Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor • Hacker News Board

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#121

Post by buboard » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

jeethsuresh wrote: post #67

22c wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they really have a highly usable product Setting up a Matrix server is a lot harder than you might think, especially when you start talking about federation and identity management. The mxisd[1] project has recently disbanded due to what I believe to be philosophical differences with the Matrix maintainers vision of identity management. I like a lot of things about Riot/Synapse, but I would suggest you try setting…

I've actually had the opposite experience - it was easy enough to download/set up, and then it was just a matter of getting the letsencrypt daemon on the box to manage certs. That said, I went in with pretty low expectations since it's a reference implementation - I think one of the great advantages of the open-source protocol is that anyone can design/build their own implementations with better UX on the sysadmin si…

> is that anyone can design/build their own implementations with better UX

That's a common fallacy. Nobody is going to do for free this crucial work for a protocol that is practically unused. Teams should focus more on a strong implementation so the protocol gains ground

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#122

Post by diggan » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #96

rtpg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Matrix is basically the "real standard" here that supports a lot more than IRC. The question for me is about how easy it is to build a client for that (IRC is stupid easy, of course). Ideally you should be able to build a Matrix client in something like a Python REPL and like 20 lines of code with an `input` loop at the end. I don't know if that's the case at the moment.

Ooooh... sounds like a fun challenge :D I've typed this out straight into the HN input box so it almost certainly doesn't work and will be full of typos and escaping bugs, but for illustrative purposes: here's what a ~8 line Matrix client for basic bi-directional chat in a given room could look like (complete with login) in almost-bash, with deps only on curl and jq: USERNAME='@whoever:matrix.org'; SERVER='https://ma…

Nice! I tried this though and it asks me for a password (unsure if for creating an account or logging in to existing one, code suggests for login) and I tried both blank and random one, but get `Unrecognized request` as a response for the first request.

This seems to indicate it's missing a register step, and then it fails to be as simple as IRC where you just set nickname and connect to a server. Sometimes the server asks you to identify yourself, but that's up to the server, not the protocol.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#123

Post by Arathorn » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

diggan wrote: post #122

Arathorn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooooh... sounds like a fun challenge :D I've typed this out straight into the HN input box so it almost certainly doesn't work and will be full of typos and escaping bugs, but for illustrative purposes: here's what a ~8 line Matrix client for basic bi-directional chat in a given room could look like (complete with login) in almost-bash, with deps only on curl and jq: USERNAME='@whoever:matrix.org'; SERVER='https://ma…

Nice! I tried this though and it asks me for a password (unsure if for creating an account or logging in to existing one, code suggests for login) and I tried both blank and random one, but get `Unrecognized request` as a response for the first request. This seems to indicate it's missing a register step, and then it fails to be as simple as IRC where you just set nickname and connect to a server. Sometimes the serve…

yeah, sorry, i put a login stage in there but not a registration step (which is a bit more fiddly as registration typically requires solving a captcha to prevent spam). so you'd need to register via riot.im or some other client first.

That said, Matrix also supports guest accounts (which are quite locked down to prevent abuse, but would work for this example) - so the /login request could be replaced by calling /register with type=guest which would then do what you want.

edit: it would look something like this (7 lines now!):

    SERVER='https://matrix.org'; ROOM='#test:matrix.org'
    TOKEN=`curl -X POST $SERVER/_matrix/client/r0/register --data "{ 'kind': 'guest' }" | jq .access_token`
    ROOM_ID=`curl $SERVER/_matrix/client/r0/directory/room/$ROOM | jq .room_id`; curl "$SERVER/_matrix/client/r0/join/$ROOM_ID?access_token=$TOKEN"
    (while true; do SYNC=`curl -s $SERVER/_matrix/client/r0/sync?access_token=$TOKEN&timeout=30000&since=$SINCE`
     echo $SYNC | jq ".rooms.join.$ROOM_ID.timeline"
     SINCE=`echo $SYNC | jq .next_batch`; done) &
    while true; do read -p "> " INPUT; `curl -s -X POST $SERVER/_matrix/client/r0/rooms/$ROOM_ID/m.room.message?access_token=$TOKEN --data "{ 'body': '$INPUT', 'msgtype': 'm.text'}"`; done

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#124

Post by buboard » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

dngray wrote: post #89

esotericn wrote: post #26

I have full faith that, if I had left a computer running, in the corner of my home, with an IRC client open, it would have been able to maintain a connection to Freenode (not continuously, but just work) for fifteen or more years. Personally I don't think IRC will ever be replaced. Well, it will, but it'll happen when my generation dies and gets fully replaced with the New Shiny. I _hope_ that some sort of real, prop…

I am hoping they go with Matrix, least then I will be able to have the choice of having a client appropriate to my needs. I do prefer my chat client to not be a part of my browser. That way I can close my browser, start my browser and chat client on login ie from i3/sway etc. A tab in a browser runs the risk of getting closed. I love using weechat (weechat.org) and have used it for decades. The Matrix plugin for Weec…

> client to not be a part of my browser.

But that should also be an option too. Matrix could be great to integrate with for both private and public web communities , and that would incentivize people to create more homeservers. There is currently a lack of such solutions for communities and matrix could fill that gap. It's just sad that we have to end up sending people to sign up to discord .

