as you might now, our main chat is based on IRC and runs on freenode. there are bridges to other platforms (discord, gitter, matrix) but the main source of truth is IRC, see also https://irclogs.nim-lang.org/ (our main channel is logged and public).
today there has been a massive exodus of all staff of freenode, following a hostile takeover (see for example this short letter of resignation which links to other more lengthy letters of resignation). you might have also noticed mutiple threads on HN discussing this. the exiting staff will be managing a new IRC network: libera.chat.
I guess we should discuss if we want to migrate to libera.chat (or other networks) or not.
As a curiosity, thanks to this event, I found out that ddevault (the creator of sr.ht) has been lurking around nim's irc in the last months:
19-05-2021.html#12:54:22 ddevault left #nim ("See you on libera.chat")
I would say this last bit at least is good news!
Besides ideology
I guess that one of the link I posted might give the impression that ideology has something to with this. Reading all other accounts, ideology seems to have very little to do with this. I will try to summarize to the best of my knowledge:
I am not very knowledgable of this matter so hopefully other members here can correct and integrate my account. to be honest I probably should not have started the thread myself, since other might be more expert to talk about this, but I was curious to know what others think about it.
I do not even have a particular strong opinion on whether or not we should migrate. From what I can tell this seems a natural outcome (whatever trust we had in freenode to choose it over alternatives, it seems to me should reside in the people running it, that unfortunately had to jump boat). It does not seem also anything urgent and it seems only a big nuisance for the work that needs to be done. I do not even know if other alternatives (e.g. making discord the main channel) should be considered or not. I know I like the irclogs being public and available, it is a nice way to track discussions happening there. If in the end we decide to keep things as we are I would not be particularly bothered.
can we move the rest of the channels to whatever the Nim #science uses?
as far as I know #science is just another channel of freenode with the corresponding bridges on other services (discord, gitter, matrix). I do not know of anything different with respect to other channels (maybe less IRC only users?).
and on the side topic of ddevault, I looked around a bit more and it seems there have been some exchanges regarding our usage of sr.ht to test nim on OpenBSD (quickly solved to the satisfaction of everybody involved) and he also gave his views on Nim based on his limited knowledge and with respect to a specific topic. On this matter I will report only his final words (from 1 year ago or earlier):
Anyway, despite all of this, I rather like Nim. I wish it targetted LLVM instead of generating awful C code, but for high level users this isn’t a huge concern. It continues to have improved every time I look at it, and I’m looking forward to using it for the next project to which it’s suited. Keep up the great work!
see this lobster comment for the full message
as far as I know #science is just another channel of freenode with the corresponding bridges on other services (discord, gitter, matrix). I do not know of anything different with respect to other channels (maybe less IRC only users?).
#science is bridged directly to discord from matrix (I also bridged gitter there too) instead of through IRC like other channels. This allows semantics from those messaging service to be preserved when talked to each other (multi-line messages, replies, etc.).
Of course, it also helps that there are little to no IRC users frequenting that channel.
I've set up a #nim channel on OFTC and sent a group registration request for Nim on Libera Chat.
I think a good first step will be to simply relay Libera Chat to Freenode or vice versa.
As a curiosity, thanks to this event, I found out that ddevault (the creator of sr.ht) has been lurking around nim's irc in the last months
I would say this last bit at least is good news!
We use builds.sr.ht for FreeBSD and OpenBSD CI, he's probably been lurking due to our excessive resource usage on that platform: https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/17479
..sent a group registration request for Nim on Libera Chat.
Good thing, thank you. In the long run, we should have something more multimedia and more secure than IRC by default though. Wikipedia has a nice table of messaging protocols and only Matrix and XMPP (fka Jabber) tick all the boxes. Matrix also offers separate authentication and data servers and probably more features, which makes it my number one. It's client, Element was called Riot earlier.
ARP, the Threema protocol, is missing from the table (why?), but Threema's implementation is not fully open source and costs money, so it's probably not an option anyway. Signal is burned for me after its head developer held a very strange speech about how a mandatory central server is great for everyones privacy and since they push users into tagging themselves with their phone number.
Caution: ideological rant, opinion and questionable language ahead
"But .. but let's not get ideological, we'll never reach consensus that way!"
I think a good first step will be to simply relay Libera Chat to Freenode or vice versa.
Still supporting freenode after this is in itself a political statement, a bad one. Maybe deprecating the relay and switching it off after a while would be good.
Making a political fuzz about chat software as I do here is probably slightly over the top, but the same general argument could be made about hosting Nim's project development. A largely european project aspiring to become relevant relying on github is IMHO a very bad idea. As soon as it gets in the way of the U.S. "Full-spectrum dominance" doctrine (which seems to be religious dogma in the IT world) only a little, there will be repercussions. Maybe we should invest in independence instead of having a discussion about how to make Nim more "popular" every few weeks.
The guy "taking over" freenode is Andrew Lee. He's been a sponser of freenode since 2013. He's also been an admin and had access to any data held by freenode since he purchased Freenode Ltd in 2017. He's also the founder and owner of Private Internet Access VPN service, so he really wouldn't need to use freenode if he wanted to gather data from people.
Here's his statement on the matter FWIW: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss
More evidence of concerning behaviors from the new stuff are coming out [1][2]
Also many claims made by Andrew Lee on hacker news seem dubious [3]
Can we please move the Discord/Gitter bridge bots from Freenode to the new channels on Libera?
1 https://twitter.com/fosdem/status/1397454352835653632
2 https://mastodon.sdf.org/@kline/106299403921451814
thanks everyone for the feedback. I guess this escalated quickly and the evidence that @federico3 is reporting about today is quite damning.
Essentially what is happening is that now the policy on freenode is being interpreted in the sense that if you have a channel there and for whatever reason you decide you want to move the community somewhere else, you cannot advertise this change on your channel. I do not think this is acceptable for a service that should be of reference for the open source community. If you want to move out you should have the freedom to do it and you should have the right to say it inside the channel so that your community knows about it.
By the way. The address of the Matrix room on nim-lang.org is wrong. It's listed as #nim:matrix.org which is actually a room for some Node.js tech. The link itself (#freenode_#nim:matrix.org) is fine, if we're still ok with using Freenode of course. I'd like to see a proper Matrix room for Nim. Matrix already has a bridge for Libera.chat set up in testing mode.
Also, we had a Matrix Community for Nim there but communities were superseded by Matrix Spaces. Do we have one already?
Also, we had a Matrix Community for Nim there but communities were superseded by Matrix Spaces. Do we have one already?
Yup, we do. @leorize created it, but I think only he can invite people at the moment (or maybe it's because things are still a bit buggy?).
I think only he can invite people at the moment (or maybe it's because things are still a bit buggy?)
The address for the Nim spaces is: #nim:envs.net, and there are currently 12 rooms within the space.
Once you join however, you will likely only see 2-3 Nim rooms (assuming that you haven't join any Nim rooms). This is due to the fact that only rooms with history visibility of "Anyone" will show up in spaces. Three rooms of which I'm the admin of already has the history visibility set, which is why you will see them, but the rest will have to be updated by a moderator on IRC logged in via Matrix (alternatively you can op me ;).