Subject: Re: bug#51696: Request: Adopt the unofficial GUIX community on Matrix

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2021 22:25:24 -0500

Hi Jacob,

I think Mark had valid concerns about control.

Jacob Hrbek <[email-masked]> writes:

> My motivation for this proposal is to make GNU Guix more accessible
> and user-friendly so that I can get my team to use it painlessly to
> organize the work as I currently use NiXOS where nixlang is giving me
> anxiety and it's too limited to my liking.
>
> I prefer zero trust model so I am happy with transferring the matrix space to the chosen GNU representative.
> About the channel I sent a message to the owner and waiting for a reply.

What is the difference between a Matrix space and a Matrix channel?

> About matrix I am proposing to run our own homeserver that GNU Guix have full control over.
> I helped Ian Kelling with the implementation for FSF when they were moving off of Freenode so i assume that we can just fork the implementation or adapt it in GNU guile?
>
> Note: FSF decided to not move on matrix as one of it's clients is
> using Google's reCAPTCHA for registration
> (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/3220) and is
> allegedly using electron.. FWIW i never understood the reasoning as
> the homeserver does not depend on the client and there are multiple
> alternatives (https://matrix.org/clients).

>From my memory the reality is that most of the clients are not quite
there yet, so to get a good experience one must use the official web
client (Element) or the Android one, both of which pose freedom
challenges (is the JavaScript tagged to run in GNU LibreJS?).  The
desktop client is also web based, probably unpackagHopefully
that changed in the last couple years.  I remember trying the (abandoned
then) Emacs-based client and also the Weechat client.  I ended up not
submitting the package to Guix, since it was too buggy (using 100% of
CPU, very slow to refresh, and had other annoyances I forgot).

> About bridges they are self-hosted (https://matrix.org/bridges) so GNU
> Guix would be in full control over them, but some
> e.g. https://t2bot.io provide it for free to the general public
> without a guaranteed uptime.

To really be in full control, ideally we'd have a Shepherd service to
administer it.  Is this something you'd be motivated to work on?

> I believe it also answers the question about moderating? There are
> also moderation bots (https://matrix.org/bots/) such as mjolnil
> <https://github.com/matrix-org/mjolnir> that afaik can be configured
> that if user is banned on matrix that it will issue the ban across all
> bridges and if needed the space.

Moderation is something that I'm a bit worried about; at least speaking
for myself I'd want to continue doing it from IRC and it'd need to sync
to Matrix transparently, not the other way around.  Is this possible?

Thanks,

Maxim