The thing I wonder is; we have a quite good solution XMPP - now why follow the hype just to get something that may be very dubious...?

Am 8. März 2022 11:27:58 MEZ schrieb "Daniele "Mte90" Scasciafratte" mte90net@gmail.com:

Considering that FSFe is using Matrix I don't think that is a problem.

Also this page was published in 2020 and in the meantime various things are changed (like protocol versions). Like Riot the client now changed name (I don't remember why honestly). Another thing is that is FOSS so should be easy to confirm the fact that send data to matrix central servers (and what kind of data anyway?). In my experience vector.im is used for login authenthication but I never studied how works.

To me the real issues with Matrix are the UX that is very bad comparing to any other chat solution.

Daniele Scasciafratte - OpenSource MultiVersal Guy daniele.tech https://daniele.tech - @Mte90Net https://twitter.com/Mte90net - GitHub https://github.com/Mte90 - Italian Linux Society council member http://www.ils.org/ - Mozillian https://people.mozilla.org/p/Mte90 Mozilla Reps, Mozilla TechSpeakers, WordPress Core Contributor https://profiles.wordpress.org/mte90, FSFE member https://fsfe.org/, LibreItalia member http://www.libreitalia.it/, Wikimedia Italia member https://www.wikimedia.it/ and LUG Rieti founder http://lugrieti.linux.it/. Il 27/02/22 09:13, Dr. Trigon ha scritto:

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Has anybody read https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html ? What is the position of fsfe regarding these issues?

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Matrix, now, is a different story. My family and those friends I care about the most had no issues adopting Element.

So XMPP basically lacks in a good cross-platform GUI like Element. That's a point I came across also.

The article you linked raises some very worrying issues which I was not aware of; thank you for pointing them out. But,

Your welcome! ;))

I don’t much like the tone it is written in. For example (paraphrasing) “Matrix developers responded, but we didn’t even read that because we don’t care”.

I agree on this the tone is provoking and theatric, indeed.

And third, I don’t think absolutes like “Matrix sends a lot of data” are the

What I was told in other places is Matrix uses a lot more of server ressources also because it shares / distributes a lot of user metadata between servers. May be something like 10 times as much ressources.

best way to look at this. How does it compare to similar widely-used services like Signal and Telegram? How does it compare to an XMPP setup with similar functionality and user experience (I assume that such a thing is possible nowadays, it wasn’t when I last used it)? I think it would be useful to know where Matrix stands in the landscape of communication tools, and to see some path it could take to get to a more privacy-friendly position.

I agree that would be intressting indeed.

One point to make is about privacy. Basically it is not possible to setup any chat nowadays without at some point needing to thrust somebody else - except you host it yourself and for that you have to dedicate a serious amount of time and you have to really (really) know what you are doing.

Greetings

Thanks for your reply.

First of all, "may be very dubious" cannot be the foundation for a decision. Can you provide facts to support your doubts that take the

I agree. It should make you cautious and intressted in gathering more facts and information. Thats what I am after.

did not discontinue XMPP at all [^1]. Teams can freely decide which

I like and apprechiate that. And it's part of the reason why I am intressed in discussing the facts and info with the people here.

Free Software and offers additional value for our community, and

What is the additional value? (just curious)

see defects or bad developments, but let us also try to fix these issues. If they are unsolvable, one should at least try to make the competing software solution (in this case XMPP, but also sysinit etc)

That is another good point. What facts would make you state "it is unsolvable"? To me the critics cited target the foundation of Matrix and from that I concluded even if it can be fixed it might be very costly and thus it's not worth the try. Just thinking aloud...

Thanks and Greetings

Thanks a lot for the details on this decision!

Hmmm, I am wondering whether its fair to say that to me it looks like XMPP development has slowed down and Matrix is still going strong? As I would assume all point from your list could implemented in XMPP as well, right? (again this efficiency-centric thinking ;)

Greetings

Am 16. März 2022 17:23:51 MEZ schrieb Max Mehl max.mehl@fsfe.org:

~ Dr. Trigon [2022-03-16 15:10 +0100]:

...

...

