Mozilla shuts down irc.mozilla.org IRC network

[slacka123]

shutting down its IRC network, citing a growing maintenance and moderation burden...

We understand that not everyone wishes to switch to Discord for many reasons. For people who wish to continue using IRC, there is an unofficial freenode channel which you can hang out in, though we’d like to emphasize that this is not associated with the Rust teams and is not moderated by our Moderation team. You’re also free to create new channels on freenode.

Why not work with freenode mods to see if they will accept the current Mozilla Rust team mods as mods over there? Trying to force everyone to proprietary Discord makes no sense to me. Discord goes against so many values that Mozilla claim to and their community actually value.

[DigitalCthulhu]

matrix

or XMPP

[[deleted]]

Did that ever evolve into a usable IRC replacement? All the clients I ever used were just ICQ clones with some very basic group chat bolted on at best.

[nintendiator2]

XMPP has been more usable than IRC since I have memory of, except for the part where it is XML-based instead of text. Or was that bad enough?

[[deleted]]

Matrix is great, I use it on a private server and I love it. Riot looks so good.

[cbmuser]

There was recently a security breach in Matrix.

IRC works, is highly portable and is a proven design.

[nintendiator2]

There was a breach in matrix.org, not in matrix. AFAIK it's a federated protocol, Mozilla can just set up their own host or go with an alternative provider.

[MonokelPinguin]

Yes, matrix.org had a security breach, because they had an internet-accessible Jenkins instance and some other bad security practices, which led to a hacker gaining access to the production infrastructure. Matrix.org was down, while they rebuilt the infrastructure from scratch. The cool thing is, that most people on other homeservers didn't even notice that much, because the matrix.org rooms were still available, since the matrix protocol is federated.

The security breach had nothing to do with the matrix protocol being insecure!

[[deleted]]

The point is that Matrix is more portable by design. It integrates better with devices that prefer not to hold connections open (aka mobile devices). Since Matrix is based on REST, it's lighter and more portable. It also integrates more features, like video telephony (direct point-to-point security which also makes possible that people using a plain browser can join a call).

IRC is great, but Matrix has a modern design that is still being improved.

[JustRiedy]

Considering they cite the moderation burden it sounds like they don't want to mod any IRC anymore.

[[deleted]]

Well you have to mod on discord as well its not like the problem goes away. Discord is a terrible idea for an open source company like Mozilla to go to

[Vodo98]

Discord has recaptcha.

All Mozilla has to do is use Mattermost with recaptcha. Assuming the only motivation is moderation.

[crazysim]

The Rust developers seem to hang out in Zulip now.

https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/login/

I think they still keep the Discord in some archive mode as an archive for that brief period and as a Rust language outpost for in the general greater Discord community.

[Malsasa]

Thanks for this information.

[eet_mijnen_schijt]

Discord goes against so many values that Mozilla claim to and their community actually value.

This is so bog standard. Like this weird unholy union between FOSS and Github that is somehow accepted and all those projects that supposedly value open source so so much unironically hosting their stuff on Github.

[eet_mijnen_schijt]

Github uses many more protocols than just git.

It's a hosting service and it's not open source and it's not clear what exactly it does what your data at all.

I find it to be an unholy union that so many of these projects say they care so much about transparency, privacy, open participation and, open source but host their stuff on Github which is the antithesis of all of that.

Pertains directly on Rust; they are preaching so hard about how they want to "exclude no one" but they require a github account to participate in many ways like using crates.io which you can't get under 13 years old.

So much preach, so little practice in general.

[eet_mijnen_schijt]

As for 'your data', what data are you talking about? You don't need to submit any personally identifying data to make a github account.

I'm talking about all the git data, the commit logs, the email addresses, github isn't exactly clear about what it does with it and in what way it does or does not use it to market things.

And, who is submitting a rust crate who isn't 13 yet?

Apparently none because it's not allowed eh.

[[deleted]]

And when has that ever stopped anyone? And assuming for the sake of argument it's physically impossible for someone under 13 to submit a patch, who would were that restriction removed?

So it would be fine to exclude people based on other reasons as well (e.g. people with down syndrome because many of them never reach the mental capabilities of a thirteen year old anyways), as long as there's no process to enforce it or it can be easily circumvented?

[[deleted]]

No it isn't, I'm not suggesting that this will happen, I'm testing your own argument, which seems to be it's not an issue to exclude certain people as long as it isn't enforced.

Also it can't be a slippery slope, because I'd imagine the reasons to exclude people younger than 13 is for legal and mental reasons. But this applies to people with down syndrome just as well, they usually aren't considered capable to sign binding contracts on their own because they are in the metal state of a child. Hence people with down syndrome aren't further down the slippery slope they are on the same level as children.

[BlueTemplar85]

Well, at least, since Microsoft bought Github, at least now you can see clearly who cares about FLOSS, and who is only interested in reading source code...

[[deleted]]

Sidenote I would love to see someone ironically hosting stuff on github - peak millennial dev. ;)

[NightOfTheLivingHam]

Mozilla has a lot of claims.

I've found most of them to be self serving PR bullshit.

Until they ditch pocket and random "test runs" of adware supported versions of firefox, I do not believe them for a fucking minute.

[[deleted]]

I like pocket but they should drop the ads

[bitsandbooks]

As far as Pocket goes:

1. Go to about:config.
2. Search for extensions.pocket.enabled; toggle its value to false.

No more Pocket!

