Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Hey, just to add to the list of options. Recently GitLab purchased and open sourceed gitter https://gitter.im >From the list of features it does look great and is being used by tons of open source projects, mostly in the web development field. You can self host it but from reading a bit it looks like you need quite a bit of server resources: there were like 3 database servers to install. Another options would be https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/conpherence/ which is integrated into phabricator. It is only web based for now and it is being used by some of the guys at MediaWiki https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Using_Conpherence I don't feel like these could be the best choices but I am just sending them here because they went unnoticed. Cristian On Wed, Aug 9, 2017, 04:53 Eike Hein wrote: > > FWIW, I didn't keep up with Matrix to well in recent times, but > I remember having a look at it back when it made its first > splash (the LWN article at all) and at the time I considered > it the most promising-looking IRC replacement attempt yet. > > It had some of the traits of other attempts that failed > before (larger per-message overhead, lots of complicated state > on the server, problems with scaling to really large channels) > but also made a lot of tasteful and practical choices. > > I understand they changed their public focus to portraying > itself as a bridging solution to create any adoption, but at > the core is a good chat system of its own. > > > Cheers, > Eike > -- Cristian Baldi
Re: KDE at Qt World Summit 2017 - let's make it the best yet!
I will go, so I'm stepping up to help. On Tue, Aug 8, 2017, 20:04 Eike Hein wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > Berlin, Germany will once again host a Qt World Summit this year, on > October 10th through 12th. This follows on from the Qt Contributor > Summit on October 9th and 10th. > > As in previous years, we want KDE To have a strong presence at this > event, which draws much of the wider Qt community. We're an important > part of the community and we make lots of things that are interesting > and useful to Qt developers, so we should be there. It's a great > opportunity to network as well as watch some interesting talks. > > I've stepped up to coordinate KDE's presence at QtWS this year. Sune, > who has done it in recent years, is a little to busy this year and > will be number #2. > > As usual we're going to have table space in the booth area (I did > some shifts there during QtWS'15, which was a thoroughly good time), > where we want to promote our products, engage people and answer > products. > > We also want KDE to appear as a community partner again, and if > possible place promo materials around the event (e.g. in the > attendee bag, have our logo slapped on things, etc). > > And since The Qt Company is allowing our team to attend QtWS for > free, we will likely also chip in with running the event again, e.g. > by chairing some of the talks on the schedule. > > To make all of this happen we'll need the following: > > - Helpers! Who wants to be an awesome person and go to QtWS and rep > KDE there? Who can make it to Berlin in the timeframe? (I know > there's a KDE Edu sprint and a Blue Systems dev sprint going on, > so no excuses! :P) > > Everyone interested and willing to commit please speak up, or get > in touch with me directly. You will be able to express a pre- > ference for booth and talk chairing duty which we'll try to > respect when drawing up the duty roster. You'll get lots of karma > bonus points if you're willing to help with booth setup and tear > down. > > There will be a limit to how many people we can send, so please > don't be upset if we can't bring you along in the end. But please > do try! > > If travel/accomodation expenses would be the only thing keeping > you, get in touch and we can look into that. > > - Figure out what we want to show at the booth this year. Who wants > to make cool demo loops or slides? > > - Make promo materials. We'll need to review and update our posters > (if anyone has the 2015/2016 posters, please link them in reply) > and flyers. And do it early enough so we can get them refined and > printed in time. Jens Reuterberg has promised to help make things > look great! > > > Cheers, > Eike >
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
FWIW, I didn't keep up with Matrix to well in recent times, but I remember having a look at it back when it made its first splash (the LWN article at all) and at the time I considered it the most promising-looking IRC replacement attempt yet. It had some of the traits of other attempts that failed before (larger per-message overhead, lots of complicated state on the server, problems with scaling to really large channels) but also made a lot of tasteful and practical choices. I understand they changed their public focus to portraying itself as a bridging solution to create any adoption, but at the core is a good chat system of its own. Cheers, Eike
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 2:51 PM, Christian Loosli wrote: > Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 20:17:08 CEST schrieb Cristian Baldi: > > Hey there, > > Hello hello, > > > [Various Issues I agree with] > > > Rocket.Chat does not have an official mobile client as of today, again > > Ruquola could solve this once it is compiled for Android. Right now the > > official way to use Rocket.Chat on mobile is to use some kind of wrapped > > WebView which does not work well (when I had that installed I did not > > receive notifications or received them randomly). > > Same goes for slack and mattermost, and these things are horrible. > First of all: they are massive battery and memory hogs. > > Same goes for the electron based wrappers that are sometimes used on the > desktop. > > Also they don't integrate UX wise. > I use Slack exclusively as the only work IM tool and none of the above is true. I'd say even the opposite. The experience on Android is pretty well integrated and overall it's a solid IM experience. Not once the battery usage showed near the top in the "apps most using battery". That's not to say "Slack's the best go for Slack", but just painting a different picture, coming from daily 10+ hours of using it. > > > As Jonathan said Rocket.Chat (but really, any modern messaging system) > > offers tons of features missing from IRC. > > Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? There are 4 things coming to > mind > for me, all of them with my personal opinion: > > - Lack of emojis and stickers: whilst I think it's great that I can send > stickers of kitties hugging each other on Telegram, I hardly see a need for > that in a more "professional" environment. Emojis are UTF-8 and thus > technically work on IRC and clients can handle them, if they want. > In our professional work environment, we use emojis /a lot/. Like, seriously a lot. It makes the experience that much more...human. IRC next to it feels very cold and raw, imho. Cheers -- Martin Klapetek
Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution
