Thib

136 posts tagged with "Thib" (See all Author)

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-09

09.06.2023 20:51 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 09.06.2023 20:48

Matrix Live

We didn't have time for a Matrix Live this week, but don't miss next week's episode!

Dept of Spec 📜

TravisR says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

On the Spec Core Team (SCT), we've started converting the list of MSCs we received into a roadmap for the next 8-ish weeks. This is all to prepare for Matrix 1.8, and we're already starting to think a bit about what Matrix 1.9 looks like too. You can see what the team plans to look at here - each column is ordered in relative priority, where the top is more likely to receive attention first. Not everything is actionable at the moment, but that's the point 😄 As we work through the next month or so, the remaining MSCs should be unblocked or near-unblocked enough to allow the SCT to make progress on them.

Most of the MSCs on the roadmap have a target state of acceptance (and merge, if we can make that happen), though some do have a simple task of reviewing the MSC ahead of implementation effort. We're aiming to test this process over the next few releases, where the SCT unblocks progress by providing review ahead of review actually being needed, but to do that we need to know what people plan to work on. If you have something which could do with review (not just acceptance) in the August-November window of time, let us know in the SCT Office.

As always, if you have questions about a particular MSC's state or what this process actually means, let us know in the SCT Office.

Meanwhile, the SCT is continuing its IETF/MIMI adventures by pushing Linearized Matrix towards working group adoption. The current stages involve updating the Internet-Draft (I-D, or MSC in IETF terms) to cover the MIMI-specific bits of the room model and working on multiple implementations of the proposal. We'll be updating the MSC at a later stage to account for the DAG interop components, though how to get a DAG to work with the linear, append-only, MIMI variant is very much top of mind. You can see the current rapidly-changing I-D here.

As mentioned, to further adoption of Linearized Matrix within MIMI we're looking for independent implementations. "Independent" here means not written by the Matrix Core Team and not written by Element given the potential for conflict of interest, though the Matrix team is working on proving the I-D through eigen-server and possibly a dual-stack Synapse (watch this space). We have a line on ~2 completely independent (but undisclosed 😇) Linearized Matrix implementations already, but more is often better for these things: if you work for a messaging service provider and are interested in writing an implementation, get in touch with us so we can coordinate some interop testing. You don't already have to be using Matrix to write an implementation, and in fact it's probably better if you aren't already using Matrix, awkwardly.

Random MSC of the week

The script of fate has decided to put forward MSC3060: Room Labels this week. This is a relatively small MSC, but one which provides a ton of value to discovering rooms. The labels/topics your room covers are listed in a state event and can inform users of what to expect beyond the room name/avatar. For example, if your room has primarily NSFW/18+ content, you can disclose that in the labels.

Leave your thoughts and concerns on the MSC via threads on the diff 🙂

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This Week in Matrix 2023-06-02

02.06.2023 20:20 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) reports

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

Part of the SCT's goals with Matrix 1.8 is to pre-plan the majority of our review attention, which means we need to be told what folks are working on to plan accordingly. We'll still have some room for random/surprise MSC work, but this is expected to be harder to acquire going forward (and so should not be relied upon).

Please let us know if you're working on something which affects the spec! We want to hear about:

  • things that aren't MSCs (yet)
  • things that are MSCs but aren't planned to be merged in 1.8
  • MSCs which are expected to be ready in time for Matrix 1.8 (in ~2 months)

If you aren't sure if your project affects the spec, talk to us about it. We do not want to be the bottleneck in your development cycle, instead preferring to know ahead of time that something will need attention from us.

All we need is for you to mention your project/MSC and timeline in the #sct-office:matrix.org - DMs and private rooms with SCT members are not enough to get something on the roadmap. This is to ensure there is full transparency in why the SCT is looking at something, and to ensure that the MSC moves through the process in an efficient manner. If your project has a sensitive context (commercial or otherwise), then we ask that you reference that here and someone from the team will contact you to get more information, relaying as much (non-sensitive) detail as possible back to the room here.

Our expected outcome for this system is to not only be a more effective team, but also to give you a faster/more reasonable turnaround on MSC review (at all stages), more rapid deployment of stable features (dropping unstable prefixes), and overall fewer review iterations as the SCT can think about problems ahead of you actually needing a review. We seriously do not want to be a blocker, but we need to know what we could end up blocking by accident.

Starting approximately August 1st, we will be starting to plan out what Matrix 1.9's release cycle will look like. A similar call to action will be raised at that point. Note that Matrix 1.8 is set to be released in late August, meaning we're aiming to have Matrix 1.9 thought out before Matrix 1.8 is released, which is a deliberately accelerated timeline than the current Matrix 1.8 release cycle planning.

As always, if you have any questions about this, please let us know in #sct-office:matrix.org.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3869: Read event relations with the Widget API!

