XSF Discussion - 2021-01-11

> https://trello.com/c/GHGXcYuq/405-how-should-we-approach-txxmpps-pr Ever thought to use some FLOSS instead of trello? Same goes for the usage of github. Why not use gittea? Has also kanban integrated.

purplebeetroot, which floss?

github/gitlab: self-hosting there would require extensive care we cannot afford currently.

mainly because you need to find a good balance between spam protection and opening up the platform for contributors

jonas’: I understand the aspect of spare resources very well. But don't underestimate the floss comunity to care for another. There are several projects that do hosting on donation basis.

Just to name two examples: https://about.0xacab.org/ (riseup for example uses this) https://codeberg.org/ (non-profit org to host for floss project.)

Codeberg uses gittea and Oxacab uses gitlab afaik.

purplebeetroot, IMO, 0xacab.org is already not an option, because you need to go through extra hoops to create/fork more than one repository

Also I don't know whether we want 'acab' in our infrastructure. 😂

yeah, that too

Is there a reason not to leave this to Board?

It's already been left to board, they chose GitHub.

(which is fine, that's where the people are, don't underestimate network effect. It would be nice if people were elsewhere too, but we're not the body to change that.)

For Trello, which to me seems like an internal tool that I don't need to use

(although this is neat, I didn't know the riseup people had a code hosting site)

> Also I don't know whether we want 'acab' in our infrastructure. 😂 Currently you have proprietary mass surveiliance company and patent trolls in your infrastructure. In that regards ACAB does seem like a good trade-off :-p (I'm not into acab, but I would prefer that option over status quo)

> (which is fine, that's where the people are, don't underestimate network effect. It would be nice if people were elsewhere too, but we're not the body to change that.) That is like proposing to better use telegram or what's app because of net-effect.

It won't change until it change.

fI don’t think use of trello over another FOSS tool is very significant, as it is mostly for internal usage, and it should be up to the people who use it to decide to change it or not

purplebeetroot, I personally don’t buy the mass surveillance argument for FLOSS hosting

I’m not one to decide, but for a basis of discussion, you can find a more detailed write up of my opinion here: https://sotecware.net/on-centralisation-of-code-hosting-infrastructure-an-argument.html

> it should be up to the people who use it to decide to change it or not 100% agree. I can still dislike their decision for several reasons

> purplebeetroot, I personally don’t buy the mass surveillance argument for FLOSS hosting Using github is bringing promotion and marketing for microsoft as a trusted entity.'..when even all the floss project trust microsoft then, microsoft must be ok'

that is a very simple view of the things.

We have a mission that involves changing XMPP. We don't have a mission that involves changing GitHub. It's as simple as that. If we want to survive we need to be on GitHub, if that changes I'm sure people will reconsider.

And it was up to the people who use it and they decided on GitHub.

> that is a very simple view of the things. And? You believe it's wrong?

it is inaccurate, as I said earlier.

Remember how microsoft support(ed?) ICE? That police force to arrest and deport thousends of (non)migrants even arresting kids? You bring marketing to microsoft. You can do so much better.

purplebeetroot, not with the resources we’re given

"pick your battles"

The XSF is not here to decide if Microsoft's contracts with ICE are good or not. End of story.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with you, but convincing the XSF to abandon GitHub isn't going to fix anything, it's just going to hurt the XSF.

We need to stop relitigating this every few months.

Yeah, sorry purplebeetroot, you missed this discussion and it's too soon to have it again.

All you're doing now is wasting energy that could have been spent on making XMPP better.

> We have a mission that involves changing XMPP. Yes. And which actions will be taken, will happen in accordance to the own culture and moral standarts. I'm only here to remember you about the later.

also, to be clear: self-hosting is not an option resource wise; moving to a not-quite-yet established obscure platform hosted by volunteers is also not an option stability wise.

gitlab was considered for the editor team, and I’m inclined to burn it down again because it’s not working as reliably as it seemed in the first few months anymore.

GitLab is utter garbage, unfortunately. I have never used worse software except maybe Confluence. Trying to find anything in their maze of options is a nightmare, its slow, etc.

GitTea is okay if you want a GitHub like flow. Sourcehut is nice if you want an email flow (but still very early and *very* buggy in my experience)

We're barely keeping up with the services we do self-host, possibly apart from this very XMPP / MUC server 😉

> GitTea First time I've seen that spelling 😀

Isn't that what it is? Something like that

Ahh, Gitea. I knew it was something involving tea.

IIRC it's pronounced like Git-Tea

Their logo involves tea, so I just assumed it was spelled out.

Maybe that can be used to convince ITeam Lead of using it!

Reminder that I don't drink tea and I think cricket is jolly boring

YOU DON’T DRING TEA?!

> The XSF is not here to decide if Microsoft's contracts with ICE are good or not. End of story. If XFS does not support basic human rights, I'll call the board to step down. If the board is not capable of knowing of mass deportation is bad, reflect, listen, diversivy the board... Your posistion is harmfull to xmpp. And that is why this discussion also matters to xmpp.

purplebeetroot, you know what’s harmful to XMPP?

distracting from actual on-topic discussion with things simply outside of the scope of the XSF. The XSF is not a human rights organization.

Ok, let's not let this conversation get out of hand

I'm a board member and iteam lead. We can barely manage our static website, we can't self-host source control right now

How many of the board members are non-white-cis-guys?

I personally have disliked Github since before it was cool to dislike Github. I'm open to solid proposals for alternatives... but right now nothing has come up

What is cis again?

Any migration itself is a lot of work and effort

mdosch, It's not the topic of the XSF main discussion channel at least.