On 08/08/2017 06:19 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote: > - Support for a decent set of Emoji (not just the ones you can create using > ASCII chars). > Using Unicode to display them is probably okay, as long as users can choose > them from a menu in the client instead of having to paste them from > KCharSelect. > This, too, might sound like nice-to-have for many, but not having them would > cut us off from the younger generation. Yes, they use them even in a > "professional context". Believe me, I'm seeing it in action every day at work. I'm not sure custom emoji should be a requirement. That pretty heavily limits your options, and even some of the major chat platforms (WhatsApp, iMessage, Hangouts) don't support this. Unicode emoji support, absolutely. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 08/08/2017 05:57 PM, Eike Hein wrote: > But what I don't want us to do is abandon IRC without retaining > what made IRC successful and good. Some of these things areed > technical points that form our most basic requirements: > > - Free > - Protocol spec > - Self-hostable > - Federated > - Multi-identity > - Anonymous > - Encryptable Matrix has all of these, with the exception of perhaps "Multi-identity" and "Anonymous." (But it's HTTP, so you can tunnel it over Tor, there's no real name requirement as it's an open federated protocol, and you can create multiple accounts and use them for different purposes if you want.) > There are some chat systems that allow for both, e.g. > Discord. Discord heavily fails all of our technical base- > line reqs, but its three-level namespacing (global name- > space for user identities, "servers", and channels on them > which you see in an easy list) means you can easily have > your permanent channels along with potentially task force > ones that can't hide. A Discord-like "server" system is coming very soon in Matrix, which will give you effectively that - a list of rooms belonging to a specific organization. As it stands now, its UI (in Riot, the official client) is somewhere in between IRC and Telegram. While they're fundamentally the same thing, there are two ways to create a room in the UI, which roughly correspond to IRC-style permanent rooms and Telegram-style one-off rooms. (By the way, I'm not affiliated with the Matrix project at all - I'm an enthusiastic user, and I've contributed Matrix support to a chatbot, but that's it!) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution (was: Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat)
Hi, in addition to the list Eike gave in his other mail, which I fully agree with, the following are mandatory: - Has to run everywhere. Means: desktop, mobile, server, *BSD, Linux, Windows, Mac ... Maybe doesn't have to run on a smartwatch or toaster, but I'd prefer to be able to also chime in from a box I am ssh-ed to. - Not a strain on bandwith. I travel a lot, also abroad, where data is limited and/or expensive, thus the lower the bandwith usage, the better. - Not excluding people. We should keep in mind that various people would like to contribute, including e.g. people with disabilities.The solution should work with technologies such as screen readers or the likes. Plus: geographical restrictions, we e.g. have collaborators in China or Russia (new laws), so using technologies that are banned in some countries can be tricky. - Privacy. Should be either fully under KDE control, or hosted by a trusted third party. Support for things like Tor would be beneficial. No mandatory disclosure of information to third parties (names, location etc.) - Open Source. (Just in case of the "free" having been meant as free in beer, which it should be as well, or free as in freedom): Open protocol plus a reference implementation of both client and server as FOSS would be great. - Migration path is mandatory, moving over to a new place and/or product from one day to the next is not only likely to be super shaky, but also likely to split the community into two halves (seen e.g. when reddit decided to move their chat system in a very short amount of time, or when Debian moved networks. Both are now roughly halved and at least with Debian it has been like that for the better part of a decade) In general I'd prefer something with an open protocol and, bonus points, a range of possibilities to connect (web, native desktop and mobile clients, ...) already available. Then I think most people should be able to somehow participate, regardless of circumstances. I don't think we should cater a specifc group, neither, quote, nerdy people nor, quote, people < 20 years old. All have valuable people in it. Finally I am 100% certain that we won't find a solution which covers all points seen as mandatory, so maybe we should just collect potentially interesting points and have people vote on a scale of 1-10 on how important these are for them. Then based on that we could see what solution (or solutions, since some do allow bridging in between) are the best compromise. Kind regards, Christian PS: on the importance of emojis and (animated) stickers: I can see why people want them for friends and family, I love the sticker packs I have on Telegram. But why it is mandatory in a somewhat more professional environment is a bit beyond me, people also still use e-mail despite it neither supporting stickers nor emojis (Well, unless html mails, but thank god that at least there we agree that it is an abomination) Am Mittwoch, 9. August 2017, 00:19:32 CEST schrieb Thomas Pfeiffer: > Hi everyone, > now that hopefully most of the emotional arguments in fiery support of one > protocol or another have been exchanged, I'd suggest we move things towards > a practical approach and ask ourselves: > > What are the requirements that KDE has for an instant messaging / chat > system for it to be viable as our main channel for real-time communication > for the foreseeable future? > > Here is what I could come up with, feel free to add new requirements or > challenge the ones I'm listing. > > Must-have: > > - FOSS clients or at least API available for desktop as well as mobile > These clients must > - have a UI that someone who is < 20 years old and cares about the looks of > a UI would use (or if those don't exist, we need to have people willing and > able to write them before switching) > - run smoothly on computers that can run most other KDE software, without > eating all of their memory > > - FOSS server implementation > (this might look like a nice-to-have for some, but if we'd require everyone > in KDE to use it, it's not optional) > > - Ability to use without having to create a new account just for that. > We could force contributors to sign up for something, but we'd increase the > barrier of entry if we'd make it mandatory for everyone who's just curious > about what's happening in KDE. > Identity would suffice, as everyone who does anything with KDE has an > Identity account anyway. > > - Permanent logs across mobile and desktop clients without the need for > users to set up anything. > That means ZNC does not count unless we implement it in a desktop as well as > mobile client in a way that is completely friction-free for users > > - Easy way to share files > A solution that puts files automatically on share.kde.org and embeds them > from there works only if we have people willing and able to implement that > feature into a desktop- as well as mobile client > > - Support for a decent
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 22:44:40 CEST schrieb Jonathan Riddell: > On 8 August 2017 at 21:46, Elvis Angelaccio wrote: > > I'm not sure I get this argument. Do we have evidence that new > > contributors > > are scared by IRC? How is signin up on RocketChat/Telegram/whatever easier > > than using http://webchat.freenode.net/ ? > > Teams including VDG, Promo and Sysadmins chose not to use IRC. I show > IRC to my friends and they recoil in horror and ask what that nerdy > stuff is. Bet on that they say the very same if you show them a phabricator code diff view. Whilst KDE has non-techy people (oddly enough quite a bunch of them manage to be on IRC, mind) we mostly do code, and code, by definition, _is_ techie or, to use a more derogatory term, nerdy. > > Again, do we have evidence that Rocket chat is more used than IRC or other > > protocols? I'd be very surprised if that's the case. > > It's not. The proposal is to change that by scrapping IRC amongst KDE. > > Do we expect people to use Mutt for e-mail? Some of us still love it > and it has simplicity and low memory use on its side, but times change > and people prefer nicer experiences now. This comparison is, sorry for being direct, bullshit. Mutt is an E-Mail client, using E-Mail protocols. There are more user friendly E-Mail clients using the same protocol. So a fair comparision would be to say that some power users like weechat or irssi whilst less "nerdy" people might prefer polari, Hexchat or colloquy. The problem with some of the proposed protocols: they do have exactly one, maybe in the future two, clients. So you don't have that choice and force everybody to use the same thing, regardless of preferences, regardless of available hardware (IRC runs on a text only raspberry), regardless of possibilities (I'd love to see how these go with people with disabilities. Note that we have a blind member of staff, thus I'd like to say that IRC works) > Jonathan Christian
Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution (was: Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat)
Hi everyone, now that hopefully most of the emotional arguments in fiery support of one protocol or another have been exchanged, I'd suggest we move things towards a practical approach and ask ourselves: What are the requirements that KDE has for an instant messaging / chat system for it to be viable as our main channel for real-time communication for the foreseeable future? Here is what I could come up with, feel free to add new requirements or challenge the ones I'm listing. Must-have: - FOSS clients or at least API available for desktop as well as mobile These clients must - have a UI that someone who is < 20 years old and cares about the looks of a UI would use (or if those don't exist, we need to have people willing and able to write them before switching) - run smoothly on computers that can run most other KDE software, without eating all of their memory - FOSS server implementation (this might look like a nice-to-have for some, but if we'd require everyone in KDE to use it, it's not optional) - Ability to use without having to create a new account just for that. We could force contributors to sign up for something, but we'd increase the barrier of entry if we'd make it mandatory for everyone who's just curious about what's happening in KDE. Identity would suffice, as everyone who does anything with KDE has an Identity account anyway. - Permanent logs across mobile and desktop clients without the need for users to set up anything. That means ZNC does not count unless we implement it in a desktop as well as mobile client in a way that is completely friction-free for users - Easy way to share files A solution that puts files automatically on share.kde.org and embeds them from there works only if we have people willing and able to implement that feature into a desktop- as well as mobile client - Support for a decent set of Emoji (not just the ones you can create using ASCII chars). Using Unicode to display them is probably okay, as long as users can choose them from a menu in the client instead of having to paste them from KCharSelect. This, too, might sound like nice-to-have for many, but not having them would cut us off from the younger generation. Yes, they use them even in a "professional context". Believe me, I'm seeing it in action every day at work. - User avatars Again, must-have if we want to reach the younger generation - Uses a port that is open even on educational networks - Channel listing So that every public channel can be easily found Nice-to-haves: - Bridge to IRC For the transitional period or for people who just refuse to change their habits - Full name display Makes things feel more trustworthy - Integration with our development tools such as Phabricator - Web client Very handy if you are at a device which isn't yours and quickly want to check up on things - Stickers People love them when they have them, but they survive without them. --- I'm sure I've forgot many things, but this (already quite long) list should give us a good start. Looking forward to a productive discussion, Thomas
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
I guess as KDE's "IRC guy" (I maintain Konversation) I should chime in here. I like IRC. I regard IRC as important. I think without IRC none of the past 20 years of KDE would have happened, and the reasons for IRC being a successful technology for us and many others start with "chatting is nice" and "it's free, duh" but go far beyond. I'm not particularly emotional about abandoning IRC. It's a pretty bad protocol. It doesn't have intact governance to really make it better at a decent clip, despite earnest attempts. It doesn't address problems modern networking brings with it adequately, and the workarounds are clumsy. I'm not even particularly emotional about the code in Konversation. Some of it is pretty good, but what makes it good can be applied elsewhere. Some of the UI is really clever for a chat app, but again, I can (perhaps with a sigh) replicate that work elswhere. But what I don't want us to do is abandon IRC without retaining what made IRC successful and good. Some of these things areed technical points that form our most basic requirements: - Free - Protocol spec - Self-hostable - Federated - Multi-identity - Anonymous - Encryptable But again, these are basics. The more interesting lessons from IRC are social dynamics. As an example, the currently second most used chat system by the KDE community is probably Telegram. Telegram doesn't meet the above technical requirements and so isn't a good choice for us. The reason we use it is because someone started using it for one of two reasons at some point (IRC sucks on mobile - yes, even with ZNC - and/or a better workflow for dealing with image content), and now we continue because of momentum, without much planning or thought. I think the way we currently use Telegram is horrific for community-building and community cohesion and hurting us. As a mobile-dominated messenger not designed with our use cases in mind, Telegram's group chat workflow suggests creating groups easily ad-hoc. It's designed for "let me quickly invite the four people we're planning to go to the Italian place with to coordinate the arrival time". This workflow has some use for "breakout" topic chats in the KDE context, but because Telegram doesn't have any concept of community namespacing, we now have probably dozens of those there that aren't enumerated anywhere. You have to know they exist and who to ask to be invited. Or someone has to know you exist and invite you. IRC on the other hand (via network services and etiquette) disincentivizes creating channels ad-hoc, it's more about setting up channels as institutions with some permanance, so they can be documented and discovered. A good IRC channel allows for random walk-ins instead of being a sequestered little clique/club. That means sometimes you have to contend with the noise of lots of people that don't work on what you and three other people are currently trying to work on. But that means you're open to new people, you have an environment for getting to know each other, you inform each other about what everyone is working on without trying, you have space to "hang out" in together and see what this new day brings along, you can place notifications there, you get feedback from out- side of your self-imposed bubbles, you generate excitement for onlookers ... the information flow across the - extensible! - community is just vastly better. There are some chat systems that allow for both, e.g. Discord. Discord heavily fails all of our technical base- line reqs, but its three-level namespacing (global name- space for user identities, "servers", and channels on them which you see in an easy list) means you can easily have your permanent channels along with potentially task force ones that can't hide. This is the discussion we should be having. It's about what we actually want to get out of a chat system socially, and not looking what we got out of IRC and why would be a big mistake. And only then is it about looking at which systems satisfy all of our technical and social requirements alike. Cheers, Eike
