Slack-like chat (also for GSOC)

[Rainer Müller]

On 2019-05-14 22:32, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On Tue, 14 May 2019 at 18:11, Rainer Müller wrote:
>> >>> Would it be realistic to install such a service on breaburn if needed?
>> >>> (Or is it too complex / too much work?)
>> >>
>> >> I'd prefer a SaaS offering here. Self-hosting just increases the
>> >> maintenance burden and I don't think we need the configurability.
>> 
>> For the self-hosted options, Rocket Chat would be an option. However,
>> when we used it at work, after a while I started to miss some kind of
>> threading for longer conversations. Although we also usually do not 
>> have
>> long conversations or that much activity on IRC, so maybe this is not
>> that important here.
> 
> I don't have any experience with Matrix, but I maybe I should try it 
> once.
> 
> I'm not familiar with Rocket Chat either, but if you missed a feature,
> I trust your opinion.
> 
> I do believe that longer conversations are important. Think of GSOC,
> where the same project runs for 5 months or longer. It does make sense
> to keep it well-organised.
> 
> Zulip offers topics (which they heavily advertise as one of their
> "superpowers") which I find to be quite a nice "substitute" for
> threads like those in emails. If we pick that one, I would certainly
> go for GitHub OAuth and IRC mirror.
> 
> I would discard the idea of using Slack. Based on general feedback
> that probably leaves the following top candidates?
> - Matrix (might work without self-hosting)
> - Zulip
> - Mattermost
> 
> Rainer, you did not answer about whether you would be willing to try
> to install / maintain one of those on the server if we wanted to
> self-host the chat?

Of course, I would be in favor of something where we do not need to do 
the maintenance. But if there is no option that is free and offers all 
features we want, it would be possible to host it on our server. 
Preferably with authentication with GitHub to ease administration of 
groups and privileges.

> Regarding Matrix: is anyone willing to set up one ("in the cloud") for 
> testing?

You could just use the matrix.org as a homeserver, which is open for 
registrations by all. The best client I am aware of would be 
https://riot.im, which uses matrix.org as default and can register new 
accounts. It offers a solution for all of Web/Desktop/Mobile. Joining 
the FreeNode IRC Bridge should be possible from all homeservers and with 
any client though, via a special channel name.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Bridged-IRC-networks

Rainer