4 ms·

Their FAQ on “Why no federation?” is relevant: https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/federation https://developers.revolt.chat/faq/federation

DocTomoe 5y ago
> "In terms of the situation, we started the project when none of us even knew what federation was, so it was never even considered from the start." Well, yes, it is honest, but it also is disturbing - which other well-known network principles were unknown to them?
- Felk 5y ago
  Is it really "disturbing" if it's maintained by mostly college students? If this was done by industry veterans I could understand your stance, but the way things are this feels uncalled for.
  - KitDuncan 5y ago
    I mean it is a little absurd, when everyone on the planet is using email, which is federated...
    - prashantsengar 5y ago
      Also absurd that so many of us use SSDs but still don't know what quantum tunneling is...
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      i've even heard that some people use some kind of federated packet-switching network these days to communicate. it'll never catch on :)
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      Everyone on the planet is using IPv4 and the internet, yet the understanding ends at 'what is a LAN and what is a port' for a shocking portion of developers. Not knowing about federation[0] doesn't seem so bad. [0] Most likely this is referencing the term and the structural pattern; as you correctly pointed out, the concept is quite widespread.
evv 5y ago
"Federation and Discord-style protocols are inherently incompatible" Really? I wonder how Rocket.Chat federation overcame this "inherent incompatibility" https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administration/settings/federation https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administratio...
- aceArtGmbH 5y ago
  Just look at the screenshot on the RocketChat page. "Use on a production system is not recommended at this time" And looking at how buggy RocketChat is without federation I trust them not to use it. Most of their features is just PR. For example they do advertise E2E while it has the same amount of warnings and not even a doc page https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administration/settings/e2e-encryption https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administratio...
  - evv 5y ago
    I wasn't defending Rocket.Chat's implementation. I haven't tried it myself. Matrix is the practical solution, and Arathorn's sibling comment gracefully addressed my real criticism. Federation is absolutely possible on these applications, although tricky.
Arathorn 5y ago
I think the punchline on the FAQ entry is: > Matrix is incredibly buggy at times and it’s left a sour taste in my mouth. Speaking as project lead for Matrix... I can see where this is coming from. Were we doing Matrix from scratch again, we'd have a smaller scope and polish each feature more before releasing and moving onto the next thing. However, we're very aware of this, and these days do almost nothing else other than polishing the current codebase - for instance, Synapse's RAM usage has dropped enormously (https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1434912387933560837 https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1434912387933560837) - all the main serverside bottlenecks have been removed; we're working on speeding up joins enormously; Element's performance is improving massively; we're working a complete rethink of the client-server sync protocol to ensure that only the bare minimum data is ever synced to clients by default. The only new feature work we have on the horizon is exiting Spaces (groups of rooms) from beta, and adding Threading. Otherwise, it's "just" a matter of fixing remaining E2EE bugs; reworking E2EE onboarding UX, and lots and lots of polish. Critically, *NONE* of these bugs are due to federation or decentralisation. Ironically, the federation bit of Matrix is one of the most robust bits these days - after we spent ages polishing it in 2018-2019 to fix bugs in the merge resolution code. So I think the... > Federation and Discord-style protocols are inherently incompatible ...assertion in the revolt FAQ is completely false, and Matrix already disproves it. Residual bugs in Matrix implementations are more thanks to the complexity of federation/decentralisation/encryption sucking a lot of energy away from the more business-as-usual things which you'd focus on if building a Revolt/Rocket/Mattermost style thing. Anyway: Revolt looks cool, and we wish them the best, and hope that they will indeed bridge into Matrix in future, which is honestly quite a good compromise - https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/07/gitter-now-speaks-matrix#how-do-you-make-an-existing-chat-system-talk-matrix https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/07/gitter-now-speaks-matrix#... is the guide to follow to rapidly plug an existing chat system into Matrix, much as we did with Gitter :)
- aceArtGmbH 5y ago
  Element keeps getting notably better :D Keep polishing it and silence the haters
  - Arathorn 5y ago

DocTomoe 5y ago

> "In terms of the situation, we started the project when none of us even knew what federation was, so it was never even considered from the start." Well, yes, it is honest, but it also is disturbing - which other well-known network principles were unknown to them?

