14 ms·

Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

132 points by feanaro 3y ago

colesantiago 3y ago
Huh? Wasn't anybody using the Matrix bridge to Libera Chat IRC? Seems like IRC is really dead and only used by a very tiny small minority of people.
- PostOnce 3y ago
  Wizards use IRC, and their apprentices use discord. Some of the most deeply technical people in the world use IRC. Being able to talk to them is a superpower.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    IRC's biggest weakness is the protocol didn't transition cleanly to a mobile world. But apart from that, it's still as good as it always was.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      IRC's biggest weakness is the lack of a consistent history mechanism and that you usually need to idle.
      - sitzkrieg 3y ago
        things like irccloud made this easier for consumers this but it was too late
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        wkat4242 3y ago
        As does quassel <3
      - doublerabbit 3y ago
        IRCs other biggest weakness is that to host images is a PITA. As is sending files. DCC works, if/when it wants.
        superkuh 3y ago
        Hosting images is a great way to waste a lot of money and have to hire a squad of lawyers. There's a reason free image hosts have well known short lifecycles. The strength of IRC is that it is mostly stateless. Just lists of IPs subscribed to sockets.
        doublerabbit 3y ago
        As beautiful as it is. You don't need to host anything. Image capabilities are still possible as all you'll need to do is encode media in to base32 and then spew that to brother channel, #hn-images or something. IRC is perfect for long blinding data dumps. If the user opts in to imagery, let the client connect to that channel. Sure you'll loose out on the image if you were not available but irc is like that anyway. Having your client throw [image:~hackernews_logo] to indicate that you've posted an image is no less spam than someone announcing that they've changed their nick to "doublerabbit|Zzz".
  - mortallywounded 3y ago
    puts on wizard hat
  - Syonyk 3y ago
    Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana. Discord is awful. It's most of the downsides of IRC, with all the downsides of a centralized company running it, with a very resource heavy client. You can run IRC on just about nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a 16MHz 68030 with 8MB RAM just fine), and I know quite a few quiet little backwaters servers doing exactly that.
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      Discord is as if IRC and MSN/Y!M/AIM had an orgy and gave birth to an illegitimate child. Discord got it right but wrong. Channels are correct. Image / File sharing is correct Closed gardens and gimmicks with paid subscriptions is where it falls.
      - immibis 3y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 3y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing a ton of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- blueflow 3y ago
  10-15k Users were using it, its quite a big thing. You can see the user count drop around 4th August: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
- koito17 3y ago
  I pretty much only used Matrix as a glorified IRC bouncer that worked across my devices. When the libera.chat bridges went away, I just stopped using Matrix altogether. Yeah, I am sure it is possible to set up my own appservice, but ERC has been convenient enough for my use case.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    I instead stopped using IRC since the Matrix bridge was the by far best bouncer I have used to date. The other bouncers I have used have just been annoying.
- brabel 3y ago
  I use it, from emacs, sometimes :D when you connect it actually tells you exactly how many users are on it, which seems to be quite a few: ** There are 73 users and 33193 invisible on 28 servers ** 39 operator(s) online ** 75 unknown connection(s) ** 22136 channels formed ** I have 1884 clients and 1 servers ** Current local users 1884, max 2958 ** Current global users 33266, max 34731 ** Highest connection count: 2959 (2958 clients) (25302 connections received) ** - platinum.libera.chat Message of the Day - ** - This server provided by NORDUnet/SUNET ** - Welcome to Libera Chat, the IRC network for ** - free & open-source software and peer directed projects.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I was using it, but I kept getting kicked out of channels for idling too long. It wasn't a good experience, and I went back to just using IRC for IRC and Matrix for Matrix.
- mickael-kerjean 3y ago
  IRC is far from dead. My relatively unknown oss work has a channel on libera which is seeing ~100 message per month Also Slack made the same move a couple years ago, first trying to appeal to IRC users at the beginning and then shut it all off when they had everyone else
  - tazjin 3y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if by the time Matrix is cold as ice, IRC will still see activity. Sufficiently simple protocols have some aura of immortality to them, and Matrix is the opposite of that.
    - jeltz 3y ago
      As is IRC. IRC is only a simple protocol in an ideal world which no longer exists.
      - tazjin 3y ago
        What do you think is not simple about IRC nowadays?
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Obligatory relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
      - dngray 3y ago
        I think the main benefit of Matrix over IRC, is proper E2EE and multi device support, something that simply isn't possible for IRC clients.
        dotnet00 3y ago
        Agreed, my friend group hosts a private Matrix server specifically for the E2EE (with encrypted history) chatrooms. Makes us all way more comfortable sharing or discussing anything involving PII because we aren't having to trust Discord's systems and employees.
- mort96 3y ago
  IRC is the best place to go to find developers of a whole host of open source projects. If you work with open source software, not using IRC really limits what you can do and who you can reach.
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    This is entirely dependent on what OSS you're working with, and not in any way representative of OSS as a whole.
    - mort96 3y ago
      That might be why I said “a whole host of open source projects” and not “all open source projects”.
      - Klonoar 3y ago
        > If you work with open source software, not using IRC really limits what you can do and who you can reach. No, I was responding to the highlighted line here, which is fundamentally wrong. ;P
        mort96 3y ago
