XSF Discussion - 2020-07-01

an IRC Channel wich I entered via bridge asked me to register my nick. Somebody knows how to do that?

Talk to the NickServ user or equivalent?

/message NickServ%irc.foo.bar@gateway HELP

Maybe someday authentication in IRC will be mainstream and you'll be able to sasl everywhere o/

On the more modern services, you can use your NickServ password as the server password and be authenticated automatically. Sometimes that even kills your ghost

There exists a nick serv user? ok. For the other channel I used it seemed to have worked automagically.

äh where? pep.

> msg: Command does not exist > Try using the //msg or /say /msg construct if you intended to send it as a text.

when I type it in my jabber client in the irc channel :D

eevvoor: /message of course depends on your client

here I use poezio

Oooooooooooooooh

just initiate a chat with that user

Here it looks like you did /me ssage

hehe

"here"?

here = jabber world

In Dino

ah no Zashs client

https://cerdale.zash.se/upload/A7sZVqKvyhggxDpD/a6614e25-d5a3-4689-82fb-0ba77945c8af.png

ah it is literally NickServ. Is it case sensitive?

Zash :D

Zash, something something semantics in body? :x

IRC is not case sensitive

Even though.. I think I did mention that in some PR

Nor is XMPP for the localpart

lol dino

https://github.com/dino/dino/pull/699#pullrequestreview-338018551 (github won't load the comment here..)

> Zash, something something semantics in body? :x ;-P

we all know not sending an action intent and parsing body is always better

(/s if it's not obvious enough)

you should’ve sent a sarcasm intent

!xep message tone

jonas’: oops

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0014.html :D

I have to admit I'm not entirely sure what to do with that information as a client

As a user sure

ok thank you pep. nickserv answers came very slowly to me but now it worked.

:)

Do I have to register on every irc server anew I guess?

Yep because they don't federate

okk

wrong

you have to register for every irc *network* anew

IRC servers *do* federate

sure..

but what you mean is probably network

I'm not sure what IRC does in what I would call "federate"

But from a user perspective it's about the same. On XMPP it doesn't matter if I'm running a server cluster or a server (apart from reliability)

Even in the single IRC days, it was more like a single logical cluster

Maybe it's the same on XMPP in the end. There's one federated network of public servers and many private networks. They're just not as exposed as IRC

Someday the one federated network of public servers may even split, who knows..

I expect that to happen over spam fighting policies

Each XMPP server has its own namespace tho, while IRC networks share the user / channel namespace.

jonas’, I also expect that to happen over privacy and CoC policies :x

You need a CoC to run an xmpp server now?

Don't you need a CoC to do anything? And if you don't it's just implicit

Where's that report that looked at some xmpp server privacy policies, considered them insufficient but didn't actually link to them?

Search for 'admin in the middle'

Don't we have that kind of s2s fragmentation already? Dialback vs strict cert validation? Onion-only servers? Admins blocking each other out of spite? ✏

On my private server I'm already blocking not based on tech nor spam

(and then what do you define as "spam" anyway)

now I wonder what you’re blocking based on

ideology. I don't want to federate with fascists servers

I don't think we'll have the same issues as the AP fediverse, where content can be replicated via multiple paths, so you need to go all Eris and block instances that federate with any instance-non-grata

pep., what do you think does that achieve?

(maybe this belongs into the other room)

pep., but will you federate with servers that federate with those?

Zash, sure

jonas’, what do you think that doesn't achieve

> ideology. I don't want to federate with fascists servers pep., hope you have 1488.io on your list then. Better don't look at the website, it's disgusting.

!XSF_Martin, didn't know about them. good to know

jonas’, just like I probably wouldn't federate with any GAFA nowadays if they used XMPP again tbh. Capitalists coming for EEE, get lost.

Once you are in a position of monopoly that's true

Nowadays GAFA has more to lose than to win when federating. ✏

I don't buy that big players don't have anything to win not federating

Being able to federate - mostly in - allows you to draw new users into your services and keep old users on your services out of convenience.

We have very much to lose for sure

'we' as in the xsf?

