Comment by progval
6 years ago
> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out
That's also what Matrix said it would solve when it started. Except now it's yet another protocol with its own chatrooms that are not reachable from any other protocol by default (even rooms on matrix.org); and bridges are at best in "beta" (except the Telegram bridge, which is "late beta"): https://matrix.org/bridges/
We tend to be pretty conservative on maturity estimates on Matrix (and bad at keeping the website updated).
IRC, Slack, Gitter bridges are all considered stable these days.
XMPP, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp work usably too.
The UX for managing them is not always great or consistent (we’re working on that currently), but “yet another protocol with its own chatrooms” is untrue. You can certainly access the entirety of Matrix via Bifrost (the XMPP bridge) if you so desire, for instance.
Hi, I am trying to write an article in French to introduce Matrix to a wider public. Especially non tech people.
So I'd like to describe the possibilities accurately. Bridges are a very interesting feature, but how do you implement them ?
I went to the #whatsapp:maunium.net room and only saw guys wondering the same thing with no answer given to them.
I went to https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp/wiki/Bridge-setup and understood they have to be implemented from the server itself ? Is that right ? So as a basic user I can't really make any adjustment on my side to join a Whatsapp group from Matrix, right ?
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge/blob/... explains how to write them.
For adding them to a chat as a user, you need to use an integration manager (eg t2bot.io) or to run one yourself.
I only have experience with the IRC one, which is ok, but I think it deserves to still be considered Beta (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21944035 )
Regarding Bifrost, it's the first time I hear about it. I'm glad it exists.
Is there an hosted instance that allows me to access Matrix rooms without installing anything other than an XMPP client? I can't find any info about it other than the code repo.
The IRC bridge shouldn’t restart that frequently (and we’re in the process of decoupling the irc connectors from the bridge itself so we can fix bugs in the bridge without bouncing all its connections). Membership should categorically be synced correctly - if you ban a Matrix user on IRC their Matrix side should be kicked out too. If not, it’s a bug and we need to know the details asap. The only scenario I can think of here is if the matrix server was lagging on handling traffic, but that shouldn’t cause a desync like this either.
For bifrost; we used to run one on matrix.org but temporarily stopped due to lack of ops bandwidth. There’s a community one somewhere though - come ask in #bridges:matrix.org about it
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I have lots of warm and fuzzy feelings toward Matrix, but my take is that XMPP solved my basic problem over 15 years ago. The problem being: I want to talk to Alice, Bob, Mary, Jane, Fred, and Joe without having to install ICQ, AIM, and Yahoo Messenger. Or should I say Facebook, Whatsapp, and Signal? I don't know what Matrix buys me over XMPP, but at this point, I don't care. I'll gladly drink the Matrix kool-aid, as long as it solves my problem and somehow ends up being the clear winner among federated protocols.
I don't think XMPP "lost" because it was bad technology. AFAIK the big players are still using it in various places under the hood. It lost because big players want to build "ecosystems".
XMPP lost because there was no big player behind it willing to push it as far as possible under its public name. Only a community of enthusiasts and a steering committee that only cares about what is going in the next spec.
Matrix at least has a company pushing for it, so there's a better chance it'll have more success than XMPP; unfortunately we'll have to wait a few more years to see the difference.
tbf there was a big player (Jabber Inc), and they sold out to Cisco. Hopefully the difference is already visible for Matrix, or if it isn’t it should be visible this year.
In practice those bridges function very well. It's common to find channels in the Matrix ecosystem that have IRC and Discord users that aren't even aware that there's Matrix participants.
The IRC bridge between matrix.org and freenode disconnects almost every week, showing sometimes hundreds of clients disconnecting, then reconnecting a few hours later.
I didn't check it personally, but I heard they (understandably) have issues enforcing bans: if one of their users is banned but another one is in the channel, the banned user can still read messages.
Matrix is general lacks support for community tools to handle stuff like that (unless you're running a channel with loose rules that doesn't get raided by 4chan on a weekly basis).
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