Bug 93556

Summary:	Implement Matrix protocol support
Product:	Telepathy	Reporter:	Matthew Hodgson <matthew>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:	Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	accounts+bugs.freedesktop.org, daniel.scharon, devurandom, diane, mcatanzaro
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Bug Depends on:	23844
Bug Blocks:

Description Matthew Hodgson 2016-01-01 23:30:51 UTC

Matrix (Matrix.org) is a relatively new HTTP-based open standard for decentralised group chat, VoIP, and freeform data pubsub with eventually consistent persistance semantics.  The idea is to provide a very simple HTTP API to decentralise conversation data without any single server or service provider having a single point of control, whilst providing all the latest and greatest features you'd expect from a modern chat service like Slack, etc.  Matrix also provides a wide range of bridges serverside for federating together existing services (IRC, Slack, Lync, XMPP etc) in a decentralised manner.  The masterplan is to provide an open fabric for modern interoperable comms on the 'net with full decentralisation.

We implemented an experimental libpurple backend for Matrix (https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix), but we just got a bug report from a telepathy user that it doesn't work via telepathy-haze, as haze assumes that all conversations are 1:1 whereas all conversations in Matrix are group chats (even if they only have 2 participants): https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/issues/1.

We don't have bandwidth to write a dedicated telepathy backend now (or fix haze), so I'm filing this bug in case someone in the telepathy community might be interested in playing with a fun new protocol and contributing one.  Writing clients should be incredibly straightforward; the Matrix client-server API (in its simplest form) is just a REST API with long-polling to receive messages.

thanks!

Comment 1 Matthew Hodgson 2016-02-07 21:31:16 UTC

Lots of chat about this at FOSDEM in the Telepathy session. Meanwhile, it turns out that a project already exists with the intention of evolving into a full Telepathy backend: https://github.com/gergelypolonkai/matrix-glib-sdk

Comment 2 diane 2016-02-18 05:42:47 UTC

Both XMPP Message Archive Management support and Matrix support will need a good Telepathy Spec API for dealing with history.

Both use cases should be considered.

See also https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90838

Comment 3 GitLab Migration User 2019-12-09 11:22:56 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to freedesktop.org's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/telepathy/telepathy-spec/issues/176.

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