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Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

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Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#151

Post by hedora »

Boulth wrote: post #114
tannhaeuser wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML/SGML is highly appropriate for representing rich text, though, which is the purpose of chat apps/logs. Using JSON you'd have to invent ad-hoc markup on top of JSON, loosing any advantage it may have.

> Using JSON you'd have to invent ad-hoc markup on top of JSON That's basically a description of ActivityPub that wraps HTML in JSON!

Will activitypub let me do:

   markdown text
And ship some js to convert to html?

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#152

Post by zinid »

speedplane wrote: post #56
Arathorn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the project lead for Matrix (and CEO of New Vector, the company which hires most of the core Matrix team) and can try to clarify this. 1. We don't have any hostility to alternative server implementations; it would be utterly idiotic to sabotage the project by doing so. Instead, we promote them, even when they're written by people who for whatever reason have issues with the project. For instance, if you look at h…

Matrix is a fantastic project. As the technology matures and becomes more useful, I hope there will be a large push to formalize the organization and bring in other stakeholders. As I'm sure you know, Matrix will not be able to get off the ground by itself, it'll need institutional buy-in from corporations and existing tech companies. Hope there is a plan for that type of out-reach.

> it'll need institutional buy-in from corporations and existing tech companies. Hope there is a plan for that type of out-reach.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail".

I don't see why would corporations and existing tech companies be interested in yet another IM protocol they cannot control, especially in the era of total silos and FAANGs. Doesn't sound like a solid plan to me at all.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#153

Post by ATsch »

dboreham wrote: post #42
thinkloop wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- no vendor lock-in - decentralized - encrypted/private/secure - open-source It's like irc or email for private decentralized encrypted chat.

Matrix isn't really decentralized. It's federated.

I think a useful way of looking at it is that the rooms are decentralized, i.e. not owned by a single server, but the user accounts are (for now).

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#154

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

pedroaraujo wrote: post #81
tannhaeuser wrote: post #55

I'm not very much into chat apps and protocols, but isn't it possible to just revive XMPP? Ten years ago we used Adium and Pidgin, and federated chat seemed like a solved problem. I understand XMPP with its extensions and use of XML fragments might be complex, but it sounds like matrix or another new protocol isn't easier. In a way, those willing to invest time into F/OSS chat apps have done the best they could with…

Why are people so attached to XMPP? There was no entity preventing XMPP from thriving, if the community really wanted XMPP, we would have had XMPP everywhere. But honestly, as someone who ran and tried to use XMPP for many years, the entire protocol was an unmaintained divided mess. And the XEPs didn't help, they felt like hacky workarounds to keep an old protocol up-to-date with the modern needs. Matrix feels very c…

Of course, app that implements it's only server API would be consistent with itself. You see, Matrix isn't mature enough to have XMPP's problems, such problems must be deserved first.

And seeing how fixated matrix zealots on JSON superiority over XML as a format, I don't think Matrix will ever mature to a point to have problems faced by real federated protocol with multiple implementations of both clients and servers.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#155

Post by tannhaeuser »

oaiey wrote: post #143
superfist wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very same impression. XMPP is basing on XML where parsing is order of magniture more complex than JSON. In lot of ways very similar to SOAP mess where you could not comunicate across different software because each of them supportet different set of SOAP extensions and good luck with communicating with web client.

XML is not popular because of JavaScript developers. Coming from .NET, I do not care using JSON or XML, because the APIs System.Xml.Linq, Newtonsoft.Json and the upcoming System.Text.Json are a joy to use. I think the lack of good native representation of XML in JavaScript made it a unwanted choice. Regards SOAP I tend to agree to you. Beyond the Basic profile it was a hassle to interop.

XML is extremely popular with the JS crowd, they just don't know they're using it ;) JSX (React's template language extension to JavaScript) stands for "JavaScript XML" [1], and there was E4X as an official ECMA spec for XML literals before that (though admittedly not as cool as React is, doesn't have vdom and update events, components for MVC, etc). And JavaScript was indeed invented for DOM manipulation, it's just that the DOM API simply sucks.

The whole XML hate thing is symptomatical for the staged this-vs-that discussion we endure in today's forums.

I guess there are those document representation schemes that everybody hates on, and those that nobody uses ;)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library)#JSX

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#156

Post by MR4D »

No.

But I mean that in a nice way. Here's why...

