[craftyguy]

Does one exist?


Edit: removed 'matrix' from the title because it was triggering for too many people

[jacqueline]

There is none at this time... the trouble is that we're mostly big discord heads for personal comms, but I don't really think discord is an acceptable choice for a project like this. If matrix is where folks are then I'm happy to give it a go though!

Is there a known-good small-scale server implementation anyone can recommend? If so happy to stand something up this week.

[craftyguy]

Ohhh ya I'm sure there are lots of opinions about Matrix vs IRC vs .... As a long time IRC user, I interact with many more projects these days over Matrix so... 🤷

Matrix is federated so I don't think it really matters where the room is "created", like maybe you don't have to stand up your own homeserver instance and can just register for an account on some public instance and create the room there.

That said, over in postmarketOS, we host our own homeserver using Synapse[1], but it's kinda annoying how much hw it requires for self-hosting it and sometimes upgrading to newer versions isn't always straight forward. For my personal stuff, I just pay the good folks at etke.cc[2] to host a basic instance on my domain (they contribute to FOSS projects that they depend on, which is a requirement for me). I think there are other options too for paid hosting. Or you could just sign up on matrix.org, but I'm not sure if that's advised anymore or what (maybe someone else here or on mastodon can weigh in on that.) Anyways, those are the options I'm familiar with, hope it helps.


1. https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse
2. https://etke.cc/

[jacqueline]

Thank u, I will investigate.

[ayumi]

Wasn’t Matrix so broken that its various failure modes, like the somewhat famous “unable to decrypt” error message, became a meme?

[craftyguy]

Wasn’t Matrix so broken that its various failure modes, like the somewhat famous “unable to decrypt” error message, became a meme?

You don't need to enable E2EE for this 😉

Since this might attract more trolls, maybe I should rephrase the thread as "it would be helpful to have a public chat for discussing fw development".

I merely proposed matrix because lots of folks are using it and it's better than the other walled garden/proprietary options. And there's always IRC I guess. It's probably not worth over-thinking this.

[ayumi]

Since this might attract more trolls

I would prefer if you didn’t call me, or anyone else who disagrees with your personal assessment of Matrix protocol and its associated software suite a “troll”.

[craftyguy]

Since this might attract more trolls

I would prefer if you didn’t call me, or anyone else who disagrees with your personal assessment of Matrix protocol and its associated software suite a “troll”.

Ok, sorry for that. In any case, your complaints about how matrix handles encryption... don't apply since I don't think e2ee is needed here 👍

Also it would be helpful if you actually proposed an alternative if you're going to show up and object 😉

[ayumi]

As far as I know there are only two actually usable chat software: Discord and IRC. Out of those two Discord does provide better user experience, better feature set out of the box and has actually working file uploads. I guess Signal is kind of usable, but it both isn’t really intended for this use case and has it’s own trade–offs. I can also give some reasons why Matrix shouldn’t be used:

• A Matrix server can’t defederate from another Matrix server
• Proper Matrix moderation tools apparently don’t exits (see also the first point), which for example forced Asahi Linux to ban (due to harassment) the bot that bridged their IRC channels to Matrix
• Asahi people also have problems with Matrix even besides the moderation ones, for example: 1, 2
• Matrix developers knowingly ship side–channel vulnerabilities in their crypto library
• Matrix developers like to brag about going to cop conferences and selling their software to cops, which if you ask me isn’t a good look
• Both the official server and client are known to be pretty hardware–demeaning for what they do and unofficial clients and servers are all in various states of “unfinished”
• Over the years I’ve seen much more complains about Matrix’ problems than complains about any other chat software (yes, this one is empirical, but my hobby isn’t collecting users’ complains about various chat software)

[craftyguy]

discord is a proprietary thing from a for-profit company, depend on it at your own risk. Signal isn't far off.

IRC is fine with me. How about xmpp? lol. It's kinda entertaining how much folks *hate* an open chat protocol, but haters gonna hate 🤷

I didn't come here to debate chat protocols, I merely want to hack on the tangara fw and have questions along the way that would probably best be handled in some chat. If it's discord or some other proprietary thing, I won't participate and will probably lose interest in submitting patches for this fw sometime soon.

[jacqueline]

Don't fight please! I am investigating and will pick a good option don't even worry about it!

[mechamegane]

If an open source platform is an absolute requirement I would recommend Zulip or MatterMost depending on your desired workflow. Zulip is used by the Rust community and is more problem oriented by forcing everything into a thread. MatterMost is more of your traditional Slack/Discord clone and has broader adoption.

I would personally recommend strongly against Matrix because beyond the Asahi issues highlighted, it also enables very easy harassment of queer dev communities that have transitioned to other platforms like Discord to avoid wasting hours of time every day dealing with said harassment. I know infosec communities that shifted to Discord because of CSAM issues with Matrix as well.

IRC is a little better because it doesn't force you to link with hostile servers, but it still has moderation and modern UX issues decades after its RFC in the 90's. So I would recommend against IRC because it is also more difficult to deal with hostile actors on top of feeling more dated

[kianryan]

I merely want to hack on the tangara fw and have questions along the way that would probably best be handled in some chat.