        I see. That doesn't make a difference though? Not using IRC limits who you can reach. In some projects, all the interesting people are easily reachable through IRC (and less reachable through other channels). Of course there are other projects where all the interesting people are reachable through matrix or gitter or zulip or slack, and if you're interacting with those projects, IRC won't do much to help you. That doesn't mean "not using IRC limits who you can reach" is false; it just means you may not have an interest of interacting with the people who you can't reach without IRC.
  - dngray 3y ago
    Not really, just use Matrix and a bridge like Heisenbridge. The experience to me feels native as if the IRC users are using Matrix.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
NewJazz 3y ago
Matrix has a long way to go to compete with IRC and XMPP... Godspeed.
- Syonyk 3y ago
  It's not really the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. I use both Matrix and IRC, very extensively. Matrix is, for me, a replacement (or a slightly less annoying way) to handle "person to person and local group" communications. And the bridges beat having to run a bunch of other clients for Google Chat, Signal, etc. However, my goal there is to move people onto Matrix, and I've done a decent job of it so far in my circles. IRC is "professional technical chatter during work hours," and I use it as such - as I've used it for the bulk of three decades at this point. There's some social stuff there, but it's mostly "deeply technical conversations in the sort of chat rooms filled with people there for the same reasons." It's very much been a bit of a superpower - build relationships in the right IRC servers and you have a massive "external brain" of relationships you can query for weird questions. I worked at a small IT shop for a while, and people eventually figured out the correlation between "An absolutely off the walls question" and "the clattery keyboard," when I started discussing the problem in IRC. I don't want IRC to be Matrix, any more than I want to bridge "professional chat rooms" into my evening hours (which more and more are simply hard analog, offline, etc).
  - AndroidKitKat 3y ago
    When you move people onto Matrix, what homeserver do you have them use? I've set up a Matrix server for my immediate family and adoption rate has been good so far. I've set up both my parents, and one of my sisters and one of my brothers have signed up, one sibling is being a bit resistant since "I already use a gazillion other chat apps." But, not everyone has a me to set up and maintain a Matrix server, and I'm weary to tell people to just hop onto the main "matrix.org" server since I don't know what kind of experiences there are for people who don't know what they're doing (e.g. Should they put in PII or remain anonymous?)
    - Syonyk 3y ago
broodbucket 3y ago
I've been using heisenbridge[0] to do my Matrix to IRC bridging and I like it. Not a broader solution to the problem since most people don't want to run their own services, but it works well for me and is no different to a bouncer for IRC servers, noone knows it's actually Matrix on the other side. [0]: https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge
- kinduff 3y ago
  Same here, I really like it. Really easy to configure and setup.
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    I just configured one today. Took me no more than 15min. Highly recommend. If you are starting fresh, I recommend using the Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
    - kinduff 3y ago
      Yes! And don't forget MASH [0], its a collection of Ansible roles that is compatible with the Matrix Docker Ansible Deploy playbook. In case you want to add more services to your Matrix server. [0]: https://github.com/mother-of-all-self-hosting/mash-playbook https://github.com/mother-of-all-self-hosting/mash-playbook
shp0ngle 3y ago
What were the "issues" that are not named?
- mistrial9 3y ago
  apparently some actors used the Matrix bridge to join private chat rooms in Libera without being detected.. AFAIK
  - snvzz 3y ago
    Sounds serious, from an IRC perspective.
    - Arathorn 3y ago
      The issue in question here is https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/1332 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/1... (and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/1337 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/133...) which accidentally regressed due to other stability work done for Libera (specifically, keeping the IRC-side connections persistent, rather than reconnecting when the bridge starts). As a result there was an race condition edge case where users on the Matrix side could read history in the IRC channel while still connecting the Matrix users on the IRC side. This was one of the straws that broke the camel's back in terms of Libera wanting the bridge disabled. The other was the confusion over https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/what-happened-with-the-archive https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/what-happened-with-the-archi....
      - snvzz 3y ago
        Not too surprising. IRC has some particular expectations of privacy, including that users that aren't in a room shouldn't be able to read what's going on in the room, and thus archived rooms are an exception rather than a rule.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        That these issues haven't seen as much as even a reply since 2021 makes me understand Libera's point a lot better to be honest. Because it is indeed a serious issue.
jmbwell 3y ago
This seems like an inevitable progression of the de-portaling in July: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/ I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here. Thanks to those involved for the efforts while they could be sustained!
- susam 3y ago
  I wrote my own IRC + Matrix client to bridge the channels I operate. I've made the source code available under the terms of the MIT license here: https://github.com/susam/nimb https://github.com/susam/nimb If you find any issues, bugs, etc. in this tool, please let me know. Although this tool works well for my modest requirements, someone else may find issues while using this tool that I have not encountered yet. In such a case, bug reports, pull requests, patches, etc. are very welcome!
  - progval 3y ago
    You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b8ab697f6d1523d9/nimb.py#L152 https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... and sanitize NUL/CR/LF from the prefix (well, display_name) here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b8ab697f6d1523d9/nimb.py#L155 https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... Otherwise you may have a command injection vulnerability similar to what matrix-appservice-irc used to have: https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-injection/ https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-... (though with carriage returns instead of null bytes)
