[Development] Changes to Freenode's IRC

[Aleix Pol]

On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 8:46 PM Carl Schwan <carl at carlschwan.eu> wrote:
>
> Le jeudi, mai 20, 2021 2:18 PM, Giuseppe D'Angelo via Development <development at qt-project.org> a écrit :
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 20/05/2021 13:47, Alejandro Exojo wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, May 19, 2021, at 8:16 PM, Giuseppe D'Angelo via Development wrote:
> > >
> > > > -   there's no registration required;
> > > > -   the $newthing has proven stability, staff, resources, etc., and won't
> > > >     disappear in a few months/years;
> > > >
> > > > -   ...
> > > >
> > > > then anything is fine.
> > > > All other things being equal, the simplest measure would be to simply
> > > > move over to Libera. (...)
> > >
> > > Can Libera already be considered so quickly? A fork of a software is not so easy
> > > as the "fork" of a service, isn't it? We don't know if they will disappear in a
> > > month, or if Freenode will be fixed by then. Or if another "fork" appears.
> >
> > Sure, that's a fair question.
> >
> > Personally,
> >
> > 1.  I trust the staffing (coming from Freenode);
> > 2.  I trust the organization being entirely under EU law (it's in
> >     Sweden), with a strong privacy policy;
> >
> > 3.  I trust it not disappearing tomorrow; most of the sponsored servers
> >     are switching from Freenode to Libera, and many big projects are moving
> >     there (e.g. Ubuntu just voted in favor. Of course none will move
> >     overnight, just like Qt isn't moving overnight; decisions +
> >     practicalities will take some time).
> >
> >
> > > Also, I don't understand how not having to register can be a requirement at all,
> > > given that one needs to register, sometimes multiple times, to use some of the
> > > other official channels. E.g. to participate in the mailing list I of course
> > > need to subscribe to it, and to get an email account at all I would either need
> > > to register with some provider or use a work email address (or self-host or...).
> >
> > Or self-host, indeed. But nothing apart from your email is needed, and
> > that email is NEVER used for any commercial or marketing or research
> > purpose. Which is the same requirement for the mailing lists. It might
> > not be the case for some 3rd party services.
> >
> > > If at all, not requiring registration makes me more concerned about spam,
> > > trolling, harassment, etc.
> >
> > Which you can easily ignore (see user mode +g, +R). None of this has
> > been a major problem on Freenode so far.
> >
> > > I have my own biases after going through many pains to have a modern-ish IRC
> > > experience (self hosting Quassel, using IRC bouncers, etc.). I hope that the
> > > current active community of people on IRC doesn't get alienated if something
> > > else is chosen, but I also hope that something with proper features is chosen so
> > > I can be back online on those communities, because my paste experience with IRC
> > > makes me not want to go there again unless really needed.
> > > FWIW, I'm now on other IM platforms, and all of Matrix, Telegram, Mattermost and
> > > even Discord seem to have acceptable IRC integration, and some open source
> > > projects treat both sides of the integration as official channels. People seem
> > > to be aware of it, and the friction between the two feature sets and "idioms" of
> > > the platform are more or less respected. So a middle ground is possible as well.
> >
> > Sure, but this doesn't bring an answer to the original question:
> >
> > -   Is the Qt community OK at staying on Freenode? (Currently it has an
> >     official presence! Although noone seems to know better, esp. who is
> >     the primary contact for this presence. Looking at the channels
> >     registrations, the founders are Thiago, ossi, tronical, JP-Nurmi, but
> >     that doesn't necessarily match who is the point of contact.)
> >
> > -   If no: does it wish to move to another IRC network -- to where?
> > -   If no: does it want to drop its official IRC presence? Implication:
> >     the #qt* channels namespace will be released, and so up for grabs by the
> >     first person passing by and registering channels in there.
> >
> >     Lacking some formal voting infrastructure, how do we take this vote?
> >     I'd say, KISS: please reply to this email and express your preference.
>
> I believe the best course of action would be to wait a bit until KDE moves
> its freenode presence to libera (should happen soon). And then Qt can move
> its freenode channels to libera and add Matrix bridging to the new channels
> with the KDE-Matrix instance.
>
> People who prefer IRC will still be able to use IRC, people who would like
> to use a more modern chat protocol can use Matrix and both will be able to
> communicate together using the Matrix bridge.
>
> Currently, there are already some unofficial matrix channels bridged to the Qt
> IRC channels (e.g. #_freenode_#qt-labs:kde.org) but making them official,
> grouping them into a Matrix Space[1] and encouraging people to join them could
> help to make Qt a friendlier project to join.

I'd say embracing matrix can only be a positive iteration for the Qt
project. I've personally been in #qt-labs for about a year through our
matrix servers and it has served its purpose.

You are welcome to join KDE's matrix server and give it a go. If Qt
decides to make this the default way to proceed, our sysadmins can
help make sure the adequate bridges are in place for a painless
transition.
https://community.kde.org/Matrix

Cheers!
Aleix