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In reality, those bridges work badly and hardly anyone uses them. I had to give up on my attempt at using Matrix as IRC client - it had questionable uptime and

by lima 8y ago

In reality, those bridges work badly and hardly anyone uses them. I had to give up on my attempt at using Matrix as IRC client - it had questionable uptime and some channels even banned Matrix users due to frequent reconnects (on Freenode). Hackint recently shut down their Matrix bridge due to how maintenance-intensive it was (and the fact that it logged all messages in its own database). It's great in theory but impractical to use.

rschulman 8y ago
This is completely the opposite of my experience. I'm in probably a dozen Freenode channels via bridge and another 5-6 Mozilla IRC channels, and haven't had a problem in as long as I can remember.
- jlkuester7 8y ago
  Same. It was a little 'interesting' to get setup (because IRC) but all-in-all it works great!
Arathorn 8y ago
This info is a bit stale - it's true we had stability problems in Freenode until July 2018 (exasperated by their spam issues), but since then it's been pretty stable and the reconnects are considerably rarer than freenode netsplits. It's not perfect, but many people use it fine as a casual IRC client. There are over 24,000 active users using the Freenode bridge in the last month, for instance, so I'm unsure that 'hardly anyone uses them'... The Hackint story is a different one; the bridge itself is not maintenance intensive at all. But it is true that the default Matrix server implementation is resource & relatively admin heavy; we're working on that currently. Meanwhile we're also fixing the data retention behaviour - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1763/proposals/1763-configurable-retention-periods.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc176... etc.
- alrs 8y ago
  I tried Matrix last month. It's neat, but slow and a little buggy. Recommending it to anyone other than a Matrix developer right now seems a bit of a stretch.
  - SamWhited 8y ago
    Not to mention that it's just re-solving all the same problems other messaging protocols (XMPP, IRC, etc.) spent time solving 10+ years ago. I always feel that the Matrix organization is a bit disingenuous. Not only are they not developed by any recognized standards body (meaning they have no long-term sustainable funding model), but if they really just wanted to connect all the other chat protocols and make sure everything was interoperable they could have built bridges for existing protocols instead of reinventing the wheel yet again and making the chat scene even more fragmented. Not invented here syndrome is not okay when there are plenty of good (or at least "good enough" even if they're not my favorite) alternatives on the market already.
    - jancsika 8y ago
      > Not only are they not developed by any recognized standards body (meaning they have no long-term sustainable funding model), I don't see a clear relationship between the sentence and its parenthetical. I don't know about Matrix' funding model. But I do know Signal, for example, isn't developed by a recognized standards body. What can I infer from that about the sustainability of its long-term funding?
      - SamWhited 8y ago
        That's fair; these should have been two separate points.
    - Arathorn 8y ago
      i'd argue that the Matrix.org Foundation is just as 'recognized' as the XMPP Standards Foundation :) In terms of disingenuousness - i'd argue that the definition of disingenuous is accusing us of reinventing the wheel rather than acknowledging that Matrix is an entirely different type of technology to IRC or XMPP. It's more similar to NNTP or Git than either IRC or XMPP. For better or worse, trying to solve existing problems using new approaches is how things evolve. On which note, it's cool to see delta.chat and COI trying a totally different approach too.
gsich 8y ago
Bridges usually suck, even for IRC. Split brain, someone needs to monitor it constantly, you are not sure if Matrix clients have received it and vice versa.
mst 8y ago
Speaking in my personal capacity but as somebody's who's a freenode oper: The ridiculous crashing every few minutes thing of the IRC bridge has been fixed enough I haven't noticed a problem for quite a while. I have a looooot of disagreements with matrix, which I have discussed and will discuss with them, but honestly they're not doing it completely wrong anymore.
- Arathorn 8y ago
  > I have a looooot of disagreements with matrix, which I have discussed and will discuss with them, but honestly they're not doing it completely wrong anymore. \o/ :) The other stuff is very much on our radar, fwiw (and in an ideal world i hope we'll finally be able to implement a services or TS6-based bridge). We've been a bit distracted over the last few months with an XMPP bridge (matrix-bifrost) but will be back on IRC bridging shortly.
Proven 8y ago
I was going to comment how this French idea with hundreds of non-expert users maintaining and operating Matrix servers seems unrealistic. The software itself may be secure and configurable but instances of such service, especially if operated by government hacks, may not be. 100s of ObamaCare portals with 0.01% of the budget. Yeah that will go well.

by lima 8y ago

rschulman 8y ago

This is completely the opposite of my experience. I'm in probably a dozen Freenode channels via bridge and another 5-6 Mozilla IRC channels, and haven't had a problem in as long as I can remember.

jlkuester7 8y ago
Same. It was a little 'interesting' to get setup (because IRC) but all-in-all it works great!