    - susam 3y ago
      Thank you for taking a close look at the source code and highlighting this issue. > You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes Do you mean splitting on (or sanitising of) carriage returns (CR or 0xD) and newlines (LF or 0xA)? I read your security advisory and as far as I understand, the issue occurs due to improper handling of CR and LF characters. I don't see anything about null bytes there.
Laaas 3y ago
The explanation seems a bit vague. What were the concrete issues at hand?
- stevenicr 3y ago
  just read - sounds like some complaints from the libera chat side that are too much to fix (?) at the moment.. I'd like to see a post from libera about what they expect someone to do if they take the bridge and take it further to work on other servers.. I still dream of a trillium (sp?) manychat kind of thing that can bridge all things... I get that some want to prevent that - and others even if they want interoperability may have debates about how things should be implemented for various reasons. maybe libera can make a bridge with options and defaults that make most people happy.. but a user of libera myself, but I want an all things work together future - I get that tech stuff can be hard, even without those who want walled gardens and barriers. - fingers crossed for more options in the future instead of less.
  - immibis 3y ago
    There was such a post from libera months ago.
- kuschku 3y ago
  Just a theory: Libera.Chat staff that used to work at Element departed the company due to budget cuts. In combination with the budget cuts' wider effects on the matrix ecosystem, this meant there was little if any hope the issues with the bridge would get fixed.
  - pwr22 3y ago
    There were Libera.Chat staff working at EMS???
    - kuschku 3y ago
      Element employed quite a few IRC folk until the recent budget cuts. My experience as IRC client dev was actually what got me hired. (though I also departed Element during the latest round of budget cuts)
INTPenis 3y ago
Some channels on libera have been awful, a ton of [m] names, and long repetitive messages converted from matrix. I know I might be using a dying medium but I enjoy IRC the way it is.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Not a fan of IRC, but I agree. Bridges and multi protocol clients just suck. They never work flawlessly and result in a ton of annoyance for people on both sides. Use the client for the group you are in rather than some bodged together bridge.
  - dngray 3y ago
    The exception there is Heisenbridge if you've got your own homeserver, supports certfp, and sasl auth too so it's really just like using znc or anything else.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  The repetitive messages happen when you edit a message in matrix. It resends the whole thing because irc doesn't support that feature.
sitzkrieg 3y ago
thank goodness, endless garbage noise
_8j50 3y ago
The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this case it looks like yet another libera complaint that is at issue, not really matrix's fault I think. The only thing I'll say about matrix is they have a lot of cool features but a smooth/fast experience like discord is the only thing they are missing to compete there but aside from philosophy I see no reason to avoid discord unless I want to operare a server instance. To me it's like webmail, I don't care if gmail or proronmail are opensource as much as I care about their security and reliability. I mean, I gotta applaud all the folks that worked on matrix clients, but there is still much left to be desired, I wish I could help in some way.
- smlavine 3y ago
  Well, stable for now. Give Discord another two decades to figure itself out and see what happens. When it hits the fan, there won't be a "Discord 2" right next door that everyone can migrate to by changing a URL.
  - izzydata 3y ago
    I am patiently waiting for Discord to be sold to some corporation such as Microsoft so we can all move on to the next big thing. I wonder what it will be. Probably not Matrix, but definitely something.
    - Syonyk 3y ago
      Meanwhile, IRC remains there, working, independent of big companies, and low enough resourced that you can host it without too much trouble on very modest hardware and bandwidth requirements. It's the turtle: https://xkcd.com/889/ https://xkcd.com/889/
    - slimsag 3y ago
      What is the next big thing after Microsoft bought GitHub, by that logic? ..or are we all in this thread just not talking about GitHub, it's a necessary evil, etc.?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xwowsersx 3y ago
What communities are y'all in that are only or primarily on Matrix? I haven't seemed to find myself in any yet, but perhaps I'm missing out
- COGlory 3y ago
  Boiling Steam on Matrix.org for Linux gaming
- dizhn 3y ago
  The thing is even though not all communities were fully there, they were using the bridges. As far as I know almost all KDE and openSUSE channels were bridged. Now we ended up with a situation where there are still people in the matrix rooms with no connection to the irc users.
- joshsimmons 3y ago
  There are a number of open source events, projects, and foundations that primarily communicate on Matrix, and no surprise it seems particularly common among projects that build on federated technologies (eg ActivityPub-based projects). That's what got me started on Matrix before I joined to lead the Matrix.org Foundation :)
- graphe 3y ago
  You aren't. If you haven't heard of social media it lacks sociability: it's only feature. If you want information join mailing lists. Discord and IG is what I usually use; because and only because everyone else uses it.
- rch 3y ago
  I mostly use it for the Fedwiki and NixOS community channels.
- aendruk 3y ago
  Seattle social groups, NixOS
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Neovim, especially now that they no longer maintain their own bridge to Libera.
diamondfist25 3y ago
On the side note, are there anyone whose only using matrix for all the social media apps bridges? I’ve been mucking away for months trying to integrate all social media apps together, and these bridges are obscure and hard to customize/configure for n00bs. Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1
- nvy 3y ago
  >Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1 Sounds like Beeper
  - broodbucket 3y ago
    Beeper contribute to and maintain many of the bridges.
- Syonyk 3y ago
  I run a few bridges. They're certainly a bit arcane to configure, but they mostly work fine once they're up and running. I run my own homeserver, it's not been too much trouble to deal with. Though I try to move people into the "native Matrix" ecosystem. The bridges are just nice as a transition technology.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  The quickest way to do a lot of bridges is this Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy. I set up Discord, Telegram, Facebook, Instagtam, Slack, IRC without too much trouble. Though if you need a bridge not directly supported you'd be better off doing it manually'
