Proposal: Use xmpp as our primary and recommended chat option

Pirate Praveen Public Seen by 87

Matrix and XMPP are both good options by Free Software, self hostable, federated standards. But matrix federation has many practical implementation problems and sometimes messages take hours or even a few days at times to deliver across servers. Additionally xmpp is lighter on server resources and gives better privacy of userid in public groups by default. Another example, Disroot.org moved from matrix to xmpp completely. Thoughts?

Abraham Raji Sun 19 Sep 2021 11:26PM

I agree that XMPP is a more reliable as a technology for delivering messages than matrix right now. But at the same time Matrix as a project is better funded and has seen a better adoption rate among technical and non-technical folks so to me it looks like matrix has a better chance at being a mainstream communication tool than XMPP. Maybe we can suggest both while stating the merits and demerits of each?

Pirate Praveen Mon 20 Sep 2021 8:38AM

Matrix needs exponentially more resources on the server compared to xmpp. In my experience I had better results getting non technical people to use Quicksy. We are not stopping Matrix bridge (which is there by default for any public xmpp room anyway), we are just recommending xmpp for reliability. If people talk on matrix in bridged rooms, xmpp users get a poor experience of lost messages, but if people use xmpp, people connected via matrix don't miss any messages. So you think leaving xmpp users in a bad situation is being neutral?

Abraham Raji Wed 29 Sep 2021 3:17PM

So you think leaving xmpp users in a bad situation is being neutral?

I agree it is not fair or neutral. But my disagreement is with the third point:

put a notice to use the the #fsci:poddery.com and recommend joining via xmpp.

Rather than suggest something to the user I say let's present the facts and let the users decide what they want to use.

Abhinav Krishna C K Wed 29 Sep 2021 3:24PM

Rather than suggest something to the user I say let's present the facts and let the users decide what they want to use.

I agree.

Pirate Praveen Wed 29 Sep 2021 10:51PM

So when we know one of the two options create a bad outcome for some, we need to remain silent on what is the preferred option?

Pirate Bady Sat 2 Oct 2021 7:14PM

@Abraham Raji from matrix user's point of view, FSCI will be still there on matrix, they just have to join a new room (and optionally leave the existing room). other than that i don't think there will be any issues (pls let me know if i got it wrong). from maintainers point of view, users won't get any admin/mod privileges on the matrix side to control the room until the bridge is capable of it.

Pirate Praveen Mon 31 Jan 2022 1:34PM

We moved to xmpp since 'xmpp -> matrix' was not very reliable. Recently I found out 'xmpp -> irc' is pretty good (There are two public biboumi bridge instances and xmpp users can use #channelname%irc.server.net@ircgw.chatterboxtown.us or #channelname%irc.server.net@irc.cheogram.com). So wondering if we should switch back to old matrix room (which is also bridged to irc) and recommend xmpp users to use irc bridge instead of matrix bridge. What do you all think?

Ravi Dwivedi Mon 31 Jan 2022 3:29PM

I think that's good to switch back to the old room. because matrix side will give us admin privileges.

Pirate Bady Fri 18 Feb 2022 12:58PM

yes, let's switch back to the old room then.

Poll Created Sun 20 Mar 2022 2:10PM

Switch back to the old matrix room and bridge it to Telegram, XMPP, IRC Closed Sun 27 Mar 2022 11:00PM

Outcome

by Ravi Dwivedi Mon 28 Mar 2022 7:05AM

Let's switch back to the old matrix room and update all the room addresses on the FSCI website.

The current xmpp room is not joined with IRC and telegram. I propose that we use the method mentioned here https://codema.in/d/i8zpQHqS/write-a-blog-post-on-bridging-all-the-rooms-matrix-xmpp-telegram-irc to bridge all the communication channels using our old matrix room #fsci:poddery.com. We need to create an IRC channel on libera.chat and then bridge it to matrix. XMPP users can join the IRC channel using https://irc.cheogram.com/ and telegram, matrix bridging can be done using https://t2bot.io/telegram/.