XSF Discussion - 2023-07-06

God morgen

hi @arc

*waves*

Hmm.

T-2 minutes until the XSF Board meeting. Agenda at https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board-Meeting-2023-07-06 for those who are interested. :-)

I'm going out, so can't gatecrash this time, you lucky people.

awwww

0. Welcome

Hi all!

o/

Who do we have?

Me

Here

Present

Good. Any additional items for the agenda?

I added an item for a finance update.

(other than what's on https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Board-Meeting-2023-07-06)

Oh my, Gajim is eating all CPU. Not sure what's going on.

(I was chatting with Eddie a little while ago so perhaps he’s on his way, too.)

Let's just start, he can jump in.

Yep!

1. IETF MIMI WG / MLS / DMA

I've not followed this topic. Is there anything to report?

I have nothing new to report since the last update.

AIUI some folks are working on an MLS protoXEP, but I haven’t pinged them in a while.

Perhaps MattJ knows more.

Our general conclusion from last time was “good luck to the MIMI WG and MLS seems promising so we’ll work on a XEP about that.”

I don't know if there has been progress on the MLS front, but we should check in with the folk working on that

MattJ: I can do that.

Thanks!

Is anyone planning on attending the IETF 117 sessions (remotely)?

On the MIMI front I don't think there is anything significant to report. There are some new documents published which are worth a look - identifying features of different data models for chat systems

Yeah, I am trying to free up some time to look at those.

I'm not planning to attend IETF 117 in person, but it's worth figuring out if *someone* wants to attend. I'm already planning to be in the US next week, and I don't think I'd be able to stay longer or fly back

Attending remotely should be possible, however

Mimi?

I haven't heard anything about DMA recently, either, other than some public news about entities self-identifying as so-called gatekeepers.

It seems likely that we won’t see significant movement on DMA for a few years, at least based on my calls with people active at IETF.

That is, self-identifying gatekeepers will put in place stopgap measures to “comply” in the short term.

So this topic might not be actionable now and we can revisit periodically if we learn more.

IMHO. :-)

Apart from ensuring we make progress on MLS, I agree I don't think there are any action items here

OK.

sorry, got thrown out of the chat

and figuring out if someone wants to attend IETF 117 is of course an open question

arc: We've been discussing MIMI for months now. If you are unaware of the term, I think you have some reading to do. Start here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/. This is related to EU Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Ah

I keep missing meetings because we keep moving them

IMHO remote participation seems fine at the moment, given the relatively low level of activity. (Tracking the list discussion and document submissions might even be sufficient.)

can we call via members@ please

Meeting time can be discussed under AOB. :-)

arc, check my multiple reports to the members mailing list

They should tell you everything you need to know

But I agree with your assessment earlier, and we can just keep this item on for potential updates.

Moving on?

That’s a good segue into the infrastructure situation.

2. Infra

Because the members@ list archives aren’t visible on the web...

On the DMA one quetsion

@emus fire away!

before we move on

ralphm: you said you had some exchange at fosdem

have you had a chance to follow up here?

For me the follow-up was mostly being at the EU meeting at the end of February.

Okay, but should we engage here again? it sounded promising

Promising in what way. Nothing is really moving w.r.t. the DMA.

but also backing up xmpp in general?

Well, the DMA is moving according to its planned timeline

What I mean is that the clock doesn't start ticking until the EU Commission decides on timelines.

I believe that happens early September

Right.

Yep, September 6.

Fine, but I prefer to be read with what we can do on our side until then

ready

So I suggest that anyone interested reads the documents MattJ mentioned

I think we concluded that in the long term the most useful thing would be to define an XMPP profile for MLS (because e2e encryption support will be necessary eventually and MLS seems like the most promising / common path for that).

Right

Anyway, I don't think we need to go on this. I have limited time today, so let's move on to agenda item 2

2. Infrastructure

MattJ?

https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/. this?

@emus yes, as well as MattJ’s notes to the members@ list

k

AFAICS, the infrastructure situation is still a mess. The only thing I’ve done recently is (manually) add/remove people on the members@ list after the last election.

The main ongoing issue with infrastructure is that the new mailman is not fully configured yet - the most notable consequences of that are lack of the web interface (so no access to archives, subscription or admin interfaces)

Is this Mailman 3?

Yes.

It's also not clear if the lists are currently being archived (i.e. new messages)

Ok. I've put off migrating my own Mailman setup forever.

:-)

We did, too.

Basically we need to finish the installation by adding a web server (likely nginx).

And then check on archiving etc.

From the iteam ML I understood that Jonathan has suggested he can work on things, but I don't know if there's progress.

We’ll restart the email thread with Jonathan.

Cool

I have practically zero mailman (2 or 3) experience, but I can assist with setting up a web server if that's all that's needed

My admin skills are getting rusty and I’m not confident that I won’t blow something up.

