XSF Discussion - 2022-03-25


  1. moparisthebest

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

  2. MattJ

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

  3. Zash

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

  4. goffi

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

  5. moparisthebest

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

  6. moparisthebest

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

  7. moparisthebest

    Thanks MattJ Zash

  8. larma

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

  9. mjk

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

  10. mjk

    now that's badass

  11. MattJ

    People, seriously

  12. jonas’

    what did I miss?

  13. MattJ

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

  14. jonas’

    are you kidding

  15. MattJ

    I'm not

  16. MattJ

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

  17. jonas’

    s/Final/Frozen/? ;)

  18. MattJ

    s/Final/Dead and buried/

  19. jonas’

    though then people will complain about '30 being frozen

  20. Menel

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

  21. moparisthebest

    Stable -> Final, Final -> ReallyFinal

  22. moparisthebest

    eh, can't fix stupid :)

  23. Zash

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

  24. moparisthebest

    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 ?

  25. mjk

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

  26. Link Mauve

    Let it go~

  27. moparisthebest

    Stahp

  28. mjk

    nnnnnooooooo

  29. mjk

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

  30. mjk

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

  31. moparisthebest

    iirc the base docx spec is thousands of pages

  32. mjk

    th-the _base_, huh. okay

  33. moparisthebest

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

  34. moparisthebest

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

  35. mjk

    Ah, the olden days of turning vml into svg

  36. larma

    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.

  37. mjk

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

  38. MattJ

    So we should ban E2EE, for interoperability

  39. MattJ

    Got it

  40. mjk

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

  41. mjk

    Lol

  42. moparisthebest

    Sounds right

  43. moparisthebest

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

  44. jcbrand

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

  45. jcbrand

    Could probably be done again if they were forced to interoperate

  46. moparisthebest

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

  47. jcbrand

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

  48. jcbrand

    > 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

  49. jcbrand

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

  50. Link Mauve

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

  51. Link Mauve

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

  52. jcbrand

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

  53. jcbrand

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

  54. jcbrand

    Yeah MSN also had XMPP support

  55. jcbrand

    We were so close

  56. moparisthebest

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

  57. jcbrand

    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

  58. Zash

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

  59. jcbrand

    Yes, our Matthew needs to defeat their Matthew

  60. Zash

    It's going to be Wild!

  61. jcbrand

    👯👯‍♀️👯‍♂️

  62. jcbrand

    Those are supposed to be cheerleaders

  63. moparisthebest

    nice one Zash

  64. jcbrand

    I like my puns intended

  65. jcbrand

    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?

  66. jcbrand

    Other questions could you what motivates people to volunteer time.

  67. jcbrand

    Another question could you what motivates people to volunteer time.

  68. jcbrand

    Another question could be what motivates people to volunteer time.

  69. jcbrand

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

  70. Matthew

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

  71. Matthew

    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

  72. Matthew

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

  73. Matthew

    (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)

  74. MattJ

    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)

  75. MattJ

    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

  76. Matthew

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

  77. Matthew

    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

  78. Matthew

    and it definitely takes time :|

  79. L29Ah

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

  80. Matthew

    knock yourself out :)

  81. emus

    Well, technically we are in contact with DE government people

  82. jcbrand

    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?

  83. Matthew

    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.

  84. Matthew

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

  85. Matthew

    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.

  86. Matthew shrugs

  87. jcbrand

    > 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.

  88. Matthew

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

  89. L29Ah

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

  90. jcbrand

    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

  91. jcbrand

    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.

  92. Zash

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

  93. jcbrand

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

  94. jcbrand

    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.

  95. jcbrand

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

  96. Zash

    Note to swag committee: Boulder racing stripe stickers

  97. L29Ah

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

  98. emus

    Ah wow, cool you are here actually Matthew

  99. Matthew

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

  100. Matthew

    plus bridging ftw

  101. emus

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

  102. TheCoffeMaker

    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

  103. TheCoffeMaker

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

  104. L29Ah

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

  105. qy

    > 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

  106. TheCoffeMaker

    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

  107. TheCoffeMaker

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

  108. TheCoffeMaker

    I can check my backups

  109. TheCoffeMaker

    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

  110. TheCoffeMaker

    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

  111. TheCoffeMaker

    But thats a global market issue I guess