Free Software and offers additional value for our community, and

What is the additional value? (just curious)

In the process of FSFE teams deciding to switch to Matrix, quite a few have been brought up. IIRC, just from the top of my head and rephrasing:

• Reactions to messages (like thumbs-up)
• More people use Matrix, therefore easier to attract new audiences
• More reliable archiving
• Upcoming features like polls
• Federated rooms with multiple addresses allow preserving a room if the

"original" server it was hosted on is offline temporarily or permanently

• Easy and seamless encryption, also for group chats
• Spaces allow for easy hierarchy and organisation of rooms
• Feels more actively developed and at the same time usable on all

servers. Good interoperability of advanced features

All these points may have downsides, and in some cases XMPP may even be better (e.g. OMEMO has a few cryptographic advantages in terms of perfect forward secrecy). Also the client side of Matrix is admittedly far from perfect as the protocol is developed rapidly. Again, it's not an obvious choice, and I hope that fair and healthy competition benefits both (and more) worlds.

...

...

see defects or bad developments, but let us also try to fix these issues. If they are unsolvable, one should at least try to make the competing software solution (in this case XMPP, but also sysinit etc)

That is another good point. What facts would make you state "it is unsolvable"? To me the critics cited target the foundation of Matrix and from that I concluded even if it can be fixed it might be very costly and thus it's not worth the try. Just thinking aloud...

That can be a hard or soft fact. If the repository owner or project lead is unresponsive and thereby let's the project die slowly, issues are unsolvable, at least in this space (forks to the rescue). Also a license change to a proprietary license is a hard no-no for our community.

But it could also be that you have personal difficulties with lead developers, or that you generally dislike the strategy of a project. Well, instead of badmouthing the project then, I am suggesting to invest your energy in a project or initiative you prefer.

Best, Max

-- Max Mehl - Programme Manager -- Free Software Foundation Europe Contact and information: https://fsfe.org/about/mehl -- @mxmehl The FSFE is a charity that empowers users to control technology _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion

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Hi all,

Am 17.03.22 um 08:04 schrieb Dr. Trigon:

Thanks a lot for the details on this decision!

Hmmm, I am wondering whether its fair to say that to me it looks like XMPP development has slowed down and Matrix is still going strong? As I would assume all point from your list could implemented in XMPP as well, right? (again this efficiency-centric thinking ;)

Well, many things can happen, so much for sure. Personally, I won't hold my breath for it, though.

XMPP had such a long time already to evolve into a good standard I fail to see how it could happen anymore.

There was some talk about "easy xmpp" about five years ago, did anyone hear about it afterwards? Sometimes you need to go with the flow, everything else is just wishful thinking in my opinion.

Best wishes Michael

This is an intressting read, thanks for your thoughts.

You are right that some patterns on how we think and what we value should be reflected and questioned.

I am a tech guy and thus I also tend very much to think in 2 categories only; working ("good") and not working ("bad") solutions. And from point of efficiency; why try to find another solution to a problem that has been solved already. But this tech or analytical kind of thinking is to simple to cope with full complexity of life (..., the universe and everything).

Greetings

Am 16. März 2022 16:33:05 MEZ schrieb Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk:

On Wednesday, 16 March 2022 12:37:26 CET Max Mehl wrote:

...

On a personal and general note, I sometimes wonder about the energy some people put into badmouthing certain projects in lengthy posts because of personal taste or disliking a person behind the project. This did not happen in this thread or by the initial poster, but I recently see it a lot with Matrix or of course also systemd.

There's a pervasive attitude in Free Software thanks to the influence of broader commercial and social culture, particularly American-style capitalism, where there apparently has to be a winner and, therefore, losers. So, a lot of energy is spent pursuing the zero-sum game of hustling for one's chosen winner and/or denigrating the competition. Ever heard anyone tell you that you should "stop needlessly competing with us and join our project instead"? That gets said quite a bit in Free Software, certainly in the Python community.

The zero-sum game thing showed itself when people started to consider alternatives to Facebook: pretty quickly, there was a lot of hype for Dispora with the usual media focus on the personalities involved, plus a lot of product focus rather than a focus on standards and interoperability. Personally, I don't pay a lot of attention to this form of communication, but I understand that things have since settled down. I guess everyone realised that the opportunity to be the one wearing the crown and ruling the kingdom wasn't really there.

Our wider societies are largely consumerist and focused on "brand name" solutions to everything, and it is arguably easier to deliver such messaging than it is to communicate a more complicated and nuanced picture. Counterintuitively, it seems that although competition and choice are supposedly valued, the last thing that people seem to want is to be confronted the existence of competition and the need to actually make a choice.