georgyo 3y ago
After the deportling, I just stopped communicating with IRC, but there is a lot of lost there. One of my communities was basically split in half. Ah well... The user drop is quite noticable here: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php After that you can see Libre.Chat is actually growing in users again and at a very consistent pace.
- immibis 3y ago
  How many of the users were not permanently AFK?
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Probably not so many because the bridge already pruned puppeted users that were inactive.
superkuh 3y ago
That's an interesting perspective. For another try reading the multiple attempts the libera team made to accommodate the slow progress and security holes on the Matrix side before the decision was made to close the the bridge permanently. Updates on the matrix<>IRC bridge (Jun 7th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 3rd) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling Delays in Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 28th) https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay Temporarily disabling the Matrix Bridge (August 5th) https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-bridge https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-br... Matrix Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective (August 10th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospective https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv... It was sad to see a few matrix people drop away but most of the activity and users were/are on the IRC side. And of the active matrix users I considered friends most just decided to connect to IRC using a real client. Much like Slack started off with an IRC bridge to bootstrap itself with IRC communities the Riot.im/Element.io corporation no longer feels the need to maintain the bootstrapping and does not allocate resources for it.
carterschonwald 3y ago
One thing that Libera and its predecessors have that is impossible with element and discord and slack is: multiple overlapping communities on the same platform. Maybe matrix/element has that, but I’m not very adept at finding it I guess. Old time original freenode had so many communities.
- thedaly 3y ago
  Isn’t that how it works with discord? I don’t understand what you mean by overlapping communities.
  - johnny22 3y ago
    What they mean is you join an irc server with tons of communities all in one place. Discord requires you to join different "servers" where each switch between communities feels like you're at a totally different irc server (even though technically it's not). On irc you just have one name and that's what everybody knows you by. On discord you have one name per "server". There's not really a lot of cross pollination there. Personally I would like to see a discord interface where there's not a jarring difference between each server. Something more like this hexchat screenshot (although hexchat itself isn't pretty) https://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html https://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html but note the server and channel list on the left. I want something more like that.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Discord is a datamining tracking commercial service. It's just not fair to ask FOSS users to join it IMO.
- joshsimmons 3y ago
  That is definitely a thing that Matrix has, all the more so because it's a decentralized protocol and many deployments federate with each other.
j3s 3y ago
soju + senpai is by far the best IRC experience & it’s not even close
- khimaros 3y ago
  i was curious, so i did a bit of digging: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/ https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/ https://sr.ht/~taiite/senpai/ https://sr.ht/~taiite/senpai/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/gamja/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/gamja/
- wkat4242 3y ago
  For me it's quassel and quasseldroid on mobile.
k8svet 3y ago
I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly. I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago. With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more. This current news just gives me more pause about leadership and vision. This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely. It feels like a massive loss for matrix (bad first impressions, negative impact on network effects, etc) and will undoubtedly be something that matrix detractors will point to for years. I normally keep quiet about this and just huff more copium because I WANT matrix to succeed, but I wish using Element and matrix as it exists didn't make me feel so ... Idk. Normally by now a tech project with this transcripts hits a steady state but man, the protocol is lacking, element web is just passable at the most generous. Element on Android, I won't even speak about, refer to where I want element to succeed. To balance this out - Element x has been pleasantly satisfying lately. I'm curious if the team is deliberately taking a different strategy. New Element is working on basically the intersection of what I think are going to be foundational future "stuff" but seem almost to eager. Meanwhile element x is missing for feature but is, still after months of using it, "blazingly fast".
- immibis 3y ago
  Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element) and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations. And it doesn't even work that well.
  - camgunz 3y ago
    Sorry I don't think anything you've written here is true: > Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2]. > It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element). 2/5 people on the board work for Element [2]. > and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) It does not use a blockchain (there is no proof-of-anything). You might be confusing blockchains with Merkle Trees, but in that case you'd also have to think git is a blockchain. > is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations There are several independent client [3] and server [4] implementations. > And it doesn't even work that well. Maybe not, but it has pretty good adoption [5] [0]: https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org [1]: https://spec.matrix.org/ https://spec.matrix.org/ [2]: https://matrix.org/about/ https://matrix.org/about/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Clients [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Servers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Servers [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Adoption