The XMPP community

The XSF is leaning towards big players anyway already

whatever they think "neutral" means

yeah - i'm strictly speaking about 'cool social network'

who don't want to federate to keep their users in a walled garden

er want to

> Being able to federate - mostly in - allows you to draw new users into your services and keep old users on your services out of convenience. But the silos is where the users are already. By opening the silo some may pour out whereas everyone who wants to be there is already there. Who would say 'I was not on facebook so far but now they federate with never heard of xmpp, let's sign up at facebook'?

walled garden's entire business model is based on keeping users locked in, they'd close before they'd federate (because federation would just be a more costly slow closure)

the problem is when people leave the walled garden they leave in mass numbers.

just to go to the next one, I don't think facebook is worried about that

problem is once they are gone they aren't coming back in most cases

if you have the convenience they can use a service and folks outside can still interact with you you both keep old users and draw in new users since they still interact with your user base

that's a problem for everyone except the big players you want to federate

most users seem perfectly fine with having 5 or 10 accounts that can't communicate

14:01:38 pep.> The XSF is leaning towards big players anyway already citation needed

just wait, someone will launch a(nother) app that brings all various chat services together

I think the mistake is thinking you're always going to be a big player. Basically only google maintains the level of integration where it's a mountain to leave

and people will say that it's oh so convenient and less clutterred

nice thing with xmpp is it doesn't just have to be chat :)

jjrh, google is so not concerned with continuing to be a big player they destroy their entire community every couple years

well yes google is uh weird like that.

facebook owns, how many different social networks? and doesn't even federate between their own

jonas’, the fact that the XSF decided to be politically "neutral" is reason enough to justify this quote. There is no such thing as politically neutral. (which differs from actively engaging in political activities)

is that in reference to that open letter thing?

The open letter is just one example

I think the stance is sensible fwiw

I think that's bs

while also acknowledging that lobbying for that cause would be good, but it’s not the XSF’s place

you also don’t see the IETF lobbying

xsf is politically neutral except copy left licenses are verbotten :)

My point is whether or not political activities are carried as a separate entity, there is no such thing as neutral

where are they verboten?

pep., why?

any group is going to project the political values of their members in what they focus time and effort on

pep., it's impossible to to netural but you can make a conscious effort to avoid bias

Just like how the law is made by and for the ruling class. A judge applying every and all decisions following these laws (staying ouside of the "politics") will privilege one type of person over the other which is inherently political

comparing the XSF with a judge is inappropriate

to both the XSF and the judge

the goal of a judge is not neutrality, but fairness and justice.

Which are quite subjective things

I don't see the inappropriate-ness sorry

pep., in which way does or should the XSF have a role similar to a judge?

It doesn't play the role of a judge, but it does encourage, or rather doesn't discourage, certain type of behaviour, by being neutral

which is ok by me

Just like the judge could make the scale go one way or another by following the law more or less

the goal of the XSF is not to judge or encourage behaviour. the goal of the XSF is to document and shepherd the XMPP protocol.

And to me that means the XSF doesn't discourage prominent behaviours in our society, thus not actually being neutral

what jonas’ said

where we *should* be encouraging or governing behaviour is regarding how the protocol is extended in an official way.

how the protocol is used is out of scope

and it most certainly is a rats nest I do *not* want to get into

> pep., in which way does or should the XSF have a role similar to a judge?

well a very recent and perfect example is "we judge this protocol to be un-implementable outside of GPL and deem it unfit for XSF standards"

moparisthebest, see my message *right* after that

well, not quite right after that

but a bit above yours

and, again, we settled that discussion

(where's that reference XEP?)

please don’t bring it up again

that is a judgement though

"we"?

moparisthebest, 14:23:24 jonas’> where we *should* be encouraging or governing behaviour is regarding how the protocol is extended in an official way.

and it's not settled, I'm still waiting for the promised 0001 update from Kev

> where we *should* be encouraging or governing behaviour is regarding how the protocol is extended in an official way. > how the protocol is used is out of scope How is any of this neutral

and to be clear I fully understand these last few months no one saw coming and has been utter craziness which is why I haven't been pushing for that update :D

pep., "how the protocol is used is out of scope"

jonas’, yes

that’s neutral

is it?

why not? ✏

Because we know who are the main users of the protocol, namely big tech companies not having to redo the work

so?

