link posted elsewhere in this
thread [4]. After a bit of experimentation I determined that if a
particular room hasn't been used yet on the bridge, it won't show up in
search results, but you can just type the name it would be expected to
have, and it'll get created on demand. So, e.g., I
created #freenode_#hotdoc:matrix.org.

Regards,
Philip C

[1] http://pasteboard.co/pqKKmBt7l.png
[2] https://riot.im/app/
[3] http://matrix.org/docs/guides/application_services.html
[4] https://solson.me/2016/10/08/irccloud-to-matrix.html#irc-bridges
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Matthew Hodgson]

On 13/01/2017 08:37, Alberto Fanjul Alonso wrote:


Hi, hackers

Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?

- signal https://whispersystems.org/
- telegram https://telegram.org/
- matrix.org  http://matrix.org/
- gitter https://gitter.im/


I'm the project lead for Matrix, and thought it might be useful to list 
the pros & cons that we see with respect to Matrix for a community like 
GNOME:


Pros:
 * It's a neutral open standard HTTP API (https://matrix.org/docs/spec) 
with a bunch of different client, server, bot & bridge implementations 
of different maturity 
(http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html).  The API is 
super-easy and fun to hack on - sending & receiving messages is just 
PUTing or GETing some JSON from your server.
 * Matrix.org is a non-profit and everything is FOSS (Apache licensed); 
both servers, clients, SDKs, bots, bridges, etc. It's not a half-FOSS 
thing like Telegram.  I think we also have a pretty vibrant & friendly 
FOSS community going on :)
 * It's completely decentralised; you can run your own server and 
bridges to things like IRC, Gitter, Slack, XMPP etc.  Conversations are 
signed and replicated over all the participating servers in a manner 
very similar to Git; no single server or network owns the conversation 
(unlike MUCs or IRC).  You're not stuck in a silo like Signal etc.
 * Matrix isn't meant to be the One True Chat standard.  Instead it's 
just a lowest-common denominator decentralised pubsub network, and the 
bridges to things like IRC let people continue using whatever clients 
they prefer.  For instance, https://linux.conf.au/wiki/conference/chat/ 
shows how the LCA folks are using it to defragment their IRC & Slack 
communities (whilst also supporting native Matrix for those who want it).
 * Matrix provides E2E encryption for those who needs it.  It's still 
beta, but the core crypto has been publicly audited and is robust: 
https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption-security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at-last/ 
etc.
 * Riot.im (the flagship Matrix client) is relatively polished, with 
native apps for iOS & Android; React app for Web, and Electron for 
desktop.  (As well as being packaged up as a proper Gnome app by aperez 
in the form of Revolt: https://github.com/aperezdc/revolt)
 * Supports zero-sign-up guest access (unlike Slack, Gitter, etc), 
letting folks jump straight into a room and start talking - e.g. 
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#riot:matrix.org
 * There are a bunch of good integrations & bots with things like 
Github, JIRA, Jenkins, Travis, etc.  In Riot these are exposed through a 
single-click appstore style UI, similar to Slack's.
 * There's a relatively advanced GTK/Vala SDK implementation at 
https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/matrix-glib-sdk.  This was written by 
the community with the intention of adding a Telepathy implementation of 
Matrix, but got stuck when it became obvious that Telepathy isn't in a 
great state for exposing Matrix's infinite-scrollback / 
sever-side-search / decentralised conversations architecture.


Cons:
 * E2E encryption is still in beta; specifically there are some races 
where decryption keys aren't correctly synced between participants, and 
we haven't finished implementing sharing history when new devices are 
added to a conversation, and we haven't finished the UX for key 
verification yet.   We're rushing to get it out of beta in time for 
https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/encrypting_matrix/.
 * Riot has some irritating UX problems and quirks which make for a 
steeper the necessary learning curve.  These are being addressed 
currently: 
https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues?q=milestone%3A%22UX+Fixes%22
 * Only one of the server implementations (synapse) is ready for 
production use currently, and is technically still in beta.
 * Synapse is written in Python/Twisted and is quite resource hungry 
(typically requires 2GB of RAM), although mem usage should improve 
significantly in the next few weeks.
 * While there are lots of clients, Riot is by far the most functional, 
making it a bit of a monoculture currently.  However we would *love* to 
see more clients, especially GTK ones!
 * By default Matrix logs everything (it's very much a conversation 
history syncing system).  The log visibility can however by configured 
per room - e.g. we turn it off by default for IRC bridged rooms.
 * https://solson.me/2016/10/08/irccloud-to-matrix.html has some other 
good critique.