Of course.

purplebeetroot: again, I don't disagree with you on any particular thing here, but jumping down peoples throats isn't helping your case. This is why OSS (and the left in general politically) always seem to do such a bad job at everything; we (including myself, not speaking for anyone else) tend to tear eachother down and evangalize instead of actually trying to fix problems. The XSF is trying to fix problems by creating a more open, distributed chat network. We can't deal with every other problem under the sun too, we just don't have the people power. Please stop arguing.

> Any migration itself is a lot of work and effort I agree and not everyone can do so. I understand. But neither does this make the arguments to migrate invalid. If I sounded like :'You must migrate or you're evil.' Then I'm sorry. This is not my intenf

I think a valid point was raised about Github, and I don't think (m?)any of us disagree with moving to something better

But lack of action is not because we are against human rights, it's that we all also have a life outside XMPP to deal with, and coordination is not trivial

purplebeetroot, I guess you can convince most people at the XSF to migrate to some self-hosted source control with just something like 5000$/months donation (please advance donation for at least 24 months) so we can pay sysadmin and servers to run it 😀

Yes please

But this gets back to fundraising and such

Hmm, actually right now I'm in a situation where I would gladly take paid infrastructure work from the XSF 🙂

> But lack of action is not because we are against human rights, it's that we all also have a life outside XMPP to deal with, and coordination is not trivial Someone else said: > The XSF is not here to decide if Microsoft's contracts with ICE are good or not. End of story. Mass deportation is anti-human right. Sure, main purpose of XSF aren't such desicions, but they are still important and if ones infrastructure supports mass deportation, then I believe it's a valid question to reflect as XSF on it.

> MattJ escribió: > Hmm, actually right now I'm in a situation where I would gladly take paid infrastructure work from the XSF 🙂 Yes and also what larma state with a bit of fun: I think essential work like this should be arranged, and if necessary by payment. I think a first good step would be to define what work should that be and then we can look how much of that we could pay if necessary. There are other options than having fulltime employees, too. ✏

> purplebeetroot, I guess you can convince most people at the XSF to migrate to some self-hosted source control with just something like 5000$/months donation (please advance donation for at least 24 months) so we can pay sysadmin and servers to run it 😀 I don't understand this. Migration is done one time. That's the additional work. Hosting can be done by existing services.

purplebeetroot: there are no good, reliable, free existing services.

purplebeetroot: We cannot make right all the bad in the world and changing without haveing the resources (please believe us, its not that simple), wont change anything in the world and likely make it bad if we destroy our own infrastructure with spontaneous moves.

purplebeetroot Have you been here before? I don't recognize your nickname.

> purplebeetroot Have you been here before? I don't recognize your nickname. No. First time this MUC.

Most of the people here are intimately familiar with many of the infrastructure that we're using, the policies that we're following, and the challenges that we have. If they tell you that we've looked at it, and, apart from the whole discussion whether this is warranted or not, is simply not achievable now - I tend to believe them.

(Maybe not the best intro of myself that start I had :-p)

You can keep pushing, but that's not getting you anything but annoyance.

++

Whether it is where we host our stuff, or our choice of XML to base our protocol on, or the fact that this weird dude is the Chair of our foundation, starting out to ask for change is certainly not the best way.

I am sympathetic to your question, but as always, there are Reasons™ for why things are like they are, and change requires effort. Preferably from those that wish it.

Or when people show up and ask why your FOSS project isn't on Github yet and when we're switching. Or switching away. Or changing the name of the default branch.

Other then that I think MattJ point is important

Zash: and Mercurial, I'm sure.

ralphm: Didn't wanna draw attention to that, we haven't had our annual "hey why aren't you using git(hub)" yet.

Zash, well it _is_ early in the year

Might as well have it covered for 2021: No, we're not doing that.

Handy reference for future use: https://logs.xmpp.org/xsf/2021-01-11#2021-01-11-10a1c75991220571

Should we have XMPP apps listed here? https://www.securemessagingapps.com/

Probably, yes

Does someone that can read/write Dutch have time to answer this? https://community.freedom.nl/t/reuring-over-whatsapp-hoe-stuur-je-meekijkvrije-berichten

A discussion around 'safe' IM that a new ISP in the Netherlands is having.

> Guus escribió: > Should we have XMPP apps listed here? https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ I placed an enquiry

👍

Lets see what comes. If I have further technical question I cannot answer I will ask those here

I will also make a suggestion I will send to him based on the existing table (of course if one is quicker than me, please go ahead)

FWIW, e2ee is just one part of the puzzle.

ralphm: Was about the netherland article said?

Yes. In all discussions around this, the focus is on end-to-end encryption, but there are other factors that are important. E.g. how do you connect to other people without revealing your address to a third party. Message archives. ✏

> Does the app have self-destructing messages?

funny that this can be a requirement

emus for which clients did you do it ?

Nothing yet, I was wondering if we should just place XMPP there, but of course that can be distracting and misguiding Otherwise I may use Conversations and Monal

XMPP isn't an App

Dino, Gajim…

They put Element/Riot

you can play the same game and list a few XMPP apps

at least it's a way to show that all those clients are compatible

we can even promote things that way

"The biggest end-to-end federated network"

> Zash escribió: > XMPP isn't an App I know, but I rather thought using it as collective placeholder for whats "knowingly" established

edhelas: yes, ok if that is possible

edhelas. Indeed, self-destructing messages are a courtesy of a receiving application. Unless you can tightly control an application so it isn't tampered with, I feel that it is a misfeature that gives a false sense of security.

(the same goes for issuing a request to delete a message that already left your domain of control)