As promised, a summary of our video call for those who couldn't attend:
Highlights
* Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office is interested in this experiment and will fund hosted Element out of non-Fedora budget. That makes going ahead with a practical trial basically a no-brainer.
* We’ll have own hosted server at https://chat.fedoraproject.org/, and Element will provide a 1-day admin SLA at the level we’re getting. So, it won’t require ongoing CPE or volunteer resources at the sysadmin level. We’ll still need moderators and active admins of course.
* Log in will be through FAS, and we’ll also federate the server so you can come in with a different identity.
* Mozilla has seen a 4× increase in engagement since switching from IRC to Matrix (also hosted by Element). Also successful for KDE and SUSE. In progress at GNOME. :)
* IRC isn’t going anywhere. Many people still like it, and Freenode is still an important hub for free and open source software development. So, we will provide bridges.
* These bridges will be set up in a way that avoids some of the problems the GNOME project shared with their deployment.
* I had a concern that Zodbot would need to be ported immediately because of problems I’d heard about logged meetings, but we’re assured that those might be non-issues or at least easily fixed, which is nice for a soft-launch / experiment with no big infrastructure changes right off.
* On a slightly more controversial note: we know that the bridge can be somewhat annoying when Matrix decides it wants to send a URL rather than a long message, and that things like reactions just don’t get bridged. Our plan here, assuming the trial is successful, is to try and minimize these inconveniences but ultimately steer people to using Matrix natively. Many popular messaging clients (including weechat, for old-school folks) support Matrix directly now.
* When will this start? Basically as soon as the money is worked out.
Full notes at:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/the-future-of-real-time-chat-discussi...
Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org writes:
- On a slightly more controversial note: we know that the bridge can be somewhat annoying when Matrix decides it wants to send a URL rather than a long message, and that things like reactions just don’t get bridged. Our plan here, assuming the trial is successful, is to try and minimize these inconveniences but ultimately steer people to using Matrix natively. Many popular messaging clients (including weechat, for old-school folks) support Matrix directly now.
I don't think that's right. I'm a happy weechat user, but as far as I'm aware, it only supports IRC natively. There exists a matrix script ( https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix , linked from https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix ) - matrix marks it as "beta", and the github repo marks it as "maintenance mode" while they work on a Rust plugin ( https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs ) which is "a work in progress and doesn't do much yet".
Thanks, --Robbie
On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 01:02:49PM -0500, Robbie Harwood wrote:
I don't think that's right. I'm a happy weechat user, but as far as I'm aware, it only supports IRC natively. There exists a matrix script ( https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix , linked from https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix ) - matrix marks it as "beta", and the github repo marks it as "maintenance mode" while they work on a Rust plugin ( https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs ) which is "a work in progress and doesn't do much yet".
I got my information on this from an offhand comment by one of the Element folks. I did mean a plugin speaking the protocol natively rather than bridged, not native support in the core, to be clear. But maybe they were over-stating the current state of that plugin.
(I'm a happy weechat user too, fwiw.)
On 04.12.2020 18:18, Matthew Miller wrote:
We’ll have own hosted server athttps://chat.fedoraproject.org/
Hosting the Matrix server on the main domain would be very dangerous, because someone can join a room with pornographic or pirated content, and this content will be copied to the fedoraproject.org server and can always be viewed via direct links.
I suggest using fedorahosted.org or fedorainfracloud.org for example.
On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 07:07:56PM +0100, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
We’ll have own hosted server athttps://chat.fedoraproject.org/
Hosting the Matrix server on the main domain would be very dangerous, because someone can join a room with pornographic or pirated content, and this content will be copied to the fedoraproject.org server and can always be viewed via direct links.
It doesn't seem possible that you mean literally copied from https://chat.fedoraproject.org to https://fedoraproject.org/; that's not the way things work. Can you clarify the problem you're concerned about?
Can you also clarify "can always be viewed"?
I suggest using fedorahosted.org or fedorainfracloud.org for example.
How would this help?
