Mozilla leaving IRC

Mozillians
#1

Hello dear mozillians.
I saw this link on Mike Hoy’s blog that says mozilla will leave IRC as it’s communication method.
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/

It seems it’s serious. Lets talk about it here, on this post.
What is your opinion? I think Mozillians as end users of new chat system should participate in process of selection replacement of IRC for Mozilla. However fianlly, Mr Mike Hoye, will decide what to choose?
Do you think newer IRC version, named IRC v3 can help and solve the problem mentioned in that blog post? Look at: https://ircv3.net

Lets list the potential replacements:

  1. Telegram

  • Telegram is open source but it’s core server side isn’t fully open source

  • Telegram’s bots can help to apply Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines

  • Telegram is blocked by some countries like Iran and Russia and Users f these countries should use VPN,… to use it

  • Telegram Blocked Public groups with uniqe id for some countries like Iran by check the user’s phone number not ip address. As result members of Persian SUMO team can’t join to http://t.me/mozsumo public group, even by using VPN. However we can join to Telegram Supergroups that haven’t unique short user name like L10n Telegram super group.

2-Discord

  • Discord desined mainly for gamers, it’s not fully like Slack.
  • Discord isn’t Open Source

3-Slack

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#2

I sure hope so.

I already made NOVA switch to using Discord because of how much I hate IRC due to how horribly painful it is to use and how terribly outdated the protocol and UX is.

#3

¡Hola @amir.farsi!

I don’t believe that @mhoye would be making this decision as an individual here.

I’ve seen the bot spam problems of recently in both IRC and Telegram, although I must say it seems to be more prevalent on the later than the former AFAICT.

There was a typo in the link to the Telegram SUMO group, the right one is https://t.me/mozsumo

I’m just hopping that whatever is eventually chosen is something I could connect with as easily or as difficultly as to IRC on my current favorite client https://riot.im/

¡Gracias!
Alex

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#4

Most of the Mozilla team’s daily operation is already on Slack and not open to the public (anymore?) so I wonder which team will be affected?

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#5

Also hoping for a move to Matrix (Riot)!

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#6

Hi, everyone - @mhoye here.

@alex_mayorga is right that this isn’t a unilateral decision on my part. That said, we have a number of good choices here - I’m going to be posting more about that shortly - and I’m happy to talk here about what we’re trying to accomplish and what success looks like.

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#7

I should add, there’s a #synchronicity channel on both IRC and Slack for this as well.

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#8

I understand the limitations with IRC. But IRC is also an easy to use, easy to implement, open source environment. If push comes to shove you can write a client in a few lines of code or even use telnet to connect to it. What is the urgency to get rid of a proven and stabile protocol and environment? Any other platform - if as open to the public as IRC - will be as difficult to manage as IRC is. It is extremely simply to write bots that require some form of identification - even non IRC methods - to be allowed to join a channel (or be kicked right after joining) . I dare to say there’s not a single environment that is so robust, flexible and battle hardened as IRC when it comes to communications.

Mke writes:

“RC is an ongoing source of abuse and harassment for many of our colleagues.”

(1) Every “open to the public” platform unfortunately has these problems. Bots can be used to effectively police channels.

“…getting connected to this now-obscure forum is an unnecessary technical barrier for anyone finding their way to Mozilla via the web.”

(2) There are plenty of web gateways to IRC. It’s the most simple protocol to implement and the development of a web-client is trivial

“Available interfaces really haven’t kept up with modern expectations …”

See (2)

"… spambots and harassment are endemic to the platform … "

See (1)

“… and in light of that it’s no coincidence that people trying to get in touch with us from inside schools, colleges or corporate networks are finding that often as not IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls at all.”

See (2) - Additionally: There’s nothing that says you can’t have an IRC server on port 443.

All in all I don’t find the reasons for the abandonment of IRC convincing. So - I wonder - are there other reasons to move?

1 Like
#9

IRC is very handy, FLOSS and works on any platform. These should also be the criteria for a replacement.

Here are some FLOSS alternatives:



https://www.mattermost.org/
Any homebrew solution based on WebRTC?

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#10

Every “open to the public” platform unfortunately has these problems.

This is, unfortunately, one of the most common arguments against changing; at the very least, conceding that it’s true amounts to surrendering, of giving up on the idea that safety and civility on an open network. I just flat out refuse to believe it’s true.

We need to stop talking about harassment and abuse on the network as though it’s inevitable, and start talking about it as though it’s inexcusable.

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#11

I think there are some user friendly options for IRC, such as http://convos.by, http://glowing-bear.org, or if you can install things then I find http://quassel-irc.org a bit awesome.

See also www.kiwiirc.com, and www.thelounge.chat

I like that unlike discord IRC is in real time and the potential for mentoring or troubleshooting is greatly increased.

I hope irc.mozilla.org can continue to exist on unofficial basis run by volunteers in the case Mozilla drops official support.

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#12

I’m not sure what you mean by that. Discord is in real-time. But I don’t think Discord is the way to move forward.

I can’t see that happening. There’d be a lot of resources that would have to be put into that, and I don’t think anyone really has them.

As @mhoye’s post says, IRC hasn’t kept up with the times. It’s ridiculously easy to abuse people on it, and we shouldn’t cannot take the “oh well, boys will be boys” stance. I don’t think that being open and being safe are mutually exclusive, but IRC sure makes it look like they are. We can do better.

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#13

While we’re investigating options for semi-anonymous or pseudonymous connections, we will require authentication, because:
The Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines will apply, and they’ll be enforced.

In the Guidelines I did not find rules pertaining to authenticating. Am I missing sth.?

#14

Since security is appearantly a big issue here, why not ask NSA to host the Mozilla chat server outright? A transparent move, no?

#15

There are two considerations here from my point of view.

  • Un-Authenticated users are hard or nearly impossible to moderate efficiently (this very forum requires log-in)
  • Authenticated systems can be anonymous if you use an email that can’t be associated with a person, and that’s fine.
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#16

And then there is

  • bad authentication requiring a whole lot of hoop-jumping and
  • less tedious auth…

MS shows how to scare users away with their dreaded iron-fist-policy regarding Auth. Let’s hope Mozilla is smarter than MS.

#17

Can you elaborate what do you consider tedious about Mozilla’s authentication system? #iam team can use your feedback to improve.

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#18

getting in here with the KDE Falkon browser took me 2 runs via e-mail. I thought it would not work at all.

#19

Hopefully we don’t end up choosing a locked down propriety solution. There are many open source modern alternatives such as mattermost or matrix.

I would like to mention that recently KDE community was also looking for alternative and they choose matrix as their communication platform. I hope we can learn a thing or two from the KDE community as well.

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#20

There’s a new post at Synchronous Messaging at Mozilla - Trial Servers & Feedback that explains the candidate synchronous messaging stacks and asks us to try them out and give feedback.

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