This MSC would allow Matrix Widgets, knowing an event ID, to request any and all other events that relate to it. Thus, if you had a m.room.message event, you could ask the client whether any edits have been made to that event, via asking for m.room.message events with m.replace relations.

This would be useful for Widgets to traverse any data structure that used relations to tie together events - which could model all sorts of use cases!

As always, leave your feedback on the MSC if this is something you're interested in or want to push forwards :)

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This Week in Matrix 2023-05-12

12.05.2023 20:47 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 12.05.2023 20:45

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) announces

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

A regular reminder that every Tuesday, the Spec Core Team (SCT) publishes their approximate priorities in the public Office of the Spec Core Team room - check it out to see what the SCT is working on. Similarly, if you’d like the SCT to engage with your MSC, mention so in that room.

The release of Matrix 1.7 is expected in the next 1-2 weeks! Keep an eye out for announcement blog post specifically for it. We'll call it out in the following TWIM as well of course :)

Matrix 1.8 is currently scheduled for around August 2023.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3914: Matrix native group call push rule!

This MSC adds a new push rule that causes your Matrix client to emit a notification if a group call (as defined by MSC3401 is started in a Matrix room. This MSC (obviously) depends on MSC3041, so that MSC will need to be accepted before this one can be.

There is currently a client-side implementation for this MSC, but it is missing a homeserver side one (for adding the push rule).

Check out the MSC if you're interested, or perhaps take a look at adding that server-side implementation?

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This Week in Matrix 2023-05-05

05.05.2023 00:00 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Social Good 🙆

Denise announces

we know there have been some questions about the recent ban on Element by the Indian Central Government. We are still trying to get answers ourselves and have put out a public statement on our understanding of the situation so far: https://element.io/blog/india-bans-flagship-client-for-the-matrix-network/

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) reports

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

Lots of MSCs moving through the pipeline this week! Plus a myriad of spec changes too! The spec seems to be gently humming along.

In other news, the next release of the spec, v1.7, is coming up in the not-too-distant future. In keeping with our roughly quarterly release schedule - the release of v1.6 was on February 14th, 2023 - a new release of the spec should come some time in next few weeks.

We haven't set a date yet, but expect to do so soon. So watch this space!

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3741: Revealing the useful login flows to clients after a soft logout!

This MSC fixes an edge case in the spec. Imagine the following scenario. You're logged into your homeserver via an SSO flow (let's say by signing into GitLab), and then you try to change your password on GitLab. Doing so may cause a "soft logout" to occur for your Matrix client. A soft logout, by the way, happens when your access token is invalidated, but your client is told explicitly not to wipe its local state (including encryption keys).

Your Matrix client is telling you to log back in again, and in doing so calls out to the GET /_matrix/client/v3/login endpoint to see what login methods are available. Your homeserver supports both password-based and SSO-based login, so that's what you get back. Your client happily presents you both options. You try to type your GitLab password, but it's incorrect. And you've just given your GitLab password to this Matrix homeserver in plaintext - oh no!

The problem here stems from the fact that GET /login is unauthenticated. The homeserver doesn't know who you are when you attempt to log in again, and thus can't tailor the available login methods to those that make sense for you. This MSC aims to fix this by having your Matrix client, upon trying to learn how to log in again after a soft logout, provide your expired access token in an Authorization request header. The homeserver can then check and see that 1) you were just soft logout'd and 2) you are an account that is authorised via SSO - so it doesn't make sense to suggest you log in again via a password specific to your Matrix homeserver!

While this MSC discusses a valuable solution, it is worth considering that the User-Interactive Authentication system as a whole is going to be completely replaced by OpenID Connect instead, which will make this problem (and solution) moot. Still, that day is not here yet, so if you suffer from this problem today, this may be one method to deal with it.

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This Week in Matrix 2023-04-28

28.04.2023 20:14 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matrix.org Foundation

Michael Downey announces

Don't miss this week's Matrix Live, where Amandine & Matthew talk about the growth of the Foundation and how it will help all of us working in the Matrix ecosystem be more successful. And in case you missed it, a job description for the Foundation's first Managing Director has now been posted. If you think you have what it takes, or if you want to share it with others who might, don't delay!

Matrix.org Website Bug Hunt

Thib says

Some of you might have heard of it, but we're about to launch a (long overdue) update of the matrix.org website! The current one has served us well, but it grew organically as exciting projects and features were added to it. It became a little impractical to navigate and sometimes confusing.

The new matrix.org website, nicknamed "Zola" after the static site generator it uses, is not just a fresh coat of paint on the website: it's a complete rewrite to address three kind of people who would browse the website. Sorted by time they're willing to spend on a web page:

  • The general public, who is not tech savvy and doesn't want to understand how things work, but who wants to get an easy onboarding
  • Community managers, who are not too tech savvy but are willing to spend a bit of time to understand more advanced use cases
  • Developers who want to understand how matrix works, and who want to build & break things!

