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Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

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Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#131

Post by kibwen »

sreevisakh wrote: post #88
kibwen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like Ruma was waiting for an async web framework to emerge, and the web frameworks were waiting on hyper to upgrade, and hyper was waiting on h2 to upgrade, and h2 was waiting on http to upgrade, and http was waiting on bytes to upgrade, and everyone was waiting on tokio to upgrade. In the six weeks since async await has stabilized, the web framework that my company uses has only just managed to upgrade to s…

Thank you for that perspective. I apologize if it sounded like I am blaming Ruma - just waiting eagerly for its development.

No problem. :) I just don't want potential contributors to write off Ruma as something worth looking at, especially since with this announcement it ought to be be more relevant than ever. And having multiple independent implementations of a federated protocol is very important to proving out the specification (the Ruma author has already filed several bugs against the spec as a result of implementing it).

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#132

Post by kibwen »

shmerl wrote: post #110

Good, but what about Rust project jumping to Discord instead? They should have used Matrix as well.

Each individual Rust team (which govern individual aspects of Rust) got to choose where to jump to; I believe one did choose to use Matrix, but the others mostly chose Discord (because there was already a very large Rust user community there), a few chose Zulip, and one is still on IRC. If Matrix clients were more well-developed and widely-used, I believe there would be good incentive for them to transition--the Rust developers already have enough on their plate without feeling like they need to also develop their own communication protocol.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#133

Post by pmoriarty »

Arathorn wrote: post #85
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)

There are a bunch of very promising native desktop Matrix clients in progress: https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko as a Qt telegram-like https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion as a Qt xchat-like https://github.com/manuroe/messagerie for instance is a SwiftUI client proof-of-concept that should work on macOS as well as iOS None are as polished as Riot functionalitywise, but we will get there eventually - even mor…

I wonder if there's one for emacs.

That's what I'd like to see.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#134

Post by iudqnolq »

iudqnolq wrote: post #57
jordigh wrote: 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…

I know I'm not supposed to talk about voting, but I'm going to anyway. Why are people upvoting me? The comment is completely useless because almost everything in it is wrong.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#135

Post by asymmetric »

iudqnolq wrote: post #57
jordigh wrote: 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…

Where’s the other thread with Rob Pike?

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#136

Post by MR4D »

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…

Let's hope they do both: Cash + Development.

Might as well ask, right?

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#137

Post by pmoriarty »

gdxhyrd wrote: post #119
w354kjhllkj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can write a pretty and functional Electron app in a weekend. You can also do so in Qt and other frameworks. The fact that you are proficient in web frameworks does not mean other tools are less productive. In fact, being proficient in modern web dev, including HTML, CSS, JS, TS, React, etc. takes way longer than learning something like Qt. And if you go to easier frameworks like Delphi or VB6, you would be amaz…

"In fact, being proficient in modern web dev, including HTML, CSS, JS, TS, React, etc. takes way longer than learning something like Qt."

But there are already a ton of web developers who already know those web development technologies, but don't know Qt. So it would be extra effort for them to learn Qt. Much easier to just use React.

The same thing goes for why there so many academics write Java apps for their proof-of-concept research work. That's what they're taught in school and for many that's all they know.

Curiously, Python was able to make huge inroads in to the academic community, but that was largely due to having a killer app (Jupyter notebooks) along with having a bunch of desirable tools for scientific computing, data processing, and visualization. I'm not sure if there's anything as compelling in the Qt ecosystem that would be as attractive to web developers who already know HTML, Javascript, React, etc.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#138

Post by swsieber »

jasonzemos wrote: post #122
basilgohar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is Mozilla an example for the next major adopter of Matrix or are they not? If they are, and everyone else signs up for modular.im as well: at what point does this ship of Theseus called Federation only exist inside a bottle?

Probably at the same point email federation only exists inside a bottle, in terms of server topography.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#139

Post by swsieber »

pmoriarty wrote: post #133
Arathorn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of very promising native desktop Matrix clients in progress: https://github.com/Nheko-Reborn/nheko as a Qt telegram-like https://github.com/quotient-im/Quaternion as a Qt xchat-like https://github.com/manuroe/messagerie for instance is a SwiftUI client proof-of-concept that should work on macOS as well as iOS None are as polished as Riot functionalitywise, but we will get there eventually - even mor…

I wonder if there's one for emacs. That's what I'd like to see.

There's the weechat terminal client.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#140

Post by coldpie »

iudqnolq wrote: post #134
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 know I'm not supposed to talk about voting, but I'm going to anyway. Why are people upvoting me? The comment is completely useless because almost everything in it is wrong.

I upvoted you because "playing systemd" made me laugh. Also I hadn't heard of Zulip. Upvotes are cheap.
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