From the Matrix side, we're ridiculously happy to have the opportunity to defragment developer chat a bit, and get folks on Gitter natively talking to folks elsewhere on Matrix (including bridged to IRC, Slack, Discord or whatever). The fragmentation of FOSS development chat into proprietary silos a few years back was incredibly depressing, and this is our attempt to put right what once went wrong :) Happy to try to answer any questions from the Matrix side!
From the GitLab side we're very happy with the new home for Gitter. Chat is very useful but using multiple incompatible technologies has lead to fragmentation and silos. For example external developers being on Gitter when the organization behind the project is on Slack. Matrix is a great way to solve that and we hope Gitter will contribute to the success of it.
One of the best features of Gitter is that it can be embedded on webpages which reduces a lot of friction for public communities. Please keep that feature and perhaps, even replicate it in Matrix. This can be a unique value prop for both over the proprietary ones. Plus, it enriches the Web as opposed to moving all things into app silos.
The Matrix to IRC bridge (for at least freenode and OFTC) has a number of suboptimal behaviours on the IRC side, it would be great if you could improve the experience for folks not using Matrix.
It is not obvious from the title but Element is actually acquiring Gitter.
Quote from the article:
> In practice, the way this is happening is that Element (the company founded by the Matrix core team to fund Matrix development) is acquiring Gitter from GitLab, with a combined Gitter and Element dev team focusing on giving Gitter a new life in Matrix!
Well, the main news is that Gitter is going to natively join Matrix. We've been talking about doing this for a few years, but it never got to the top of the todo list on either side - plus frankly we're breaking new ground by making a large existing network natively speak Matrix (complete with incorporating room archives, etc).
Others (e.g. Rocket.Chat) have had a go at natively speaking Matrix but it's hard to be the first to do so unless both sides of the bridge are prioritising it and focusing on making it a success - and an obvious way of getting aligned is if you are on the same team. So when the opportunity came up for Gitter to move from GitLab to Element, it was a no-brainer way to ensure a successful native bridge for Gitter into Matrix. But we'd probably have got around to it anyway... it'd just have had a lower chance of success.
Talk about burying the lead. That wasn’t mentioned in the matrix blog post at all. Only that Gitter would be using matrix natively. Doesn’t matter either way but weird to not mention it.
1. ChatOps is still a feature of GitLab https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/chatops/ and supports multiple chat platforms. GitLab doesn't need to own the chat to make chatops work.
If you granted Gitter access to Gitlab, you granted it full read access to everything in your Gitlab account. This is because Gitlab does not yet support restricted access grants [1].
Absolutely - at Element we categorically have zero desire to have access to anything in your GL accounts. On the other hand, for the same reason, we’re not going to exploit that :/
Dissenting opinion: Element UI/Matrix UX is not good. It's as unwieldy/hostile/frustrating as IRC, maybe more.
Gitter, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward. The biggest issues with it are that they chose to go with the "has a GitLab/GitHub/Twitter account and must use it to sign in" antipattern as the barrier to entry, and that the web client's layout at half-width 1080p is unfathomably bad. Like, clearly-no-one-has-ever-tested-their-responsive-layout-rules bad.
> Our plan is instead to merge Gitter’s features into Element (or next generations of Element) itself and then - if and only if Element has achieved parity with Gitter based on the above list - we expect to upgrade the deployment on gitter.im to a Gitter-customised version of Element. The inevitable side-effect is that we’ll be adding new features to Element rather than Gitter going forwards.
Wonder what existing Gitter users think about this?
Hopefully they'll be happy that Gitter will sprout all Matrix's funky features like E2EE, VoIP, Widgets, Read receipts, Reactions, a bajillion clients/bots/bridges, the open standard API itself... and as long as Element-branded-as-Gitter looks and performs and smells enough like Gitter, and the community & rooms are still there, all will be well.
And if they don't like it, they can always go spin up their own Gitter instance and maintain it, bridged into Matrix - it's FOSS after all :D
Using it mostly out of necessity (a project I'm involved in uses it for communication), but I'm mostly enthusiastic about no longer having that annoying Matrixbot - there were always a number of Matrix users, and the implementation was incredibly confusing.
It's a nice bonus that I'll no longer be dependent on Gitter's somewhat buggy Web UI.
(That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time - GitLab promised Gitter rooms for GitLab projects as well when they acquired it, and I'm not even sure if that ever saw the light of day.)
I don't think Gitter development was very active, before or after their acquisition by GitLab. It has been pretty much the same since 2016. It being folded into another tool felt inevitable to me.