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#125

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:51 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #116

lima wrote: post #94

I'm sad to see Zulip excluded from the list. It solves the #1 issue with large group chats - proper threading. Nothing worse than waking up to a 1000 message backlog you have to sort through to filter out the information relevant to you. Except for Slack, all of their other choices have very poor threading. They said they had trouble to get it working behind IAM, but Zulip is just a Django application. Surely there's…

> but Zulip is just a Django application. Yet again: > The installer expects Zulip to be the only thing running on the system; it will install system packages with apt (like nginx, postgresql, and redis) and configure them for its own use. We strongly recommend using either a fresh machine instance in a cloud provider, a fresh VM, or a dedicated machine. If you decide to disregard our advice and use a server that hos…

Mozilla is large enough that they could go over to the Zulip developers and ask nicely for what they need, and stand a good chance of getting it.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#126

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 10:58 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #45

radus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experiences as an infrequent IRC user over many years: - hmm, I have to download a client? maybe I can access a web interface? - okay, I have this connection string/url - how do I join a channel? - how do I set my nickname? is this persistent? - oh someone else is using my name? is this for the channel or the server?? - what's the etiquette of this particular channel? (I realize this is probably the case for any c…

I admit, I never used zulip -- I don't like using chat from the browser, so I generally stick to things that I can connect to from chat clients. - What does it replace channels with? - How does it keep my github account separate from the identity I'm using in chat? - How does it avoid etiquette in channels? - Does it let me ignore or mute annoying people? - Is it possible to easily archive communication for posterity…

Zulip uses three classes of communication: Streams which are like IRC channels; each stream has named threads (users are encouraged to reuse or start new ones as appropriate); and private messages can be 1:1 or multiparty.

Zulip doesn't do anything with github other than the regex-based integration -- you can create links more easily, that's it.

Nothing avoids etiquette or enforces etiquette except people.

Muting can be applied to people or named threads.

Zulip defaults to full archiving of everything, and making it searchable as well.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#127

Post by perlgeek » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:01 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #125

buboard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Zulip is just a Django application. Yet again: > The installer expects Zulip to be the only thing running on the system; it will install system packages with apt (like nginx, postgresql, and redis) and configure them for its own use. We strongly recommend using either a fresh machine instance in a cloud provider, a fresh VM, or a dedicated machine. If you decide to disregard our advice and use a server that hos…

Mozilla is large enough that they could go over to the Zulip developers and ask nicely for what they need, and stand a good chance of getting it.

Even if it's just for a PoC with a 1/5th chance of being actually selected in the end?

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#128

Post by buboard » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

Arathorn wrote: post #77

22c wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they really have a highly usable product Setting up a Matrix server is a lot harder than you might think, especially when you start talking about federation and identity management. The mxisd[1] project has recently disbanded due to what I believe to be philosophical differences with the Matrix maintainers vision of identity management. I like a lot of things about Riot/Synapse, but I would suggest you try setting…

there’s a successor fork to that identity server over at https://github.com/ma1uta/ma1sd which is being well maintained :) sorry that setting up a homeserver was hard; we’ve been doing a lot of work recently to improve this (eg https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse-config-generator/tree/... is a graphical installer which should be released very shortly).

This looks good. Will this become part of matrix in the future (also, does it work /stable?)?

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#129

Post by johnisgood » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:15 AM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #57

esotericn wrote: post #26

I have full faith that, if I had left a computer running, in the corner of my home, with an IRC client open, it would have been able to maintain a connection to Freenode (not continuously, but just work) for fifteen or more years. Personally I don't think IRC will ever be replaced. Well, it will, but it'll happen when my generation dies and gets fully replaced with the New Shiny. I _hope_ that some sort of real, prop…

Die? No, but it is slowly degrading. More and more the people in my old freenode chatrooms are idle or simply leaving. We've gotten so used to phone notifications and a persistent history, that IRC has fallen behind purely from a convenience factor. It's rock solid in what it does, I have zero doubt about that or your 15 year claim. But even if the protocol works, if the user base isn't being added to it will die eve…

You can have both notifications and a persistent history with the majority of IRC clients. Many public channels keep logs, even. If someone pings me (hilight), then I get an urgency hint. Most window managers handle urgency hints. I use openbox + xterm + irssi. I do get notified if someone pings me, and I can also add any arbitrary words for which I would get notified. With a small Perl script I could use notify-send if I wanted (it probably already exists).

If you are really referring to phone notifications, well, you can use an IRC client on your phone, then you would get notifications on your phone. I use irssi even on my Android phone.

Let us not forget that there is the other side of the story: many people report that they have been enjoying life more without those phone notifications.

I love IRC. I have been using IRC ever since I was 11. It made me a more technical person. I find that IRC is not that easily accessible to the majority, which is a good thing, because of this, the conversations tend to be of higher quality, and technical in most channels. I would also like to add that IRC is the reason I understand English, and a zillion other things. :)

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#130

Post by thedanbob » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 11:37 AM UTC

22c wrote: post #54

swalladge wrote: post #15

It's great to see 3/4 of the options are open source! Whatever happens, I really hope the community get behind the open source options and don't let more things get eaten up by commercial silos cough slack cough. I'm partial towards Matrix/Riot.im - the progress made on those projects is awesome and they really have a highly usable product, with bonuses such as e2e encryption and federation.

> they really have a highly usable product Setting up a Matrix server is a lot harder than you might think, especially when you start talking about federation and identity management. The mxisd[1] project has recently disbanded due to what I believe to be philosophical differences with the Matrix maintainers vision of identity management. I like a lot of things about Riot/Synapse, but I would suggest you try setting…

I actually switched my whole family to a private Matrix server after the Hangouts retirement announcement. It's got some rough edges (especially identity management) but it works well enough overall and it was the best option of all the chat apps I looked at.