XSF Discussion - 2022-03-25

Where are the rules regarding membership? I thought it was in xep-0001 but doesn't appear to be

moparisthebest, https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/bylaws/

moparisthebest, https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0345.html may be of relevance as well

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-digital-markets-act-imessage-whatsapp-interoperable

goffi: if only there was some standard they could use for that eh?

Sounds like it'll be more like "each operator request API keys and implement this custom WhatsApp thing"

Thanks MattJ Zash

moparisthebest, it would still allow to have proper bridges. Better than what we have right now.

> [EU] can fine a company up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue.

now that's badass

People, seriously

what did I miss?

Today XMPP is a failure because XEP-0352 (CSI) "is stable, but not finalized"

are you kidding

I'm not

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30802195

s/Final/Frozen/? ;)

s/Final/Dead and buried/

though then people will complain about '30 being frozen

Rename it again.. Stable will now be named final. And later you make versions regardless.

Stable -> Final, Final -> ReallyFinal

eh, can't fix stupid :)

Don't let them make us waste more effort on renames

larma, you think so? or will it be like microsoft "open document format" docx that they made so complicated no one could implement it correctly on purpose, not even them ?

no Frozen plz (and no Deprecated -> Frozen 2 either)

Let it go~

Stahp

nnnnnooooooo

is it the open part of docx that's really terrible, or their _extensions_? ;)

in this sense, they better not make the APIs xmpp-based :D

iirc the base docx spec is thousands of pages

th-the _base_, huh. okay

The rumor is they did this on purpose so they could claim it was "open" while guaranteeing no one could implement it

That was back when companies were afraid of anti-trust enforcement, remember those days?

Ah, the olden days of turning vml into svg

moparisthebest, well, document formats in the likes of docx are inherently complicated. I remember the days when a file was displayed differently depending on the printer configured on the system, because printers report printable areas and the software wants to adjust to it. I don't think it's feasible to make instant messaging such complicated without looking like doing so intentionally, which would probably be causing issues with EU regulators.

Unless they woo the regulators with e2e crypto, which is easilly believable to be "inherently complicated"

So we should ban E2EE, for interoperability

Got it

Akthough, EU could just say "don't bother with e2ee"

Lol

Sounds right

Also send a copy of every message to the govt so they can verify interoperability is correct

For a short while back in 2013 I had OTR encrypted chats with Facebook contacts via Converse

Could probably be done again if they were forced to interoperate

POLICY VIOLATION: CANNOT IMPLEMENT GOVT MANDATED CSAM SCANNING PLEASE DISABLE ENCRYPTION

> For a short while back in 2013 I had OTR encrypted chats with Facebook contacts via Converse Facebook account to Facebook account... They never federated like Google ✏

moparisthebest: you joke, there are powerful forces in the EU and other countries (UK) that wasn't to circumvent EE2E

For an extremely short while, I could connect to MSN as well.

I don’t remember if they had s2s or not, probably not.

UK gov recently paid a public relations firm to launch an anti-encryption campaign ✏

Yeah MSN also had XMPP support

We were so close

yep https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/01/uk-paid-724000-creepy-campaign-convince-people-encryption-bad-it-wont-work

Matrix (Matthew) already has an article out about the proposed EU legislation. The CEO of XMPP really needs to step up his game and get the public relations team to write an article about how this is good for XMPP

Yeah, Matthew, come on! Chop chop! Write something! /s

Yes, our Matthew needs to defeat their Matthew

It's going to be Wild!

👯👯‍♀️👯‍♂️

Those are supposed to be cheerleaders

nice one Zash

I like my puns intended

Seems like every few months I get an email and questionnaire from a university student doing "research" on funding (or somesuch) of FOSS. Personally I'm curious about the XMPP community. How many people use XMPP as part of their job (i.e. as a way to get paid), if so, what do they do with it etc. Anyone else interested as well?

Another question could you what motivates people to volunteer time. ✏

Another question could be what motivates people to volunteer time. ✏

Maybe ties in a little with an idea that emus had, to get people to celebrate XMPP by saying why they like it

fwiw i wrote https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/25/interoperability-without-sacrificing-privacy-matrix-and-the-dma myself

and if i were working on xmpp i'd have thought it'd be a way better use of time to write an equivalent one for XMPP

rather than sitting whining on HN about how Matrix isn't an IETF standard, or whatever.