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 21:52:12 CEST schrieb Jonathan Riddell: > On 8 August 2017 at 19:51, Christian Loosli wrote: > > Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? There are 4 things coming to > > mind > > for me, all of them with my personal opinion: > Option for full names, IRC has the GECOS field, in most clients even called real name, _exactly_ for that reason. Some people (e.g. me) use it for that: their real name. This is part of the protocol and has been for ages. > photos of people, Some clients, like kvirc, have support for that as well. See below. > timezone, can be added as metadata if wanted, we (freenode) do support it. (we support arbitrary string metadata, we just no longer display it by default because people thought it would be hilarious to do antivirus signatures or ASCII porn, not kidding) > e-mail addresses. mandatory field on freenode, just hidden by default for privacy reasons, but can be configured to be shown for those who want to (I wouldn't recommend it, to be honest). So out of these: one that isn't supported out of the box on all clients, being a picture or avatar. Whether that makes sense in channels like #kde with ~500 users is imo a bit debatable, and definitely a bandwith and ressource hog. > Looking at #kde-devel just now it says: > <-- swati_27 (uid130066@gateway/web/irccloud.com/x-abaollxcgicrxgwg) > has quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity) > <-- nowrep (~david@kde/developer/drosca) has quit (Quit: Konversation > terminated!) > <-- stikonas (~gentoo@wesnoth/translator/stikonas) has quit (Quit: > Konversation terminated!) > <-- soee_ (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has quit (Quit: > Konversation terminated!) > --> soee (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has joined #kde-devel > > Show that to most people and they'll just not want to know what it means Good thing every single client coming to mind has a feature to hide these, including the official KDE client Konversation. http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/hide_join_part_messages I'm rather sure that most other protocols, at least Telegram most certainly does, do also show when someone joined or parted a group, mind. The part they might hide is the nick!ident@host part. This is client dependent, some do and quite a lot of them can hide it. So I wouldn't really recommend switching to a completely different protocol due to "shows additional info when someone joins or leaves the group". > Jonathan Christian
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
2017-08-08 17:52 GMT-03:00 Jonathan Riddell : > On 8 August 2017 at 19:51, Christian Loosli wrote: >> Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? There are 4 things coming to >> mind >> for me, all of them with my personal opinion: > > Option for full names, photos of people, timezone, e-mail addresses. > Just a few of the useful and user friendly features I see looking at > it now. > > Looking at #kde-devel just now it says: > <-- swati_27 (uid130066@gateway/web/irccloud.com/x-abaollxcgicrxgwg) > has quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity) > <-- nowrep (~david@kde/developer/drosca) has quit (Quit: Konversation > terminated!) > <-- stikonas (~gentoo@wesnoth/translator/stikonas) has quit (Quit: > Konversation terminated!) > <-- soee_ (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has quit (Quit: > Konversation terminated!) > --> soee (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has joined #kde-devel > > Show that to most people and they'll just not want to know what it means True, so the IRC client needs an option to hide the hostmask. -- Nicolás
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 8 August 2017 at 21:46, Elvis Angelaccio wrote: > I'm not sure I get this argument. Do we have evidence that new contributors > are scared by IRC? How is signin up on RocketChat/Telegram/whatever easier > than using http://webchat.freenode.net/ ? Teams including VDG, Promo and Sysadmins chose not to use IRC. I show IRC to my friends and they recoil in horror and ask what that nerdy stuff is. > Again, do we have evidence that Rocket chat is more used than IRC or other > protocols? I'd be very surprised if that's the case. It's not. The proposal is to change that by scrapping IRC amongst KDE. Do we expect people to use Mutt for e-mail? Some of us still love it and it has simplicity and low memory use on its side, but times change and people prefer nicer experiences now. That is happening with real-time communication whether we like it or not and we need to consider moving with the times. Jonathan
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On Dienstag, 8. August 2017 22:46:18 CEST Elvis Angelaccio wrote: > On martedì 8 agosto 2017 21:46:58 CEST, Riccardo Iaconelli wrote: > > On 8 August 2017 at 20:01, Luigi Toscano wrote: > >> Can rocket.chat be bridged too? If not, promoting it would > >> create another island. > > > > With Brooklyn, you can create n-ways bridges between Rocket.chat, IRC, > > Telegram and possibly many more. All of this while handling attachment > > support, replies, and other nifty features where the protocol supports > > them (or falling back to the best support possible - e.g. if I send an > > image on Telegram you would see a URL on IRC to download the image). > > Since Matrix supports watching IRC, this means that we could in theory > > keep the four systems together with some level of interoperability, > > especially during a transition phase. I am not sure we really want to > > do this though. > > > > Now, my personal opionion - Rocket.chat has been a blood bath for > > WikiToLearn (most newbies are there, most old-timers are on Telegram, > > and they communicate through bridges, we lost several people in the > > migration), but in spite of this I still consider myself in favor of > > switching to it, for a few reasons. The problem is that all tools have > > their big drawbacks, and we need to keep using communication methods > > which are used by the rest of the world, to lower the access barrier > > for new contributors, and for leveraging on tools created by others. > > I'm not sure I get this argument. Do we have evidence that new contributors > are scared by IRC? How is signin up on RocketChat/Telegram/whatever easier > than using http://webchat.freenode.net/ ? We do have evidence. For example a significant portion of the VDG has never been in any of our IRC channels and would never want to go there. I bet that the same goes for WtL. > Again, do we have evidence that Rocket chat is more used than IRC or other > protocols? I'd be very surprised if that's the case. Of course rocket.chat is not used more than IRC at the moment. It's still a quite new technology. I bet that if you'd show some 20-year-old rocket.chat and http://webchat.freenode.net/ side-by-side and asked them which one they'd prefer, the clear majority would go with the former. bet as in put actual money on it.
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 8 August 2017 at 19:51, Christian Loosli wrote: > Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? Would be worth asking the teams who don't use IRC why they don't. Sysadmins use Slack, VDG uses Hangouts, Promo uses Telegram... anyone from those teams able to tell us why? Jonathan
Re: KDE at Qt World Summit 2017 - let's make it the best yet!
On 2017-08-08, Eike Hein wrote: > Berlin, Germany will once again host a Qt World Summit this year, on > October 10th through 12th. This follows on from the Qt Contributor > Summit on October 9th and 10th. > > I've stepped up to coordinate KDE's presence at QtWS this year. Sune, > who has done it in recent years, is a little to busy this year and > will be number #2. I'm (obviously) interested. /Sune
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 8 August 2017 at 19:51, Christian Loosli wrote: > Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? There are 4 things coming to mind > for me, all of them with my personal opinion: Option for full names, photos of people, timezone, e-mail addresses. Just a few of the useful and user friendly features I see looking at it now. Looking at #kde-devel just now it says: <-- swati_27 (uid130066@gateway/web/irccloud.com/x-abaollxcgicrxgwg) has quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity) <-- nowrep (~david@kde/developer/drosca) has quit (Quit: Konversation terminated!) <-- stikonas (~gentoo@wesnoth/translator/stikonas) has quit (Quit: Konversation terminated!) <-- soee_ (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has quit (Quit: Konversation terminated!) --> soee (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has joined #kde-devel Show that to most people and they'll just not want to know what it means Jonathan
