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Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

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Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#191

Post by TuringTest »

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.

What's wrong with the link " Try Matrix Now / Get Chatting ", right below "Welcome to Matrix / Learn more"?

https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#192

Post by [deleted] »

Arathorn wrote: post #32
fro0116 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote one of the follow up comments from the author: > If you go to matrix.org and look at the list of about a dozen or so servers: you will find that none of them actually work except the reference implementation, and maybe sometimes Construct. Even thus, the phrase "able to build" is questionable. I have spent months reverse-engineering their software and its interactions before, and after, it was at all documen…

The "good luck talking to your own federation" comment is being taken out of context. I can't find it in my history (so I assume it's been paraphrased), plus from memory I think it was the final line in an argument over how some bit of the protocol should be implemented. After failing to convince the guy that our approach was better than his proposal, I gave up with "okay, you can always do it your way, but you'll on…

[deleted]

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#193

Post by l0b0 »

bepvte wrote: post #33
l0b0 wrote: post #10

I don't know about Matrix, but Riot, the default frontend, certainly isn't: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/7062 Copy/paste is a pretty fundamental feature.

This only applies to text with embedded formatting, like bold and italic

It doesn't have to have any explicit formatting, it just needs to be rich text. If you try pasting anything from a web browser or WYSIWYG editor it will break.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#194

Post by speedplane »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #190
speedplane wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have shown they're against federated messaging the more pertinent question for me is "can it work? You're probably right, the legacy companies won't buy-in without a fight, but I see two avenues of success. - New companies: If a federated messaging system existed five years ago, Slack may have chosen to run on an open standard rather than build its own. - Large corporates: they…

The lack of ability for their chat to interface with others is probably a considerable measure of control over information flow, which I imagine is good for Goldman Sachs.

> The lack of ability for their chat to interface with others is probably a considerable measure of control over information flow, which I imagine is good for Goldman Sachs.

A federated system can still be locked down, and made to be inoperable with other services. If you wanted to make an email service that didn't speak to other email services, you would still probably start with the email standard and make changes to lock it down rather than creating a new email service from scratch.

Likewise, a Goldman Sachs (or similar company) that wanted a locked down messaging service would likely consider an open platform that they could modify and lock down rather than using a commercial one (like slack) or rolling their own (which is extremely expensive).

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#195

Post by dboreham »

Arathorn wrote: post #67
dboreham wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In Matrix the conversations really are decentralised, not federated, over the servers - they are replicated over the nodes just as you would with git or a blockchain. Meanwhile we’re actively working on running servers clientside, at which point it becomes fully p2p as well as decentralised if you want that.

Right, I meant federated in that each user is expected to connect to a home server, not to "the network". Running the server locally on the user's device definitely changes the picture.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#196

Post by maxidorius »

Pneumaticat wrote: post #15
fro0116 wrote: post #8

I had a pretty positive view of Matrix until I came across this post and the follow up responses from the developer behind an unofficial Matrix server implementation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968 I'd say tread carefully given their apparent hostility towards competing server implementations, which is literally the only thing that makes the protocol meaningfully "federated" to begin with. This part in…

Matrix isn't really hostile to competing server implementations. If it were, then they wouldn't have spent a long time and a lot of effort to finalize the Server-to-Server spec r0.1, which anyone can implement [1]. And just to add my personal anecdote, Matthew (CEO of New Vector, co-founder of Matrix.org) is present quite often in the Matrix HQ chat room, and willing to field questions from anyone. Perhaps with sligh…

I am the author of the now-frozen mxhsd project [1] and its resurected version, Gridepo [2]. I have contributed several times to the specification, reported issues for the past two years and still, to this day, I can confirm that it is not possible to implement a Matrix server with the current specification that can talk to the reference implementation.

Most fundamental problem: synapse doesn't sign the events like the spec tell us to do it, making every event invalid. Whatever you sent that is spec compliant will be refused by synapse.

So talking "synapse" is possible. Talking Matrix and be able to federate with the ecosystem is not. I wish people would not blindly believe what a for-profit is saying, especially one that is in full control of the said protocol, and start checking for themselves.

[1]: https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhsd [2]: https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#197

Post by maxidorius »

cetra3 wrote: post #9
fro0116 wrote: post #8

I had a pretty positive view of Matrix until I came across this post and the follow up responses from the developer behind an unofficial Matrix server implementation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968 I'd say tread carefully given their apparent hostility towards competing server implementations, which is literally the only thing that makes the protocol meaningfully "federated" to begin with. This part in…

I would be interested in knowing whether anyone else has confirmed these accusations or created a writeup as to why the protocol is insecure.

I can confirm. One of the write-ups I did: https://gist.github.com/maxidorius/b25769f1a89c8860b928babe7...

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#198

Post by maxidorius »

Perceptes wrote: post #54
fro0116 wrote: post #8

I had a pretty positive view of Matrix until I came across this post and the follow up responses from the developer behind an unofficial Matrix server implementation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968 I'd say tread carefully given their apparent hostility towards competing server implementations, which is literally the only thing that makes the protocol meaningfully "federated" to begin with. This part in…

I'm the original creator of Ruma, another homeserver implementation, and our project has received nothing but support and appreciation from the Matrix team. It's true that Synapse is the only homeserver that is in a "finished" state, but that has more to do with Matrix being young, the spec still needing work (although it's come a long way recently), and the lack of time and resources to complete such a big project i…

As the author of one frozen homeserver [1] and an hybrid implementation [2], with various work made all across the spec, I'm not shy to say synapse is the only homeserver because it talks its own dialect of the spec, not because there wasn't attempts to build something else.

[1]: https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhsd [2]: https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#199

Post by maxidorius »

Arathorn wrote: post #26
subway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a few folks have been burned by the failure to put the spec before the implementation. Another example: Kamax provides mxisd[1], the only federated identity server (the official identity server is/was controlled by vector, and doesnt openly federate). They had to give up on mxhsd[2], their home server implementation due to spec inadequacies, and ended up forking the spec into Grid[3] [1] https://github.…

Matrix has always deliberately put implementation before formalising the spec, because there's no point in speccing things which haven't first been tested in the wild. This is also partially influenced by observing that many XMPP XEPs seem to have lacked a proven implementation at the point of being specced, contributing to the fragmentation of the standard. Now, the reason that we didn't formalise the federation spe…

Still can't implement to this day.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#200

Post by maxidorius »

Arathorn wrote: post #32
fro0116 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote one of the follow up comments from the author: > If you go to matrix.org and look at the list of about a dozen or so servers: you will find that none of them actually work except the reference implementation, and maybe sometimes Construct. Even thus, the phrase "able to build" is questionable. I have spent months reverse-engineering their software and its interactions before, and after, it was at all documen…

The "good luck talking to your own federation" comment is being taken out of context. I can't find it in my history (so I assume it's been paraphrased), plus from memory I think it was the final line in an argument over how some bit of the protocol should be implemented. After failing to convince the guy that our approach was better than his proposal, I gave up with "okay, you can always do it your way, but you'll on…

You're right, we need to do better, and we have started doing so under a fork of the protocol that will respect its user's privacy: The Grid - Come talk to us at #thegrid:libremonde.org
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