Obviously I'm not remotely neutral, but hopefully this gives a few more 
datapoints to help make a decision :)  Feel free to come and bug me with 
questions on https://riot.im/app/#/room/#riot:matrix.org or 
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org if desired.


Matthew

--
Matthew Hodgson
Matrix.org

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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Federico Mena Quintero]

On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 08:37 +, Alberto Fanjul Alonso wrote:
> 
> Do anybody though about trying new services for communication? 
> 
> - signal https://whispersystems.org/
> - telegram https://telegram.org/
> - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
> - gitter https://gitter.im/

Just to add to the list, there's also

  - Zulip https://zulip.org/

In my very brief experience with it, it looks like Gitter, but
different.  I liked that it lets you define topics within a stream of
conversations.  You know when there are three different conversations
going on in an IRC channel and it's hard to pick them up if you just
logged in?  That's what it solves.

  Federico
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Alexandre Franke]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:02 PM, Michael Catanzaro  wrote:
> The rest of your points are still valid, though. Sounds like they could
> be resolved by improving the Matrix website (maybe needs a big "take me
> to chat" button).

The matrix.org homepage has two "Try Matrix Now!" links, one in the
menu (second item) on top and one in the middle of the screen. The
page that leads to has a selection of four clients for four platforms
(command line, desktop/web, ios and Android) and only below that is
there a more exhaustive list. Clicking on Riot links to a presentation
page with a link to launch it directly.

I think that's rather reasonable.

-- 
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GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 16:59 +, philip.chime...@gmail.com wrote:
> And the web client was really low quality.

The web client is pretty good now.

The rest of your points are still valid, though. Sounds like they could
be resolved by improving the Matrix website (maybe needs a big "take me
to chat" button).

Michael
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[philip . chimento]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 07:47 Allan Day  wrote:

> I agree with pretty much everything you've written here, Emmanuele. Just
> one comment...
>
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Emmanuele Bassi  wrote:
> ...
>
> >> pros/cons irc:
> >>
> >> pros:
> >> 
> >> - is widespread
> >> - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
> >
> > I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
> > platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their
> workflow, they
> > probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly
> became a
> > stumbling block.
>
> I guess the issue, here, is whether or not we care about reaching
> other people than the existing pool of contributors.
>
>
> Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important
> consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different
> directions here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier between us
> and all the existing Free Software contributors/projects who are also using
> IRC. On the other hand, for contributors who are used to modern tools, IRC
> probably feels like a huge step backwards - it isn't user friendly, isn't
> attractive, and it doesn't work well if you're not in one of the time zones
> that are popular with our community.
>
> In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor tech
> which has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a relatively
> isolated server, so we miss out on the additional traffic we might get on
> Freenode.
>

Agreed with this. I know it's hard to put ourselves in the shoes of a new
contributor who's never used IRC, but I think it really does harm. This may
of course not be a calculus that's acceptable to everyone, but I'd rather
break my workflow 100x over, to be able to offer new contributors a better
environment to start out in.

Matrix seems to be not much better though; last time I checked it out,
about a year ago, the main thing on the website was a technical explanation
of the protocol. Whereas I was hoping for a "just download the client
already" button. When I did find where to download the client, there were
too many confusing choices and most of them were labeled "unstable". And
the web client was really low quality. If we switch from IRC, I really hope
we'll consider the experience that new contributors will have getting set
up. Especially contributors who are not software developers!

Philip C
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Allan Day]

I agree with pretty much everything you've written here, Emmanuele. Just
one comment...

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Emmanuele Bassi  wrote:
...