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On martedì 8 agosto 2017 21:46:58 CEST, Riccardo Iaconelli wrote: On 8 August 2017 at 20:01, Luigi Toscano wrote: Can rocket.chat be bridged too? If not, promoting it would create another island. With Brooklyn, you can create n-ways bridges between Rocket.chat, IRC, Telegram and possibly many more. All of this while handling attachment support, replies, and other nifty features where the protocol supports them (or falling back to the best support possible - e.g. if I send an image on Telegram you would see a URL on IRC to download the image). Since Matrix supports watching IRC, this means that we could in theory keep the four systems together with some level of interoperability, especially during a transition phase. I am not sure we really want to do this though. Now, my personal opionion - Rocket.chat has been a blood bath for WikiToLearn (most newbies are there, most old-timers are on Telegram, and they communicate through bridges, we lost several people in the migration), but in spite of this I still consider myself in favor of switching to it, for a few reasons. The problem is that all tools have their big drawbacks, and we need to keep using communication methods which are used by the rest of the world, to lower the access barrier for new contributors, and for leveraging on tools created by others. I'm not sure I get this argument. Do we have evidence that new contributors are scared by IRC? How is signin up on RocketChat/Telegram/whatever easier than using http://webchat.freenode.net/ ? Several software compete in this arena: Mattermost, Rocket.Chat and Matrix are some of the big contenders. Matrix is a great idea but its federated nature give it a very confusing feeling for a newcomer. I understand that it needs to be easy for people to join our communication channels, but for this usecase I prefer supporting federated logins (so that you get one-click registrations with already existing accounts) to the full federation of the protocol. But the bigger reason for which I think that RC will be our best bet, is that several big teams (e.g. KDAB) are migrating to Rocket.chat, which means that even if the software is definitely perfectible (to say the least), it's gravitating towards critical mass. Again, do we have evidence that Rocket chat is more used than IRC or other protocols? I'd be very surprised if that's the case. I believe that we will only solve this problem when, no matter what underlying technologies we choose, we will be able to provide a user experience as nice as Telegram with a simple server, hosted by us, which allows for federated login. And with a nice interface it can be actually usable. Vasudha and I are working on Ruqola to solve exactly this problem with Rocket.Chat, creating a great mobile client in the meantime. I am not sure this will be the definitive server, but this is something we want to try. Anyone is welcome to help us in this regard. Bye, -Riccardo
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 8 August 2017 at 21:46, Riccardo Iaconelli wrote: > I believe that we will only solve this problem when, no matter what > underlying technologies we choose, we will be able to provide a user > experience as nice as Telegram with a simple server, hosted by us, > which allows for federated login. to clarify myself a little better, I am in favor of any system that evolves over IRC. I simply cannot connect to IRC from my university and several major physics labs around the globe, which means I am effectively cut out from participating in the discussion, and like me probably many other people. I simply believe that Rocket.Chat might be the best investment for KDE, but in light of this, +1 to Matrix and Mattermost as well. Bye, -Riccardo -- Pace Peace Paix Paz Frieden Pax Pokój Friður Fred Béke Heddwch Hasiti Lapé Hetep Malu Mир Wolakota Santiphap Irini Peoch שלום Shanti Vrede Baris Rój Mír Taika Rongo Sulh Mir Py'guapy 평화 和平
Re: KDE at Qt World Summit 2017 - let's make it the best yet!
On Wednesday 09 August 2017 02:18:04 Eike Hein wrote: > - Helpers! Who wants to be an awesome person and go to QtWS and rep > KDE there? Who can make it to Berlin in the timeframe? (I know > there's a KDE Edu sprint and a Blue Systems dev sprint going on, > so no excuses! :P) I'll (almost certainly) be there in some capacity. I'm better at session- chairing than running a booth, but that's because I'm more into the tier-2 platforms for Qt and not the flashy KDE stuff we do. [ade] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 8 August 2017 at 20:01, Luigi Toscano wrote: > Can rocket.chat be bridged too? If not, promoting it would create another > island. With Brooklyn, you can create n-ways bridges between Rocket.chat, IRC, Telegram and possibly many more. All of this while handling attachment support, replies, and other nifty features where the protocol supports them (or falling back to the best support possible - e.g. if I send an image on Telegram you would see a URL on IRC to download the image). Since Matrix supports watching IRC, this means that we could in theory keep the four systems together with some level of interoperability, especially during a transition phase. I am not sure we really want to do this though. Now, my personal opionion - Rocket.chat has been a blood bath for WikiToLearn (most newbies are there, most old-timers are on Telegram, and they communicate through bridges, we lost several people in the migration), but in spite of this I still consider myself in favor of switching to it, for a few reasons. The problem is that all tools have their big drawbacks, and we need to keep using communication methods which are used by the rest of the world, to lower the access barrier for new contributors, and for leveraging on tools created by others. Several software compete in this arena: Mattermost, Rocket.Chat and Matrix are some of the big contenders. Matrix is a great idea but its federated nature give it a very confusing feeling for a newcomer. I understand that it needs to be easy for people to join our communication channels, but for this usecase I prefer supporting federated logins (so that you get one-click registrations with already existing accounts) to the full federation of the protocol. But the bigger reason for which I think that RC will be our best bet, is that several big teams (e.g. KDAB) are migrating to Rocket.chat, which means that even if the software is definitely perfectible (to say the least), it's gravitating towards critical mass. I believe that we will only solve this problem when, no matter what underlying technologies we choose, we will be able to provide a user experience as nice as Telegram with a simple server, hosted by us, which allows for federated login. And with a nice interface it can be actually usable. Vasudha and I are working on Ruqola to solve exactly this problem with Rocket.Chat, creating a great mobile client in the meantime. I am not sure this will be the definitive server, but this is something we want to try. Anyone is welcome to help us in this regard. Bye, -Riccardo -- Pace Peace Paix Paz Frieden Pax Pokój Friður Fred Béke Heddwch Hasiti Lapé Hetep Malu Mир Wolakota Santiphap Irini Peoch שלום Shanti Vrede Baris Rój Mír Taika Rongo Sulh Mir Py'guapy 평화 和平
Re: KDE at Qt World Summit 2017 - let's make it the best yet!
Hey Everyone interested and willing to commit please speak up, or get in touch with me directly. You will be able to express a pre- ference for booth and talk chairing duty which we'll try to respect when drawing up the duty roster. You'll get lots of karma bonus points if you're willing to help with booth setup and tear down. I'd like to toss my name into the hat :) Cheers Rohan Garg
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On martedì 8 agosto 2017 20:31:13 CEST, Helio Chissini de Castro wrote: I never heard before we have a Matrix enabled server. We don't (and that's the beauty of Matrix!). The reference Matrix server (matrix.org) is bridged with many big IRC networks including freenode, which means it is possible to join every KDE IRC channel out of the box.
