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Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

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Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#151

Post by Arathorn »

Zetobal wrote: post #149
joshsimmons wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation it is expected that I conduct myself with some level of decorum. So, exercising all due restraint, I say this: your statement is unmoored from reality. I thank @camgunz for chiming in and citing sources.

Ridiculous. You joined a mere 6 months ago you didn't have any say in the decisions you are trying to defend now. You aren't even defending them you are just babbling and more emberassing playing personal attacked while deflecting. Matrix is dying and element killed it. Good riddance. I knew the stories were too good to be true but turns out you are just as corp as every other hired gun. There is a reason why they pu…

I think your vitriol is better directed at me (as Matrix project lead & founder) rather than Josh, whose role as MD for the Foundation is to ensure it gathers $ and distributes it as effectively as possible to support Matrix. The original post here is written by Josh because he took over diplomatics with Libera to give it a fresh start as an independent, given the breakdown in trust on both sides.

In terms of Matrix dying, killed by Element: I’m afraid rumours of Matrix's death are highly exaggerated. And Element spends its life helping Matrix come to life rather than death, for better or worse.

The reason the spec trails the implementation for months is precisely the same reason that the formal HTML5 spec trails the implementations for years. It's not some grand conspiracy that Mozilla ships CSS Flexbox behind a vendor prefix for years (decades?) ahead of the feature being finalised in the spec. Instead: the point is that you get to play with the spec change in the wild, prove that it works, iterate on the design, and then eventually propose it for merge into the spec itself.

Personally, I think this is one of the bits of Matrix that we've got right. The spec process doesn't evolve as fast as it could, but that might well be a feature (just like it's a feature that HTML5 moves slowly too, but doesn't stop folks experimenting all over the place on it). https://spec.matrix.org/proposals/ explains the full process and the workflow, in case you want to understand it.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#152

Post by Arathorn »

wkat4242 wrote: post #144
Arathorn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue in question here is https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/1... (and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/133... ) which accidentally regressed due to other stability work done for Libera (specifically, keeping the IRC-side connections persistent, rather than reconnecting when the bridge starts). As a result there was an race condition edge case where users on the Mat…

That these issues haven't seen as much as even a reply since 2021 makes me understand Libera's point a lot better to be honest. Because it is indeed a serious issue.

The linked issue and the associated PR that fixed it haven't had a reply since 2021 because they were filed and fixed in 2021.

Separately, the original issue regressed in 2023 on the Libera instance, which was tracked as a security issue... but Libera shut down the bridge before we could fix it.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#153

Post by camgunz »

vilunov wrote: post #139
camgunz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I don't think anything you've written here is true: > Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2]. > It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element). 2/5 people on the board work for Element [2]. > and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) It does not use a blockchain (there is no…

> Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2]. Technically correct, but in practice the spec is complex enough that there are only 2 more or less working server implementations, both of them developed by the same org. I tried to implement it myself, but in comparison to IRC and XMPP it's just too complex. That's what "effectively" means. > There are several in…

> That's what "effectively" means.

Sometimes hard things are hard, and it turns out a distributed E2E messaging system is one of those things. Same goes for writing a fit-for-purpose C compiler. Doesn't make GCC or the C standard any less open.

> Only one non-Element server is there is "Production ready", and it's dead.

Yeah I think reasonably you're looking at Synapse, Dendrite, and Conduit -- all Element-written. I think the argument was "it's too hard to implement", but someone's done it three times, so it still seems like that's wrong.

> They probably mean the DAG-like structure of rooms, which is a horror to implement, and even more horrifying to implement efficiently.

Op used "blockchain" as a pejorative, which is why I was responding "if you think Merkle trees are blockchains (and I would argue you shouldn't), you think a lot of perfectly fine software is a blockchain." If the argument is that implementing a distributed database is hard, well yeah, it is.

> It does not need to be "proof-of-anything" to be a blockchain

Not strictly, but you need a way to suppress fraudulent chains. Blockchains are Merkle trees with the requirement that the deepest tree is authoritative. They attempt to ensure this by requiring proof-of-*, which makes the creation of a fraudulent tree very computationally intensive, and therefore unlikely to ever catch up to the "real" tree. Matrix has nothing like this.

> There is a consensus protocol between home servers, and it fails terribly, leading to room resets.

Yeah, I think probably a lot of this goes away w/ the switch to MLS. But not all of it, they chose AP out of CAP (correct IMO) so this is just gonna be the way it goes. Your other options are deal with the service being down while it becomes consistent--which would happen constantly--or welcome back IRCs netsplits.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#154

Post by wkat4242 »

Arathorn wrote: post #152
wkat4242 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That these issues haven't seen as much as even a reply since 2021 makes me understand Libera's point a lot better to be honest. Because it is indeed a serious issue.

The linked issue and the associated PR that fixed it haven't had a reply since 2021 because they were filed and fixed in 2021. Separately, the original issue regressed in 2023 on the Libera instance, which was tracked as a security issue... but Libera shut down the bridge before we could fix it.

Ah I see, I didn't realise. That explains a lot.

PS: I thought I saw the issue listed as "New Issue" and thus open but apparently not. Weird.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#155

Post by [deleted] »

Arathorn wrote: post #150
k8svet wrote: post #103

I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly. I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago . With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the projec…

> with the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more. Synapse is very stable these days, and relatively resource efficient. Matrix.org (both the server, website, spec and foundation) is in a good place too, as is (from my biased pov as project lead) the project in general. > This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely We simply don't have…

[deleted]

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#156

Post by Laaas »

Arathorn wrote: post #150
k8svet wrote: post #103

I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly. I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago . With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the projec…

> with the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more. Synapse is very stable these days, and relatively resource efficient. Matrix.org (both the server, website, spec and foundation) is in a good place too, as is (from my biased pov as project lead) the project in general. > This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely We simply don't have…

Did you solve the funding issues after that Christmas (?) post about not having enough funds? I assume probably not fully given you don't have enough manpower?

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#157

Post by vilunov »

camgunz wrote: post #153
vilunov wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2]. Technically correct, but in practice the spec is complex enough that there are only 2 more or less working server implementations, both of them developed by the same org. I tried to implement it myself, but in comparison to IRC and XMPP it's just too complex. That's what "effectively" means. > There are several in…

> That's what "effectively" means. Sometimes hard things are hard, and it turns out a distributed E2E messaging system is one of those things. Same goes for writing a fit-for-purpose C compiler. Doesn't make GCC or the C standard any less open. > Only one non-Element server is there is "Production ready", and it's dead. Yeah I think reasonably you're looking at Synapse, Dendrite, and Conduit -- all Element-written. I…

> distributed E2E messaging system

The thing is, customers don't necessarily want a distributed messaging system, they might be perfectly fine with a decentralized one if it supports E2EE. Matrix went the way they did and it's far from obvious whether it was a good choice. I'm leaning towards no.

> but someone's done it three times

You can do it however times you want and it will be easy to do if you have access to one of the few domain experts of the protocol. It can be considered easy to implement once someone else successfully implements it and continues to support it for a significant period of time. Rewriting one thing three times inside a single org is not something of interest.

> Blockchains are Merkle trees

This is getting offtopic, but anyway. Blockchains are DAGs, they are not necessarily trees. The canonical chain and candidate blocks have only one genesis block, and non-genesis blocks could have multiple parents (e.g. one main parent and orphaned uncles), which by traverse still converge to the same genesis block.

Although Merkle trees are used in the underlying block data structure, this is orthogonal to the blockchain concept and any data structure could be stored there.

> MLS

Unless I'm missing something about MLS, you're mixing unrelated stuff here.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#158

Post by Zetobal »

Arathorn wrote: post #151
Zetobal wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous. You joined a mere 6 months ago you didn't have any say in the decisions you are trying to defend now. You aren't even defending them you are just babbling and more emberassing playing personal attacked while deflecting. Matrix is dying and element killed it. Good riddance. I knew the stories were too good to be true but turns out you are just as corp as every other hired gun. There is a reason why they pu…

I think your vitriol is better directed at me (as Matrix project lead & founder) rather than Josh, whose role as MD for the Foundation is to ensure it gathers $ and distributes it as effectively as possible to support Matrix. The original post here is written by Josh because he took over diplomatics with Libera to give it a fresh start as an independent, given the breakdown in trust on both sides. In terms of Matrix…

If your intention was to suffocate competition you got it right.

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#159

Post by kinduff »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #53
kinduff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I really like it. Really easy to configure and setup.

I just configured one today. Took me no more than 15min. Highly recommend. If you are starting fresh, I recommend using the Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Yes! And don't forget MASH [0], its a collection of Ansible roles that is compatible with the Matrix Docker Ansible Deploy playbook. In case you want to add more services to your Matrix server.

[0]: https://github.com/mother-of-all-self-hosting/mash-playbook

Re: Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

#160

Post by RadiozRadioz »

Arathorn wrote: post #150
k8svet wrote: post #103

I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly. I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago . With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the projec…

> with the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more. Synapse is very stable these days, and relatively resource efficient. Matrix.org (both the server, website, spec and foundation) is in a good place too, as is (from my biased pov as project lead) the project in general. > This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely We simply don't have…

> Synapse is [...] relatively resource efficient

Yeah, no. I run both a Matrix server (Synapse) and an XMPP server (Prosody). It is completely obvious when Synapse is running on my server. I don't need ps or systemctl status, I can tell if Synapse is running just by looking at the bars at the top of htop.

Meanwhile my XMPP stuff is as invisible as any other system service.

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