On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 08:37:30AM +0000, Alberto Fanjul Alonso wrote:
Hi, hackers Do anybody though about trying new services for communication? - signal https://whispersystems.org/ - telegram https://telegram.org/ - matrix.org http://matrix.org/ - gitter https://gitter.im/
None of these platforms have an official Telepathy protocol implementation. That people will have a lessened ability to access chat already seems like a non-starter.
pros/cons irc: pros: <snip> - is widespread - integrated in gnome environment (bots, bugzilla)
I would argue these two features are critical to any prospective chat platform. If people can't access chat in a way that suits their workflow, they probably won't. And it'd be a step backwards if automation suddenly became a stumbling block. In terms of universality, the only chat platform rivalling IRC (that I can think of, at least) is XMPP. I don't know enough about it to seriously recommend it, though; does it support the requested features?
Solutions by new technology: - gitter can deal with integration
So can IRC, thanks to an easy-to-parse protocol and an abundance of libraries. XMPP, too, has quite a few libs available.
an syntax highlight
Is syntax highlighting done in the browser, or baked into the protocol? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's the former. For many people (myself included), web chat is a non-starter. Assuming others in the community feel the same, is there any point moving to a new platform for extra features that many won't be able to use?
- telegram has programmable bots
Again, not unique to Telegram/Gitter.
- signal is aware of privacy
What does this mean? If the plan is that public chats are logged, is there any room for privacy considerations? I'm probably misunderstanding, but being privacy-aware seems moot in this instance.
- matrix.org can be bridged to gimpnet in full two-way communication
I find this the most convincing argument, but if we're just going to keep using IRC anyway then is it worth the cost? That question isn't (entirely) rhetorical; it might be, but the benefit isn't immediately obvious to me.
- All can deal with multimedia
See above re syntax highlighting.
Is there any chance to adopt one of this technologies?
I would argue that positioning to replace IRC is unnecessarily extreme. IRC has a great deal of momentum for a very good reason: plain text is *really* easy to work with. I think it's an unreasonable position to think that GNOME should untether itself from a tool that does its job extremely well (by the criteria of accessibility and flexibility). Alternate chat services may have a place alongside IRC, but that raises the question as to whether it's appropriate to splinter discussions across yet more platforms. The proposal for a IRC bridge with Matrix strikes me as the most sensible and potentially an interesting experiment, but I have doubts wrt its adoption. Thanks
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