(and regarding the other quote: well, yeah, judging how the protocol is extended is exactly the one job the XSF has; that is where we’re *not* neutral, we’re trying to be sane by having committees to decide things)

that’s kind of the point of having standards

if you don’t like that, roll your own thing with a non-liberal license, e.g. AGPL based.

I personally think it's not enough

non-liberal?

You're using scary words :p

sorry for that

but I’m kind of serious

(even though I generally advocate the use of AGPL and the likes)

(the non-liberal-ness of the license *does* have its use as a political mean)

it is *not* the XSF’ place to govern who is using the protocol for what purpose in which way. It really very much is not territory I want to go in to change that, because it’d make everything a huge mess.

even though I’m, personally, not fond of some military use cases and of course not of faceboogle using it for their silos.

(I generally prefer "permissive", so I don't have to justify what "liberal" means or doesn'T)

ah, yeah, let’s do s/liberal/permissive/ on what I just said

(I prefer that terminology actually, but the word wasn’t coming up in my head) ✏

the XSF is not primarily there for the normal jabber IM end users

we (the normal jabber IM end users and developers) need an org which is there for us, because otherwise we don’t have a voice loud enough, that’s for sure.

that’s also a thing we all know, but nobody has the resources to spawn such an entity

jonas’, whether I want the XSF to go that way I think is another topic. I just want the XSF to stop pretenting it's neutral

but that’s no reason to abuse the XSF for that.

Our main users are corporate and we are aware of that

I still don’t see how the XSF is not neutral in points where it aims to be neutral.

but now my head starts to hurt which isn’t exactly great

(probably unrelated to this discussion and more related to the ramp up of heat from yesterday to today)

> Our main users are corporate and we are aware of that Is this a bad thing?

(but it’s also not helping)

Daniel, that's up to you to decide

Just saying it's not neutral

pep., we can’t be made responsible for who our users are, can we?

Sure we can

or are you saying that we specifically cater for one set of users and not the other?

We're empowering them

in the way the protocols are written?

how do we do that?

The "how" is still very much up for discussion, that doesn't make the whole thing moot

DISCLAIMER: I feel this is going in a direction where I need to say the following: (a) I am speaking for myself in this discussion and these are only my personal views (b) My personal views can be changed by application of reason and argument. Just because I say one thing today doesn’t mean that I do or will firmly believe this to be true forever.

pep., not sure if you got my question

how do you think are we empowering corporate users?

jonas’, gotta say not many people seem to have that (b) and I couldn't have more respect for that :)

( moparisthebest: I think actually that many people do, however, nobody believes that they do and instead the moment someone says something one doesn’t like, they’re blocked/ghosted/... instead of having a reasonable discussion.)

By giving them access to a ready to implement protocol (and often ready-to-use free software implementations, but we can leave that out of the XSF's hands). We know that a majority of our users (in actual numbers, for the very few cases we display on the website there are many more we don't know about) are a specific type of users, and by being "neutral" most of the XSF's work will eventually benefit them.

pep., I don’t see how the first part is specific to corporate users.

We also give that protocol to non-corporate users.

It’s the user’s (= developer’s) choice which protocol they use to implement their stack.

We do indeed, but one type has effectively more resources than the other

That is true, and probably the reason why there are more users of that type.

where is the lack of neutrality?

This is the lack of neutrality?

I can’t follow

are you saying we need to simplify the protocol so that users with fewer resources are more likely to be able to use it?

why do I feel like this is going to end up discussing licenses

jonas’, As a (somewhat remote? maybe not) example: You know about GHGS (green house gases) and you'd like to reduce the amount per year. There's many options in front of you, you could just 1. let people do because you think they'll do what is best for the planet, 2. impose a tax on GHGS producing activities, but then this is mostly gonna affet poor people, because those with resources don't actually care much about a few $ increase, 3. you could for example impose quotas saying a person can't produce more than X a year, putting less pressure on those with less resources. All this to say there's different ways to go about something and each and every decision is going to affect a different group of person/entity (the earth in this case). Also called trade-offs

pep., and I think the XSF is doing a pretty good job to not at all influence the chance of success or failure of entities using the XMPP suite.

if you can point me to a point where we’re not doing that, I’d be curious.

