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Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

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Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#241

Post by Vinnl »

ptman wrote: post #237
Vinnl wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't managed to properly use Matrix myself, but I am part of a number of Gitter rooms that includes people using the Matrix bridge. I certainly wouldn't call that bridge "nice": all their messages are posted by a single user called matrixbot, that simply prefixes it message by their Matrix username in backticks. I'm not sure if the people in the room who aren't aware of Matrix understand that that's what's going…

Maybe a limitation of the gitter api? Better than nothing, but improvement welcome

I understand why it works this way and I wouldn't know how to do it better; it was more of a general critique of the bridging approach, I guess, and hence a reluctance from my side to call it nice.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#243

Post by phre4k »

lousken wrote: post #160

So after testing matrix and riot with friends for a couple of months, there're still a ton of work to be done. We all used the most common setup - matrix.org homeserver, riot and riotX as apps. (Also please don't point me to dev version, I am only considering what's in stable.) Random stuff not in particular order: 1a) e2e is a choice that affects experience in riot, a lot - you can't use search, you don't see recent…

2) could be partially solved by backing up all of your keys from all devices. After that, non-decryptable messages decreased about 95%.

Ironically, backing up your keys is done by recovering your keys from a backup – Settings → Cryptography Keys Management → Encrypted Messages Recovery → Restore from backup.

(Web version: Settings → Security and Privacy → Key Backup → Restore from Backup)

You can verify that you set it up properly by checking if the backups are signed by all your currently used devices (and possibly old ones, too).

3) can be mitigated by using workers. You'll need a beefy server, but message transfer and synchronisation will be super fast.

The other things you mentioned are works in progress and I think the progress is outlined pretty transparently on Github, even if some people disagree with how the Matrix team is handling things.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#244

Post by Arathorn »

k_sze wrote: post #242

I'm confused. Is Matrix actually synchronous or asynchronous? The Matrix FAQ ( https://matrix.org/faq/#what-is-a-homeserver%3F ) makes it sound like it can be asynchronous. Otherwise, why store communication history at all?

Matrix is asynchronous. You send a message into a room; other people can receive it later or respond to it subsequently - it's not like the data blocks the room somehow until it's read, or that messages disappear after reading.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#245

Post by jangid »

Arathorn wrote: post #97
jangid wrote: post #94

Can I access the network from Emacs? I use ERC as of now.

yup. https://github.com/alphapapa/matrix-client.el is your best bet (it probably doesn't support SSO though, but should be pretty easy to add).

Thanks for sharing. Actually, I searched MELPA before posting my question. It is time to support this package to get included into MELPA/ELPA.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#246

Post by nullc »

Arathorn wrote: post #156
nullc wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And them Matrix will happily spam IRC with links to comments instead of the comments themselves. Matrix is toxic to IRC. Any widely used IRC channel that has matrix joined to it would do well to ban matrix if they want the channel to pratically continue to exist as a IRC channel.

The default heuristic is that if someone sends a message on Matrix which is longer than 3 lines, it gets sent as a pastebin to IRC. This feels significantly better than spamming an N-line paste into IRC, which could be seen as even more toxic. Open to suggestions on how to improve it, though...

If someone sends an overly long message and it irritates people, they'll get asked to not do that in the future.

Do you also plan to replace offensive words in messages?

Forcing people to load a URL to a remote server to see a message is one of the most hostile things I've _ever_ seen an attempt at IRC integration do.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#247

Post by jeltz »

pabs3 wrote: post #221
bloopernova wrote: post #177

Has anyone had experience with both Matrix and Mattermost? What are the main differences between the two? Apropos of nothing, currently I am running: * Signal * Wife * Family * Google Hangouts (web) * Friends and ex-coworkers * Slack * Vendor A * Vendor B * Team C * Team D * Keybase * Some friends * SMS * My Stepdaughter * Skype * Coworkers too stubborn to open Mattermost or change what they do * Mattermost * Coworke…

I really wish Telepathy took off, then you could have one single app that speaks each of those protocols and talks to the relevant servers. https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/

Pidgin already exists but seems to have bad support for newer protocols for some reason.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#248

Post by afiori »

saagarjha wrote: post #80
gtirloni wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefits would Mozilla get from running their own server and federation (that they have with ircd today)?

Good publicity for decentralization. If they can get it to work, it shows that it’s possible to run a large instance from a non-central host.

Federation and decentralization are two different properties with different tradeoffs.

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#249

Post by jeltz »

kibwen wrote: post #153
jeltz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Cargo supports having multiple crates in the same git repo. Many projects do this like regex (regex and regex-syntax are in the same repo) and openssl (openssl, openssl-sys, openssl-errors). Maybe I am missing something but it seems very easy to handle multiple closely related crates in the same repo.

What makes this possible is Cargo's "workspace" feature, which is relatively new enough that it's not hard to imagine that some older projects may simply predate it.

Hm, I have been doing this just fine without using the workspaces. What am I missing?

Re: Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla: The Decision

#250

Post by jeltz »

cowedbyprgrssvs wrote: post #182

The announcement mentions only two features: safety and accessibility, but places no emphasis on the technical merits of the choice for the majority of users. That is disappointingly irrational for a technology organization. I don't feel comfortable with the strong emphasis on "progressive" concerns that mozilla (and the rust community) have. It's not inclusive: I have normal liberal views (I'm from a European countr…

Accessibility was actually as far as I understand an argument in favor of staying on IRC (but also in favor of Matrix) since there are IRC clients which work very well with screenreaders (I think weechat for example). It is the proprietary solutions which have poor accessibility.
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