> >> pros/cons irc:
> >>
> >> pros:
> >> 
> >> - is widespread
> >> - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
> >
> > I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
> > platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their
> workflow, they
> > probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly
> became a
> > stumbling block.
>
> I guess the issue, here, is whether or not we care about reaching
> other people than the existing pool of contributors.
>

Attracting and retaining contributors has to be the most important
consideration. It's worth noting that IRC cuts in a few different
directions here: on the one hand, IRC means there's no barrier between us
and all the existing Free Software contributors/projects who are also using
IRC. On the other hand, for contributors who are used to modern tools, IRC
probably feels like a huge step backwards - it isn't user friendly, isn't
attractive, and it doesn't work well if you're not in one of the time zones
that are popular with our community.

In some ways, GNOME has the worst of both worlds - we're using poor tech
which has the advantage of adoption, and then we go and use a relatively
isolated server, so we miss out on the additional traffic we might get on
Freenode.

Allan
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 23:45 +1100, George Barrett wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 08:37:30AM +, Alberto Fanjul Alonso
> wrote:
> > Hi, hackers
> > 
> > Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?
> > 
> > - signal https://whispersystems.org/
> > - telegram https://telegram.org/
> > - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
> > - gitter https://gitter.im/
> 
> None of these platforms have an official Telepathy protocol
> implementation.
> That people will have a lessened ability to access chat already seems
> like a
> non-starter.

Hi,

I've been assured that Matrix works well enough via telepathy-haze,
although I've never tried it myself and wouldn't want to recommend it.
Anyway, telepathy has been unmaintained for years and is frankly
totally dead, so the real problem here is that GNOME Shell still uses
Telepathy at all.

(This is a real shame, by the way. If only somebody cared enough to
maintain it)

> > pros/cons irc:
> > 
> > pros:
> > 
> > - is widespread
> > - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
> 
> I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
> platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their
> workflow, they
> probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly
> became a
> stumbling block.
> 
> In terms of universality, the only chat platform rivalling IRC (that
> I can
> think of, at least) is XMPP. I don't know enough about it to
> seriously
> recommend it, though; does it support the requested features?

Matrix solves this by bridging to both IRC and XMPP, so you can
continue using your existing client.

As far as GNOME integration, our Telepathy integration in GNOME Shell
has been very lacking since GNOME 3.8 and probably worse than no
integration since GNOME 3.16. I would really, really like to see a
decent GNOME Chat app, or just improved Empathy, but in the meantime
we're already in a very bad position with Telepathy.

(And don't say "Polari"... unfortunately, as Polari can only handle
IRC, it's not an option for those of us who need to use any other
protocol.)

> > - signal is aware of privacy
> 
> What does this mean? If the plan is that public chats are logged, is
> there any
> room for privacy considerations? I'm probably misunderstanding, but
> being
> privacy-aware seems moot in this instance.

Signal offers end-to-end encryption. So does Matrix. I don't know how
this feature interacts with chat room logging (though I'd presume that
the developers are not stupid).

> The proposal for a IRC bridge with Matrix strikes me as the most
> sensible and
> potentially an interesting experiment, but I have doubts wrt its
> adoption.

Seems like it can't hurt anything, at least! On the other hand, it
doesn't solve our identification problem.

Michael
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Michael Catanzaro]

Hi,

At Igalia we're currently evaluating a switch from XMPP to Matrix.
We're quite pleased with Matrix relative to both XMPP and IRC. Although
many Matrix clients are not very great, we find the Riot web client is
good and improving quickly; we have a dumb GTK+ 3 wrapper app for it
that many of us use. (I use a GNOME web app. ;)

We need to recognize that a large amount of developers will continue to
wish to access GIMPNet with an IRC client. But bridging solves that
problem nicely. Igalia's Matrix server already has its own IRC bridge
to GIMPNet that works quite well, though it's not public.

On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 10:47 +, Allan Day wrote:
>  - doesn't really track identity; nicks clash, people get renamed,
> etc

This is a very important one. At the risk of giving anyone ideas, you
can log onto IRC with my nick because I don't know how to make NickServ
work with Empathy; last I tried, it sent me a private chat asking me to
 type my password every time I tried to log on, so I unregistered
myself because that was flatly ridiculous. Security has to be built-in, 
not an annoyance. Simply bridging our existing IRC network to Matrix
cannot fix this major problem. (And no, I will not consider switching
to a non-Empathy client, because your suggested alternative either
doesn't integrate well with GNOME, or can't handle XMPP, which I still
need.)

