RFI: Guix XMPP service.

RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[MSavoritias]

Hello o/


I would like to do a formal proposal to make an official Guix XMPP instance.


Background:

I asked a couple of days ago if it would be possible to have an XMPP 
room listed on the Guix site next to the IRC. I also asked in IRC and 
shared it on ActivityPub.

The response was very enthusiastic, thank you everyone for joining and 
spreading the message. ^^

It was said though that listing it on the website would make it 
official, plus some other concerns around log retention. Hence this 
proposal here. :)

For those that do not know XMPP is a protocol for many things, one of 
them being messaging. It has been active for more than 20 years now and 
is still being developed.


Who am I:

I have been around Guix for a bit in IRC and the email lists. I also do 
some small advocacy for Guix in ActivityPub federation (Mastodon, 
Peertube, etc.).

I am maintaining the infrastructure for https://joinjabber.org/ which is 
moving to Guix currently -> https://codeberg.org/joinjabber/Infra :) and 
I am a member of XSF.

I also do a lot of advocacy for xmpp in activitypub and handle the 
activitypub presence of joinjabber. -> @joinjabber@indieweb.social


What is being proposed:

I propose to host an xmpp instance with a room/or some rooms under the 
guix domain. Something like xmpp.guix.gnu.org

This can be done in one of two ways:

1. There is a service here -> https://cheogram.com/freedomware-muc/ 
hosted by https://soprani.ca/

  We can just setup our DNS to point to the service and sopranica will 
take care of the xmpp server.

I have talked with them and they do have unlimited retention of past 
messages plus they can also setup a log viewing thing just like IRC has.

Its a sustainable free software business and the hosting will be free. :)

2. We can self host our own prosody instance. It has minimal 
maintenance, and its very lightweight.

I can maintain the instance as it is done for joinjabber and we already 
have a guix service for prosody.


Why / What does Guix get from this:

Right now guix has email lists and IRC. What XMPP can give on top of 
that is:

1. XMPP is more approachable for people used to Matrix or Discord (for 
multiple reasons). While still being very lightweight and free software.

2. It is federated and easily self hosted. Which makes Guix more 
independent in case something like Freenode ever happens to Libera chat 
or in case people want to have their own server to connect to the guix 
rooms.


Personally I am in favor of option 1. We can host it in the cheogram 
service to test things out and if we need to we can self host it later. 
Since It will point to the same domain it shouldn't be a problem.

All we would need to do is change where our DNS points to and that's it.


MSavoritias

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[Vivien Kraus]

Hello Guix!

Le vendredi 08 décembre 2023 à 19:22 +0200, MSavoritias a écrit :
> I propose to host an xmpp instance with a room/or some rooms under
> the 
> guix domain. Something like xmpp.guix.gnu.org

Are there options for guests? 

I don’t know how XMPP or Prosody or cheogram.com may handle this, but
the way I imagine it, we could have an array of guest accounts and
reserve one for anyone that would ask for it, for something like a
week. The guest accounts need not communicate with another server, so
we wouldn’t relay spam.

Maybe there’s something more convenient or more standard though. What
do you think?

Best regards,

Vivien

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[MSavoritias]

On 12/8/23 20:43, Vivien Kraus wrote:
> Hello Guix!
>
> Le vendredi 08 décembre 2023 à 19:22 +0200, MSavoritias a écrit :
>> I propose to host an xmpp instance with a room/or some rooms under
>> the
>> guix domain. Something like xmpp.guix.gnu.org
> Are there options for guests?
>
> I don’t know how XMPP or Prosody or cheogram.com may handle this, but
> the way I imagine it, we could have an array of guest accounts and
> reserve one for anyone that would ask for it, for something like a
> week. The guest accounts need not communicate with another server, so
> we wouldn’t relay spam.
>
> Maybe there’s something more convenient or more standard though. What
> do you think?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Vivien


yes it does. from the page I linked it says:

Once configuration is complete, your chatroom will be accessible to 
anyone on the XMPP federation, as well as on the web via 
anonymous.cheogram.com <https://anonymous.cheogram.com/>.

You basically enter the address of the group chat you want and a 
nickname and you chat without an account. but only in the rooms in the 
guix server of course. same as IRC.


MSavoritias

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi,

On Fri, Dec 08 2023, MSavoritias wrote:

> 2. We can self host our own prosody instance.

I host my own Prosody instance (mostly to talk to Soprani). [1][2] I
recommend the project host its own, as well.

The server is very lightweight. Unfortunately, my system's uptime
history is not suitable for a project instance.

For DNS, I'd be happy to offer help.juix.org, but an official address is
probably better.

XMPP is great. Thanks for the initiative!

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/system-config/src/commit/b566b08a982a12f896cd6e6666f7849dbac0ce2e/host/wallace-server/operating-system.scm#L1195-L1200
[2] Message retention in my setup may only be thirty days.

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[MSavoritias]

On 12/10/23 05:53, Felix Lechner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Dec 08 2023, MSavoritias wrote:
>
>> 2. We can self host our own prosody instance.
> I host my own Prosody instance (mostly to talk to Soprani). [1][2] I
> recommend the project host its own, as well.