Then again, this is understandable: things like privatisation have effectively conjured up pretend markets that compel everyone to choose something that should just be provided uniformly and in a reasonable way, and choice in such a context is less about preferences and more about avoiding being exploited and overcharged by middlemen. The UK energy supplier "market" has recently been learning about this the hard way, although such "financialisation" has been underway for years in various countries.

...

Is that helping Free Software? I don't think so. Sure, we should have a close look at software solutions, criticise them based on facts if we see defects or bad developments, but let us also try to fix these issues. If they are unsolvable, one should at least try to make the competing software solution (in this case XMPP, but also sysinit etc) better than the one one is criticising; there have to be valid reasons why users and projects switched to the newer software apart from "hype". With this, we could achieve much more for the benefit of user freedoms as a community.

I agree that people should absolutely invest in alternatives to the latest trends and fashions. One damaging element of our societies has been the running down of their resilience by people deciding that any form of duplication of effort is "inefficient" and therefore unnecessary. As noted above, however, there is considerable resistance to pursuing such parallel initiatives. It even becomes internalised and considered as common sense or some kind of natural order: for example, why bother doing this or that when "you can just put Linux on it"?

Here the case of systemd is actually illustrative, too, often being presented as a controversy based on technological ideology: one side wants to further a particular technological agenda; the other apparently rejects that agenda and appeals to earlier ideological principles. Soon enough, the discussion gets heated and personal, which is, of course, unwelcome and regrettable. But nobody really addresses the social and commercial dynamics that underpin the real nature of the conflict.

As with other technologies, like the Free Software desktop environments, by the time end-users get to use the software, a bunch of other people have decided precisely how the experience is going to be. And increasingly, if those end-users don't like what they see, their complaints end up being brushed off as "entitled" or unappreciative of the vision or hard work of the designers and developers of that software. (Never mind that the designers in various cases are pretty visionless and seem to have little sense of the history of the technologies in which they claim to be authorities.)

But what chance do the end-users actually have of influencing the result? They can get involved and presumably be told to "pipe down" when making their suggestions, so as not to upset the visionaries, or they can fork the entire software stack, which is hardly realistic. One can argue that many influential Free Software projects are barely participatory at all in a genuine sense: "volunteers are needed" to get the work done, of course, but one has to work one's way up the equivalent of the corporate ladder to steer the effort in a different direction.

The consequence is a rather more understandable degree of frustration expressed by people feeling that they are experiencing a loss of control. When a language like Python or a distribution like Debian or Fedora obliges its users to do unnecessary extra work or see their systems break, just because someone wanted to freshen up some element of the technology, and when dissatisfaction about such matters is met with condescension and hostility itself, I think that some reactions are understandable, at least if they are communicated respectfully.

To return closer to the original topic, I think it is worth asking whether we, the users, can exercise control over the technologies involved, and if one appears to be suffering from a lack of investment, then we must ask whether it is feasible or desirable to overcome its deficiencies and make it more appealing. From what I remember of XMPP, it rather suffered from "neat idea syndrome" (messages being XML documents that are incrementally parsed, when XML itself rather rests on notions such as well-formedness), specifications that were verbose and yet incomplete in critical places, and the usual proliferation of extensions driven by corporate opportunism. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be salvaged in a more sensible form.

Paul

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On Thursday, 17 March 2022 09:54:42 CET Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:

Hi Paul,

to me your statements are too general to lead to more insights. You draw specific conclusions from observations made on a much larger scale, so I cannot see a valid chain of arguments. The follow paragraph is an example, but others display the same problem.

I know what you are saying - that I have made claims but provided few specific examples or evidence - but having been editing a certain collaborative Web site over the last couple of years, and having chased down citations for lots of claims and assertions (or, alternatively, correcting what has been written and also providing citations), I didn't necessarily feel that I had to multiply the amount of time spent writing what was a fairly casual message in order to take it to that other level.

Am Mittwoch 16 März 2022 16:33:05 schrieb Paul Boddie:

...

There's a pervasive attitude in Free Software thanks to the influence of broader commercial and social culture, particularly American-style capitalism,

A lot of Free Software initiatives are located around the world, e.g. KDE is very strong in Europe.