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 20:01:05 CEST schrieb Luigi Toscano: > Can rocket.chat be bridged too? Yes, but the bridge is quite buggy. In their defense: as are most other bridges, e.g. personally I think the Matrix IRC bridge is horrible, buggy (it breaks protocol in various places) and unstable, but apparently for quite a lot of end-users it is okay. > Ciao Kind regards, Christian
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 20:17:08 CEST schrieb Cristian Baldi: > Hey there, Hello hello, > [Various Issues I agree with] > Rocket.Chat does not have an official mobile client as of today, again > Ruquola could solve this once it is compiled for Android. Right now the > official way to use Rocket.Chat on mobile is to use some kind of wrapped > WebView which does not work well (when I had that installed I did not > receive notifications or received them randomly). Same goes for slack and mattermost, and these things are horrible. First of all: they are massive battery and memory hogs. Same goes for the electron based wrappers that are sometimes used on the desktop. Also they don't integrate UX wise. > As Jonathan said Rocket.Chat (but really, any modern messaging system) > offers tons of features missing from IRC. Out of interest: what exactly does IRC lack? There are 4 things coming to mind for me, all of them with my personal opinion: - Lack of emojis and stickers: whilst I think it's great that I can send stickers of kitties hugging each other on Telegram, I hardly see a need for that in a more "professional" environment. Emojis are UTF-8 and thus technically work on IRC and clients can handle them, if they want. - Lack of backlog / disconnecting when offline: Not only a solvable issue with things like IRCCloud or bouncers, but actually a solved issue for KDE, given there is an official ZNC instance available. - Lack of support for code: Yes. There I like the old UNIX philosophy of "one tool for one purpose". We do have phabricator, which handles diff and comments on code (including highlighting) much better, so why place that all into a client, which will only make it way less lightweight? - Lack of a file drop: Yes, that might be an issue. However, putting that in the protocol not only creates more of a burden for infra and people (more on that below), technically it can be done in IRC. KMail just recently got a feature which puts files too large for e-mail on a file drop (e.g. owncloud, dropbox or whatnot). It would not be too hard to implement that as a feature in IRC clients, so it uploads the file to $whatever (e.g. imgur for images, dropbox for documents, ...) and place an URL in chat. > A few months ago we also tried Mattermost (similar to Rocket.Chat but it > seems to have gotten much better). Mattermost is actually more of slack than rocket (see my other mail), as it tries to (and mostly is) compatible with Slack. I recommended it already as a FOSS alternative to Slack. > I would suggest investigating all the alternatives and going with the one > that works and feels better, offering the best native experience and having > the most stable core. Always also keep in mind what impact it would have on - The infra. If we have an application that allows files and (endless) backlog, consider that this uses memory, disk space and bandwith. - The community. As you write correctly, it is hard to migrate people over. So I do prefer protocols that can be linked, at least. - People with less access to decent hardware and bandwith, since KDE collaborators work all over the world, not everywhere you have decent up- and downloads and devices with endless amounts of RAM and / or huge batteries. IRC is super lightweight, both clients (you can just ssh to a box with irssi on it, you don't even need a GUI) and servers, both bandwith and memory/cpu consumption. > Cristian Kind regards, Christian (Fuchs on freenode) > > On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 7:08 PM, Luca Beltrame wrote: > > Il giorno Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:16:17 +0200 > > Luigi Toscano > > > > ha scritto: > > > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. > > > > -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because > > the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. > > > > -- > > Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team > > KDE Science supporter > > GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On Tuesday, August 8, 2017 7:08:14 PM CEST Luca Beltrame wrote: > -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because > the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. Another -1 from me. I use both KDE's BNC and Matrix. I started using Matrix as BNC, but I even have personal conversation there since Riot.im is nice for non-geek people too. FYI: Matrix needs funds[1]. [1] https://matrix.org/blog/2017/07/07/a-call-to-arms-supporting-matrix/ -- Andrea
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
There seems to be a native Qt/QML client for Matrix ( https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/quaternion.html), it even seems to be developed by a fellow KDE member, judging from the screenshoot. On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Cristian Baldi wrote: > Hey there, > > I mainly contribute to the WikiToLearn project and for some months we have > been using Rocket.Chat (instead of Telegram and IRC which we used in the > beginning). > > First of all let me tell you that it is very hard to migrate users from an > existing communication service to a new service. Even if at WikiToLearn we > officially moved to Rocket.Chat some users still use the old communications > means daily (mostly for the offtopic channels but some users still write in > the main/official/support channel too). > > Rocket.Chat still has a lot of issues (mostly in term of user interface > and interaction, many little annoying things that make you hate the > platform, unless you get used to it). It is getting better daily but there > is still many work to do (just to give an insight they have 1.7k issues > open on their bug tracker, many are help requests and duplicates but many > other are proper bugs). > > The native client could be a solution to many of these UI problem but > after talking with a few people that developed software based on > Rocket.Chat (for example Davide Riva (which I am cc-ing, he will tell you > more) the KDE student working on the Chat Bridge project) there are also a > lot of issues with their API and inner functionalities (undocumented or > wrongly documented features). > > Rocket.Chat does not have an official mobile client as of today, again > Ruquola could solve this once it is compiled for Android. Right now the > official way to use Rocket.Chat on mobile is to use some kind of wrapped > WebView which does not work well (when I had that installed I did not > receive notifications or received them randomly). > > As Jonathan said Rocket.Chat (but really, any modern messaging system) > offers tons of features missing from IRC. > > Telegram works (outside the open source world) because it has great native > clients, cool features and it is easy to use. > I have not tried matrix but it looks promising. > A few months ago we also tried Mattermost (similar to Rocket.Chat but it > seems to have gotten much better). > IRC gets the job done but it lacks the features that everyone is used to > in 2017. > > I would suggest investigating all the alternatives and going with the one > that works and feels better, offering the best native experience and having > the most stable core. > > Cristian > > > On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 7:08 PM, Luca Beltrame wrote: > >> Il giorno Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:16:17 +0200 >> Luigi Toscano >> ha scritto: >> >> > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. >> >> -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because >> the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. >> >> -- >> Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team >> KDE Science supporter >> GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79 >> >> >> >
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
