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> Our plan is instead to merge Gitter’s features into Element (or next generations of Element) itself and then - if and only if Element has achieved parity with

> Our plan is instead to merge Gitter’s features into Element (or next generations of Element) itself and then - if and only if Element has achieved parity with Gitter based on the above list - we expect to upgrade the deployment on gitter.im to a Gitter-customised version of Element. The inevitable side-effect is that we’ll be adding new features to Element rather than Gitter going forwards. Wonder what existing Gitter users think about this?

Arathorn 6y ago
Hopefully they'll be happy that Gitter will sprout all Matrix's funky features like E2EE, VoIP, Widgets, Read receipts, Reactions, a bajillion clients/bots/bridges, the open standard API itself... and as long as Element-branded-as-Gitter looks and performs and smells enough like Gitter, and the community & rooms are still there, all will be well. And if they don't like it, they can always go spin up their own Gitter instance and maintain it, bridged into Matrix - it's FOSS after all :D
- phone8675309 6y ago
  This is the "slippers and sex toy" deflection. If the user's don't like the slippers (new features) they can use the sex toy to fornicate themselves.
  - crakenzak 6y ago
    man some people really find anything to complain about huh
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    and this is a bad thing? O:-)
    - phone8675309 6y ago
      Not saying it's good or bad, but nobody can be shocked Pikachu when it's never the "year of the Linux desktop" with this type of mentality.
remram 6y ago
I don't think Gitter development was very active, before or after their acquisition by GitLab. It has been pretty much the same since 2016. It being folded into another tool felt inevitable to me.
Vinnl 6y ago
Using it mostly out of necessity (a project I'm involved in uses it for communication), but I'm mostly enthusiastic about no longer having that annoying Matrixbot - there were always a number of Matrix users, and the implementation was incredibly confusing. It's a nice bonus that I'll no longer be dependent on Gitter's somewhat buggy Web UI. (That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time - GitLab promised Gitter rooms for GitLab projects as well when they acquired it, and I'm not even sure if that ever saw the light of day.)
- Arathorn 6y ago
  > That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time As Element we are if nothing else highly financially motivated to get Gitter bridged into Matrix, so we can run it via our normal Matrix server backend farm rather than keep an entirely parallel deployment running of Gitter infrastructure. We also want to stick to our word :)
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    I'm rooting for you!
kag0 6y ago
I'm happy about it. For me, one shortcoming of gitter is that it has always been tertiary in my pool of chat services. The more tertiary services are accessible through matrix the better, that way I'm less likely to miss notifications. I don't think there are big downsides, I can't think of anything in the core gitter chat that I would miss when switching to matrix.
coolreader18 6y ago
I'm hyped for this; RustPython uses gitter as its main communication platform for developers and contributors, and while it's certainly worked quite well for us so far, I was slightly worried the slow pace of development and the deprecation of mobile apps. It seemed (to me, at least, and I don't follow the gitter changelogs or anything - edit: just looked at them now, so yeah, what follows is pretty unfounded. Anyway,) like gitter was sorta becoming a ghost ship, still running along smoothly but not much was happening at the helm -- this also might be because I mainly use the Android app, which is deprecated, so I see very few updates to gitter if any. Anyway, yeah, I think this is a great direction to go for gitter, if only so I'll have an updated mobile app :)
StavrosK 6y ago
I am ecstatic. The Element Android client is quite good and getting better, and I'd love to be able to access gitter from that.

Arathorn 6y ago

Hopefully they'll be happy that Gitter will sprout all Matrix's funky features like E2EE, VoIP, Widgets, Read receipts, Reactions, a bajillion clients/bots/bridges, the open standard API itself... and as long as Element-branded-as-Gitter looks and performs and smells enough like Gitter, and the community & rooms are still there, all will be well. And if they don't like it, they can always go spin up their own Gitter instance and maintain it, bridged into Matrix - it's FOSS after all :D

phone8675309 6y ago
This is the "slippers and sex toy" deflection. If the user's don't like the slippers (new features) they can use the sex toy to fornicate themselves.
- crakenzak 6y ago
  man some people really find anything to complain about huh
- Arathorn 6y ago
  and this is a bad thing? O:-)
  - phone8675309 6y ago
    Not saying it's good or bad, but nobody can be shocked Pikachu when it's never the "year of the Linux desktop" with this type of mentality.

remram 6y ago

I don't think Gitter development was very active, before or after their acquisition by GitLab. It has been pretty much the same since 2016. It being folded into another tool felt inevitable to me.

Vinnl 6y ago

Using it mostly out of necessity (a project I'm involved in uses it for communication), but I'm mostly enthusiastic about no longer having that annoying Matrixbot - there were always a number of Matrix users, and the implementation was incredibly confusing. It's a nice bonus that I'll no longer be dependent on Gitter's somewhat buggy Web UI. (That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time - GitLab promised Gitter rooms for GitLab projects as well when they acquired it, and I'm not even sure if that ever saw the light of day.)

Arathorn 6y ago
> That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time As Element we are if nothing else highly financially motivated to get Gitter bridged into Matrix, so we can run it via our normal Matrix server backend farm rather than keep an entirely parallel deployment running of Gitter infrastructure. We also want to stick to our word :)
- Vinnl 6y ago
  I'm rooting for you!

kag0 6y ago

I'm happy about it. For me, one shortcoming of gitter is that it has always been tertiary in my pool of chat services. The more tertiary services are accessible through matrix the better, that way I'm less likely to miss notifications. I don't think there are big downsides, I can't think of anything in the core gitter chat that I would miss when switching to matrix.

coolreader18 6y ago

I'm hyped for this; RustPython uses gitter as its main communication platform for developers and contributors, and while it's certainly worked quite well for us so far, I was slightly worried the slow pace of development and the deprecation of mobile apps. It seemed (to me, at least, and I don't follow the gitter changelogs or anything - edit: just looked at them now, so yeah, what follows is pretty unfounded. Anyway,) like gitter was sorta becoming a ghost ship, still running along smoothly but not much was happening at the helm -- this also might be because I mainly use the Android app, which is deprecated, so I see very few updates to gitter if any. Anyway, yeah, I think this is a great direction to go for gitter, if only so I'll have an updated mobile app :)

StavrosK 6y ago

I am ecstatic. The Element Android client is quite good and getting better, and I'd love to be able to access gitter from that.