Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

Post by jasonzemos » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

basilgohar wrote: post #99

jasonzemos wrote: post #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…

They are using a hosted provider, run by the makers of Matrix themselves. This lets them get the benefits of federation while making the hosting someone else's problem. Of course, we all want to see Mozilla bootstrap their own Matrix instance, but maybe the cost/benefit equation worked out differently for them than we would have expected. I can imagine this lets them replace IRC with a better solution faster while st…

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

cjbprime wrote: post #76

iudqnolq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't describe Zulip as coming from the IRC tradition -- it was built by MIT students as an improvement on MIT's Zephyr. There's a split between line-at-a-time messaging like IRC or Slack, and paragraphs-at-a-time messaging with per-message channels like Zephyr, Gale, and now Zulip. I really miss the paragraphs style.

Post by anoncake » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

w354kjhllkj wrote: post #63

rtpg wrote: 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…

Post by kibwen » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #125

kibwen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually interviewed the author in August for our Rust podcast, on which he says he's waiting for async to mature before progressing further: https://rustacean-station.org/episode/001-ruma/

I love the name of your podcast.

Post by lifty » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

jethro_tell wrote: post #116

lifty wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Mozilla will use their own domain name they will be free to move their federated Matrix instance wherever they want. Modular.im will only provide the hosting expertise. I expect that in the future self-hosting your own Matrix server instance will become much easier.

It can be a bit onerous, half the convo in our matrix room is about updating matrix.