Michael
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[George Barrett]

Thanks ebassi. I mostly agree with your reply, but there were a few points
I'd like to raise in response (not that it changes my argument, just hoping to
make my concerns clear).

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 01:32:18PM +, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> Considering the state of Telepathy, this is not at all a blocker.
> Actually, it may very well be the push needed to phase it out from our
> platform.

My point was less about Telepathy specifically and more about general access
to the platform using GNOME services. And as poor Telepathy's current state
is, it's the only technology we have separating us from the wilderness of a
separate application for every single chat platform (besides Pidgin, but
that's a worse alternative in many respects).

> If you can use a browser with HTTPS then you're likely going to be
> able to use IRC on a web form, or better user experiences.
>
> If you cannot access anything outside of IRC then you're living in a
> severely constrained network, managed by someone who doesn't really
> want you to join online communities, and IRC is just a way to work
> around those cases. Some platforms, like Slack, do offer IRC bridges
> as well, in any case, with degraded functionality.

Either that, or you're running a configuration that Some Browser doesn't agree
with (for almost five releases running Firefox does racy rendering stuff that
gets tripped up on my hardware -- Telepathy clients tend to be immune to
frequent browser bugs). Or you're using a laptop, on which Some Browser takes
a significant toll on battery life even if you're just using it for a trivial
chat web app. Or maybe (for whatever reason) you're limited to communicating
on a toaster oven which doesn't have the horsepower for Some Browser.

Not that any of that is particularly relevant in the context of a Matrix
bridge, but there are all sorts of reasons (with varying degrees of validity
;) that people would be locked out of (or in the least have hindered access to)
a browser-only chat platform.

> Just because you found yourself happy with IRC it does not imply IRC
> is without fault, or without features that are, indeed, required by
> other people.
>
> If it doesn't cost you anything to stay on IRC while other people move
> to different standards — assuming there's a bridge, at the very least
> as a transition mechanism — then asking "what is the cost" is just
> stop energy.

I had interpreted the email originally posted to this list to be discussing
possible *replacements* for IRC going into the future. In that context, I
don't think it's fair to label valid concerns as 'stop energy'. Like I said,
the Matrix bridge plan is sensible. My reservations regard the idea of using
it as a transition technology with the goal of phasing out GimpNet operations
in the future.

Yes, IRC is my preferred platform. And, absolutely, it follows that I have
some bias. But that shouldn't disqualify from consideration the benefits of
having a simple, flexible system; one that serves many of its required
purposes extremely effectively.

Thanks


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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Emmanuele Bassi]

Hi;

On 13 January 2017 at 12:45, George Barrett  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 08:37:30AM +, Alberto Fanjul Alonso wrote:
>> Hi, hackers
>>
>> Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?
>>
>> - signal https://whispersystems.org/
>> - telegram https://telegram.org/
>> - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
>> - gitter https://gitter.im/
>
> None of these platforms have an official Telepathy protocol implementation.
> That people will have a lessened ability to access chat already seems like a
> non-starter.

Considering the state of Telepathy, this is not at all a blocker.
Actually, it may very well be the push needed to phase it out from our
platform.

>> pros/cons irc:
>>
>> pros:
>> 
>> - is widespread
>> - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
>
> I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
> platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their workflow, they
> probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly became a
> stumbling block.

I guess the issue, here, is whether or not we care about reaching
other people than the existing pool of contributors.

> In terms of universality, the only chat platform rivalling IRC (that I can
> think of, at least) is XMPP. I don't know enough about it to seriously
> recommend it, though; does it support the requested features?

XMPP is somewhat a "nerd ghetto". In principle, it's awesome: a
federated protocol with capabilities negotiation that has free
implementations and a set of extensions.

