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Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

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Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#181

Post by tabbott »

ori_b wrote: post #139
dsr_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zulip uses three classes of communication: Streams which are like IRC channels; each stream has named threads (users are encouraged to reuse or start new ones as appropriate); and private messages can be 1:1 or multiparty. Zulip doesn't do anything with github other than the regex-based integration -- you can create links more easily, that's it. Nothing avoids etiquette or enforces etiquette except people. Muting can…

> Nothing avoids etiquette or enforces etiquette except people. So why is it listed as an IRC specific problem? > Zulip defaults to full archiving of everything, and making it searchable as well. I have IRC logs from dead networks dating from over 15 years ago, and I still sometimes look things up in them. I don't want to trust Zulip to survive 15 years. > Zulip doesn't do anything with github other than the regex-ba…

Zulip uses your full name as the primary identifier facing other users. Depending on the organization's configuration, a user's email address may or may not be available as well, but we just need your name (and auto-generated user ID) to display messages.

https://zulipchat.com/help/restrict-visibility-of-email-addr...

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#182

Post by tabbott »

fluffything wrote: post #176
buboard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Zulip is just a Django application. Yet again: > The installer expects Zulip to be the only thing running on the system; it will install system packages with apt (like nginx, postgresql, and redis) and configure them for its own use. We strongly recommend using either a fresh machine instance in a cloud provider, a fresh VM, or a dedicated machine. If you decide to disregard our advice and use a server that hos…

So why is that a problem ? I expect Mozilla IAM to handle VMs just fine.

Right, our recommendation is to run Zulip on a dedicated VM or container, which I'm sure is how Mozilla will install any self-hosted chat software.

For context, the background for that advice is that most folks who want Zulip to share with other systems are running a cheap "shared hosting" server with 5 different apps on it and without root access. Before we added that advice, more than 50% of requests for help installing Zulip were problems specific to that type of environment where the user wasn't going to succeed in any case (e.g. because they had an insufficient RAM quota from their hosting provider anyway).

There are reasonable use cases that would benefit from our investing in making this possible, but container technology is convenient enough in 2019 that it doesn't feel worth it over other high-value investments in making Zulip accessible to a wider audience.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#183

Post by tabbott »

dsr_ wrote: post #125
buboard wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Zulip is just a Django application. Yet again: > The installer expects Zulip to be the only thing running on the system; it will install system packages with apt (like nginx, postgresql, and redis) and configure them for its own use. We strongly recommend using either a fresh machine instance in a cloud provider, a fresh VM, or a dedicated machine. If you decide to disregard our advice and use a server that hos…

Mozilla is large enough that they could go over to the Zulip developers and ask nicely for what they need, and stand a good chance of getting it.

I lead the Zulip project, and we would definitely have been excited to do the work to make Zulip available. Unfortunately, they didn't contact us.

After seeing this blog post, I emailed the OP yesterday offering to add whatever they need to evaluate Zulip (which sounds like is just SAML authentication work that's was already on our near-term roadmap). He replied that they're too late in their evaluation process to consider Zulip :(. I really wish they'd thought to get in touch with us about this concern.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#184

Post by tabbott »

lima wrote: post #94

I'm sad to see Zulip excluded from the list. It solves the #1 issue with large group chats - proper threading. Nothing worse than waking up to a 1000 message backlog you have to sort through to filter out the information relevant to you. Except for Slack, all of their other choices have very poor threading. They said they had trouble to get it working behind IAM, but Zulip is just a Django application. Surely there's…

I lead the Zulip project, and am also super sad about this. There's a very active Zulip in the Rust community (https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com), and we love the great feedback we've gotten from them.

The "IAM problem" is apparently that Mozilla's IAM is based on SAML, which Zulip doesn't have native support for today. There are two possible technical solutions:

* One could use https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/authentica... with https://github.com/Uninett/mod_auth_mellon to integrate SAML authentication for Zulip without any code changes.

* One could add native support for it, using our `python-social-auth` integration. Generally adding an authentication provider supported by `python-social-auth` takes about 50 lines of mostly boilerplate code plus some tests -- not a big effort.

As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I sent OP an email yesterday offering for the Zulip core team to do any work required for Mozilla to evaluate Zulip over the next week so they can evaluate Zulip. He replied that it's too late to revisit their decision :(.