I never heard before we have a Matrix enabled server. -1 for Rocket Chat and I will start on Matrix to test ASAP On Tue, Aug 8, 2017, 20:17 Cristian Baldi wrote: > Hey there, > > I mainly contribute to the WikiToLearn project and for some months we have > been using Rocket.Chat (instead of Telegram and IRC which we used in the > beginning). > > First of all let me tell you that it is very hard to migrate users from an > existing communication service to a new service. Even if at WikiToLearn we > officially moved to Rocket.Chat some users still use the old communications > means daily (mostly for the offtopic channels but some users still write in > the main/official/support channel too). > > Rocket.Chat still has a lot of issues (mostly in term of user interface > and interaction, many little annoying things that make you hate the > platform, unless you get used to it). It is getting better daily but there > is still many work to do (just to give an insight they have 1.7k issues > open on their bug tracker, many are help requests and duplicates but many > other are proper bugs). > > The native client could be a solution to many of these UI problem but > after talking with a few people that developed software based on > Rocket.Chat (for example Davide Riva (which I am cc-ing, he will tell you > more) the KDE student working on the Chat Bridge project) there are also a > lot of issues with their API and inner functionalities (undocumented or > wrongly documented features). > > Rocket.Chat does not have an official mobile client as of today, again > Ruquola could solve this once it is compiled for Android. Right now the > official way to use Rocket.Chat on mobile is to use some kind of wrapped > WebView which does not work well (when I had that installed I did not > receive notifications or received them randomly). > > As Jonathan said Rocket.Chat (but really, any modern messaging system) > offers tons of features missing from IRC. > > Telegram works (outside the open source world) because it has great native > clients, cool features and it is easy to use. > I have not tried matrix but it looks promising. > A few months ago we also tried Mattermost (similar to Rocket.Chat but it > seems to have gotten much better). > IRC gets the job done but it lacks the features that everyone is used to > in 2017. > > I would suggest investigating all the alternatives and going with the one > that works and feels better, offering the best native experience and having > the most stable core. > > Cristian > > > On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 7:08 PM, Luca Beltrame wrote: > >> Il giorno Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:16:17 +0200 >> Luigi Toscano >> ha scritto: >> >> > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. >> >> -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because >> the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. >> >> -- >> Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team >> KDE Science supporter >> GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79 >> >> >> >
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Hey there, I mainly contribute to the WikiToLearn project and for some months we have been using Rocket.Chat (instead of Telegram and IRC which we used in the beginning). First of all let me tell you that it is very hard to migrate users from an existing communication service to a new service. Even if at WikiToLearn we officially moved to Rocket.Chat some users still use the old communications means daily (mostly for the offtopic channels but some users still write in the main/official/support channel too). Rocket.Chat still has a lot of issues (mostly in term of user interface and interaction, many little annoying things that make you hate the platform, unless you get used to it). It is getting better daily but there is still many work to do (just to give an insight they have 1.7k issues open on their bug tracker, many are help requests and duplicates but many other are proper bugs). The native client could be a solution to many of these UI problem but after talking with a few people that developed software based on Rocket.Chat (for example Davide Riva (which I am cc-ing, he will tell you more) the KDE student working on the Chat Bridge project) there are also a lot of issues with their API and inner functionalities (undocumented or wrongly documented features). Rocket.Chat does not have an official mobile client as of today, again Ruquola could solve this once it is compiled for Android. Right now the official way to use Rocket.Chat on mobile is to use some kind of wrapped WebView which does not work well (when I had that installed I did not receive notifications or received them randomly). As Jonathan said Rocket.Chat (but really, any modern messaging system) offers tons of features missing from IRC. Telegram works (outside the open source world) because it has great native clients, cool features and it is easy to use. I have not tried matrix but it looks promising. A few months ago we also tried Mattermost (similar to Rocket.Chat but it seems to have gotten much better). IRC gets the job done but it lacks the features that everyone is used to in 2017. I would suggest investigating all the alternatives and going with the one that works and feels better, offering the best native experience and having the most stable core. Cristian On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 7:08 PM, Luca Beltrame wrote: > Il giorno Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:16:17 +0200 > Luigi Toscano > ha scritto: > > > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. > > -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because > the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. > > -- > Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team > KDE Science supporter > GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79 > > >
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
+1 for Matrix - given that it's bridged to Freenode, all you have to do is give out Matrix links instead of linking people to IRC and they'll be able to participate in the same community. You might want to look into creating Matrix rooms manually if you want more control over the room (the ability to add integrations, etc), but even without that it's fine. (And it's an open protocol!)
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Il 08 agosto 2017 19:09:28 CEST, Eike Hein ha scritto: > > >On 08/09/2017 01:16 AM, Luigi Toscano wrote:> We have an alternative >already working, which bridges IRC (freenode.net and >> OFTC): matrix.org. >> I don't know how many times I should repeat this, but many people are >already >> using successfully (I monitor few channels, for example). >> >> So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. > > >It could make sense to promote Rocket.Chat over Telegram though (more >free). I'm personally for ditching Telegram in favor of really FLOSS (and sane) alternatives. That said, if it's bridged to IRC as it happens now, I don't care much as long as the accessibility through IRC (and now matrix) is well visible. I would never promote Telegram standalone. Can rocket.chat be bridged too? If not, promoting it would create another island. Ciao -- Luigi
KDE at Qt World Summit 2017 - let's make it the best yet!
Hi everyone, Berlin, Germany will once again host a Qt World Summit this year, on October 10th through 12th. This follows on from the Qt Contributor Summit on October 9th and 10th. As in previous years, we want KDE To have a strong presence at this event, which draws much of the wider Qt community. We're an important part of the community and we make lots of things that are interesting and useful to Qt developers, so we should be there. It's a great opportunity to network as well as watch some interesting talks. I've stepped up to coordinate KDE's presence at QtWS this year. Sune, who has done it in recent years, is a little to busy this year and will be number #2. As usual we're going to have table space in the booth area (I did some shifts there during QtWS'15, which was a thoroughly good time), where we want to promote our products, engage people and answer products. We also want KDE to appear as a community partner again, and if possible place promo materials around the event (e.g. in the attendee bag, have our logo slapped on things, etc). And since The Qt Company is allowing our team to attend QtWS for free, we will likely also chip in with running the event again, e.g. by chairing some of the talks on the schedule. To make all of this happen we'll need the following: - Helpers! Who wants to be an awesome person and go to QtWS and rep KDE there? Who can make it to Berlin in the timeframe? (I know there's a KDE Edu sprint and a Blue Systems dev sprint going on, so no excuses! :P) Everyone interested and willing to commit please speak up, or get in touch with me directly. You will be able to express a pre- ference for booth and talk chairing duty which we'll try to respect when drawing up the duty roster. You'll get lots of karma bonus points if you're willing to help with booth setup and tear down. There will be a limit to how many people we can send, so please don't be upset if we can't bring you along in the end. But please do try! If travel/accomodation expenses would be the only thing keeping you, get in touch and we can look into that. - Figure out what we want to show at the booth this year. Who wants to make cool demo loops or slides? - Make promo materials. We'll need to review and update our posters (if anyone has the 2015/2016 posters, please link them in reply) and flyers. And do it early enough so we can get them refined and printed in time. Jens Reuterberg has promised to help make things look great! Cheers, Eike
