3 ms·

That's where bridging with other services comes in, e.g. using Matrix on your side to talk to contacts on IRC or whatever else without the people on the other s

That's where bridging with other services comes in, e.g. using Matrix on your side to talk to contacts on IRC or whatever else without the people on the other side having to change what system or software they use.

Karunamon 10y ago
Does this require control of the server being bridged to implement, or could I do something like, say, set up an instance that lets me be on both Rizon and Freenode at the same time on one client connection?
- Perceptes 10y ago
  My understanding is that bridges are implemented via application services (the Matrix term for privileged plugins that extend the capability of the server,) so a user's ability to communicate over non-Matrix protocols is dependent on the homeserver where their user account is based. The best known example of this is that the public matrix.org homeserver is bridged to the Freenode IRC network, and certain channels are synced to each other, e.g. (#matrix on Freenode is the same thing as #matrix:matrix.org on matrix.org.) I'm not sure how this works for non-public communication, like private messages on IRC or services like Facebook where it wouldn't be safe for the Matrix homeserver to have access to a user's Facebook account. At this point I'm not super well-versed on the details of application services so hopefully one of the Matrix team members will reply to you directly.
  - Arathorn 10y ago
    It generally doesn't require input from the target network being bridged, unless you're running a large public bridge like the ones we host on matrix.org. You do however currently have to run your own homeserver in order to run your own bridge (although in future we're looking at ways of getting around this for 'personal' bridging purposes). If you run your own homeserver, and your own bridge to Rhizome/wherever, you can think of the end result being a bit like bitlbee or a pidgin-in-the-cloud... but decentralised, and with the richness of Matrix's conversation semantics (e.g. arbitrary data types) rather than being limited to IRC.
    - johntash 10y ago
      > If you run your own homeserver, and your own bridge to Rhizome/wherever, you can think of the end result being a bit like bitlbee or a pidgin-in-the-cloud... but decentralised Wouldn't this still be centralized to your home server?

Karunamon 10y ago

Does this require control of the server being bridged to implement, or could I do something like, say, set up an instance that lets me be on both Rizon and Freenode at the same time on one client connection?

Perceptes 10y ago
My understanding is that bridges are implemented via application services (the Matrix term for privileged plugins that extend the capability of the server,) so a user's ability to communicate over non-Matrix protocols is dependent on the homeserver where their user account is based. The best known example of this is that the public matrix.org homeserver is bridged to the Freenode IRC network, and certain channels are synced to each other, e.g. (#matrix on Freenode is the same thing as #matrix:matrix.org on matrix.org.) I'm not sure how this works for non-public communication, like private messages on IRC or services like Facebook where it wouldn't be safe for the Matrix homeserver to have access to a user's Facebook account. At this point I'm not super well-versed on the details of application services so hopefully one of the Matrix team members will reply to you directly.
- Arathorn 10y ago
  It generally doesn't require input from the target network being bridged, unless you're running a large public bridge like the ones we host on matrix.org. You do however currently have to run your own homeserver in order to run your own bridge (although in future we're looking at ways of getting around this for 'personal' bridging purposes). If you run your own homeserver, and your own bridge to Rhizome/wherever, you can think of the end result being a bit like bitlbee or a pidgin-in-the-cloud... but decentralised, and with the richness of Matrix's conversation semantics (e.g. arbitrary data types) rather than being limited to IRC.
  - johntash 10y ago
    > If you run your own homeserver, and your own bridge to Rhizome/wherever, you can think of the end result being a bit like bitlbee or a pidgin-in-the-cloud... but decentralised Wouldn't this still be centralized to your home server?