« The mission of the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is to build an open, secure, feature-rich, decentralized infrastructure for real-time communication and collaboration over the Internet. »

I think the XSF is far from achieving its mission

Where is the promotion of decentralized infrastructure

indeed, I wonder what the word infrastructure is doing there

Where is "open"

because the XSF is most certainly not building any infrastructure and never has ✏

well I would read this as "help build"

https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/mission.html for reference

Promoting decentralisation in itself is certainly not neutral anyway. And most of our users are certainly not using this feature

So..

but it's politically neutral I'd say

what is

> moparisthebest > and it's not settled, I'm still waiting for the promised 0001 update from Kev It's still on my list, but I'm afraid the last few months have not been good for me. In ways not obvious from the global state. I have a load of stuff when life is better, and I will get to them.

promoting or aiming for decentralization ✏

Syndace, it's definitely not politically neutral to promote decentralisation

Not sure where you got the idea

Syndace, why not promote centralisation instead?

pep., the mission statement is leaving me empty handed argument wise right now

however, I can’t really see how this works together with a neutral organisation we want to be

"we"

That's why I want the XSF to be clear about what it wants to achieve

(by "we want to be" I mean what people have been advocating in the past)

pep., I agree with that

And I don't think it can achieve what the mission statement says by being "neutral"

maybe the mission statement should be reviewed by board, together with the open letter and the arguments on the members@ list

pep., I also agree with that

the mission statement is IMO pretty much contradictory to being fully neutral.

/mute 24h

I'm sorry you refuse to take part in this discussion

pep., not so harsh please

jonas’, we've already had it in commteam@

a few weeks ago

From a quick skim, this seems to be yet another sub-discussion of a "discussion" that has been going on for a very long time now

I'm quite sure I know where everybody stands

I don't know how preferring one technology over another technology is political. But if it is, then I guess no single entitiy on this world can ever produce a product without also being politically biased.

Syndace, indeed :)

MattJ, sometimes it’s good to refresh that impression, because of the (b) I said above ;)

MattJ, in addition, I was indeed not aware of the official XSF mission statement which seems conflicting with some things said on members@ recently.

but I’m not going to ping you anymore, off to a meeting next door

> And to me that means the XSF doesn't discourage prominent behaviours in our society, thus not actually being neutral And technology is never neutral, as its made by society (choices).

at least is a result of it

It sounds like pep.'s argument is based on the premise that a organization or individual can not truly ever be impartial. Thus a organization shouldn't try conveying they strive to do their best to be impartial because that cannot possible be true.

yeah that's a good summary

While I agree a organization cannot be impartial - especially one run mostly on a volunteer basis - I think it's worth making it clear you at least /try/ to be impartial to contrast from organizations or projects that take the complete opposite stance and base decision making solely on political arguments (like the GNU project)

Well there are two stances it appears the XSF is going to have to decide between. Either promoting "open" and "decentralized" infrastructures, or trying to be "neutral"

(Again putting neutral in quotes. Because to me that's similar to "equal chances for every potential user" when we all know the starting line is not the same for everybody)

I think it's more if interoperability is the number one criteria. Like would the XSF accept a XEP (or work to standardize one) that has some technical issues but has massive deployment.

And does the XSF actively try and reach out to companies deploying non standardized extensions to try and get them standardized?

("lol no?" scnr)

It seems not interviening is what the XSF means by neutral

the freer the market..

I think this describes most of the XEPs :P > Like would the XSF accept a XEP (or work to standardize one) that has some technical issues but has massive deployment.

Is there a example of a XEP that Riot,Eve online,epic, etc uses that the XSF standardized?

Ie they use XMPP, but do something non standard for a feature

they don't tell people about those things do they?