Yeah the consensus so far seems to be to host our own. It is pretty easy 
as you said so it shouldn't be a problem for me to maintain it.

Do you think it would be ok to use a VPS? Or do we want a physical 
server at somebody's home?

> The server is very lightweight. Unfortunately, my system's uptime
> history is not suitable for a project instance.
>
> For DNS, I'd be happy to offer help.juix.org, but an official address is
> probably better.

Yeah under the guix domain would be best. We also have the guix.info of 
the foundation but idk how good it would be to be under that.

> XMPP is great. Thanks for the initiative!
Yw ^^ Was missing an XMPP instance and since i can step up I did :)
> Kind regards
> Felix
>
> [1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/system-config/src/commit/b566b08a982a12f896cd6e6666f7849dbac0ce2e/host/wallace-server/operating-system.scm#L1195-L1200
> [2] Message retention in my setup may only be thirty days.

MSavoritias

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi MSavoritias,

On Sun, Dec 10 2023, MSavoritias wrote:

> Do you think it would be ok to use a VPS? Or do we want a physical 
> server at somebody's home?

It's a community question. Everyone knows about IRC, and it works
well. I'm not sure there is a "we want" for XMPP, even though the
protocol is superior.

There is also a trust issue. For acceptance, we need bridging. For
bridging, we need policing. And for policing, we need people with
time.

Libera.chat has great volunteers that have a long track record in
maintaining a service that people rely upon. A group of people would
have to step up for XMPP here.

Kind regards
Felix

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[MSavoritias]

On 12/10/23 16:43, Felix Lechner wrote:
> Hi MSavoritias,
>
> On Sun, Dec 10 2023, MSavoritias wrote:
>
>> Do you think it would be ok to use a VPS? Or do we want a physical
>> server at somebody's home?
> It's a community question. Everyone knows about IRC, and it works
> well. I'm not sure there is a "we want" for XMPP, even though the
> protocol is superior.

"We want" was in the context of what would be acceptable as hosting so 
that we can have the room under the same domain as guix.

The past few days has given me an indication that there is a good amount 
of people that want something else than IRC and email.

>
> There is also a trust issue. For acceptance, we need bridging. For
> bridging, we need policing. And for policing, we need people with
> time.

That's a good question yeah. Whether we want bridging that is. 
Personally I am leaning that we don't.

Because bridging can ruin the experience of people that use XMPP. But I 
can see it either way.

Regarding moderation its not a problem to find moderators for the room. 
Add like 5-10 of them so that we always have somebody online. I have 
been running XMPP for the past two years like this.

> Libera.chat has great volunteers that have a long track record in
> maintaining a service that people rely upon. A group of people would
> have to step up for XMPP here.

I agree. Hopefully this thread will encourage some people that there is 
a chance we have an XMPP instance :D

And we (the people doing/wanting the xmpp instance) can get some 
permission to set it up under a guix domain.

MSavoritias

>
> Kind regards
> Felix

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[Vivien Kraus]

Le dimanche 10 décembre 2023 à 17:45 +0200, MSavoritias a écrit :
> > There is also a trust issue. For acceptance, we need bridging. For
> > bridging, we need policing. And for policing, we need people with
> > time.
> 
> That's a good question yeah. Whether we want bridging that is. 
> Personally I am leaning that we don't.
> 
> Because bridging can ruin the experience of people that use XMPP. But
> I 
> can see it either way.

Maybe we could do something a little smarter, like having sneek deliver
messages in both IRC and XMPP.

Vivien

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[MSavoritias]

On 12/10/23 17:56, Vivien Kraus wrote:
> Le dimanche 10 décembre 2023 à 17:45 +0200, MSavoritias a écrit :
>>> There is also a trust issue. For acceptance, we need bridging. For
>>> bridging, we need policing. And for policing, we need people with
>>> time.
>> That's a good question yeah. Whether we want bridging that is.
>> Personally I am leaning that we don't.
>>
>> Because bridging can ruin the experience of people that use XMPP. But
>> I
>> can see it either way.
> Maybe we could do something a little smarter, like having sneek deliver
> messages in both IRC and XMPP.
>
> Vivien

There are mirroring ways yeah. That would be a better solution.

Because there is biboumi but it basically just creates an IRC room in XMPP.


Also sneek should filter stuff probably. Because xmpp allows pictures 
and long messages and such.

So it shouldn't mirror everything as is. I don't know how possible it is 
though. Maybe some custom setup of something.


That said I do have my doubts whether this is more trouble than its 
worth personally.

Given that IRC and XMPP are two very different protocols that are 
probably gonna attract a different community.


MSavoritias

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service.

[Ada Stevenson]

Hi,

On 12/10/23 4:04 PM, MSavoritias wrote:
>
> On 12/10/23 17:56, Vivien Kraus wrote:
>> Le dimanche 10 décembre 2023 à 17:45 +0200, MSavoritias a écrit :
>>>> There is also a trust issue. For acceptance, we need bridging. For
>>>> bridging, we need policing. And for policing, we need people with
>>>> time.