132 points by feanaro 3y ago

Huh? Wasn't anybody using the Matrix bridge to Libera Chat IRC? Seems like IRC is really dead and only used by a very tiny small minority of people.

PostOnce 3y ago
Wizards use IRC, and their apprentices use discord. Some of the most deeply technical people in the world use IRC. Being able to talk to them is a superpower.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  IRC's biggest weakness is the protocol didn't transition cleanly to a mobile world. But apart from that, it's still as good as it always was.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    IRC's biggest weakness is the lack of a consistent history mechanism and that you usually need to idle.
    - sitzkrieg 3y ago
      things like irccloud made this easier for consumers this but it was too late
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        As does quassel <3
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      IRCs other biggest weakness is that to host images is a PITA. As is sending files. DCC works, if/when it wants.
      - superkuh 3y ago
        Hosting images is a great way to waste a lot of money and have to hire a squad of lawyers. There's a reason free image hosts have well known short lifecycles. The strength of IRC is that it is mostly stateless. Just lists of IPs subscribed to sockets.
        doublerabbit 3y ago
        As beautiful as it is. You don't need to host anything. Image capabilities are still possible as all you'll need to do is encode media in to base32 and then spew that to brother channel, #hn-images or something. IRC is perfect for long blinding data dumps. If the user opts in to imagery, let the client connect to that channel. Sure you'll loose out on the image if you were not available but irc is like that anyway. Having your client throw [image:~hackernews_logo] to indicate that you've posted an image is no less spam than someone announcing that they've changed their nick to "doublerabbit|Zzz".
- mortallywounded 3y ago
  puts on wizard hat
- Syonyk 3y ago
  Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana. Discord is awful. It's most of the downsides of IRC, with all the downsides of a centralized company running it, with a very resource heavy client. You can run IRC on just about nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a 16MHz 68030 with 8MB RAM just fine), and I know quite a few quiet little backwaters servers doing exactly that.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Discord is as if IRC and MSN/Y!M/AIM had an orgy and gave birth to an illegitimate child. Discord got it right but wrong. Channels are correct. Image / File sharing is correct Closed gardens and gimmicks with paid subscriptions is where it falls.
    - immibis 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 3y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing a ton of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
blueflow 3y ago
10-15k Users were using it, its quite a big thing. You can see the user count drop around 4th August: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
koito17 3y ago
I pretty much only used Matrix as a glorified IRC bouncer that worked across my devices. When the libera.chat bridges went away, I just stopped using Matrix altogether. Yeah, I am sure it is possible to set up my own appservice, but ERC has been convenient enough for my use case.
- jeltz 3y ago
  I instead stopped using IRC since the Matrix bridge was the by far best bouncer I have used to date. The other bouncers I have used have just been annoying.
brabel 3y ago
I use it, from emacs, sometimes :D when you connect it actually tells you exactly how many users are on it, which seems to be quite a few: ** There are 73 users and 33193 invisible on 28 servers ** 39 operator(s) online ** 75 unknown connection(s) ** 22136 channels formed ** I have 1884 clients and 1 servers ** Current local users 1884, max 2958 ** Current global users 33266, max 34731 ** Highest connection count: 2959 (2958 clients) (25302 connections received) ** - platinum.libera.chat Message of the Day - ** - This server provided by NORDUnet/SUNET ** - Welcome to Libera Chat, the IRC network for ** - free & open-source software and peer directed projects.
nerdponx 3y ago
I was using it, but I kept getting kicked out of channels for idling too long. It wasn't a good experience, and I went back to just using IRC for IRC and Matrix for Matrix.
mickael-kerjean 3y ago
IRC is far from dead. My relatively unknown oss work has a channel on libera which is seeing ~100 message per month Also Slack made the same move a couple years ago, first trying to appeal to IRC users at the beginning and then shut it all off when they had everyone else
- tazjin 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if by the time Matrix is cold as ice, IRC will still see activity. Sufficiently simple protocols have some aura of immortality to them, and Matrix is the opposite of that.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    As is IRC. IRC is only a simple protocol in an ideal world which no longer exists.
    - tazjin 3y ago
      What do you think is not simple about IRC nowadays?
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Obligatory relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/
    - dngray 3y ago
      I think the main benefit of Matrix over IRC, is proper E2EE and multi device support, something that simply isn't possible for IRC clients.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        Agreed, my friend group hosts a private Matrix server specifically for the E2EE (with encrypted history) chatrooms. Makes us all way more comfortable sharing or discussing anything involving PII because we aren't having to trust Discord's systems and employees.
mort96 3y ago
IRC is the best place to go to find developers of a whole host of open source projects. If you work with open source software, not using IRC really limits what you can do and who you can reach.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  This is entirely dependent on what OSS you're working with, and not in any way representative of OSS as a whole.
  - mort96 3y ago
    That might be why I said “a whole host of open source projects” and not “all open source projects”.
    - Klonoar 3y ago
      > If you work with open source software, not using IRC really limits what you can do and who you can reach. No, I was responding to the highlighted line here, which is fundamentally wrong. ;P
      - mort96 3y ago
        I see. That doesn't make a difference though? Not using IRC limits who you can reach. In some projects, all the interesting people are easily reachable through IRC (and less reachable through other channels). Of course there are other projects where all the interesting people are reachable through matrix or gitter or zulip or slack, and if you're interacting with those projects, IRC won't do much to help you. That doesn't mean "not using IRC limits who you can reach" is false; it just means you may not have an interest of interacting with the people who you can't reach without IRC.
- dngray 3y ago
  Not really, just use Matrix and a bridge like Heisenbridge. The experience to me feels native as if the IRC users are using Matrix.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