^^^ This.

It's easy for us to end up in the endless debate about the best chat medium, when the answer is "we just need a chat medium".

My typical day at the moment involves Slack and Teams for work, Discord for communities, IRC for a bunch of other communities and Telegram/WhatsApp/Signal for personal comms.

Throwing /another/ application in to the mix to keep track of single project development I want to keep track of makes me wince.

Adding a channel to an existing platform makes me wince slightly less, even if it's a less than ideal medium.


I'm here to hack firmware, and chew gum.

And I'm all out of gum[1].


--

[1] I don't like gum.  I do like popcorn, crisps, nuts, and chocolate.  But "I'm here to hack firmware, and nibble on a bowl of sweet and salted popcorn", doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

[river]

From a non-IRC user's perspective: last time I tried to use IRC I was kicked from everywhere because macbook power management meant I was unknowingly spamming all connected channels with disconnect-rejoin messages. I think the only way to fix this is running a bouncer which means paying for a server. This isn't a request for help and I don't mean to just complain into the void, I just mean to say I think it makes for a bad primary channel

[jacqueline]

I definitely agree that we should have *some* kind of IM chat zone for folks wanting to hack on the firmware. Make no mistake we will have something. And I do agree as well that there seems to be no truly good solution at this time.

As a primary channel for longer-form discussion, requests for support, etc., I think this forum is still the right tool. It is very visible and searchable, and the barrier to participation is low. I think whatever IM chat approach we end up going with, I will aggressively ask folks to take larger discussions to the forum.

As for the specific IM platform we choose... I don't know. They really are all bad in various ways;
- Matrix makes people extremely mad, and also sounds like it's a real pain in the ass to run and moderate.
- IRC is... idiosyncratic. For folks who have been using it for decades it seems like a fine choice, but I've always found it to be totally impenetrable. We could maybe spin up a channel(?) on libera.chat and point folks at one of the nicer web irc frontends?
- Discord is obviously not very FOSS, and making chat logs visible outside of the platform is an ordeal. But it does have the advantage that all the CTZ folks are already on Discord for personal+community chatting.
- Some of the smaller chat platforms like mattermost or zulip look okay, but have the disadvantage that it's Yet Another App, so higher friction for folks to participate.

It's hard. I will take a few days to mess about with the options and think about it. Most likely we will end up needing to make a decision that's bad in various ways.

[Eve]

Hi !

I'm stepping into this subject because I have a question :

Why is a IM chat platform an advantage, compared to a forum ? from user point of view I mean, so except for forum maintenance that I understand is a hard work.

I think that :

advantages of forum :
- keeps history
- can search in the forum
- more "serious" interface, that reminds users to think if the posted message is relevant and clear before posting it
- web search can give results that are in the forum 
- you give your time to contribute *when* you have time and knowledge, instead of as soon as there's a question you want to reply immediately, but may have no time to do so
- vintage 90's smileys
disadvantages of forum :
- you need to plan some lines in your message to say that you have already searched the web, and that you are not looking for a fight, and to cover yourself in case it your message already has been posted somewhere, etc.
- heavier interface than text IM

advantages of IM :
- instantaneous...
- quick questions, quick answers
disadvantages of IM :
- search within the IM app harder than with forum ? (quick questions / answers may be lost)
- not searchable from a web search engine
- history loss
- harder to write long detailed messages that are some times needed to require help / advice or to share your experiences, or to join logs
- easier fights, faster fights
- not sure how unrelated people (eg. not interested in the project) can stumble across the project, and just bring noise in the conversations

to summarize, what I think is bad in IM is that it's instant . Or I may have misunderstood the subject.

Cheers
Eve

[craftyguy]

Why is a IM chat platform an advantage, compared to a forum ? from user point of view I mean, so except for forum maintenance that I understand is a hard work.

IMHO it's easier to have discussions over chat than it is on a forum. I have a series of questions related to some feature I'm working on in the firmware, should I make each question a separate forum post? Should I have one post about it and list all the questions, and then try to sort out responses as folks randomly respond (or bikeshed) in the post? I don't know what else to say about this, maybe it comes down to personal preference 😅

As for the specific IM platform we choose... I don't know. They really are all bad in various ways;
- Matrix makes people extremely mad, and also sounds like it's a real pain in the ass to run and moderate.

Yeah, they all kinda suck, tbh. You don't need to host anything for matrix though, just register for an account on any matrix instance (matrix.org), create a room for tangara fw, and let federation do its thing. You don't need E2EE, and you don't need to mess with Spaces or any 'advanced' matrix features. 🤷
It can be bridged to IRC for folks who want that, and I'm sure someone has figured out how to bridge to discord, signal, telegram, whatever.

[jacqueline]

I have registered a '#cooltechzone' channel on https://libera.chat/

I will be trialing it this week to see how it goes. If we're happy with it, I will stand up a https://thelounge.chat/ instance configured to make joining and chatting easy for irc noobs (disclaimer: i am an irc noob). If we're not happy with it, we'll try out matrix next week.

Come along and say hi!