I'm hyped for this; RustPython uses gitter as its main communication platform for developers and contributors, and while it's certainly worked quite well for us so far, I was slightly worried the slow pace of development and the deprecation of mobile apps. It seemed (to me, at least, and I don't follow the gitter changelogs or anything - edit: just looked at them now, so yeah, what follows is pretty unfounded. Anyway,) like gitter was sorta becoming a ghost ship, still running along smoothly but not much was happening at the helm -- this also might be because I mainly use the Android app, which is deprecated, so I see very few updates to gitter if any. Anyway, yeah, I think this is a great direction to go for gitter, if only so I'll have an updated mobile app :)
For me, one shortcoming of gitter is that it has always been tertiary in my pool of chat services. The more tertiary services are accessible through matrix the better, that way I'm less likely to miss notifications.
I don't think there are big downsides, I can't think of anything in the core gitter chat that I would miss when switching to matrix.
I'm massively rooting for this. I really wanted to use Gitter as the official chat for my projects, but the experience was just so painful that I ended up fragmenting the community across Discord and a gated Slack. I would love to have a forever home where I can feel comfortable getting everyone on board.
Matrix is based on an open documented protocol, which means it welcomes multiple implementations. There are several terminal-based clients, which you can see on their current client list, and I wouldn't be surprised if more appear over time: https://matrix.org/clients/
I'm not sure anyone has written an irssi plugin specifically, but there's an excellent weechat plugin (https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix). As others have said, there's also matrix-ircd which exposes all of Matrix as an IRC server you can connect to from whatever IRC client floats your boat, but you end up speaking the subset of Matrix which can be represented as IRC, which is a bit of a shame.
Yup. I haven't tried it myself and I think there are different ways to set that up but this could be a start (I think this is more targeted towards bridging matrix and IRC, which may or may not be what you want): https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc
> If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?
Not sure what's in the mainline debian repos but there are some decent CLI clients, yes: https://matrix.org/clients/
If you're OK with weechat you can use that already :)
IMO matrix is already mature to be an IRC killer (caveat federated/decentralized identities, if that's something you require but arguably IRC doesn't have that either).
Gitter has a much simpler onboarding experience and users don't have to be signed in or members of a room to view chat. I like the ideals of Element. In fact I have the services bridged between chat rooms. Currently editing chat posts between different clients is less than subpar. Gitter build on Element will fix that issue.
You already could, before this announcement. For example, want to join https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby ? Then join #gitter_hashicorp-consul=2FLobby:matrix.org from Element.
We hope to get Gitter natively speaking Matrix in the coming months. It'll probably be a year or so before Element has feature parity with Gitter though :)
Can anyone comment on the state of UX with Element these days? I'm changing to Linux/Windows from Mac, so i'm dumping iMessage - but i'm not convinced Signal has a good enough UX to keep me and my family happy.
Sidenote, i love how i can pay Element and support Matrix/Element.
In my opinion, Signal's UX is better than Element. Element's distinction of rooms / communities is not great, and hindered by the user interface. Although, after checking out Element again, all the other parts of the UI that I thought were unintuitive were changed up, so it's certainly improving.
Particularly for the situation you described - small, family chats - I'd recommend Signal over Element / Matrix.
If you want to support the project and get something from it, a good way is to get yourself a hosted server from Element. The cheapest plan is $10 per month for 5 users, and includes things like a custom domain.
Still not good, confusing and not very fast. Like Keybase four years ago. They have some catching up to do and I hope they do it before Keybase is shut down.
If a Riot contributor is reading this comment, go try Keybase out while you still can, there are things it does well.
I think it's pretty good! Been using it every day for the past year or so and most of the UX issues I've had before (channel switching, creation and discovery) has been more or less adressed!
The only UX feature I miss is threads to help organize bigger discussions better.
Congratulations to Element ! Gitter is a fantastic platform . Are we possibly going to see Gitter become a reference open source implementation of Matrix ?
This is great news. I've used Gitter for communication in some open source projects, and have always found certain things painful. My favorite points from the article are;
- Improving iOS and Android apps. At least in the iOS case, the experience is abysmal (the web interface is similarly so)
- Replacement of the matrix-appservice-gitter bridge. I've used the Matrix <-> Gitter bridge for some time now but there's much left to be desired, such as proper edit and deletion of messages to and from the services.