We're in the final stages of developing the website, and we need you to help us making it ready! Head to the preview of the website, use the website, and give is feedback by opening an issue on the website tracker. Please make sure the issue doesn't already exist before opening it.

Reporting the following is particularly helpful:

  • Something looks off, misplaced, is not aligned well or behaves oddly
  • Something is missing (the doc is incomplete? Some informationg is missing somewhere?)
  • There's an accessibility issue
  • Something doesn't work on your browser
  • It's not clear how to get to a particular information (you're looking for a client or a SDK, and after visiting the website you still don't know which one to use or how to get it?)

We still need to:

  • Finish up the Bots page (which will likely be replaced by an Integrations page)
  • Flesh out the support page to highlight more of the work of the Matrix.org Foundation
  • Import the historical projects that are no longer maintained (clients, servers, bots, bridges, sdks)

If you want to follow along, you can join the #matrix.org-website:matrix.org room.

Help us make the website look as neat as possible for launch!

Matthew reports

The UK's online safety bill is a catastrophe in the making, and as currently written empowers the UK telecoms industry regulator (OFCOM) to obligate end-to-end encrypted messaging apps to embed proprietary 3rd party scanning software which attempts to identify and flag abusive content and report it to the authorities. If you are in the UK, please sign this petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/634725 to try to force the government to reconsider. Element, for instance, would rather be blocked by the UK govt from the app stores than embed third party scanning technology. For more info: https://element.io/blog/the-uks-online-safety-bill-undermines-everyones-safety/ and https://element.io/blog/the-online-safety-bill-an-attack-on-encryption/

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This Week in Matrix 2023-04-14

14.04.2023 20:25 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

An unfortunate series of events prevented us from recording this week! Stay tuned for great bridge news next week.

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) [GMT-6] says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

The concept of Linearized Matrix (MSC3995) is moving forwards as a potential answer to the European Union's, Digital Markets Act. The fully-decentralised Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) model of Matrix is well-known, yet complex to implement and thus a potential blocker to gatekeepers who are looking for an interoperable messaging protocol to link their chat service to. Enter Linearized Matrix, a concept of a Matrix room that uses a linked-list to store events in a room, rather than a DAG. Crucially, while being simpler to implement, our aim is to be forward-compatible with the DAG version of Matrix, such that gatekeepers may switch over to DAG-style Matrix in the future if they so chose.

See MSC3995 for more information, and a reminder that this is all still very much in flux!

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC2943: Return an event ID for membership endpoints!

Currently, when you send a (state) event manually via PUT /_matrix/client/v3/rooms/{roomId}/send/{eventType}/{txnId}, you'll receive an event ID in the response. While you can send membership events this way, it's often a bit nicer to use the various POST /_matrix/client/v3/rooms/{roomId}/join,leave,kick endpoints instead. However, these do not return an event ID in their response. For clients that don't use /sync, this would force them to use the former, generic endpoint in order to retrieve the event ID of the membership event.

MSC2943 attempts to rectify that by specifying that membership-related endpoints should return an event ID, similar to the generic event send endpoint. Currently this MSC is just waiting on an implementation in a homeserver (and possible a client) in order to move forward. If you feel strongly about this change being included in the Matrix spec, why not get your hands dirty with some homeserver dev?

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-04-10

10.04.2023 21:24 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

TravisR says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Merged MSCs:

Spec Updates

This last week the core team has been working on Linearized Matrix, which now exists in MSC form. The idea is still very much in flux, but the MSC covers a large part of the backing context for the overall approach. More detail about IETF116, Linearized Matrix, and the overall mission can be found in last week's TWIM, and we're happy to answer any questions in #matrix-spec:matrix.org on Matrix.

Meanwhile, the Spec Core Team (SCT) has been focusing on Matrix 2.0 MSCs for OIDC, VoIP, etc alongside quite a few other smaller MSCs. You can follow along with the SCT's weekly priorities in the #sct-office:matrix.org room on Matrix.

Random MSC of the week

Today's random proposal is MSC3860: Media Download Redirects! Quite a few medium-large servers use a CDN of some kind to host media shared in rooms, and currently the usefulness of that CDN is diminished by servers not necessarily being able to tell clients that the media is actually found on another URL. This proposal formalizes HTTP 307 redirects, and the SCT is interested to hear if this will break any clients - check it out, leave some comments, and let us know :)

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This Week in Matrix 2023-03-31

31.03.2023 20:54 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 31.03.2023 20:26

Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

uhoreg announces

Messaging Layer Security approved by the IETF

The IETF has approved Messaging Layer Security (MLS) for publication. MLS is an end-to-end encryption method designed for group messaging. We have been working on integrating a variant of MLS into Matrix. Keep an eye out for demos in the near future.

