What should the next chat app look like?
drewdevault.com
drewdevault.com
"Let's quickly address the present state of the ecosystem. Matrix rates well in most of these respects, much better than others. However, their software is way too complicated. They are federated, but the software is far from reliable or robust, so the ecosystem tends to be centralized because Matrix.org are the only ones who have the knowledge and bandwidth to keep it up and running. The performance sucks, client and server both, and their UX for E2EE is confusing and difficult to use.
It's a good attempt, but too complex and brittle. Also, their bridge is a major nuisance to IRC, which biases me against them. Please don't integrate your next chat app with IRC; just leave us alone, thanks.
Speaking of IRC, it is still my main chat program, and has been for 15+ years. The lack of E2EE, which is unacceptable for any new protocol, is not important enough to get me to switch to anything else until it presents a compelling alternative to IRC."
I thought it was interesting that he would prefer new protocols to not bridge with IRC.
I kinda see where he's coming from. Even when I tried to get all my chat apps merged into Matrix bridges, I still used Quassel to connect to IRC (and get some mod cons like scrollback on demand!). Matrix doesn't translate well to IRC. Joining 20-30 channels on each network just makes matrix too cluttery. At least in Element.
However it depends on the kind of bridge. If you do full network integration then it's a bit annoying because not all joined users are visible on the IRC side and the bridge pops them in and out as needed. And it also causes some side effects like users that just joined being able to scroll back to conversations they were never part of! This is one of the reasons a lot of IRC networks don't allow Matrix.
However, you can also do puppet bridging for personal use in which Matrix just becomes a fancy personal IRC bouncer and nobody even knows about it :)
I don't think the lack of E2EE is a big issue on IRC at all. After all it is meant for wide communication with people you don't know. Anyone can join it if they want, so there is no expectation of privacy except perhaps for DMs/queries.
In the same way I don't like having to deal with E2EE in public Matrix rooms.
Federation where you have to enter a home-server is not simple enough so my grandmother could use it. Or non-techie friends.
I'm working on https://snikket.org/ partly to try and fix this perception. All Snikket software (server and apps) uses modern XMPP, are open-source and designed for easy self-hosting.