Felk 5y ago
Is it really "disturbing" if it's maintained by mostly college students? If this was done by industry veterans I could understand your stance, but the way things are this feels uncalled for.
- KitDuncan 5y ago
  I mean it is a little absurd, when everyone on the planet is using email, which is federated...
  - prashantsengar 5y ago
    Also absurd that so many of us use SSDs but still don't know what quantum tunneling is...
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    i've even heard that some people use some kind of federated packet-switching network these days to communicate. it'll never catch on :)
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    Everyone on the planet is using IPv4 and the internet, yet the understanding ends at 'what is a LAN and what is a port' for a shocking portion of developers. Not knowing about federation[0] doesn't seem so bad. [0] Most likely this is referencing the term and the structural pattern; as you correctly pointed out, the concept is quite widespread.

evv 5y ago

"Federation and Discord-style protocols are inherently incompatible" Really? I wonder how Rocket.Chat federation overcame this "inherent incompatibility" https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administration/settings/federation https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administratio...

aceArtGmbH 5y ago
Just look at the screenshot on the RocketChat page. "Use on a production system is not recommended at this time" And looking at how buggy RocketChat is without federation I trust them not to use it. Most of their features is just PR. For example they do advertise E2E while it has the same amount of warnings and not even a doc page https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administration/settings/e2e-encryption https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administration/administratio...
- evv 5y ago
  I wasn't defending Rocket.Chat's implementation. I haven't tried it myself. Matrix is the practical solution, and Arathorn's sibling comment gracefully addressed my real criticism. Federation is absolutely possible on these applications, although tricky.

Arathorn 5y ago

I think the punchline on the FAQ entry is: > Matrix is incredibly buggy at times and it’s left a sour taste in my mouth. Speaking as project lead for Matrix... I can see where this is coming from. Were we doing Matrix from scratch again, we'd have a smaller scope and polish each feature more before releasing and moving onto the next thing. However, we're very aware of this, and these days do almost nothing else other than polishing the current codebase - for instance, Synapse's RAM usage has dropped enormously (https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1434912387933560837 https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1434912387933560837) - all the main serverside bottlenecks have been removed; we're working on speeding up joins enormously; Element's performance is improving massively; we're working a complete rethink of the client-server sync protocol to ensure that only the bare minimum data is ever synced to clients by default. The only new feature work we have on the horizon is exiting Spaces (groups of rooms) from beta, and adding Threading. Otherwise, it's "just" a matter of fixing remaining E2EE bugs; reworking E2EE onboarding UX, and lots and lots of polish. Critically, *NONE* of these bugs are due to federation or decentralisation. Ironically, the federation bit of Matrix is one of the most robust bits these days - after we spent ages polishing it in 2018-2019 to fix bugs in the merge resolution code. So I think the... > Federation and Discord-style protocols are inherently incompatible ...assertion in the revolt FAQ is completely false, and Matrix already disproves it. Residual bugs in Matrix implementations are more thanks to the complexity of federation/decentralisation/encryption sucking a lot of energy away from the more business-as-usual things which you'd focus on if building a Revolt/Rocket/Mattermost style thing. Anyway: Revolt looks cool, and we wish them the best, and hope that they will indeed bridge into Matrix in future, which is honestly quite a good compromise - https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/07/gitter-now-speaks-matrix#how-do-you-make-an-existing-chat-system-talk-matrix https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/07/gitter-now-speaks-matrix#... is the guide to follow to rapidly plug an existing chat system into Matrix, much as we did with Gitter :)

aceArtGmbH 5y ago
Element keeps getting notably better :D Keep polishing it and silence the haters
- Arathorn 5y ago