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Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

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Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#81

Post by pedroaraujo »

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 consistent, specially in the client side. I have all the modern features one could have wanted (E2E encryption, video and audio calls, file sharing, proper synchronization across multiple devices, etc) working out-of-the-box across all my devices. This was almost impossible to achieve with the XMPP clients existent nowadays.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#82

Post by Arathorn »

ajconway wrote: post #78
Arathorn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup. we layer megolm on top of olm (double ratchet) to scale to ~1000 or further.

Looks like every device still has to establish an olm channel with every other device in the group. Does that scale?

you're right that that's the slow bit (typically about 50ms to set up each channel, so across 1000 devices that's 5s to establish the initial mesh), but the important thing is that having established the channels, they are only used to sync key data for the megolm layer which sits on top. megolm keys typically rotate every 100 messages or every day (whichever comes first), and this uses the existing olm channels. In turn, the olm channels themselves only resetup when conversation changes direction (or if they stall).

https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2019/03/10/a-look-at-matrix-orgs-... is quite a good overview of this (from the XMPP perspective!), as is https://www.uhoreg.ca/blog/20170910-2110 (from the Matrix perspective).

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#83

Post by wink »

hannob wrote: post #77
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…

Matrix is the perfect example of xkcd 927 - https://xkcd.com/927/ They built something like XMPP, just a bit different. What they got is more fragmentation in the space of free messaging. None of the justifications they have how their approach is different justifies the costs of additional fragmentation they create. This is super frustrating, people don't seem to have an understanding what the costs of incompatibilit…

I used to be a big fan of XMPP, but I've also come to the conclusion that it failed.

Technically, too long the clients just weren't good enough. First the desktop ones, then the mobile ones. Not losing messages if you were logged in with multiple clients was hard.

Matrix (after waiting a little) now just works. Yes, maybe I just don't have any energy left to fight on this front, but for a huge chunk of people I communicate with it has finally replaced IRC. Finally as in reuniting the people who had stopped and also didn't want Slack or Discord. And never got on the XMPP train.

Now we'd just need more native desktop clients, but so far Riot is good enough for me.

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#84

Post by hestefisk »

Arathorn wrote: post #21
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 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…

Thanks for building Matrix. It’s a great product / standard / protocol

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#85

Post by MattJ100 »

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…

Plenty of us are still working on XMPP, and there are thousands of XMPP servers and many more users on the network.

It's true that since the original Jabber project began in 1999 there was a vision of giving users freedom of software and service, yet that vision is still nowhere near reality in 2019. But we are still an active community and still work towards that vision. XMPP is not dead.

Unfortunately Pidgin and Adium were two of the most popular clients for XMPP, and their development (in Adium's case) and XMPP development (in Pidgin's case) has almost completely stalled, which is unfortunate. Alternative XMPP projects are still very actively developed.

The XMPP community recently began holding sprints, where a bunch of us get together in real life to focus on specific topics, such as UX and interop. It's been great!

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#86

Post by kkarakk »

ubercow13 wrote: post #72
Gigablah wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want messages to span the entire screen? https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-be...

What if your window doesn't span the entire screen? It's a frustrating and common flaw in so many modern websites and apps that they simply do not work unless the app is fullscreen on a widescreen monitor. For example Discord is borderline unusable if it is one of two windows side-by-side on my laptop, and completely unusable if you have three. This can't even be an unusual case for people on UNIX derivatives using t…

Discord isn't meant to be used side by side,it's default usecase is joining a channel and continuously talking while doing something else(mostly gaming).

not being able to snap the window seems to be a conscious choice on their part

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#87

Post by Hendrikto »

Arathorn wrote: post #80
hannob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is the perfect example of xkcd 927 - https://xkcd.com/927/ They built something like XMPP, just a bit different. What they got is more fragmentation in the space of free messaging. None of the justifications they have how their approach is different justifies the costs of additional fragmentation they create. This is super frustrating, people don't seem to have an understanding what the costs of incompatibilit…

I'd counter and suggest that the super frustrating thing is XMPP zealots saying "oh my god how dare you try to create a different protocol". With this mentality, nothing would evolve and we'd be stuck on svn rather than git... To reiterate once again, the things which Matrix tries to do differently to XMPP include: * Be a replicated conversation database for realtime conversations, more like usenet (NNTP) if anything…

> we'd be stuck on svn rather than git...

Don’t you mean CVS?

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#88

Post by MattJ100 »

Arathorn wrote: post #71
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…

We have almost finished a pretty decent XMPP to Matrix bridge, if you are attached to XMPP ( https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-bifrost with a bridge running at bridge.xmpp.matrix.org). However, Matrix has a fundamentally different architecture: replicating conversation history over a full mesh of participating nodes, rather than passing messages via a star topology, and we opted to build that as a fresh stack rath…

I'm so happy this bridge exists. I'm using it to join rooms of some open-source projects that opted to use Matrix, and I know of some people on Matrix using it to join similar rooms on XMPP.

Meanwhile both sides get to use free and open communication protocols :)

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#89

Post by unicornporn »

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…

> isn't it possible to just revive XMPP?

Please no. XMPP has adapted over time to support various chat and instant messaging features that we today take for granted. These adaptions come in the form of Extensions[1]. A year ago I spent about two hours with a geek friend to configure something that resembles what we get from any other instant messenger today. That's not acceptable to the outside world.

Meanwhile, Matrix just worked. Granted, UX involved with the key management associated with E2EE was not what it should have been. But, that has largely been fixed in v1.0.

Funny thing, Matrix is still struggling (like every other federated network) to explain the concept of federation. People may have grasped email, but for some reason it seems hard to translate that knowledge to other federated technologies.

To suggest that we should just go back to XMPP seems like insanity to me. Matrix stands a chance. It's freaking wonderful!

[1] https://xmpp.org/extensions/

Re: Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet?

#90

Post by viraptor »

stagas wrote: post #79
amiraliakbari wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, decentralization is invented alongside the blockchain and nothing without a blockchain is decentralized. :)

No, you don't need a blockchain for decentralization. Also, you don't need a blockchain[0]. [0]: https://thomaslarock.com/2018/11/no-you-dont-need-a-blockcha...

I believe you missed a joke.
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