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Anyone interested in IRC protocol improvements should check out https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ Two of the most major changes: 1. First-class mo

by lrvick 4y ago

Anyone interested in IRC protocol improvements should check out https://ircv3.net/irc/ https://ircv3.net/irc/ Two of the most major changes: 1. First-class mobile-friendly websocket support. 2. Server can store messages to catch you up when you return Personally I feel Matrix is the right way forward for most use cases but Matrix will continue to bridge to IRC so you have options. IRC remains a much easier to implement protocol and much easier to deploy for standalone environments where federation is not needed. There is a reason most infra teams at FAANG companies keep IRC servers around as a fallback for when their complex proprietary solutions fail.

mekster 4y ago
What good is a chat platform without mobile notifications? I don't see how people need to stick with a legacy protocol when there are so many working alternatives.
- welterde 4y ago
  Some people prefer to chat on desktop and don't really like the mobile-derived UI and prefer a text-heavy dense layout. Throw in lightweight resource usage as a requirement and suddenly there are not that many working alternatives anymore.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
usrn 4y ago
Matrix has a lot of nasty issues, I'd argue XMPP is probably the right way forward for small group chats and one to one convos. I personally refuse to use matrix since I still don't feel comfortable self hosting it. For large group chats IRC is still king. EDIT: There's pretty much one useful server last time I checked and it's too bloated to host in most places and it looks to me like this might be at least partly due to the way federation works. One of the main organizations funding Matrix is that one company in Israel that was contracted to do all the phone surveillance in the US. I haven't really been impressed with the protocol itself either. In short, I don't think Matrix will "mature" since it's problems are deeper than just technical/implementation. XMPP already is mature and there are good clients and servers for nearly every platform. IMO: The only reason Matrix is more popular than XMPP right now is just PR.
- mekster 4y ago
  What good XMPP clients that non techs feel comfortable with? I'd just put Mattermost and be done with chat problems.
- capableweb 4y ago
  What are those nasty issues? I also prefer irc, but been waiting for Matrix to mature so good to know where they are at.
  - southerntofu 4y ago
    Matrix has really interesting properties for censorship circumvention, but their approach has drawbacks: designing an append-only log with consensus building takes a lot of resources (though the implementations are getting better). It's not uncommon for medium server operators to report >10GB RAM usage and at least twice as much database storage... which is quite too much for most of us. Also worth noting, there are also issues regarding the fast evolving protocol. Room protocol versions keep increasing and if some server doesn't have the very latest version it may be unable to federate with a more modern room, from what i understand. (please correct me if i got this wrong) Finally, some pseudonymous persons are really unhappy that as a consequence of decentralized rooms, your public matrix address is leaked to any server federated with a room you joined. Under IRC, addresses are local to a server (not federated) so this concern does not apply, while on XMPP only the servers/services you explicitly connect to know of your JID. In the meantime, IRC and XMPP provide useful services with 1-10% of those resources, despite most clients being less polished. For example, jabberfr.org uses only a few gigs of RAM for hundreds of clients and over a thousand of server-to-server connections. Not all features may be available on all clients/servers, but "graceful degradation" is definitely there so noone is left out. To be clear, decentralized room is an amazing concept, and it's really cool the Matrix team has full-time employees to evolve things that quickly. It's just too bad historical standards were left out (decentralized rooms could have been a XMPP extension), and Matrix focuses (though this focus is changing) on high-end clients/servers.
    - ectopod 4y ago

by lrvick 4y ago

mekster 4y ago

What good is a chat platform without mobile notifications? I don't see how people need to stick with a legacy protocol when there are so many working alternatives.

welterde 4y ago
Some people prefer to chat on desktop and don't really like the mobile-derived UI and prefer a text-heavy dense layout. Throw in lightweight resource usage as a requirement and suddenly there are not that many working alternatives anymore.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

usrn 4y ago

Matrix has a lot of nasty issues, I'd argue XMPP is probably the right way forward for small group chats and one to one convos. I personally refuse to use matrix since I still don't feel comfortable self hosting it. For large group chats IRC is still king. EDIT: There's pretty much one useful server last time I checked and it's too bloated to host in most places and it looks to me like this might be at least partly due to the way federation works. One of the main organizations funding Matrix is that one company in Israel that was contracted to do all the phone surveillance in the US. I haven't really been impressed with the protocol itself either. In short, I don't think Matrix will "mature" since it's problems are deeper than just technical/implementation. XMPP already is mature and there are good clients and servers for nearly every platform. IMO: The only reason Matrix is more popular than XMPP right now is just PR.

mekster 4y ago
What good XMPP clients that non techs feel comfortable with? I'd just put Mattermost and be done with chat problems.
capableweb 4y ago
What are those nasty issues? I also prefer irc, but been waiting for Matrix to mature so good to know where they are at.
- southerntofu 4y ago
  Matrix has really interesting properties for censorship circumvention, but their approach has drawbacks: designing an append-only log with consensus building takes a lot of resources (though the implementations are getting better). It's not uncommon for medium server operators to report >10GB RAM usage and at least twice as much database storage... which is quite too much for most of us. Also worth noting, there are also issues regarding the fast evolving protocol. Room protocol versions keep increasing and if some server doesn't have the very latest version it may be unable to federate with a more modern room, from what i understand. (please correct me if i got this wrong) Finally, some pseudonymous persons are really unhappy that as a consequence of decentralized rooms, your public matrix address is leaked to any server federated with a room you joined. Under IRC, addresses are local to a server (not federated) so this concern does not apply, while on XMPP only the servers/services you explicitly connect to know of your JID. In the meantime, IRC and XMPP provide useful services with 1-10% of those resources, despite most clients being less polished. For example, jabberfr.org uses only a few gigs of RAM for hundreds of clients and over a thousand of server-to-server connections. Not all features may be available on all clients/servers, but "graceful degradation" is definitely there so noone is left out. To be clear, decentralized room is an amazing concept, and it's really cool the Matrix team has full-time employees to evolve things that quickly. It's just too bad historical standards were left out (decentralized rooms could have been a XMPP extension), and Matrix focuses (though this focus is changing) on high-end clients/servers.
  - ectopod 4y ago