In practice, it's a disaster zone — with terrible server
implementations, and a tendency for clients to either assume a certain
set of extensions and running against specific servers, or providing
the minimum common denominator because extension and capabilities
discovery is terrible.

All existing chat protocol silos — like Google's, WhatsApp, Signal,
Telegram — usually start off as some sort of XMPP protocol, and then
rapidly close it off because it's impossible to gracefully degrade
functionality and UI at the same time across a wide range of services
without giving the users something that only geeks, with their higher
pain threshold, would use.

>> Solutions by new technology:
>> - gitter can deal with integration
>
> So can IRC, thanks to an easy-to-parse protocol and an abundance of libraries.
> XMPP, too, has quite a few libs available.

The reason why IRC is even a contender is that it's a trivial
protocol. The problem is that it's *too* trivial, and does not provide
features without resorting to things like proxies, bouncers, or bots.

>> an syntax highlight
>
> Is syntax highlighting done in the browser, or baked into the protocol? I'm
> going to go out on a limb and assume it's the former. For many people (myself
> included), web chat is a non-starter. Assuming others in the community
> feel the same, is there any point moving to a new platform for extra features
> that many won't be able to use?

There's a point in moving to a new platform if people will be able to
use new features.

If you can use a browser with HTTPS then you're likely going to be
able to use IRC on a web form, or better user experiences.

If you cannot access anything outside of IRC then you're living in a
severely constrained network, managed by someone who doesn't really
want you to join online communities, and IRC is just a way to work
around those cases. Some platforms, like Slack, do offer IRC bridges
as well, in any case, with degraded functionality.

>> - signal is aware of privacy
>
> What does this mean? If the plan is that public chats are logged, is there any
> room for privacy considerations? I'm probably misunderstanding, but being
> privacy-aware seems moot in this instance.

Public channels can be logged, but private chats can be secured. These
are not conflicting goals.

>> - matrix.org can be bridged to gimpnet in full two-way communication
>
> I find this the most convincing argument, but if we're just going to keep
> using IRC anyway then is it worth the cost? That question isn't (entirely)
> rhetorical; it might be, but the benefit isn't immediately obvious to me.

Just because you found yourself happy with IRC it does not imply IRC
is without fault, or without features that are, indeed, required by
other people.

If it doesn't cost you anything to stay on IRC while other people move
to different standards — assuming there's a bridge, at the very least
as a transition mechanism — then asking "what is the cost" is just
stop energy.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
https://www.bassi.io
[@] ebassi [@gmail.com]
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Patrick Griffis via desktop-devel-list]

 Original Message 

Subject: Re: Thoughs about communication
Local Time: January 13, 2017 5:47 AM
UTC Time: January 13, 2017 10:47 AM
From: a...@gnome.org
To: Alberto Fanjul Alonso <albertofan...@gmail.com>
desktop-devel-list@gnome.org <desktop-devel-list@gnome.org>




Alberto Fanjul Alonso <albertofan...@gmail.com> wrote:
...


Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?

- signal https://whispersystems.org/
- telegram https://telegram.org/
- matrix.org http://matrix.org/
- gitter https://gitter.im/
- Rocket.Chat https://rocket.chat/
- Mattermost https://about.mattermost.com/

...


pros/cons irc:

pros:
- can be accesed through command line
- is widespread
- integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
cons:
- syntax highlight
- multimedia


IRC is lacking in almost all respects. Some of the main issues:

- no built-in logging, server-side assistance for search
- doesn't really track identity; nicks clash, people get renamed, etc

- inaccurate tracking of online/offline status
...
Yes you can get around some of these things, using a bouncer or IRCCloud, but 
that's not ideal. We've also done our best to improve the experience in our own 
IRC client, Polari, but there's only so far you can take it on the client side.

IRCv3 is aiming to improve the protocol/server situation but there's a long way 
to go.

Allan

It is worth noting that IRCv3 already solves the replaying of logs from the 
server the gnome network just needs to implement it.
It also allows for negotiating any custom features we would want to add and has 
drafts for things like registering accounts.