NewJazz 3y ago

Matrix has a long way to go to compete with IRC and XMPP... Godspeed.

Syonyk 3y ago
It's not really the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. I use both Matrix and IRC, very extensively. Matrix is, for me, a replacement (or a slightly less annoying way) to handle "person to person and local group" communications. And the bridges beat having to run a bunch of other clients for Google Chat, Signal, etc. However, my goal there is to move people onto Matrix, and I've done a decent job of it so far in my circles. IRC is "professional technical chatter during work hours," and I use it as such - as I've used it for the bulk of three decades at this point. There's some social stuff there, but it's mostly "deeply technical conversations in the sort of chat rooms filled with people there for the same reasons." It's very much been a bit of a superpower - build relationships in the right IRC servers and you have a massive "external brain" of relationships you can query for weird questions. I worked at a small IT shop for a while, and people eventually figured out the correlation between "An absolutely off the walls question" and "the clattery keyboard," when I started discussing the problem in IRC. I don't want IRC to be Matrix, any more than I want to bridge "professional chat rooms" into my evening hours (which more and more are simply hard analog, offline, etc).
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  When you move people onto Matrix, what homeserver do you have them use? I've set up a Matrix server for my immediate family and adoption rate has been good so far. I've set up both my parents, and one of my sisters and one of my brothers have signed up, one sibling is being a bit resistant since "I already use a gazillion other chat apps." But, not everyone has a me to set up and maintain a Matrix server, and I'm weary to tell people to just hop onto the main "matrix.org" server since I don't know what kind of experiences there are for people who don't know what they're doing (e.g. Should they put in PII or remain anonymous?)
  - Syonyk 3y ago

broodbucket 3y ago

I've been using heisenbridge[0] to do my Matrix to IRC bridging and I like it. Not a broader solution to the problem since most people don't want to run their own services, but it works well for me and is no different to a bouncer for IRC servers, noone knows it's actually Matrix on the other side. [0]: https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge

kinduff 3y ago
Same here, I really like it. Really easy to configure and setup.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  I just configured one today. Took me no more than 15min. Highly recommend. If you are starting fresh, I recommend using the Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
  - kinduff 3y ago
    Yes! And don't forget MASH [0], its a collection of Ansible roles that is compatible with the Matrix Docker Ansible Deploy playbook. In case you want to add more services to your Matrix server. [0]: https://github.com/mother-of-all-self-hosting/mash-playbook https://github.com/mother-of-all-self-hosting/mash-playbook

shp0ngle 3y ago

What were the "issues" that are not named?

mistrial9 3y ago
apparently some actors used the Matrix bridge to join private chat rooms in Libera without being detected.. AFAIK
- snvzz 3y ago
  Sounds serious, from an IRC perspective.
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    The issue in question here is https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/1332 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/issues/1... (and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/1337 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/133...) which accidentally regressed due to other stability work done for Libera (specifically, keeping the IRC-side connections persistent, rather than reconnecting when the bridge starts). As a result there was an race condition edge case where users on the Matrix side could read history in the IRC channel while still connecting the Matrix users on the IRC side. This was one of the straws that broke the camel's back in terms of Libera wanting the bridge disabled. The other was the confusion over https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/what-happened-with-the-archive https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/what-happened-with-the-archi....
    - snvzz 3y ago
      Not too surprising. IRC has some particular expectations of privacy, including that users that aren't in a room shouldn't be able to read what's going on in the room, and thus archived rooms are an exception rather than a rule.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      That these issues haven't seen as much as even a reply since 2021 makes me understand Libera's point a lot better to be honest. Because it is indeed a serious issue.

jmbwell 3y ago

This seems like an inevitable progression of the de-portaling in July: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/ I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here. Thanks to those involved for the efforts while they could be sustained!

susam 3y ago
I wrote my own IRC + Matrix client to bridge the channels I operate. I've made the source code available under the terms of the MIT license here: https://github.com/susam/nimb https://github.com/susam/nimb If you find any issues, bugs, etc. in this tool, please let me know. Although this tool works well for my modest requirements, someone else may find issues while using this tool that I have not encountered yet. In such a case, bug reports, pull requests, patches, etc. are very welcome!
- progval 3y ago
  You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b8ab697f6d1523d9/nimb.py#L152 https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... and sanitize NUL/CR/LF from the prefix (well, display_name) here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b8ab697f6d1523d9/nimb.py#L155 https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... Otherwise you may have a command injection vulnerability similar to what matrix-appservice-irc used to have: https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-injection/ https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-... (though with carriage returns instead of null bytes)
  - susam 3y ago
    Thank you for taking a close look at the source code and highlighting this issue. > You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes Do you mean splitting on (or sanitising of) carriage returns (CR or 0xD) and newlines (LF or 0xA)? I read your security advisory and as far as I understand, the issue occurs due to improper handling of CR and LF characters. I don't see anything about null bytes there.