Here are some numbers on geographic distribution of Free Software contributers and it shows that the US is contributing less then a fourth (<25%) so it is 75% from the rest of the world. (See table 1 of Wachs, et. al 2020 [1])

I was imprecise by saying American-style capitalism. What I actually meant was "West Coast capitalism". In other words, a culture that promotes aggressive competition and the rapid growth of businesses at the expense of healthy competition...

To me it is unlikely and unplausible that "American-style capitalism" is the decisive influence of a "pervasive attitude" in the Free Software movement and leads to

...

where there apparently has to be a winner and, therefore, losers.

This is not about where the contributors are, but about the dominant cultural mindset, rooted in myths about technological progress and the companies involved. I have just spent two years in academia again, albeit in a support role as opposed to actually doing research. What is increasingly evident (and has been for some time) is the prevalence of the West Coast paradigm in academia and educational institutions, and in more than one respect.

Firstly, universities are now "incubators" for start-up companies, "innovation" and commercial exploitation. Read the pontification of university executives and while they may talk about noble things like academic freedom, collaboration and the traditional "bread and butter" issues of such institutions, what mostly seems to excite them is the potential for researchers to monetise their research and make lots of cash. Of course, one cannot merely make lots of money without denying others the chance to do the same, so naturally the "intellectual property office" has to be involved to patent everything.

Parallel to this particular stream of influence is the effect on the tools and technologies used by the students, researchers and institutions themselves. It is quite evident that where computing technology is concerned, most of the people concerned pick and choose the latest and greatest brand-name products without any further thought about what such choices entail. Some of that is driven by supposed economic necessity: why invest in solutions when you can buy them?

So, one encounters a pantheon of different tools and solutions (Google products, Microsoft products, Zoom, Slack, Mattermost and so on), some of which are actually not supposed to be used due to privacy and security issues, but does that stop anyone? In my experience, even institutionally approved tools can end up on the list of forbidden products, but that is hardly a surprise when people lobby so hard to get their hands on the latest toys.

Even in the more mundane area of getting work done in the field of writing software, there is a parade of tools that emerge and become the new best thing, obviously at the expense of what existed before. Some of them do address use-cases which need addressing, but others are just seeking to displace existing solutions in order to chase revenue.

For example, Docker became the fashionable solution for distributing software (never mind that practically all containers are based on existing software distributions), but then there was Singularity and this was the hot new thing, although it has now been forked by the Linux Foundation and renamed Apptainer. (Do keep up!) Meanwhile, the Python-related software distribution companies who have never willingly collaborated sensibly with operating system distributions are trying to carve out maximal market share: today, Anaconda is the darling, but ActiveState wants to reclaim the throne.

For communication software like instant messangers (and chat rooms) this can also be explained by the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect and it is not limited to Free Software or software.

And it is very natural. Your personal choice is under pressure if many of your peers or people you want to communicate with are on a certain platform. So even without any suggested special attitude there is a competition. And competition can be a good thing as it creates choice. (It can also be a bad thing, this depends on more factors, I won't expand on this here and yet, just explain why your argument is not conclusive.)

Of course the network effect explains why people want to use particular technologies, but you don't get a network effect without building a critical mass to start with. And the way people usually believe that this might be done is to get "mindshare" at the expense of the competition, because all the investment that is required in hosting such platforms needs to pay off at some point, and that isn't likely to be forthcoming if a company is not "dominating" a particular market.

Obviously, if there were broader investment in infrastructure and an investment paradigm that did not demand stratospheric rates of return (due to most investments being so speculative that they fail), investors would settle for less and be more tolerant of the existence of viable competitors. As I noted before, it was rather telling that when "open" Facebook competitors emerged, Diaspora was anointed as the chosen one, following the familiar narrative of one winner and everyone else the loser.

Hope it is helpful to see why most of your writings do not convince me and they are often not specific enough to be able to answer them without a lot of time and research.

I'd profit from shorter contribution that cover more specific details or arguments drawn on your knowledge.

I could certainly get into the details on some of these topics, but I don't have all day to spend doing so. Maybe it is my fault for raising broad topics and writing so much about them in the first place.

I actually think that it is pretty uncontroversial to say that consumerism, which definitely intersects with capitalism, American or otherwise, is pervasive, influential, and motivates people's behaviour. Indeed, I think that unless one is living in a society that is very different to those most readers of this list are living in, the burden should be on anyone to claim the opposite.

Paul