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) [GMT-8] says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

Last week we mentioned that we'd have more to share this week about an easier API for accessing rooms in Matrix, and while it was our intention to have an MSC out by now, our priorities shifted slightly after the MIMI working group session at IETF 116. Some exciting news on that front though: our proposed easier API, called Linearized Matrix (apologies to all the mathematicians), is very much in line with what the working group is thinking about. So much so that we're going through the effort of writing up Matrix as a series of proper Internet-Draft specifications.

We don't currently have an up-to-date document which covers Linearized Matrix completely, but the short version is it allows a server to support individual rooms being linear arrays instead of DAGs. This doesn't prevent a DAG-capable server from joining the room and speaking full-blown DAG either, which is particularly important for compatibility with the existing Matrix network. Currently our efforts on Linearized Matrix are in implementation rather than documentation, though once things are slightly more stable we'll be getting an MSC out there for everyone to review more easily. Watch this space for news.

Following IETF 116, we have an immense amount of work ahead of us to define Matrix as the standard for interoperable chat, but we're well on our way on getting through it all. Namely, we're going around and mapping Matrix's functionality onto MIMI's concepts, defining Matrix as a proper IETF standard along the way. The expected outcome of this for the implementation authors of Matrix is a spec that is significantly easier to follow, finally.

For an idea of what's ahead, here's what the SCT will be looking at over the next several months:

  • Linearized Matrix (implementation & MSC)
  • Extensible Events (at least the core types) - this will serve as the basis for an interoperable messaging format in our IETF drafts
  • Decentralized MLS & interoperability of crypto
  • Clarification gaps and bugs in the current spec
  • Pseudonymous user IDs and account portability
  • Almost certainly something that was missed when writing this list

Considering the above list, the Matrix 2.0 objectives (sliding sync, OIDC, native VoIP conferencing, and faster room joins), and the core team's work around mentions, abuse reporting, and more, the SCT will be a bit busy. That said, if you have MSCs you think we should be looking at, let us know in the #sct-office:matrix.org room. We've recently started doing our weekly planning in that room too, which should help give an idea for what the SCT is expecting to look at each week.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... [WIP] MSC2966: Usage of OAuth 2.0 Dynamic Client Registration in Matrix!

This MSC provides a mechanism for implementing Dynamic Client Registration (RFC 7591) for OAuth 2.0 between Matrix clients and homeservers. Without this, homeserver admins would need to manually configure OAuth metadata (Redirect URIs, application names, client secrets, and more) for every Matrix client that wanted to connect to the homeserver. Since that doesn't really scale in an environment that allows anyone to use any client they like, dynamic registration is critical! Dynamic registration allows clients to communicate this metadata to the homeserver at the login/registration step.

MSC2966 is part of a series of MSCs that add first-class OpenID Connect (OIDC) support to Matrix. You can see an overview of the related MSCs (here) and https://areweoidcyet.com/ for the latest progress on integrating OIDC into the Matrix spec!

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This Week in Matrix 2023-03-24

24.03.2023 20:45 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 24.03.2023 20:33

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) says

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

The Matrix.org Foundation (mostly Travis) are beavering away preparing for the MIMI meeting at IETF 116 this weekend! This is part of our continual work to contribute to a IETF standard that can be used for interoperable messaging between gatekeepers (large companies in the chat world) under the EU's Digital Markets Act. See our earlier blogpost for more context on this topic.

In terms of our previous proposals on this subject; it turns out that implementing full-scale DAGs is a bit difficult, particularly when aiming to achieve interoperability on a short timeline. So we've been working on building an API surface for Matrix which makes rooms easier to access/implement in chat settings. We unfortunately don't have much to share today, but keep an eye on next week's TWIM for details 👀

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3480: Make device names private!

This MSC proposes hiding device names from any other user, while still allowing your own devices to see the names of the others.

You may question why device names being shown to other users was considered a good idea at all in Matrix. Initially these being public was really useful for verifying the devices of other users! Back in the days before cross-signing (where you only need to verify another user once), you had to verify every one of your friend's devices from every one of your own devices. It was an n * m problem, whereas if you had 4 devices, and your friend had 5, you'd need to do 20 verifications! And 4 more if your friend got a new phone!

So having device names back then were handy, but today any justification is moot and they're just a metadata leak. So we should get rid of them!

This MSC is blocked on a proven implementation. I actually wrote one up for Synapse a little while ago, and I plan to polish and merge it soon. Anyone else is free to do so in the meantime as well (just let me know first if you plan to do so in Synapse :).

Here's to improved privacy by default in Matrix!

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