I am of the opinion that bridging would be a bad idea. The differences 
between IRC and XMPP are significant enough that bringing would probably 
be more disruptive than conducive to acceptance. A better approach would 
to simply have a separate IRC and XMPP channel. If people end up 
preferring XMPP, more people will simply elect to use it. In any project 
eventually the main communication channels tend to split up into smaller 
groups once they get to a certain size anyway for a number of reasons. 
This doesn't stop these other spaces from being 'accepted', and if we 
have the XMPP channel become official, I think this is acceptance enough.


>>> That's a good question yeah. Whether we want bridging that is.
>>> Personally I am leaning that we don't.
>>>
>>> Because bridging can ruin the experience of people that use XMPP. But
>>> I
>>> can see it either way.
>> Maybe we could do something a little smarter, like having sneek deliver
>> messages in both IRC and XMPP.
>>
>> Vivien
>
> There are mirroring ways yeah. That would be a better solution.
>
> Because there is biboumi but it basically just creates an IRC room in 
> XMPP.
>
>
> Also sneek should filter stuff probably. Because xmpp allows pictures 
> and long messages and such.
>
> So it shouldn't mirror everything as is. I don't know how possible it 
> is though. Maybe some custom setup of something.
>
>
> That said I do have my doubts whether this is more trouble than its 
> worth personally.
>
> Given that IRC and XMPP are two very different protocols that are 
> probably gonna attract a different community.

Agreed. Specifically, mobile XMPP clients work far, far better than 
their IRC counterparts out of the box. I think we'd see a lot of people 
come to the XMPP server due to it's great mobile accessibility.

In short, I think we should host our own XMPP server (maybe a VPS for 
uptime purposes? With media uploads and message logs, storage would be 
much more of a factor to consider compared to IRC) under the 
guix.gnu.org domain name and list it on the website. I think once we get 
to that stage, investigating how to keep track of message logs (perhaps 
mirroring logs to logs.guix.gnu.org, perhaps under a separate page to 
the IRC logs) will be vital in moderation efforts. Bridging would cause 
more problems and potentially solve a problem that we shouldn't want to 
solve (having one unified space).


>
>
> MSavoritias
>

Ada (adanska)

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service. paid service?

[jbranso]

I would like to pay $5 a month to have an xmpp account coolawesomeusername@guix.gnu.org

Are there other interested parties?  It might be a possible way to generate $$ to continue developing guix.

We could even partner with JMP.chat.

My two cents,

Joshua

www.gnucode.me

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service. paid service?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

jbranso@dismail.de writes:

> I would like to pay $5 a month to have an xmpp account coolawesomeusername@guix.gnu.org
>
> Are there other interested parties?  It might be a possible way to generate $$ to continue developing guix.

I’d rather not commercialize stuff like this, especially not for project
communication.  I wouldn’t want our servers to cache image,
video, and audio uploads by “coolawesomeusername” that aren’t related to
discussing Guix.  Nor would I want to give the impression that
“coolawesomeusername”’s activities are in any way endorsed by
guix.gnu.org.  We don’t ache for $5 a month, and giving away autonomy
over the name and what it is associated with is worth far more than a
trickle of $5.

In my personal opinion (as an experienced curmudgeon) I think that
setting things up for commercialization is to invite unspeakable dread
and rot.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: RFI: Guix XMPP service. paid service?

[Ada Stevenson]

Hi,

On 12/14/23 7:36 AM, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> jbranso@dismail.de writes:
>
>> I would like to pay $5 a month to have an xmpp account coolawesomeusername@guix.gnu.org
>>
>> Are there other interested parties?  It might be a possible way to generate $$ to continue developing guix.
> I’d rather not commercialize stuff like this, especially not for project
> communication.  I wouldn’t want our servers to cache image,
> video, and audio uploads by “coolawesomeusername” that aren’t related to
> discussing Guix.  Nor would I want to give the impression that
> “coolawesomeusername”’s activities are in any way endorsed by
> guix.gnu.org.  We don’t ache for $5 a month, and giving away autonomy
> over the name and what it is associated with is worth far more than a
> trickle of $5.
>
> In my personal opinion (as an experienced curmudgeon) I think that
> setting things up for commercialization is to invite unspeakable dread
> and rot.

Agreed. Accounts with an official domain like 'guix.gnu.org' should be 
left for very special cases, such as admin accounts or special server 
infrastructure. Upkeeping a XMPP server that caches this data would be a 
little more expensive than usual, but if you use Guix often and want to 
support the project you should very well just donate. (As a digression, 
I do believe that we should promote the link to donate to the project a 
little bit more, perhaps in the IRC and XMPP banners?)

Anyway, hosting a server should be pretty cost efficient. A few 
terabytes would go a long way, and you wouldn't need that much compute 
speed either. An XMPP server would be the least of our worries 
expenditure-wise (we still have to decide whats happening with qa.guix 
and data.guix (!!!!!))

Thanks,

Ada (adanska)