matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Aneesh Kumar K.V]

Hi all,

Was there any discussion around using matrix.org or any other
alternative as a replacement for IRC? This should help to avoid setting
up irc proxy to keep track of discussion when the users are not online.

IIUC both KDE and mozilla switched to matrix as their IRC replacement.

-aneesh

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Drew DeVault]

Hard NACK from me.

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Bjorn Helgaas]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 7:44 AM Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> wrote:
>
> Hard NACK from me.

I'd never heard of matrix.org and don't have an opinion either way.  I
do find IRC useful.  Proxies make it much more useful, and if I have a
choice, I'd rather not pay $50/year to irccloud just for a permanent
presence.

I'd be interested to hear the details of your NACK, because they'd
likely be informative and useful to me.

Bjorn

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Drew DeVault]

On Tue Jan 14, 2020 at 1:13 PM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> I'd never heard of matrix.org and don't have an opinion either way. I
> do find IRC useful. Proxies make it much more useful, and if I have a
> choice, I'd rather not pay $50/year to irccloud just for a permanent
> presence.
>
> I'd be interested to hear the details of your NACK, because they'd
> likely be informative and useful to me.

$50/year is offset by one fewer cup of coffee per month.

In any case, bouncers are not as necessary as they might seem. The idea
of an infinite backlog encourages you to keep up with discussions you
missed, which is a bad way of approaching IRC. Docs don't live in IRC,
projects don't live in IRC, tickets don't live in IRC - any discussion
that people shouldn't be fine with missing should be summarized and
forwarded to a more appropriate medium.

I use a bouncer mainly because IRC is such an important part of my life
that it's helpful for organization, and it's nice for people to be able
to drop me a quick note while I'm offline. Nice, but easily replaced
with email for anyone without a bouncer.

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Matthias Brugger]

On 14/01/2020 20:14, Drew DeVault wrote:
> On Tue Jan 14, 2020 at 1:13 PM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
>> I'd never heard of matrix.org and don't have an opinion either way. I
>> do find IRC useful. Proxies make it much more useful, and if I have a
>> choice, I'd rather not pay $50/year to irccloud just for a permanent
>> presence.
>>
>> I'd be interested to hear the details of your NACK, because they'd
>> likely be informative and useful to me.
> 
> $50/year is offset by one fewer cup of coffee per month.
> 

Given that we are a global community, you can't take the US living standard as
an argument that something is affordable to everyone.

> In any case, bouncers are not as necessary as they might seem. The idea
> of an infinite backlog encourages you to keep up with discussions you
> missed, which is a bad way of approaching IRC. Docs don't live in IRC,
> projects don't live in IRC, tickets don't live in IRC - any discussion
> that people shouldn't be fine with missing should be summarized and
> forwarded to a more appropriate medium.
> 
> I use a bouncer mainly because IRC is such an important part of my life
> that it's helpful for organization, and it's nice for people to be able
> to drop me a quick note while I'm offline. Nice, but easily replaced
> with email for anyone without a bouncer.
> 

I use both matrix and IRC, you can use matrix as a IRC bouncer but it got
blocked on some channels. Anyway I don't think that IRC is a must-have in our
community as you can always fall-back to email. That holds at least for the part
of the kernel I'm involved. So, from my point of view, no need for action.

Regards,
Matthias

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Greg KH]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 06:35:47PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Was there any discussion around using matrix.org or any other
> alternative as a replacement for IRC? This should help to avoid setting
> up irc proxy to keep track of discussion when the users are not online.
> 
> IIUC both KDE and mozilla switched to matrix as their IRC replacement.

Given that there is no kernel.org irc channel (officially), I don't see
how the tool that different developers use to chat matters, do you?

Also, there are tools like irccloud if you don't like running your own
irc proxy.  Or better yet, just be fine with being offline :)

thanks,

greg k-h

TAN: SSIA emails [was: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?]

[Eric Wong]

"Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
> Was there any discussion around using matrix.org or any other
> alternative as a replacement for IRC? This should help to avoid setting
> up irc proxy to keep track of discussion when the users are not online.

Going off on a tangent here, I've been thinking about detecting
and displaying Subject-Says-It-All (SSIA) emails in a more
concise way for public-inbox.

That would give some benefits of chat and save readers' time in
having less text to wade through; while still retaining
threading and offline capability of email.

I'm not aware of any existing MUAs which support, it, though;
so I'm hesitant to have public-inbox be the first...

> IIUC both KDE and mozilla switched to matrix as their IRC replacement.

Not sure how those orgs operate, but I find synchronous
communication tiring and difficult when people are operating
between several different timezones.  It's especially difficult
when several topics are being discussed in parallel.

I still use IRC privately, but only with small groups and mostly
for non-technical topics ("watercooler talk"); but some of my
fellow chatters have been wanting to move over to proprietary
replacements :<

Re: matrix.org as a replacement for IRC?

[Brendan Higgins]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:06 AM Aneesh Kumar K.V
<aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi all,

Full disclosure: I use both Martrix and IRC.

> Was there any discussion around using matrix.org or any other
> alternative as a replacement for IRC? This should help to avoid setting
> up irc proxy to keep track of discussion when the users are not online.

I think that matrix.org is very useful. However, I wouldn't replace IRC with it.

I use Matrix's bridging functionality to basically act as a cloud IRC
client (since it's free and I only use it with IRC channels which are
public anyway), but I do mostly use a local IRC client for my day to
day.

I like the features that Matrix gives you, and I think that it
provides a web interface which is less unfamiliar to a newbie.
However, I do think for someone who knows IRC, the overhead of joining
Matrix is meaningfully higher than joining a new IRC server/channel.
Also, the features Matrix provides are not very useful if you either
have a bouncer, a cloud IRC client, or you don't care about history or
access from a mobile device.

So I definitely see Matrix vs. IRC as a tradeoff if you are living in
the all-or-nothing world, and a tradeoff that many people would
reasonably not want to make. Nevertheless, as I mentioned, it doesn't
have to be that way: just use the Matrix bridge feature and then
everyone is happy. You get to use Matrix if you want, everyone who
just wants to keep using IRC is happy too. (Also, you don't need to
ask for permission to do this either.)

Cheers