Arathorn 8y ago

This info is a bit stale - it's true we had stability problems in Freenode until July 2018 (exasperated by their spam issues), but since then it's been pretty stable and the reconnects are considerably rarer than freenode netsplits. It's not perfect, but many people use it fine as a casual IRC client. There are over 24,000 active users using the Freenode bridge in the last month, for instance, so I'm unsure that 'hardly anyone uses them'... The Hackint story is a different one; the bridge itself is not maintenance intensive at all. But it is true that the default Matrix server implementation is resource & relatively admin heavy; we're working on that currently. Meanwhile we're also fixing the data retention behaviour - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1763/proposals/1763-configurable-retention-periods.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc176... etc.

alrs 8y ago
I tried Matrix last month. It's neat, but slow and a little buggy. Recommending it to anyone other than a Matrix developer right now seems a bit of a stretch.
- SamWhited 8y ago
  Not to mention that it's just re-solving all the same problems other messaging protocols (XMPP, IRC, etc.) spent time solving 10+ years ago. I always feel that the Matrix organization is a bit disingenuous. Not only are they not developed by any recognized standards body (meaning they have no long-term sustainable funding model), but if they really just wanted to connect all the other chat protocols and make sure everything was interoperable they could have built bridges for existing protocols instead of reinventing the wheel yet again and making the chat scene even more fragmented. Not invented here syndrome is not okay when there are plenty of good (or at least "good enough" even if they're not my favorite) alternatives on the market already.
  - jancsika 8y ago
    > Not only are they not developed by any recognized standards body (meaning they have no long-term sustainable funding model), I don't see a clear relationship between the sentence and its parenthetical. I don't know about Matrix' funding model. But I do know Signal, for example, isn't developed by a recognized standards body. What can I infer from that about the sustainability of its long-term funding?
    - SamWhited 8y ago
      That's fair; these should have been two separate points.
  - Arathorn 8y ago
    i'd argue that the Matrix.org Foundation is just as 'recognized' as the XMPP Standards Foundation :) In terms of disingenuousness - i'd argue that the definition of disingenuous is accusing us of reinventing the wheel rather than acknowledging that Matrix is an entirely different type of technology to IRC or XMPP. It's more similar to NNTP or Git than either IRC or XMPP. For better or worse, trying to solve existing problems using new approaches is how things evolve. On which note, it's cool to see delta.chat and COI trying a totally different approach too.

gsich 8y ago

Bridges usually suck, even for IRC. Split brain, someone needs to monitor it constantly, you are not sure if Matrix clients have received it and vice versa.

mst 8y ago

Speaking in my personal capacity but as somebody's who's a freenode oper: The ridiculous crashing every few minutes thing of the IRC bridge has been fixed enough I haven't noticed a problem for quite a while. I have a looooot of disagreements with matrix, which I have discussed and will discuss with them, but honestly they're not doing it completely wrong anymore.

Arathorn 8y ago
> I have a looooot of disagreements with matrix, which I have discussed and will discuss with them, but honestly they're not doing it completely wrong anymore. \o/ :) The other stuff is very much on our radar, fwiw (and in an ideal world i hope we'll finally be able to implement a services or TS6-based bridge). We've been a bit distracted over the last few months with an XMPP bridge (matrix-bifrost) but will be back on IRC bridging shortly.

Proven 8y ago

I was going to comment how this French idea with hundreds of non-expert users maintaining and operating Matrix servers seems unrealistic. The software itself may be secure and configurable but instances of such service, especially if operated by government hacks, may not be. 100s of ObamaCare portals with 0.01% of the budget. Yeah that will go well.