For other folks involved in open source projects, you should absolutely consider Zulip! We provide our paid plan completely free to open source projects, can import history from Slack and other tools, and are actively prioritizing features specifically for open source communities (like the ability to search the complete history of all public streams even as a user who just joined).

Open source projects that have switched consistently tell us that Zulip's topic-based threading is a way better model for a distributed community with a lot of volunteers than Slack/IRC/Gitter/etc., making it easier for maintainers to manage the community and helping more new contributors stick around. A few links:

* https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source/

* https://www.recurse.com/blog/112-how-rc-uses-zulip

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#185

Post by Avamander »

corndoge wrote: post #174
Avamander wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there's a bot available https://github.com/keybase/bot-sshca in addition to the regular CLI API keybase has.

What does this have to do with keybase chat?

The link I posted is basically a headless server client, was that not what you asked for?

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#186

Post by steveklabnik »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #161
kzrdude wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be grinding through to a conclusion. Google analytics has already been removed (2018).

Activity only started after the ICO made contact with them as a result of my complaint. (I also have issues with how slow the ICO are at investigating, but that's a different story)

This is not accurate. I can agree that the process has been slow and frustrating, but that’s for us as well. We would have much preferred to have this all sorted a long time ago.

I won’t be able to say more than that, but I can’t stand by suggesting that we don’t care about this issue. I’ve been personally advocating for these things longer than that issue has been open.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#187

Post by ptman »

693471 wrote: post #159
dngray wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hoping they go with Matrix, least then I will be able to have the choice of having a client appropriate to my needs. I do prefer my chat client to not be a part of my browser. That way I can close my browser, start my browser and chat client on login ie from i3/sway etc. A tab in a browser runs the risk of getting closed. I love using weechat (weechat.org) and have used it for decades. The Matrix plugin for Weec…

You really don't want Matrix. One year of Matrix to IRC bridge cost me about 30GB in Postgresql database to hold the state/logs of everything. It was less than 500MB of plaintext irssi logs.

This too keeps improving

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#188

Post by Arathorn »

shantly wrote: post #164
693471 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't want Matrix. One year of Matrix to IRC bridge cost me about 30GB in Postgresql database to hold the state/logs of everything. It was less than 500MB of plaintext irssi logs.

Did you figure out what's with the 60x bloat? Badly denormalized and storing tons of metadata? Storing images/video?

badly denormalised; every state change stored a snapshot of all the state in the room. so everytime someone joined a room it snapshotted the state of everyone else in the room. it has now been improved massively, and there is scope for further fixes. sorry that the GP got bit by it.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#189

Post by radus »

movedx wrote: post #120
radus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experiences as an infrequent IRC user over many years: - hmm, I have to download a client? maybe I can access a web interface? - okay, I have this connection string/url - how do I join a channel? - how do I set my nickname? is this persistent? - oh someone else is using my name? is this for the channel or the server?? - what's the etiquette of this particular channel? (I realize this is probably the case for any c…

> hmm, I have to download a client? maybe I can access a web interface? irccloud.com > okay, I have this connection string/url No? What clients are you using that don't have an exhaustive network list in them? > how do I join a channel? The same way you do in Slack and other alternatives: you look at the channel list > how do I set my nickname? ... A good client, such as IRC Cloud, makes setting your nick name easy.…

Based on my infrequent use of IRC, I am not interested in investing in learning the tools - which by the way change quite a bit over a few decades.

On the other hand, the same usage pattern with other chat apps such as Zulip/Slack/Mattermost and others requires no specialized knowledge.

irccloud.com looks great, except for the fact that you have to pay if you don't want to be kicked off after 2 hours of inactivity.

Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor

#190

Post by Dylan16807 »

oehtXRwMkIs wrote: post #142
calcifer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've been knowingly and willingly violating the GDPR That's quite the inflamatory statement to throw out there without at least providing a source or two.

I'm guessing they are talking about this issue which has been open for a disturbingly long time: https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/955

IPs and the account data you give them. And the complaint is not the collection, just that there's no listing that lets you know they collect IPs.

Seems extremely minor. I'm very far from disturbed.

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