On Thursday, November 19, 2020 11:17:15 AM MST Neal Gompa wrote:
The move to having our own Matrix server is being driven by Fedora
subcommunities already wanting to move primacy from IRC to Matrix.
Many of our adjunct upstreams have done so (Mozilla, KDE, etc.) or are
in the process of doing so (GNOME, openSUSE, etc.).
The intent isn't to drop IRC as a gateway to these communities, and
indeed the Freenode IRC channels would remain bridged to the Fedora
Matrix server.
To be blunt, we're struggling to get new folks to come talk to us on
IRC.
Has this been documented anywhere? If so, we can likely review these issues,
and see what would need to be done to solve this problem, if there is one.
Our largest user community is on Discord today, which eclipses
*everything* else by a wide margin.
It's worth questioning whether those folks are actually Fedora uses, or people
who are just a bit interested in Fedora. Given that the use of proprietary
software, where a superior Free alternative exists, is against the Four
Foundations, it's questionable that they'd be Discord users.
Next up is Telegram, which we have
been using somewhat for years through influence by the Russian Fedora
community who brought it to us in the first place. Neither of these
platforms are FOSS, and we want to provide a rich real-time
communications platform that is FOSS and open in many of the same ways
that IRC is. Matrix is open, federated, and gaining share in the
marketplace, making it a solid replacement for IRC. And unlike
alternatives, maintaining links to historical IRC channels with Matrix
rooms is easy and straightforward.
We want to be approachable, and we want to be appealing. Right now,
our usage of IRC hurts us.
If Matrix bridges so well with IRC, and many upstream communities are using it
already, surely they could just join our channels through their bridges?
--
John M. Harris, Jr.
Splentity