XSF Discussion - 2019-06-09

xmpp for ios

Hi again. :) I've been running an IRC channel for my open source project at work for six years and a contributor has been pushing lately for something more modern. I asked to go ahead and open a GitHub issue with his requirements and he did, a couple days ago. XMPP is certainly more modern than IRC but I'm not sure if it meets all of his requirements: https://github.com/IQSS/chat.dataverse.org/issues/7

pdurbin: other day i say xmpp is much better than irc and they comment it is incorrent. i again i say xmpp is much better.

Nothing will ever satisfy everyones requirements

neshtaxmpp, that's sad. Maybe that person hasn't used XMPP much. It's really good! I've been getting back into XMPP lately after a decade or so off. :)

Zash, yes, it is ever thus. :) Can't make everyone happy.

pdurbin: what on that list isn't satisfied by XMPP

moparisthebest, well, I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm still getting up to speed with what I've heard called "modern XMPP". :)

someone know for ios xmpp client.

pdurbin: I don't see anything not satisfied by 2005 xmpp muc either...

Flaky Connections maybe

> IRC is not very helpfull in highlighting the existance of other channels or the activity that happens there. Neither is XMPP. A concept of a group of channels that are related would be nice to have.

Put it in the topic? I've never seen anything with that actually

pdurbin: sad is that zash was in this channel that they ban me. peoples dont like true: https://conocer.xyz/upload/photos/2019/06/aO8HBaIRGWnZNK1nXj14_07_0facdc41ee7c106050b368cf88efb3da_image.png

eh

Zash: how is your friend pep from cluxia illuminati.

Zash, are you saying that it's not straighforward in XMPP to have several channels or rooms under a single "workspace" (Slack) or "community" (Gitter)?

Tho if you run a MUC per such group then that sorta works, but that needs DNS setup and stuff which adds overhead

pdurbin: muc.xmpp.org is kinda such a thing

pdurbin: if xmpp make general' like irc... and xmpp. irc + xmpp = then nobody will complaint.

pdurbin: is new xmpp and for that classic peoples prefer irc...

Zash, is muc.xmpp.org only available via XMPP? I tried going to it under HTTP in the hope of seeing related rooms, kind of like how I can see a bunch of rooms under the jupyter "community" at https://gitter.im/jupyter/home

pdurbin: Logs are at https://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/

pdurbin: The point being that all the rooms/channels hosted on it are related to the same topic

pdurbin: Problem being that you can't easily do that without running your own server

pdurbin: all rooms need dns

Altho I do like it if more people run servers

pdurbin: you want a web UI for it? You have options there, probably Converse or movim

Zash, it sounds like you're saying that https://logs.xmpp.org is the HTTP view of related channels, similar to the Gitter "community" example I gave.

pdurbin: It's a public view of the logs

Zash, yes. Ok.

moparisthebest, I don't worry much about flaky connections with Conversations on Android. I don't even notice when I lose signal. It's a great user experience.

pdurbin: right current xmpp handles that well

moparisthebest, and yes, a web UI is essential. Thanks for the suggestions. I've heard of Converse but not movim.

neshtaxmpp, interesting. I didn't know that XMPP rooms each need a dedicated DNS entry. It's been a while since I helped run an XMPP server and I didn't set it up.

Rooms don't need DNS; the MUC service does

Zash, thanks, that makes more sense. :)

So does an IRC service

And a http service

sure

pdurbin: are you looking for a free service or is self-hosting also an option?

oli, sometimes I can convince a community member to run services for the project so I'd say that self hosting is probably an option.

self-hosting gives you more options and more control

Incidentally, rather than clutter that issue the contributor opened with a comment by me with clarifying questions, I've taken the description in that issue he opened and left comments on various points in a google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18-4MrbSHYhcxvuFs1alAz0Opm_JTkRK2E0bafAxAHSI/edit?usp=sharing ... comments are welcome!

Zash, sure, makes sense.

We are having our 5th annual conference for our project in a week and a half and the question I'm anticipating is, "Can we shut down the #dataverse IRC channel and use Slack, instead?" I'd like to avoid this. And I'm wondering if XMPP would be a good choice. Public logs is one of my main requirements but as you can see people in the community have their own ideas of what they want. :)

pdurbin: if you are looking for a slack like experience, I think mattermost is quite easy to install. Unfortunately it doesn't speak XMPP/MUC

pdurbin: In my experience, everyone has their own ideas of what they want. The hard part is figuring out what you really need.

oli, do you know if Mattermost can be installed in such a way that logs are public? I know this is possible with RocketChat because that's how Inkscape runs it: https://chat.inkscape.org

pdurbin: I don't think that feature is included. It's most likely doable with a bot are you can use the API.

oli, bummer. Thanks.

I wonder how hard it is two write a MUC component for mattermost / rocketchat / slack / whatever

oli: That does what?

offering all mattermost channels as MUC rooms

So a gateway/transport/bridge/thing?

could be also implemented as a bridge

(those were all words for the same thing)

is it?

gateway and transport are words used by XMPP since the early days of Jabber, bridge is what Matrix calls it

oli: https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge/ btw

it doesn't bridge transparently

bridge over bots

That's one way to do it

Doing it as a component that acts as a MUC service is another

biboumi does a pretty good job at that for IRC

For my project's use case, potentially switching from IRC only, it would be nice if a future service supported both IRC and XMPP, the way Slack used to. But this isn't a hard requirement for me. I guess I'm ok with non-standardized interfaces like whatever Gitter or RocketChat use.

Zash: and I thought a gateway is something else in XMPP: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0100.html

> One distinguishing characteristic of Jabber technologies from their earliest days has been the existence of gateways (also called "transports") between the Jabber network and legacy instant messaging

oli: There have been IRC gateways since forever and they usually act like a MUC service

Zash: > All existing client proxy gateways require a Jabber User to register with the Gateway before sending messages or presence through the gateway. Although strictly speaking registration is not required (e.g., a Gateway could prompt the Jabber User for credentials every time the user attempted to communicate through the gateway, or once per "session"), in practice this step is required.

For connecting to services that require an account (ie ICQ and MSN) yes. IRC often doesn't, but can require it anyways.

This "Document how to set up a Gitter-like user experience" issue I opened is where I'm tracking if it's feasible to switch my project from IRC to XMPP: https://github.com/modernxmpp/modernxmpp/issues/21

pdurbin: you can join IRC channels from an xmpp client with biboumi and that makes them act like xmpp mucs

Or you can spin up an ircd backed by a muc service https://github.com/moparisthebest/xmpp-ircd allowing IRC clients to join your real xmpp muc

But at least mattermost is Foss unlike slack

moparisthebest, cool, these are great. Thanks!

RocketChat is also FOSS and seems like it supports public logs out of the box (again the Inkscape example above).

Are there any open source projects that aren't already oriented around XMPP that use XMPP as their primary chat platform? Would Dataverse be the first if we switch from IRC to XMPP? Or do open source projects mostly just use Slack these days? Does this question make sense? :)

Good question.

I'm glad it makes sense. :)

I can't be the only one who cares about chat standards. RFCs for IRC and XMPP.

IRC, especially Freenode, hosts quite a lot of FOSS projects still

Sure. And six years ago when I started the #dataverse channel, freenode was a competely normal choice.

Freenode was growing in adoption back then: http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/irc.002.jpg

I'm not really sure I understand what <no-permanent-store/> is for, any example?

anti-MAM

You wouldn't use no-store?

An offline message store might keep a message until it's delivered, while an archive (MAM) might keep it longer.