Seems to me that one could connect to Riot Games' chat with a free software client, so it's possible to see what they send you, but then they might also very well filter based on other parameters

No, but one could either try and get them involved to standardize it.

riot games was stuffing xml into message bodies

encoded xml that is

if I had to guess most aren't standard-izeable (is this a word?)

it's much easier to not worry about interop if you control all ends

I wonder what are the feared outcomes of make more clear statements on e.g. the mentioned XSF mission? _(or "being more political" what was also discussed)_

I think it would be benefitial to reach out to companies deploying XMPP solutions to try and get them to document and publish their work and in cases where they have duplicated features of existing XEP's work with them to make changes so they can adopt a existing standard.

emus, I guess conflict of interest mostly. Some members working for entities that don't actually federate or are anywhere near "open"

pep., those groups will still benefit working with a standards body.

jjrh, yeah but not with the current XSF mission

(which the XSF just doesn't apply)

Also why I'm not entirely happy with "open standards", but that's another topic

Note that I'm not saying this kind of deployment shouldn't exist (as much as I wish it didn't), I understand sometimes people make compromises. But there is such a thing as acknowledging your own stance.

"We do not write code; instead, we make it possible for others to write code. We listen to developers, service providers, and end users regarding the kinds of problems they want to solve, and we work with them to create protocols that solve those problems. "

How doesn't that apply to a company looking to extend XMPP to fit their use case?

I think it does

Are there any technical people from Riot,Epic,Cisco,etc involved in the XSF/standards process?

Nowadays I don't think so. Maybe some years back there would have been Cisco people

Just like there's been Google people before

No clue how you reach out to those companies but to me having those companies involved would be beneficial.

Cisco is actively deploying XMPP for their Unified Communications platform for instance.

Is that in their interest at all

Which is one of the reasons I think we should push for it instead of relying on the (in)famous market

I’m still in the backlog and may not even read all of it, but this stood out:

16:02:59 pep.> (Again putting neutral in quotes. Because to me that's similar to "equal chances for every potential user" when we all know the starting line is not the same for everybody)

yes, the starting line is different

no, I do not want the XSF to be the org rectifying that

Then you agree we're just following the status quo?

s/following/encouraging/ maybe is a better word

pep., regarding the XSF? yes

what do you mean by status quo?

The quote above basically. Meaning we acknowledge some groups will be more advantaged than others wrt using our protocol. We're fine with not interviening.

yes

I wouldn’t call that encouraging

I do, but I can see that one would prefer using a less .. word (I'm missing the word..)

active

yeah ok

I don’t see us particularly endorsing that state, because that would also not be neutral.

Cisco being involved in the standards process benefits them in the sense they: get their say in standards, they decrease effort required to build new features, they can use existing XMPP servers, client libraries, etc

jonas’, endorsing is what I was looking for indeed.

And how is us acknowledging this not "endorsing"

(while I'd say not endorsing it is just putting our head in the sand)

(looking the other way*, not sure which one is french which isn't)

pep., I looked it up in a dictionary, and 'to endorse' has multiple translations to german, one of which I can support, the others I don’t as a meaning in this context.

the one I support would be "billigen", but many others translate to something more active than that.

so if your interpretation of "endorse" is more close to the german "billigen" than the german "befürworten", we might just have a slight language issue here

If that's "just" changing our level of implication I think that's not really interesting to clear up.

pep., it’s just that

in my head, endorsement would entail preferring this particular effect of us not being partial in who our users are over any other potential effect

i.e. that we prefer having helped whatsapp as closed silo to rise instead of a free and federated IM network

which would neither be neutral nor a message I could stand behind

Well one could argue that by knowing who are potential user base is mostly going to be and not doing anything about it we are indeed "preferring" it to some other distribution

one could argue that, but I don’t think that argument makes a lot of sense

This is us passively doing this

no

you can’t passively do something

We could also actively influence

But we prefer not to

yes, but that would be taking a side, which would not be neutral.

I don’t want the XSF to take either side

Well you're taking the side of the current distribution by not taking one

this is not our hill to die on.

I don’t think that’s true

I'm just saying what I said above with different words tbh

likely

who our* potential :x

indeed

> emus, I guess conflict of interest mostly. Some members working for entities that don't actually federate or are anywhere near "open" Ok, but it doesnt automatically mean we are excluding them, right?

them?

Whether the protocol is still made available to them is up for debate, I can see many options (1. Yes no strings attached, 2. Yes for a fee, 3. Yes with a specific license, 4. No, etc.).

