Been lurking a bit, reading forum and noting that there are quite a few Pirate channels on Matrix now, for a variety of different countries, including the ones which actually have Pirates in government. Riot client seems to work well and it’s quite a bit more user friendly than classic irc clients, might have a better chance at pulling in engagement from the kids.
Personally I believe open source is the way to go if you’re going to be a party to stand behind principles. Problem is we’re living in a world which doesn’t give a crap about principles. So to get the world you want, how do you get there? Do you sacrifice principles (which is your raison d’etre), or do you say “fuggit, I’m gonna fight dirty”? How are Pirates managing to be relevant in other parts of the world without sacrificing principles?
There’s a dedicated Pirate server on Retroshare too.
Thing is, someone has to step up and make a test implementation of a Riot server that can bridge to the current IRC server. I unfortunately don’t have much time these days to do so (or the experience to move it on from proof of concept and really make it secure) but I’d fully support that effort by throwing more money to the party to make it happen.
Slack takes 2 mouseclicks and a little typing in things like “name of slack server”.
It was also up and running a year ago with a pirate community having a lot of fun. And here we are still talking about the alternatives are just as good just… if only we had… if someone could just…
I’ve been using Riot for about as long and as far as I can tell it is as easy to setup and bridge, I don’t really see the need to support Slack especially since it has that inane history post limit.
wrong? I don’t buy into that the only tech we should use is open source.
I’m typing this right now on a PC with Windows 10 on a Chrome browser over a network running on CISCO routers.
To have a full open source stack for most, and by most i mean something like 99.9% of the public, would be unrealistic.
You can support Open Source while using proprietary technologies.
Did I miss it in the policy that we should only use Open Source software?
I don’t know if I’m missing something obvious, I’m pretty new to Matrix but hasn’t this work already been done as per
I tried logging in and joining #pirateirc_#PPAU:diasp.in room which let me join #PPAU IRC channel.
What stops the party from announcing IRC account creation freeze in lets say 3 months, then asking all the regulars and party members to move to Matrix with IRC being a deprecated legacy option and then maybe a year down the road once most people have migrated decommissioning IRC and turning on E2E encryption?
On the front page it states that the Pirate Party is a movement based around civil and digital liberties, privacy and anonymity, and transparency. Using a proprietary service for party communications that’s based in the USA and that has already had at least one user data breach, when there are other, better options available, runs clearly counter to those principles.
(Also the programmer in me takes one look at Electron being used and struggles not to vomit. But that’s a different issue.)
If someone suggested moving all communications to Facebook I expect there’d be even more controversy. As far as I can tell having a presence there is more of an advertising necessity, and feeding the giant privacy-violating behemoth beyond that purpose is probably not something we should be doing.
Sorry must have misunderstood there. it looked like you were using FB for organising stuff (which a lot of people do by default because “it’s easier”). Basically allergic to FB and self-exclude from many things due to people requiring its use to be involved in any organisational capacity, so it’s something I pay attention to before considering joining any organisation or group. Generally bcos I will have to say sorry, can’t do xyz if you need me to do it on FB. Kinda like Chuck in Better Call Saul. So, good to know.
Keep in mind that I’m not actually a member yet either. At this point almost entirely because I haven’t gotten around to reading the party constitution. So I could very well be slightly off base, but to the best of my knowledge the organisational tools used are more etherpad, wiki, email, irc, and this forum.
I permanently deactivated my FB account around the beginning of this year. Not deleted, because I don’t like the idea of retroactively removing one half of a conversation.
I disagree with your interpretation. You’re just assuming an organisational policy interpretation when it really is not clear at all.
“Better” is subjective. What can definitely be objectively measured is the lack of engagement and communication of the party, as well as the uptick in messages per user and install speed in both time and clicks to get a slack server and individual clients running. Your argument lacks validity.
Expecting us to require all our resources to be absolutely free as far as expenses are concerned to fit in with what we want to represent/support can be a little unrealistic at times. As long as it meets the following conditions, I’m OK with whatever.
Freedom to adapt it to suit our needs
Agreeable licencing terms
Portable between OSs
“Open is more transparent than proprietary.”
“Federated protocols support civil/digital liberties more than centralised.”
“All services hosted by third parties in the USA are less private than ones on hosting you control.”
These are the sorts of statements you’re disagreeing with. Apparently we’re speaking different languages here. I remain incredibly unimpressed with the latest fashionable app you’re pushing and I’m not really interested in arguing further.
There’s always options. However nothing is going to change unless someone puts forward an actual proposal for the National Council to consider. We hold meetings once a fortnight on Wednesdays (there’s one tonight), but thus far no Party member has put forward a proposal that can be actioned (no this thread doesn’t count).
Where this discussion has come up before I’ve offered to work with members to help move things forward, that offer is still open.
Assume:
We don’t have much money
We don’t have armies of sysadmins
Any proposal needs to be an ‘in house’ solution
Here is the beginning of an effort to develop a proposal the National Council could vote to adopt from months ago. It isn’t finished and needs major work before it would be acceptable, I’ve updated the todo at the top, feel free to contact me for help: https://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/proposal-implement-matix-platform
We’re (unofficially) trying out Matrix for social chat. Not self-hosted yet and no IRC bridge either. Come and join us! I recommend using the Riot webchat client or their iOS/Android apps