(that said, if anyone does know a PR team who are able to write intelligent things about why interoperability is good, i'd love to meet them ;P)

Matthew, FWIW I'm aware of the people you mean on HN who are always going on about that at every opportunity, but I don't recognise them as anyone here (or XSF members)

But yes, we do generally need to write more... our "PR team" are all volunteers who write what they can when they can, so it's sporadic

i may be misremembering nicks (or conflating ^za..$ nicks together) - apologies if so

and yeah. i guess i don’t feel me writing blog posts or sitting on HN is my dayjob either and i’m doing it as an enthusiastic volunteer for matrix

and it definitely takes time :|

so, can we just take the text and s/Matrix/XMPP/?

knock yourself out :)

Well, technically we are in contact with DE government people

Matthew: hi, I didn't know you hanged out here. I didn't want to imply that you didn't write it yourself, I was just trying to be funny (and maybe failed). I find it a bit strange that you call yourself a volunteer though, don't you get paid to work on Matrix?

matrix is an opensource project i started in my free time, and then persuaded my dayjob to let me work on it, and it spiralled from there.

so it's both my FOSS side-project and my dayjob, for better or worse

my rule of thumb is that anything i do on matrix.org i consider FOSS side-project, and anything i do on element.io is my dayjob.

> matrix is an opensource project i started in my free time, and then persuaded my dayjob to let me work on it, and it spiralled from there. It's a fantasy of many that you managed to achieve, so respect for that.

:) not entirely sure that having your hobby become your dayjob is a good thing

a good hobby ought to have the potential of becoming a dayjob

Everything has tradeoffs and downsides, but if you can work on something that you are philosophically aligned with and which interests you, I'm pretty sure it's better than most alternatives

You probably get a lot of meaning out of it which is very important for life satisfaction. Coming back to my questionnaire idea, I suspect a lot of the volunteers here do it because of the meaningfulness it gives them.

Also because it was more fun to work on XMPP stuff than arguing with people about moving to XMPP from whatever proprietary things.

Yeah, I was just going to say it's also fun 🙂

I'm just chipping away since 2013 and still making progress and having fun. Sometimes it was my dayjob and many other times it was something I could only do in evenings and in weekends.

I like watching the boulder roll downhill before I go down after it so that I can push it up again

Note to swag committee: Boulder racing stripe stickers

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/files/2017/02/cncartoons_1300.jpg?x45884

Ah wow, cool you are here actually Matthew

in the absence of in-person fosdems, i've got to hang out somehow :P

plus bridging ftw

👍 ah speaking of brdiging: https://opencollective.com/bifrost-mam but havent followed whats going on

If this works for u I been working on Argentinean public sector for several years on interoperability matters including trying to get XMPP as the standard for systems interoperability (its being use in aome areas but they do not actuall

Sorry ... My daughter touched the screen ... Letme try again

i have a matrix as a standard for interoperability idea: a matrix of buttons for text input into computer systems

> emus wrote: > 👍 > ah speaking of brdiging: https://opencollective.com/bifrost-mam > but havent followed whats going on I feel like there are higher priorities w.r.t QoL on the bifröst

If this works for u I been working on Argentinean public sector for several years on interoperability matters including trying to get XMPP as the standard for systems interoperability (its being use in aome areas but they do not actually use is for im, but for other kind of near realtime systems communication) ... The problem, this is mainly why I left is the lobbies ... From local companies and global corporations (the same that all we know) ... Most of interoperability is abt data sharing not IM ... But then big public sector areas (like ministries) have their management trying to do business with their firnds and then u get the whole ecosystem broken

I wrote some highlevel documents abt interoperability ... And XMPP were always the protocol taken as example

I can check my backups

I been using XMPP as example because it meets all the features required for interoperability and the most important is being an open standard ... Also been working on geoinformation interoperability with OSGI members ... This side of interoperability is where we had more success

The other problem ... Besides lobbies was the lack of trained developers ... Only in scientific areas we found developers and scientists that understood the value of XMPP as interoperable protocol

But thats a global market issue I guess