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On 08/09/2017 01:16 AM, Luigi Toscano wrote:> We have an alternative already working, which bridges IRC (freenode.net and > OFTC): matrix.org. > I don't know how many times I should repeat this, but many people are already > using successfully (I monitor few channels, for example). > > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. It could make sense to promote Rocket.Chat over Telegram though (more free). Cheers, Eike
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Il giorno Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:16:17 +0200 Luigi Toscano ha scritto: > So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. -1 as well. As Luigi said, matrix.org is a better replacement because the bridge is already up there. Also, it is federated, and FOSS. -- Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team KDE Science supporter GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On martedì 8 agosto 2017 18:16:17 CEST, Luigi Toscano wrote: On Tuesday, 8 August 2017 17:52:00 CEST Jonathan Riddell wrote: Like all sensible open source communities we use IRC lots for real time communication essential to making low bandwidth decisions in a reasonable timeframe as well as socialising. 20 years ago IRC was cool but these days real-time communication in the non-geek world long since moved other places such as WhatsApp, ... We have an alternative already working, which bridges IRC (freenode.net and OFTC): matrix.org. I don't know how many times I should repeat this, but many people are already using successfully (I monitor few channels, for example). So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. I also want to stress that using matrix.org requires literally zero changes to the current infrastructure (unlike the other chat apps). Anyone can switch now: https://community.kde.org/Matrix Riot.im works very well from smartphones. It should be mentioned that native desktop clients are still not 100% ready (Riot.im is the only one with proper end-to-end encryption), but for KDE-related public chats they are good enough (I use Quaternion). Cheers, Elvis
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Hi list, first of all a disclaimer: As someone heavily involved with IRC (I am freenode staff) I am of course slightly biased. However: various communities I am in, including freenode, frequently has a look as alternative protocols. They come and, compared to IRC, they also go. (https://xkcd.com/1782/) There are various good reasons in my opinion to not move: First of all: FOSS is not only KDE. Quite a lot of us are in various communities, and a lot of them still reside on IRC. So adding another protocol and another client just increases the amount of things you need to have open and to have an eye on. Yes, there are bridges, recently even a KDE project (brooklyn), but all of them I have seen so far get various things wrong and are not as stable as IRC is. And there we come to the technical side: IRC is super lightweight. Other protocols and their clients eat tons of memory, basically "I am in 6 slack channels. 1.5GB RAM consumed by the desktop app. In 100+ IRC channels. 25MB consumed by irssi. The future is rubbish." from https://twitter.com/popey/ status/793399003463516160 I can also have IRC run on my server and connect from anywhere to it just via SSH. I can even run it on a raspberry pi or a free amazon AWS instance. So despite all these fancy features the new protocols and clients like slack, rocket, Telegram and whatnot offer: they do come at a price. With IRC we have a lightweight, well established protcol that works everywhere and we have well established communities. Switching would not help preventing the community from fragmenting. The opposite would happen, it would fragment the community even more, with questionable benefits and high prices on a resource end. I highly recommend not to. Kind regards, Christian (Fuchs on freenode) PS: if proprietary is an issue, which indeed it should be: with Mattermost there is a free, slack compatible thing, and Telegram is not terribly proprietary, neither the client(s) nor the protocol. I obviously still prefer IRC, just pointing out. Am Dienstag, 8. August 2017, 16:52:00 CEST schrieb Jonathan Riddell: > Like all sensible open source communities we use IRC lots for real > time communication essential to making low bandwidth decisions in a > reasonable timeframe as well as socialising. > > 20 years ago IRC was cool but these days real-time communication in > the non-geek world long since moved other places such as WhatsApp, > Facebook Messenger which are infinately more user friendly than IRC. > In the geek-world it has moved to Slack and Telegram. So KDE finds > itself spread between three real time communication methods with IRC > still the strongest but many new people reluctant to use it as scary > and unfamiliar while Slack and Telegram smell of being proprietary and > lacking some of the free-form nature of IRC. > > So my radical proposal for today is to consider moving all our > real-time communications wholesale to Rocket.Chat. Like Slack it takes > much of it's basic setup from IRC with #channels that anyone can set > up. Unlike Slack it's all free software and we can run our own > servers. Like Telegram it works on phones fine. Unlike IRC it > supports media files and friendly user names. > > It has a native desktop client and we have a KDE one in progress with > Ruqola. https://rocket.chat/ > > I setup up a temporary server, do come along and say hi to evaluate it. > http://ec2-34-203-38-236.compute-1.amazonaws.com:3000/ > > I'm aware this will probably end up as a case of XCKD standards > https://xkcd.com/927/ but I thought it worth a shot. We have > difficulty attracting new contributors and our community is > fragmenting because of the dominance of IRC so worth considering > alternatives. > > Jonathan
Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
On Tuesday, 8 August 2017 17:52:00 CEST Jonathan Riddell wrote: > Like all sensible open source communities we use IRC lots for real > time communication essential to making low bandwidth decisions in a > reasonable timeframe as well as socialising. > > 20 years ago IRC was cool but these days real-time communication in > the non-geek world long since moved other places such as WhatsApp, > Facebook Messenger which are infinately more user friendly than IRC. > In the geek-world it has moved to Slack and Telegram. So KDE finds > itself spread between three real time communication methods with IRC > still the strongest but many new people reluctant to use it as scary > and unfamiliar while Slack and Telegram smell of being proprietary and > lacking some of the free-form nature of IRC. > > So my radical proposal for today is to consider moving all our > real-time communications wholesale to Rocket.Chat. Like Slack it takes > much of it's basic setup from IRC with #channels that anyone can set > up. Unlike Slack it's all free software and we can run our own > servers. Like Telegram it works on phones fine. Unlike IRC it > supports media files and friendly user names. We have an alternative already working, which bridges IRC (freenode.net and OFTC): matrix.org. I don't know how many times I should repeat this, but many people are already using successfully (I monitor few channels, for example). So -1 for moving to Rocket.Chat. -- Luigi
radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat
Like all sensible open source communities we use IRC lots for real time communication essential to making low bandwidth decisions in a reasonable timeframe as well as socialising. 20 years ago IRC was cool but these days real-time communication in the non-geek world long since moved other places such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger which are infinately more user friendly than IRC. In the geek-world it has moved to Slack and Telegram. So KDE finds itself spread between three real time communication methods with IRC still the strongest but many new people reluctant to use it as scary and unfamiliar while Slack and Telegram smell of being proprietary and lacking some of the free-form nature of IRC. So my radical proposal for today is to consider moving all our real-time communications wholesale to Rocket.Chat. Like Slack it takes much of it's basic setup from IRC with #channels that anyone can set up. Unlike Slack it's all free software and we can run our own servers. Like Telegram it works on phones fine. Unlike IRC it supports media files and friendly user names. It has a native desktop client and we have a KDE one in progress with Ruqola. https://rocket.chat/ I setup up a temporary server, do come along and say hi to evaluate it. http://ec2-34-203-38-236.compute-1.amazonaws.com:3000/ I'm aware this will probably end up as a case of XCKD standards https://xkcd.com/927/ but I thought it worth a shot. We have difficulty attracting new contributors and our community is fragmenting because of the dominance of IRC so worth considering alternatives. Jonathan
