Spreed: Discussion: Matrix.org Integration

[sunjam]

Specific discussions should take place in the subtickets.

This is a discussion thread for matrix.org integration as mentioned in meta thread #687. Also mentioned in chat meta thread #294 #395. Matrix has been announced as the base platform for the upcoming Librem 5 phone.

[GoetheG]

An interesting idea you have, @sunjam. The college society I volunteer for, tested a lot of different collaboration software. We tested Slack, Mattermost, Riot.im/Matrix, Rocket.Chat, stackfield, Threema Work. From my non computer scientist point of view, it would be the best solution to closely cooperate with Rocket.Chat. I know that Rocket.Chat has not a PHP basis. But I honestly think that this is the best solution from a user experience perspective. Rocket.Chat can be installed on an own server and can also be hosted somewhere. I have NETWAYS in mind.

And for guys like me, who just want to have a good looking and working peace of software, which is easy to update and to install, Rocket.Chat seems to be the way to go. Matrix is not easy to use. It's for professional coders only. What makes Nextcloud really special is it's simplicity. I can easily install Nextcloud within my web hosting service and just use it. Great work you do by the way @nickvergessen. And Matrix is not easy anything. I was shown the installation process on a test server. It's really horrible.

And if we really want people to switch from Skype and Slack and Dropbox, that this open source society should deliver not only a good looking software, but an 'easy to handle' software too.

[natrius]

@GoetheG
In my opinion the matrix synapse server is not hard to install. It seems complicated, i understand that, but its not that hard and it just works out of the box afterwards, without much hasseling around.
But i have not tried rocket.chat.
The usage of matrix itself its easy too - but that should not be point of this discussion.

@Topic
I would appreciate the integration of Matrix.

[violoncelloCH]

I would rather go for implementing a matrix compatible api at least for federation. This would open a possibility to connect to matrix instances from within nextcloud talk. Or maybe it could even be possible to implement matrix's client api so existing matrix clients like riot could be used with nextcloud talk

[GoetheG]

When I posted my first comment I didn’t know anything about Nextcloud Talk. Is there maybe anything planned?

I wish there were some easy way to connect Rocket.Chat with Nextcloud. That would make Nextcloud a real collaborative solution. But it seems that Nextcloud is building a completely new “messenger” from scratch.

[nickvergessen]

Well we want everyone, that runs Nextcloud, to be able to also run Talk with as many features as possible.
When looking into the federation of chats/calls, we will surely think about all this again and what the best way is to achieve this.

[sunjam]

What @violoncelloCH mentioned is really interesting. I had not thought of Talk being supported by Riot, which is a front end for the backend Matrix Synapse server. There are actually many client front end implementations being used. It would be fascinating if these front ends could be used with Nextcloud Talk.

[entfrickler]

Or if we had a matrix bridge which integrates Nextcloud Talk into the Riot client / Matrix network.

[matthiasbeyer]

As a user, I'd vote against a centralized solution like Slack, Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Threema.. and would explicitely vote for Matrix, _because_ it is federated.

Just my 2ct.

[sunjam]

Definitely some confusion in that last response. Matterbridge (linked in
another request), can interconnect these services via python.

Threema and Slack are proprietary services. Mattermost is FOSS.
Rocket.chat and Matrix are both Federated and FOSS. Hope this helps.

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 6:37 AM Matthias Beyer [e-mail]
wrote:

As a user, I'd vote against a centralized solution like Slack, Mattermost,
Rocket.Chat, Threema.. and would explicitely vote for Matrix, because
it is federated.

Just my 2ct.

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[gtbuchanan]

I was all for this integration initially, but recently discovered the following privacy issues with Matrix:

https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/4540
https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-matrix.org

A new protocol called "The Grid" is being proposed and developed to address these issues:

https://gitlab.com/thegridprotocol/home
https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo

Seems to be led by one dev at the moment, though.

[Xananax]

Is there any official statement answering those points from Matrix?

[gtbuchanan]

@Xananax The research paper claims Matrix did a full review of the notes here and he responded. Though, there's a lot of information to sift through and apparent contention between the two individuals.

[tilosp]

Is there any official statement answering those points from Matrix?

https://matrix.org/blog/2019/06/30/tightening-up-privacy-in-matrix
https://matrix.org/blog/2019/09/27/privacy-improvements-in-synapse-1-4-and-riot-1-4

[Xananax]

It seems to me like the second part of the research is either old (written prior to the links @tilosp posted) or not entirely accurate. The response by Matrix in those blog articles seems to commendable to me and addresses a lot of (if not most/all? I didn't do a bullet-by-bullet comparison) the criticisms of the paper. I see this as a constructive attitude, far from the bleaker picture research paper #2 painted.

[gtbuchanan]

I agree though the second blog link from @tilosp was posted only yesterday. Matrix seems to have taken significant strides to address the issues listed in the paper. They also posted an AMA on /r/privacy yesterday. Seems I commented a day too early!

[wrapper]

+1 for this topic, I'd really like my self-hosted communication platforms to be able to integrate with each other

[blaggacao]

Yes, please. Matrix has a wonderful perspective to put all those slacks, telegrams, mattermosts, keybases, IRCs, and - eventually - even Whatsapp into that single box through https://dimension.t2bot.io/ with the right bridges...

My use case: consolidate customer care channels, professionally.

@nickvergessen You might even consider (seriously, and over time) to base your real time communication stack on matrix (giving it some time to mature).

[dan-elevate]

I would also advocate to link TALK with the Matrix ecosystem - would be a great and self empowering combo!!

[johnjaylward]

I too would appreciate matrix integration. Tbh I have not been impressed with the built in Talk. The chat is super basic without even offering a way to add/upload attachments or pictures and the video and voice chats were super spotty while on my own LAN.

I think it would allow the nextcloud team more focus on the "cloud" aspects to offload the Talk plugin in favor of a matrix integration. I think this would line up more with how the email integrations work where nextcloud isn't really the provider but just another client.

[vranki]

It's already possible to embed Riot as an external application if you find one that allows embedding. SSO and proper integration would be of course appreciated.

[jayhybrid]

Just another comment on how Matrix integration would be very appreciated passing through.

[4jNsY6fCVqZv]

Here's what Matthew from Matrix says about it. An encrypted search could also be implemented. https://github.com/nextcloud/spreed/issues/1437#issuecomment-586468169

[stenwt]

Now, it's possible (though in very early days) to run a Matrix server in the browser, removing the need to run and associate with a homeserver: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix