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Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

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Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#62
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is a huge relief. I was getting quite worried that Mozilla would go to Discord, like Rust and other projects have done. I don't know anything about Matrix, but I know it's free, and if it has Mozilla's endorsement, now I'm actually curious to try it... maybe even via an IRC bridge!

FYI #rust-beginners is on discord, but many of the teams have transitioned to Zulip because it has threads. I'd love if Zulip was OSS, but at least it's a highly innovative company that's improved a lot on the UX of IRC (far beyond not needing to setup a bouncer). The mismatch between Discord's targeted audience of gamers can get funny at times. One rust dev has had their status we to "playing systemd" for days. Edit…

Zulip is open source: https://github.com/zulip/zulip

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#63
post #12
post #6

Can't wait for Mozilla to back a stable, native desktop client into a daily driver state so we can finally ditch Mattermost at work.

Seriously, I feel like it’s such an indictment on native app tool development that we have a bazillion new electron apps written by ppl all the time for weekend projects yet almost no one spitting out native apps to interface with services. It’s clearly in demand (if a bit of a niche kind of demand)

You answered your own question.

You can write a pretty and functional Electron app in a weekend.

To implement the same level of functionality and prettiness in a native app toolkit like Qt is at least a month of work.

It's the same story as Python versus C, or C versus Assembly.

When C was introduced, the old-timers had the same complains like we do today: why would you program in such a slow and inefficient language? Real programmers (TM) use Assembly, C is for lazy people who don't want to learn and who don't care about the awful resource wasting. 3 KB for a hello world? That's an absolutely ridiculous level of bloat.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is a huge relief. I was getting quite worried that Mozilla would go to Discord, like Rust and other projects have done. I don't know anything about Matrix, but I know it's free, and if it has Mozilla's endorsement, now I'm actually curious to try it... maybe even via an IRC bridge!

FYI #rust-beginners is on discord, but many of the teams have transitioned to Zulip because it has threads. I'd love if Zulip was OSS, but at least it's a highly innovative company that's improved a lot on the UX of IRC (far beyond not needing to setup a bouncer). The mismatch between Discord's targeted audience of gamers can get funny at times. One rust dev has had their status we to "playing systemd" for days. Edit…

[deleted]

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#66

Wow this already looks like a fractured mess! https://matrix.org/clients/ Why are there so many clients with different supported functionality?

Presumably Matrix is the protocol and the clients implement that protocol. Some may be at a further stage of development than others.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#67
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, I feel like it’s such an indictment on native app tool development that we have a bazillion new electron apps written by ppl all the time for weekend projects yet almost no one spitting out native apps to interface with services. It’s clearly in demand (if a bit of a niche kind of demand)

You answered your own question. You can write a pretty and functional Electron app in a weekend. To implement the same level of functionality and prettiness in a native app toolkit like Qt is at least a month of work. It's the same story as Python versus C, or C versus Assembly. When C was introduced, the old-timers had the same complains like we do today: why would you program in such a slow and inefficient language…

If Electron vs Qt/C++ were the only two choices that would be true. In reality there are lots of ways to write cross platform native apps without using C or C++: Gtk + scripting language of your choice (even Javascript); Tcl/Tk; WxWindows; Mono/C#; lots of Java options; Delphi/Lazarus.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#68

Wow this already looks like a fractured mess! https://matrix.org/clients/ Why are there so many clients with different supported functionality?

Matrix advertises themselves as an eventually consistent global JSON DB. So it makes sense anyone can build a client and stuff something in there and maybe only their client really handles it.

Seems like a better idea given the failure of XMPP. XMPP was a communications protocol lots of products used like Google Talk, but got dumped when they wanted to do their own proprietary stuff. It feels like Matrix will be less likely to get dumped like that since they are just a general purpose global DB.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#69

Wow this already looks like a fractured mess! https://matrix.org/clients/ Why are there so many clients with different supported functionality?

> Why are there so many clients with different supported functionality?

If a client has different functionality from the spec, then it simply means that the client is unfinished.

It's not like XMPP where different servers/clients implement different XEPs.

A client either implements the spec and is complete or it does not and it is "beta".

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#70
This is really good news. I have only one question for Mozilla: why choose a solution whose hallmark is decentralization and the libre model- only to become a customer of a centralized host (modular.im). Why can't Mozilla actually federate? That's a step backward from your IRCd in my opinion.

I hope Mozilla gets onboard with everyone else running their own Synapse, hacks on it, and pay their dues with patches, rather than with their cash.

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