But even if "Yes", there are things the XSF can do to try to counter-balance

I feel if we went down that route .. we’d spend even less resources on actual standards and too many resources on that meta stuff

If we went down that route we might even be able to pay people to work on standards :)

I don’t think that would necessarily be a good thing

Planned economy vs unplanned economy? :)

I think it’s not the XSF’s place

If you make XMPP and the value the XSF adds attractive to the private sector you will end up with folks being paid by their employers to work with the XSF to develop standards. Same way a good chunk of people working with the IETF are paid by their employers to do that work.

It has always been the case that people have been paid by the private sector to work with the XSF, to differing degrees.

Yep :)

jjrh, that's definitely not a goal of mine, but I can see how it's attractive for some. I think that's actually what makes the XSF not neutral in any way. Why would it be easier for these entities to spend resources on this and orient the protocol some way rather than some other, just because they do have resources

(And that rejoins my "not everybody starts on the same starting line")

Because at the end of the day they still need consensus from the community. They still need to provide good answers for or against technical issues.

The community? you mean paid people working say as a council member? (as an example)

(or not directly paid, but working with that entity's interests in mind)

You of course need to choose the right people to be council members.

"You" being other people from the same distribution? :)

pep., are you saying the XSF should exclude corporate members?

or do you have the impression that the current or previous council was imbalanced between corporate and non-corporate uses?

jonas’, I'm not (I don't have a very clear opinion on this, I leave that up for debate)

I think what 'corporate' means here is probably far too vague to be interesting.

(Even though I know it's already pretty much debated..)

(from my knowledge, the current council consists of four independent and one paid member, if we count daniel as independent)

Kev, that's true

Daniel is a paid XMPP developer, no?

What I'm saying is that if we endorse, or let things be, we'll "obviously" end up with that same distribution within our ranks

It could quickly become "anyone who makes money selling or deploying XMPP solutions" which I suspect most people here do to some extent.

I'm not asking for the moon I'm just asking for people to acknowledge it

I'm in favour of diversity, FWIW. Not of exclusion.

hah, which falacy is that

I think that a Council that's a mix of client and server devs (and other) across a range of backgrounds is a good thing.

Saying I'm not inclusive?

jonas’ raised the point of whether people with a commercial interest in their work on XMPP should be excluded from Council.

Yeah and that's not what I'm talking about anyway. pep.> What I'm saying is that if we endorse, or let things be, we'll "obviously" end up with that same distribution within our ranks. [..] I'm just asking for people to acknowledge it

So we might as well say we're inclusive, if we don't do anything about it we'll always have the same distribution of people

Just like saying "It's not our fault there's no woman in tech it's their fault if they don't come"

Kev, hey, no

sorry, I did *not* want to make that impression that I’d support that

jonas’: I didn't say you endorsed the position.

thanks

But I think it was you who raised it?

I thought that was where pep was going

yeah no

which I then understood

I am not attempting to put words in people's mouths.

Kev, I didn’t want to say you did, either

I just wanted to make sure that noone feels offended by this debate

Oh I'm sure some do :x

and I wanted to make sure that nobody would assume that I hold that position or something

And that's fine to me, it's not my problem if they don't assume their position

Kev, so, my "hey, no" was more like "hey, you, no I didn’t want to say that, please don’t think that" not "hey, I didn’t mean that! Don’t claim I did!!"

so, no offense taken or intended

someone else pasted in Conversations MUC but it seems pretty relevant to paste here:

https://rocket.chat/how-kinghost-increased-team-efficiency-with-rocket-chat-2/

> But to everyone’s surprise, it (XMPP) failed to deliver. The XMPP protocol tool didn’t provide basic features such as group chats. It only allowed one-on-one conversations, making it difficult for larger teams to collaborate.

OMFG

deswegen gibt es auch keine WA Gruppen moparisthebest :D

is ja WA under the hood

The xmpp protocol tool™

"However, as an ever-growing tech company", maybe they should have looked here first..

Also I'm curious what they mean by "didn't provide basic features such as group chats"

We went through great lengths to find the one xmpp protocol tool that doesn't implemt muc

> pep., are you saying the XSF should exclude corporate members? I think that is a misleading question and obviously out of his point ✏