Overall, it's great to see less future fragmentation in the chat systems developers use, reminds me of the XKCD comic[0] and a modification showing the matrix.org bridges[1]
Wow. It really needed this response to the xkcd comic for the vision of Matrix to click with me. Matrix just went from "just another messenger who happens to have bridges to others" to "possibly the only communication software you’ll ever need" in my mind.
Although I was well aware of Matrix for years, that particular intention behind it somehow never got through to me.
Way cool! Anecdotally, of course, but a sizeable number of Matrix rooms I was in were actually bridged Gitter rooms. Looking forward to tighter integration!
I've found trying to get help from any project that uses Gitter to be a huge pain. It seems that people hardly ever check messages on there. I hope this helps the situation from a UX perspective. Maybe can provide better notification management options?
Just a few days ago I considered setting up a Gitter-bridge for my Marrix-instance, but decided that it was both too involved and not well-enough integrated to be worth it.
I don't mean to sound stuffy when i say that the beauty of open source is that you are free to build a better alternative...but it is true. Either you can build a better thing that you want, or you can pay someone to do so, etc. That being said, there are existing native clients already. May i direct your attention to: https://www.matrix.org/clients/
Interesting. Is there already a Gitter->Matrix bridge, and that would essentially be going away once Gitter fully supports Matrix? It seems like they're not changing Gitter to talk Matrix, but actually switching the backend to be Matrix? Is that right?
The short term plan is to replace the existing (rather rubbish) Gitter<->Matrix bridge with a fully featured bridge that seamlessly bridges between Gitter and Matrix.
The long term plan folding gitter.im features into Element and Gitter users will migrate to using Element and Matrix.
Arathorn|5 years ago
Also, https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/element-acquires-gitter-to... is a pretty massive deep-dive into the migration, and The Changelog did a big podcast covering off all the details on both the GitLab/Gitter and Element/Matrix side: https://changelog.com/podcast/414
sytse|5 years ago
mathnmusic|5 years ago
pabs3|5 years ago
samschooler|5 years ago
lhoff|5 years ago
> In practice, the way this is happening is that Element (the company founded by the Matrix core team to fund Matrix development) is acquiring Gitter from GitLab, with a combined Gitter and Element dev team focusing on giving Gitter a new life in Matrix!
There is also another blogpost from the elements side https://element.io/blog/gitter-is-joining-element/
Arathorn|5 years ago
Others (e.g. Rocket.Chat) have had a go at natively speaking Matrix but it's hard to be the first to do so unless both sides of the bridge are prioritising it and focusing on making it a success - and an obvious way of getting aligned is if you are on the same team. So when the opportunity came up for Gitter to move from GitLab to Element, it was a no-brainer way to ensure a successful native bridge for Gitter into Matrix. But we'd probably have got around to it anyway... it'd just have had a lower chance of success.
As another datapoint: Gitter was already looking (independently) at using Element to replace their native mobile apps, which otherwise they were having to deprecate (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/issues/2281).
Edit: another relevant link: https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition...
redonkulus|5 years ago
hntestacc|5 years ago
[deleted]
jerodsanto|5 years ago
1. What happened to "ChatOps" and why is GitLab divesting in this space?
2. Who contacted whom? What are some details of the acquisition process and negotiations?
3. What does this mean at a practical sense for existing Gitter users?
4. What's going to happen in the next 6, 12, and 18 months?
[1]: https://changelog.com/podcast/414
sytse|5 years ago
2. GitLab contacted Matrix.
I think 3. and 4. have answers in https://matrix.org/blog/2020/09/30/welcoming-gitter-to-matri...
tha0x5|5 years ago
Look at what happened HipChat, Stride, etc.
mleonhard|5 years ago
Soon https://element.io will have that full access. Now is a good time to check your Gitlab access grants: https://gitlab.com/profile/applications
[1] "Support restricting OAuth tokens to specific projects and groups " https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/22115
Arathorn|5 years ago
cxr|5 years ago
Gitter, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward. The biggest issues with it are that they chose to go with the "has a GitLab/GitHub/Twitter account and must use it to sign in" antipattern as the barrier to entry, and that the web client's layout at half-width 1080p is unfathomably bad. Like, clearly-no-one-has-ever-tested-their-responsive-layout-rules bad.
randtrain34|5 years ago
Wonder what existing Gitter users think about this?
Arathorn|5 years ago
And if they don't like it, they can always go spin up their own Gitter instance and maintain it, bridged into Matrix - it's FOSS after all :D
Vinnl|5 years ago
It's a nice bonus that I'll no longer be dependent on Gitter's somewhat buggy Web UI.