My understanding (limited, to be fair), is that a large percentage (most?) users have a matrix.org account instead of an account somewhere else. By definition, this is not federation. Certainly riot.im users get that by default.

Let's look at a different example - email. What if the inventors of email created email.org and created accounts on it. Everyone would also ask "where's the federation?". What ultimately made email really useful (note the use of the word "really"), was the ability to reach people outside your organization. So you could email back and forth to stanford.edu, ibm.com, usna.mil, and even aol.com.

What is difficult (today), is for me to go to google or yahoo, or microsoft, or stanford and get an account. Yes, there is this [0] but only one provider is on the page. Further, according to that provider [1] it's only a sub-domain, not my domain. It's a start, but also a version behind from the looks of things, so therefore not truly ready.

If any of this is wrong, and I can sign up with a reliable hosting to have server.mydomain.com, I'd sign up. I don't have the time to manage updates & server security, and a reliable provider would allow me to run my own instance.

[0] - https://matrix.org/docs/projects/hosting [1] - https://www.modular.im/

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#157

Post by Animats »

notyourday wrote: post #129
TuringTest wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you point users to Riot.im instead... Seriously, you don't expose end users to platform-level infrastructure. Matrix audience is software engineers, so it's good that matrix.org is dedicated to explain itself to developers. The tools you build on top of it, those are the ones you show to end users.

Oh so the users also need to know that when they hear Matrix, it means people are talking about Riot! Compare: https://telegram.org/ with https://matrix.org/blog/home/ Where is a link to the app store for Riot? Where is the link to the website? Why do I get a table of "yes/no/kinda" when I click on "Clients"? This project will will become another IRC -- cute but irrelevant.

IRC has active users.

I have, or had, a Disapora account. Nobody to talk to. I have an OpenID. No service I use still accepts it. The home page of Matrix has to provide a convincing argument that Matrix is worth more attention than Mastodon or GNU Social.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#158

Post by oaiey »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #155
oaiey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML is not popular because of JavaScript developers. Coming from .NET, I do not care using JSON or XML, because the APIs System.Xml.Linq, Newtonsoft.Json and the upcoming System.Text.Json are a joy to use. I think the lack of good native representation of XML in JavaScript made it a unwanted choice. Regards SOAP I tend to agree to you. Beyond the Basic profile it was a hassle to interop.

XML is extremely popular with the JS crowd, they just don't know they're using it ;) JSX (React's template language extension to JavaScript) stands for "JavaScript XML" [1], and there was E4X as an official ECMA spec for XML literals before that (though admittedly not as cool as React is, doesn't have vdom and update events, components for MVC, etc). And JavaScript was indeed invented for DOM manipulation, it's just…

I agree.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#159

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

superfist wrote: post #94
pedroaraujo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so attached to XMPP? There was no entity preventing XMPP from thriving, if the community really wanted XMPP, we would have had XMPP everywhere. But honestly, as someone who ran and tried to use XMPP for many years, the entire protocol was an unmaintained divided mess. And the XEPs didn't help, they felt like hacky workarounds to keep an old protocol up-to-date with the modern needs. Matrix feels very c…

I have very same impression. XMPP is basing on XML where parsing is order of magniture more complex than JSON. In lot of ways very similar to SOAP mess where you could not comunicate across different software because each of them supportet different set of SOAP extensions and good luck with communicating with web client.

Sure, XMPP has problems, but ZERO of them comes from using XML. Thinking that using JSON will help solve the real problems any federated protocol would face is very naive and will lead to more than a few unpleasant discoveries down the road.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#160

Post by paulcarroty »

MattJ100 wrote: post #123
paulcarroty wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and there are thousands of XMPP servers proof please. Checked the top 3-4 xmpp servers last summer and they almost died. IRC looks 1000000x more active.

I'm not sure how you are judging "activity". I suspect you are talking about chatrooms. In this sense, yes, IRC probably would look pretty active - it is built around the concept of channels, the majority of which tend to be public. XMPP is far more diverse, rooms are spread across multiple servers with no central way to list them. A project that aims to spider the network and help find rooms is at: https://search.ja…

> I'm not sure how you are judging "activity"

OK, "324 Kuketz-Blog (kuketzblog@rooms.dismail.de)" seems like most popular jabber channel, right?

Here's the #freenode top in this moment:

#linux 2000

#python 1950

#archlinux 1860

And it's ONLY first 3 top channels.

So, the facts matters.

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