On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 6:03 PM John M. Harris Jr <johnmh@splentity.com> wrote:
On Thursday, November 19, 2020 11:17:15 AM MST Neal Gompa wrote:
> The move to having our own Matrix server is being driven by Fedora
> subcommunities already wanting to move primacy from IRC to Matrix.
> Many of our adjunct upstreams have done so (Mozilla, KDE, etc.) or are
> in the process of doing so (GNOME, openSUSE, etc.).
>
> The intent isn't to drop IRC as a gateway to these communities, and
> indeed the Freenode IRC channels would remain bridged to the Fedora
> Matrix server.
>
> To be blunt, we're struggling to get new folks to come talk to us on
> IRC.

Has this been documented anywhere? If so, we can likely review these issues,
and see what would need to be done to solve this problem, if there is one.

> Our largest user community is on Discord today, which eclipses
> *everything* else by a wide margin.

It's worth questioning whether those folks are actually Fedora uses, or people
who are just a bit interested in Fedora. Given that the use of proprietary
software, where a superior Free alternative exists, is against the Four
Foundations, it's questionable that they'd be Discord users.

I manage the place we're talking about so I can tell you all about it. Many open source lovers use Discord. Quite a few became Fedora contributors through our Discord community as well. Perhaps you shouldn't judge without ever participating. People aren't automatically bad or whatever just because they don't mind using proprietary software when its benefits far outweigh the downsides and when it enables them to work at their peak efficiency.

Discord is in fact an amazing chat platform for the end user that doesn't have a peer out there. (I could talk for hours about its flaws, but the end user won't notice or realise most of them.) You're extremely wrong in saying that there is a "superior" libre alternative. There isn't, nowhere near. If there was, it would have been popular and not Discord. Those masses chose it for its features and ease of use. It allows people to do whatever they want and doesn't disable anyone, regardless how "out there" their requirements may be.

Our Discord community is not "against the Four Foundations" like you say. It definitely hits 3/4 - Features Friends and First, and by proxy, by enabling people to reach Fedora contributors easier, it also enables the FREE in the end, by further contribution from the members. I could easily turn your logic against IRC - it's definitely not First to introduce new Features and because of it, it doesn't bring Friends together anymore. All it's got really going for it is the FREE.
 

> Next up is Telegram, which we have
> been using somewhat for years through influence by the Russian Fedora
> community who brought it to us in the first place. Neither of these
> platforms are FOSS, and we want to provide a rich real-time
> communications platform that is FOSS and open in many of the same ways
> that IRC is. Matrix is open, federated, and gaining share in the
> marketplace, making it a solid replacement for IRC. And unlike
> alternatives, maintaining links to historical IRC channels with Matrix
> rooms is easy and straightforward.
>
> We want to be approachable, and we want to be appealing. Right now,
> our usage of IRC hurts us.

If Matrix bridges so well with IRC, and many upstream communities are using it
already, surely they could just join our channels through their bridges?

--
John M. Harris, Jr.
Splentity

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