Laaas 3y ago

The explanation seems a bit vague. What were the concrete issues at hand?

stevenicr 3y ago
just read - sounds like some complaints from the libera chat side that are too much to fix (?) at the moment.. I'd like to see a post from libera about what they expect someone to do if they take the bridge and take it further to work on other servers.. I still dream of a trillium (sp?) manychat kind of thing that can bridge all things... I get that some want to prevent that - and others even if they want interoperability may have debates about how things should be implemented for various reasons. maybe libera can make a bridge with options and defaults that make most people happy.. but a user of libera myself, but I want an all things work together future - I get that tech stuff can be hard, even without those who want walled gardens and barriers. - fingers crossed for more options in the future instead of less.
- immibis 3y ago
  There was such a post from libera months ago.
kuschku 3y ago
Just a theory: Libera.Chat staff that used to work at Element departed the company due to budget cuts. In combination with the budget cuts' wider effects on the matrix ecosystem, this meant there was little if any hope the issues with the bridge would get fixed.
- pwr22 3y ago
  There were Libera.Chat staff working at EMS???
  - kuschku 3y ago
    Element employed quite a few IRC folk until the recent budget cuts. My experience as IRC client dev was actually what got me hired. (though I also departed Element during the latest round of budget cuts)

INTPenis 3y ago

Some channels on libera have been awful, a ton of [m] names, and long repetitive messages converted from matrix. I know I might be using a dying medium but I enjoy IRC the way it is.

Gigachad 3y ago
Not a fan of IRC, but I agree. Bridges and multi protocol clients just suck. They never work flawlessly and result in a ton of annoyance for people on both sides. Use the client for the group you are in rather than some bodged together bridge.
- dngray 3y ago
  The exception there is Heisenbridge if you've got your own homeserver, supports certfp, and sasl auth too so it's really just like using znc or anything else.
wkat4242 3y ago
The repetitive messages happen when you edit a message in matrix. It resends the whole thing because irc doesn't support that feature.

sitzkrieg 3y ago

thank goodness, endless garbage noise

_8j50 3y ago

The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this case it looks like yet another libera complaint that is at issue, not really matrix's fault I think. The only thing I'll say about matrix is they have a lot of cool features but a smooth/fast experience like discord is the only thing they are missing to compete there but aside from philosophy I see no reason to avoid discord unless I want to operare a server instance. To me it's like webmail, I don't care if gmail or proronmail are opensource as much as I care about their security and reliability. I mean, I gotta applaud all the folks that worked on matrix clients, but there is still much left to be desired, I wish I could help in some way.

smlavine 3y ago
Well, stable for now. Give Discord another two decades to figure itself out and see what happens. When it hits the fan, there won't be a "Discord 2" right next door that everyone can migrate to by changing a URL.
- izzydata 3y ago
  I am patiently waiting for Discord to be sold to some corporation such as Microsoft so we can all move on to the next big thing. I wonder what it will be. Probably not Matrix, but definitely something.
  - Syonyk 3y ago
    Meanwhile, IRC remains there, working, independent of big companies, and low enough resourced that you can host it without too much trouble on very modest hardware and bandwidth requirements. It's the turtle: https://xkcd.com/889/ https://xkcd.com/889/
  - slimsag 3y ago
    What is the next big thing after Microsoft bought GitHub, by that logic? ..or are we all in this thread just not talking about GitHub, it's a necessary evil, etc.?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xwowsersx 3y ago

What communities are y'all in that are only or primarily on Matrix? I haven't seemed to find myself in any yet, but perhaps I'm missing out

COGlory 3y ago
Boiling Steam on Matrix.org for Linux gaming
dizhn 3y ago
The thing is even though not all communities were fully there, they were using the bridges. As far as I know almost all KDE and openSUSE channels were bridged. Now we ended up with a situation where there are still people in the matrix rooms with no connection to the irc users.
joshsimmons 3y ago
There are a number of open source events, projects, and foundations that primarily communicate on Matrix, and no surprise it seems particularly common among projects that build on federated technologies (eg ActivityPub-based projects). That's what got me started on Matrix before I joined to lead the Matrix.org Foundation :)
graphe 3y ago
You aren't. If you haven't heard of social media it lacks sociability: it's only feature. If you want information join mailing lists. Discord and IG is what I usually use; because and only because everyone else uses it.
rch 3y ago
I mostly use it for the Fedwiki and NixOS community channels.
aendruk 3y ago
Seattle social groups, NixOS
nerdponx 3y ago
Neovim, especially now that they no longer maintain their own bridge to Libera.