I can also of course sit down and figure out mailman setup, but I won't have time for that for at least another couple of weeks

3. Finance

MattJ: we can discuss with Jonathan via email and divide up the tasks.

Agreed

(sorry, everything is laggy here, I assume that the restart suggestion by stpeter was the conclusion)

This is a brief finance update, not a full report.

i have one more point here https://gitlab.com/mailman/hyperkitty and discourse

ralphm: yes

emus: I think from a Board perspective we're done on Infra, but you can participate on the iteam ML or MUC

3. Finance

stpeter?

We currently have $12,700 in the bank, down from $16k+ at the start of the year.

Because of a miscommunication between me and Eddie, as well as the fact that I was traveling, we missed a deadline with Google (by less than 24 hours) and therefore it seems that we will not be paid for our participation in the Summer of Code.

:-(

That would have been our usual way to make up for expenses incurred because we have been at around $16k in the bank for years.

Yes, it’s bad and I’m sorry.

Is there something we can do still?

Eddie pinged people and I don’t think he’s heard back.

By the end of next week we’re supposed to submit a tax form at Payoneer in order to get paid, and I plan to proceed with that as normal just in case.

Let's just do so, indeed

@emus Should I send a separate email to GSoC people? Any word from them?

Thanks

stpeter: That'd be a good move I think.

Also with regard to finances, I will commit to creating a more detailed finance report for 2023 YTD so that we can track things more carefully. I also need to do that for past years. I can add these things as web pages.

Thanks!

That’s all I have for the moment.

4. AOB

Any OB?

Date of next meeting / stop moving the meeting times so that people don’t get confused? ;-)

(Also it seems that the meeting notification didn’t work even though I set it up in our shared calendar?)

@arc would you prefer Wednesday?

I don’t have a strong preference.

I don't care what it is but we cannot keep changing this every month

I've just put https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=64v3vs15qlalgqv0j7r99ikm1c%40group.calendar.google.com on my calendar and have not been confused yet

I have had to put this in my calendar and it keeps changing without updating the calendar

I think it’s been Thursday at 17:00 UTC every meeting this year based on agreement reached in December, but I really don’t have a preference.

ical: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/64v3vs15qlalgqv0j7r99ikm1c%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

I can’t account for the calendaring issues.

But subscribing to the calendar has worked well for me, too.

(Modulo the lack of notifs.)

arc: I'm not sure what calendaring tool you use but just subscribing to iCal should just work.

We can also start sending out 1-week and 1-day reminders just to be sure. ;-)

If you use Google Calendar you can go to calendar settings and add reminders

I use Google and it has not worked in the past because someone keeps deleting the event and posting a new one when they move it, which kills my alarm. So does this new time and date work for everyone next month?

Speaking of which, if we stick with the first Thursday of the month, the next meeting would be at 17:00 UTC on Thursday, August 3.

https://upload.ik.nu/upload/-DhyQPix0LGJrNjF/755cc800-a672-4d7b-95b3-1feabe78e81d.png

Which is:

5. Date of Next

for me August 3 is fine

+1

Great.

6. Close

Thanks all!

I just edited the calendar event to be recurring on the first Thursday of each month.

The ICS link did not work but I added it myself

Yep, thanks.

Thanks, stpeter!

Wednesday or Thursday?

> Speaking of which, if we stick with the first Thursday of the month, the next meeting would be at 17:00 UTC on Thursday, August 3.

Yes that is why I'm asking

That message I quoted says Thursday twice, and doesn't mention Wednesday once. And my calendar confirms that August 3 is a Thursday. So I don't understand why you're asking?

I am not referring to the message you quoted

Back in December we agreed on Thursday.

If that doesn’t work for Arc or anyone else, we can move as needed,

bbiab

Yes we did and several people including you had to change it last minute

I don't care what day it is I just don't want it to change

If some person has double booked it they should not attend

I would love to include everyone every month but the reality is that this changing it for every single person's needs ends up becoming too complicated

I am 6 months out of a stroke, I rely on Google calendar for everything. And I'm the one with the constantly changing schedule with juggling different PT and OT appointments throughout each week, but they are never scheduled more than a week ahead so I don't really care what day its on. If it's in my calendar I will not book another event for the same time

arc, I don't think the meeting was ever moved

There was indeed some confusion about the one in June, but according to the previous meeting *and* the calendar entry, it was on the Thursday as planned

You should check the list archives

Btw thanks stpeter for the reminder today

test

hmm now I can write again

what was the error?

first of all I will likely be off on 3rd Aug, but have the session without me.

Would be great if we can become a more pro-active for our topics of interest and also beyond Board imho. I will read the document of course, too.

stpeter: let me check my mails be fore you reach out. I will let you know within the enxt hour.