(That said, I am somewhat sceptical about whether we'll see any reasonable results in a reasonable amount of time - GitLab promised Gitter rooms for GitLab projects as well when they acquired it, and I'm not even sure if that ever saw the light of day.)
remram|5 years ago
coolreader18|5 years ago
StavrosK|5 years ago
kag0|5 years ago
For me, one shortcoming of gitter is that it has always been tertiary in my pool of chat services. The more tertiary services are accessible through matrix the better, that way I'm less likely to miss notifications.
I don't think there are big downsides, I can't think of anything in the core gitter chat that I would miss when switching to matrix.
jeffail|5 years ago
kuon|5 years ago
Once threads will be implemented, I am sure matrix will grow a lot more, especially inside enterprises.
I hope the merge will help with that. Best of luck both teams.
TooCreative|5 years ago
Can Irssi be used to access this matrix thing?
If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?
Or maybe someone could just make an IRC server which is a bridge to matrix?
andolanra|5 years ago
There are also Matrix-IRC bridges that already exist: https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc
Arathorn|5 years ago
3np|5 years ago
Yup. I haven't tried it myself and I think there are different ways to set that up but this could be a start (I think this is more targeted towards bridging matrix and IRC, which may or may not be what you want): https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc
> If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?
Not sure what's in the mainline debian repos but there are some decent CLI clients, yes: https://matrix.org/clients/
If you're OK with weechat you can use that already :)
IMO matrix is already mature to be an IRC killer (caveat federated/decentralized identities, if that's something you require but arguably IRC doesn't have that either).
louib|5 years ago
this_user|5 years ago
There is the gomuks client (https://github.com/tulir/gomuks) for the command line. I'm not sure about the Debian package, though.
mewmewblobcat|5 years ago
lukeramsden|5 years ago
eeZah7Ux|5 years ago
dangsBoss|5 years ago
[deleted]
Valodim|5 years ago
FloatArtifact|5 years ago
ocdtrekkie|5 years ago
mike-cardwell|5 years ago
varbhat|5 years ago
Also, I think that matrix ecosystem will grow from this move.
Arathorn|5 years ago
pknopf|5 years ago
akerro|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
adsjhdashkj|5 years ago
Sidenote, i love how i can pay Element and support Matrix/Element.
j-james|5 years ago
Particularly for the situation you described - small, family chats - I'd recommend Signal over Element / Matrix.
DenseComet|5 years ago
https://element.io/plans-and-pricing/pro
Avamander|5 years ago
If a Riot contributor is reading this comment, go try Keybase out while you still can, there are things it does well.
Shared404|5 years ago
With good UX, easy encryption, the option to self host if you feel so inclined, I haven't found anything to complain about.
wraptile|5 years ago
The only UX feature I miss is threads to help organize bigger discussions better.
robjan|5 years ago
There are some other matrix clients, like Pattle, which hide much of the complexity and give a more familiar UX to other messaging apps.
japgolly|5 years ago
(Disclaimer: ShipReq dev here)
sandGorgon|5 years ago
reitanuki|5 years ago
siraben|5 years ago
- Improving iOS and Android apps. At least in the iOS case, the experience is abysmal (the web interface is similarly so)
- Replacement of the matrix-appservice-gitter bridge. I've used the Matrix <-> Gitter bridge for some time now but there's much left to be desired, such as proper edit and deletion of messages to and from the services.
Overall, it's great to see less future fragmentation in the chat systems developers use, reminds me of the XKCD comic[0] and a modification showing the matrix.org bridges[1]
[0] https://xkcd.com/1810/
[1] https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*vILzcbWOi7e4RtK0
dschuessler|5 years ago
Although I was well aware of Matrix for years, that particular intention behind it somehow never got through to me.
ncmncm|5 years ago
Or Gitter.
theon144|5 years ago
acd|5 years ago
spurgu|5 years ago
Nuzzerino|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
josteink|5 years ago
Just a few days ago I considered setting up a Gitter-bridge for my Marrix-instance, but decided that it was both too involved and not well-enough integrated to be worth it.
This is really good news!
Avamander|5 years ago
Arathorn|5 years ago
jondubois|5 years ago
boleary-gl|5 years ago
That is correct - in 2017 https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2017/03/15/gitter-acquisition/. But as announced today, Gitter will be going to Matrix going forward.
xvilka|5 years ago
mxuribe|5 years ago
dangsBoss|5 years ago
[deleted]
djsumdog|5 years ago
decentralisedog|5 years ago
The long term plan folding gitter.im features into Element and Gitter users will migrate to using Element and Matrix.