Also Polari will never support IRCv3 as long as it uses Telepathy for its 
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Re: Thoughs about communication

[George Barrett]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 08:37:30AM +, Alberto Fanjul Alonso wrote:
> Hi, hackers
>
> Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?
>
> - signal https://whispersystems.org/
> - telegram https://telegram.org/
> - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
> - gitter https://gitter.im/

None of these platforms have an official Telepathy protocol implementation.
That people will have a lessened ability to access chat already seems like a
non-starter.

>
> pros/cons irc:
>
> pros:
> 
> - is widespread
> - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)

I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat
platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their workflow, they
probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly became a
stumbling block.

In terms of universality, the only chat platform rivalling IRC (that I can
think of, at least) is XMPP. I don't know enough about it to seriously
recommend it, though; does it support the requested features?

> Solutions by new technology:
> - gitter can deal with integration

So can IRC, thanks to an easy-to-parse protocol and an abundance of libraries.
XMPP, too, has quite a few libs available.

> an syntax highlight

Is syntax highlighting done in the browser, or baked into the protocol? I'm
going to go out on a limb and assume it's the former. For many people (myself
included), web chat is a non-starter. Assuming others in the community
feel the same, is there any point moving to a new platform for extra features
that many won't be able to use?

> - telegram has programmable bots

Again, not unique to Telegram/Gitter.

> - signal is aware of privacy

What does this mean? If the plan is that public chats are logged, is there any
room for privacy considerations? I'm probably misunderstanding, but being
privacy-aware seems moot in this instance.

> - matrix.org can be bridged to gimpnet in full two-way communication

I find this the most convincing argument, but if we're just going to keep
using IRC anyway then is it worth the cost? That question isn't (entirely)
rhetorical; it might be, but the benefit isn't immediately obvious to me.

> - All can deal with multimedia

See above re syntax highlighting.

> Is there any chance to adopt one of this technologies?

I would argue that positioning to replace IRC is unnecessarily extreme. IRC
has a great deal of momentum for a very good reason: plain text is *really*
easy to work with. I think it's an unreasonable position to think that GNOME
should untether itself from a tool that does its job extremely well (by the
criteria of accessibility and flexibility). Alternate chat services may have a
place alongside IRC, but that raises the question as to whether it's
appropriate to splinter discussions across yet more platforms.

The proposal for a IRC bridge with Matrix strikes me as the most sensible and
potentially an interesting experiment, but I have doubts wrt its adoption.

Thanks


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Re: Thoughs about communication

[Allan Day]

Alberto Fanjul Alonso  wrote:
...

> Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?
>
> - signal https://whispersystems.org/
> - telegram https://telegram.org/
> - matrix.org http://matrix.org/
> - gitter https://gitter.im/
>
  - Rocket.Chat https://rocket.chat/
  - Mattermost https://about.mattermost.com/
...

pros/cons irc:
>
> pros:
> - can be accesed through command line
> - is widespread
> - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
> cons:
> - syntax highlight
> - multimedia
>

IRC is lacking in almost all respects. Some of the main issues:

 - no built-in logging, server-side assistance for search
 - doesn't really track identity; nicks clash, people get renamed, etc
 - inaccurate tracking of online/offline status
...

Yes you can get around some of these things, using a bouncer or IRCCloud,
but that's not ideal. We've also done our best to improve the experience in
our own IRC client, Polari, but there's only so far you can take it on the
client side.

IRCv3 is aiming to improve the protocol/server situation but there's a long
way to go.

Allan
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Thoughs about communication

[Alberto Fanjul Alonso]

Hi, hackers

Do anybody though about trying new services for communication?

- signal https://whispersystems.org/
- telegram https://telegram.org/
- matrix.org http://matrix.org/
- gitter https://gitter.im/

pros/cons irc:

pros:
- can be accesed through command line
- is widespread
- integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
cons:
- syntax highlight
- multimedia

Solutions by new technology:
- gitter can deal with integration an syntax highlight
- telegram has programmable bots
- signal is aware of privacy
- matrix.org can be bridged to gimpnet in full two-way communication
- All can deal with multimedia

Terms that need discussion:

- There's a concern about log (deactivated on gimpnet)
- There's a chance to test matrix.org through a bridge,

Is there any chance to adopt one of this technologies?
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