On 04.12.2020 19:14, Matthew Miller wrote:
It doesn't seem possible that you mean literally copied from https://chat.fedoraproject.org tohttps://fedoraproject.org/; that's not the way things work. Can you clarify the problem you're concerned about?
chat.fedoraproject.org is the hosted web version of the Element Matrix client. Users can use any other to login. This is completely optional.
fedoraproject.org is the main Matrix server with all user content.
Can you also clarify "can always be viewed"?
Matrix is similar to Git. When you join any room, all events and content will be copied to your homeserver.
For example #foobar:example.org contains pirated content. When you join it from your fedoraproject.org account, most of its contents will be copied to this server and can be viewed by direct hyperlinks (until the cache is purged).
The links will look like this: https://fedoraproject.org/_matrix/media/r0/download/example.org/kJsInSvRQWlS...
How would this help?
Most public services (GitHub, GitLab, etc.) use separate domains for the user content.
We need to discuss these potential legal issues with at least the Fedora Legal Team.
On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 07:29:41PM +0100, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
On 04.12.2020 19:14, Matthew Miller wrote:
It doesn't seem possible that you mean literally copied from https://chat.fedoraproject.org tohttps://fedoraproject.org/; that's not the way things work. Can you clarify the problem you're concerned about?
chat.fedoraproject.org is the hosted web version of the Element Matrix client. Users can use any other to login. This is completely optional.
fedoraproject.org is the main Matrix server with all user content.
Well, no. I would say 'matrix.fedoraproject.org' is the matrix server run by element on our behaf? Or matrix.fedorapeople.org ?
Can you also clarify "can always be viewed"?
Matrix is similar to Git. When you join any room, all events and content will be copied to your homeserver.
For example #foobar:example.org contains pirated content. When you join it from your fedoraproject.org account, most of its contents will be copied to this server and can be viewed by direct hyperlinks (until the cache is purged).
The links will look like this: https://fedoraproject.org/_matrix/media/r0/download/example.org/kJsInSvRQWlS...
How would this help?
Most public services (GitHub, GitLab, etc.) use separate domains for the user content.
We need to discuss these potential legal issues with at least the Fedora Legal Team.
Yeah, we need to clarify some legal issues around it for sure.
We could call it whatever makes the most sense, but I would expect this to be user content with element handling issues like takedowns, etc.
kevin
On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 07:29:41PM +0100, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
fedoraproject.org is the main Matrix server with all user content.
Or whatever we decide to call it. I am super-unclear on what you're saying about using a different domain here and what that would buy us. I note that if I go to https://chat.mozilla.org/#/welcome, it says:
Homeserver: https://mozilla.modular.im Identity server: https://vector.im
Can you also clarify "can always be viewed"?
Matrix is similar to Git. When you join any room, all events and content will be copied to your homeserver.
For example #foobar:example.org contains pirated content. When you join it from your fedoraproject.org account, most of its contents will be copied to this server and can be viewed by direct hyperlinks (until the cache is purged).
We will be getting this service as SaaS with active administration from the Element team. Red Hat will have a standard contract for services. I am confident that this can all be handled in a way that is acceptable.
On 04.12.2020 20:54, Matthew Miller wrote:
Homeserver: https://mozilla.modular.im We will be getting this service as SaaS with active administration from the Element team.
In that case, everything is fine.
On Sat, Dec 05, 2020 at 04:51:11PM +0100, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
Homeserver: https://mozilla.modular.im We will be getting this service as SaaS with active administration from the Element team.
In that case, everything is fine.
Ok, cool. I do appreciate the concern. :)
On Fri, Dec 04, 2020 at 07:29:41PM +0100, Vitaly Zaitsev via devel wrote:
Most public services (GitHub, GitLab, etc.) use separate domains for the user content.
I looked into this a little bit, and it appears that the primary concern is cross-site scripting attacks, not a legal separation. See https://developer.github.com/changes/2014-04-25-user-content-security/
I am not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that having a different domain name doesn't actually provide any particularly strong legal shield. But, my amateur lawyer-opining on the devel list isn't really very valuable -- if you have a concern, please bring it directly to legal@fedoraproject.org and feel free to CC me. Thanks.