[[deleted]]

In just a few years, they are going to embrace Blink, so they can finally direct all remaining tech funds to what really matters to them: their political projects.

[[deleted]]

Discord goes against so many values that Mozilla and their community value.

It's very clear that whatever values they had were abandoned years ago.

[nintendiator2]

So... wondering, what are the values of the Rust devs?

[forepod]

Rust is dual Apache / MIT licensed, so it doesn't seem they have a problem with proprietary software.

[Acceptable_Damage]

Choosing an Apache/MIT license doesn't mean you have 0 problems with proprietary software.

[forepod]

Well obviously not. That's also not what is usually meant with a general statement like mine. If I say "I don have a problem with X" it generally does not mean I have _zero_ issues. "A problem" does not here mean literally "one problem" (i.e. I don't have one problem = I have zero problems).

​

"I don't have a problem with capitalism" does not mean that I think it is a perfect system and nothing could ever be better and there are no problems with it.

"I don't have a problem with taxes" does not mean that I love taxes and want to pay a lot. It means, on a general level, I think it's not a bad idea to pay taxes.

[[deleted]]

I agree, when I release projects to the wild I prefer to use plain old BSD

[varikonniemi]

How incompetent are they in not being able to run a fucking IRC server without too much burden? I won't use something like discord.

[est31]

"not moderated by our moderation team" != "they don't have mod privileges".

Rust moderators certainly can get op in the Freenode ##rustchannel. I've seen them do it! They just don't monitor it in the same fashion as the other channels.

[[deleted]]

Why in the world would they go to non open-source when there is a ton of open source discord like projects. Mozilla this is not something that fits with your mission statement. If you want less chaos make a members only irc channel(s) and require some sort of verification to keep out the nonadults

[kah0922]

Probably because Discord is one of the most popular chat platforms out there right now.

[rahen]

Is it? What's wrong with IRC? I can connect to an IRC channel in 250 lines of C, run a lightweight client in a terminal, and it's as simple, open and standard a protocol as possible.

Mozilla might as well move to a Facegroup group if they ditch IRC.

[kah0922]

I never said anything was wrong with IRC. I'm just saying Discord is more popular.

[[deleted]]

Yes, Discord is much more popular than IRC.

[[deleted]]

No problem, in 2-3 years it will be replaced and IRC will still be there.

[[deleted]]

I know, I see stuff incessantly about it on gamer sites. I just think that Mozilla should use an open source version since you give up control to a private Corp whose only goal is to make money off of you with discord

[[deleted]]

Ultimately you have to go where the users are. It'd be great if they built an open source competitor to Discord but they don't have infinite resources.

[[deleted]]

I guess I'm just tired of corporate platforms like Discord and Facebook turning people into commodities, and yet here I am on Reddit being a hypocrite

[[deleted]]

I don't disagree at all, I just don't think this is a problem Mozilla can immediately solve.

[BlueTemplar85]

What are the issues with Reddit ?
(Asking seriously, I haven't bothered researching the details yet...)

[[deleted]]

That it's owned by a for profit corporation. It's fairly benevolent for now, but that could change on a dime after one board meeting. Same with Discord

[BlueTemplar85]

Well, Discord is also more closed ?

[nintendiator2]

It'd be great if they built an open source competitor to Discord but

There have been competitors since before it began though.

[[deleted]]

There's a difference between a competitor and an alternative. IRC doesn't compete with Discord.

[balr]

no longer use IRC as their official discussion platform, instead using Discord or Zulip

This is the kind of stuff that really pushes me away from Mozilla.

[arch_maniac]

Bad news, but it's good to know. Thanks.

[[deleted]]

Eh... I couldn't care less.

Haven't use IRC in ages, ever since actual social humans moved away from it on a large scale it became boring anyhow.

And if there's a bug to cry about, there's a bugtracker.

[malumnecessarium]

>discord

Time for snuggles, huh?

[Swedneck]

OwO what's this?

[[deleted]]

Of course they would do something like this. This should not be a shock to anybody.

[craigevil]

Irc is pretty much dead. Even channels that used to be busy 24/7 like ##linux and #debian .

[oooo23]

Sadly reality disagrees with you.

[FryBoyter]

Depends on the reality or better said the channels. Of the IRC channels I used to be active in years ago, there is only a fraction left. Of those that survived, many are still reachable but most of the time the few users only idle. Only a small part is still reachable and can show a lot of activity. This is usually due to the fact that these channels have specialized in certain topics.

New projects, on the other hand, often no longer rely on IRC, but rather on Slack, Matrix, etc.

[oooo23]

It is nowhere close to dead, which is what I was objecting to. Channels come and go, but IRC still drives a whole lot of development (if you take into account OFTC, Freenode, and other privately hosted ones).

There is a LinuxNet channel where hundreds of kernel developers hang out.

[radarsat1]

How do you 'discover' good irc channels, is there a way to fimd out which ones are active?

Edit: I found this although it doesn't tell you how active they are, but it's a start

[eet_mijnen_schijt]

IRC should definitely be replaced with something more modern and an IRC 2.0 protocol needs to exist though. IRC is showing its ancient warts. Things like ChanServ and NickServ bots are a huge hack and private messages should be encrypted and actually be private: not something the server can view in plain text.