diamondfist25 3y ago

On the side note, are there anyone whose only using matrix for all the social media apps bridges? I’ve been mucking away for months trying to integrate all social media apps together, and these bridges are obscure and hard to customize/configure for n00bs. Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1

nvy 3y ago
>Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1 Sounds like Beeper
- broodbucket 3y ago
  Beeper contribute to and maintain many of the bridges.
Syonyk 3y ago
I run a few bridges. They're certainly a bit arcane to configure, but they mostly work fine once they're up and running. I run my own homeserver, it's not been too much trouble to deal with. Though I try to move people into the "native Matrix" ecosystem. The bridges are just nice as a transition technology.
alwayslikethis 3y ago
The quickest way to do a lot of bridges is this Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy. I set up Discord, Telegram, Facebook, Instagtam, Slack, IRC without too much trouble. Though if you need a bridge not directly supported you'd be better off doing it manually'

georgyo 3y ago

After the deportling, I just stopped communicating with IRC, but there is a lot of lost there. One of my communities was basically split in half. Ah well... The user drop is quite noticable here: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php After that you can see Libre.Chat is actually growing in users again and at a very consistent pace.

immibis 3y ago
How many of the users were not permanently AFK?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Probably not so many because the bridge already pruned puppeted users that were inactive.

superkuh 3y ago

That's an interesting perspective. For another try reading the multiple attempts the libera team made to accommodate the slow progress and security holes on the Matrix side before the decision was made to close the the bridge permanently. Updates on the matrix<>IRC bridge (Jun 7th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 3rd) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling Delays in Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 28th) https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay Temporarily disabling the Matrix Bridge (August 5th) https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-bridge https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-br... Matrix Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective (August 10th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospective https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv... It was sad to see a few matrix people drop away but most of the activity and users were/are on the IRC side. And of the active matrix users I considered friends most just decided to connect to IRC using a real client. Much like Slack started off with an IRC bridge to bootstrap itself with IRC communities the Riot.im/Element.io corporation no longer feels the need to maintain the bootstrapping and does not allocate resources for it.

carterschonwald 3y ago

One thing that Libera and its predecessors have that is impossible with element and discord and slack is: multiple overlapping communities on the same platform. Maybe matrix/element has that, but I’m not very adept at finding it I guess. Old time original freenode had so many communities.

thedaly 3y ago
Isn’t that how it works with discord? I don’t understand what you mean by overlapping communities.
- johnny22 3y ago
  What they mean is you join an irc server with tons of communities all in one place. Discord requires you to join different "servers" where each switch between communities feels like you're at a totally different irc server (even though technically it's not). On irc you just have one name and that's what everybody knows you by. On discord you have one name per "server". There's not really a lot of cross pollination there. Personally I would like to see a discord interface where there's not a jarring difference between each server. Something more like this hexchat screenshot (although hexchat itself isn't pretty) https://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html https://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html but note the server and channel list on the left. I want something more like that.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Discord is a datamining tracking commercial service. It's just not fair to ask FOSS users to join it IMO.
joshsimmons 3y ago
That is definitely a thing that Matrix has, all the more so because it's a decentralized protocol and many deployments federate with each other.

j3s 3y ago

soju + senpai is by far the best IRC experience & it’s not even close

khimaros 3y ago
i was curious, so i did a bit of digging: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/ https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/ https://sr.ht/~taiite/senpai/ https://sr.ht/~taiite/senpai/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/gamja/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/gamja/
wkat4242 3y ago
For me it's quassel and quasseldroid on mobile.

k8svet 3y ago

I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly. I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago. With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more. This current news just gives me more pause about leadership and vision. This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely. It feels like a massive loss for matrix (bad first impressions, negative impact on network effects, etc) and will undoubtedly be something that matrix detractors will point to for years. I normally keep quiet about this and just huff more copium because I WANT matrix to succeed, but I wish using Element and matrix as it exists didn't make me feel so ... Idk. Normally by now a tech project with this transcripts hits a steady state but man, the protocol is lacking, element web is just passable at the most generous. Element on Android, I won't even speak about, refer to where I want element to succeed. To balance this out - Element x has been pleasantly satisfying lately. I'm curious if the team is deliberately taking a different strategy. New Element is working on basically the intersection of what I think are going to be foundational future "stuff" but seem almost to eager. Meanwhile element x is missing for feature but is, still after months of using it, "blazingly fast".

immibis 3y ago
Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element) and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations. And it doesn't even work that well.
- camgunz 3y ago
  Sorry I don't think anything you've written here is true: > Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2]. > It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element). 2/5 people on the board work for Element [2]. > and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) It does not use a blockchain (there is no proof-of-anything). You might be confusing blockchains with Merkle Trees, but in that case you'd also have to think git is a blockchain. > is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations There are several independent client [3] and server [4] implementations. > And it doesn't even work that well. Maybe not, but it has pretty good adoption [5] [0]: https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org [1]: https://spec.matrix.org/ https://spec.matrix.org/ [2]: https://matrix.org/about/ https://matrix.org/about/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Clients [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Servers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Servers [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Adoption