MSavoritias fae.ve: > The room is currently overactive, please try again later

ah here too..

how?

it has happened on three different servers all running prosody lately

Because everyone has been enabling limits lately

ah makes sense with two of them. with joinjabber we havent done it

but its a setting i can check

If you haven't enabled it on joinjabber then you won't see it there

ah right the person was talking about another server. my bad

For muc.xmpp.org we're planning to auto-member XSF members, which should help

And of course we can review the limits if they are consistently reached

I have sometimes heard people report reaching the limit when it seemed just normal conversation was happening. So maybe need to tweak it up a tiny bit but it hasn't been urgent yet

chatstates etc.?

The problem is that silent traffic such as chat states count

So when a few people are talking the real traffic is a lot higher than it seems

Oh. Yeah. Maybe just counting a bit less stuff rather than upping the limit is the way

Excluding chat states allows silent MUC flooding 🙂

But they could be counted as half or something

If it's silent why do I care?

Still has the potential to lag clients and consume bandwidth and battery

I guess

I had to mod_firewall someone here who was (presumably unintentionally) flooding me with IQs. I noticed 🙂

Is it the end of presences status ? I barely have one or two contacts that have a custom status in my 400 contacts rosters now.

Yes, for about 10 years

The primary status people care about now is the personal status, not the device status

But we don't have that no ? Should we create a status PEP node ? :D

more PEP stuff \o/

Yes, it was discussed at the summit (not the most recent one) - we need a XEP

There are probably notes on the wiki

Isn't that what presence text is? Personal status?

Not do avoid making new pep nodes ;)

Not when it's per device and disappears when that device is offline

Every proprietary messenger I look at also has device status, but it's not usually prominent in the UI just sort of there

https://about.fb.com/news/2022/12/sharing-features-on-instagram-notes-group-profiles-and-more/

Yeah, there is still a small part for device status to play

Instagram introduced "Notes" recently

Which is nothing more that an account presence status

But per device status messages are not a thing that anyone wants

MattJ: oh, you mean because iPhone. Probably I never see you online so I never get your text

edhelas: sure, many platforms have "stories" now which I think started with Instagram

Yes there is Stories, and Notes which are just "small text stories"

And it's basically just a status, but an image/video instead of text

And it seems there was still demand for text after all 🙂

So we could start to introduce small "social" features like that in our XMPP clients

It's pretty simple to implement as well :)

Yep

MattJ, with Snapchat actually, Instagram copied them quite some time later.

(Re stories.)

Maybe we could start with those small "text stories" ? See how it goes ?

Would it be interesting to do a little survey to ask the clients developers what features they would like to implement among a list ?

Could even build it on top of presence text until something else is standardized, just to try it out

small notes of anything "attached" to my profile sounds cool

It would be basically "XEP-xxxx PEP Notes" : Publish on urn:xmpp:notes:0 <notes xmlns="">My text</notes>

why make it only text though

it can be anything

access_model: roster max_items: 1

> it can be anything "anything' need to be standardized ↺

yeah of course. i was more saying not to restrict it to text 😀

Well, the summit folk wanted text, emoji, photo/video and a ttl

I'm happy to at least rename "status" to "note" in my app

Well restriction can also help.

If you have only text you basically have a common way to display it.

Bring back current activity!!

We can have several PEP nodes for each usages.

> Bring back current activity!! https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0108.html ↺

Well !!!

I forgot about that one :D

Looks like we already have Notes

Not sure about the predefined list of activities though

current activity but without requiring me to transform the html list of activities into a python dict to load into the program

The one thing holding XMPP back from mass adoption is lack of winamp integration

I think you mean that no clients are skinnable with winamp skins

Well I meant "now playing: X" but sure why not that too

moparisthebest, this was present like a decade ago, and then decayed as newer clients didn’t implement it.

I'd like some kind of game integration though

"Link Mauve is now playing Genshin Impact"

:3

Ok discord

I have that directly integrated in PyTouhou, fwiw.

> Ok discord Ok boomer protocol ↺

Hi admins, could you make me a member in this room please?

game integration would be cool

edhelas, you mean dust off 0196?

I once started working on a free reimplementation of libdiscord-rpc.a, which many emulators started to include, but using XMPP underneath.

Then got caught in xmpp-rs not yet being usable and never finished it.

> edhelas, you mean dust off 0196? Yes ! If I had some kind of client to push the gaming state ↺

For that to be useful to me, the systems I play games on would need to be internet connected, and basically none are :P

Mine almost all are, although the main game I play on them is Linux kernel hacking. :3

You don't need integration to set: > Link Mauve: kernel hacking on Nintendo hardware And just leave it :D

But which Nintendo hardware am I working on right now? I’m sure all of my contacts are dying to know it.

Is it the Wii today? Is it the Switch? You will never know until you ask me!

wow... this is really annoying, which ever settings has been chnaged...

stpeter: I can confirm we are able to receive payments

again

so move on

pleaee

please