GDPR

HAPPY GDPR DAY EVERYONE!!!!1!

  • Our long-awaited new privacy policy & term & conditions for the matrix.org server are here - Phase 1 is complete!
  • Folks are already accepting the new policies - thanks.
  • We're going to start requiring acceptance to access the matrix.org server on Tuesday (May 29th).
  • We're already receiving our first GDPR requests… :|
  • Erasure and Right-to-be-forgotten work (Phase 2) is next up so we can action the requests in a timely manner.
  • It looks like we will go ahead on removing MXIDs on events as a Phase 3 (although for now we do warn people that this is effectively a technical limitation of Matrix, albeit one that we're working on).

Client Updates

mtxclient E2E progress

Big E2E progress from mujx, developer of the nheko client on his project mtxclient. As of this week, mxtclient is able to decrypt group events. When writing (that is, sending encrypted messages) is complete, the idea is to migrate this work back to nheko, though mujx points out this library could be used in any client.

Fractal

Back to work after the Hackfest, Fractal have released version 0.1.30, featuring:

  • Translations support
  • Number of members in the room in the members button
  • File storage configuration support
  • Gold and Silver tags for admins and moderatos
Some coverage of the Fractal design thinking from last week, nothing new but a decent signal boost.

gomuks

tulir came in with some late breaking news about gomuks, the terminal client written in go. New features:

  • A fancy quick room switcher by Evidlo
  • A few basic UI options (hide user/room lists)
  • Plaintext view to be able to click long links and such
  • Fixed some bugs

Riot/Web

  • GDPR-capable release! 0.15.4 out today
  • Various bugfixes and performance regressions.

Riot/Mobile

  • GDPR-capable releases!
  • Sticker sending is ready modulo some CSS bugs; we'll get it pushed shortly.

Bridging

JonTheNiceGuy bridging video

JonTheNiceGuy produced a helpful video describing how to use bridges for IRC, Slack and Telegram, showing the difference between the different bridges. I found this to be really clear and well-paced for following the many practical details of bridging. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNEzgYRLj8g

Discord bridge

anoa and half-shot have been working on the matrix-appservice-discord bridge:

"finished edit passing between Discord and Matrix, as well as support for discord's custom emojis (though UX is a bit manual until TravisR's proposal goes through ?)"

matrix-puppet-facebook-1to1-fixer from Brendan

Brendan shared a project he's been working on this week: matrix-puppet-facebook-1to1-fixer. This project fixes a UI issue Brendan had with the Facebook Messenger Bridge, namely that activity in 1:1 rooms was not clear enough.

This small tool will take the local part of the room ID created by the Matrix<>Facebook Messenger bot once the friend has joined it, identify th friend, and grab their avatar and display name to set the room's.

mautrix-telegram

Lots of progress on mautrix-telegram this lately including v0.2.0 RC. As reported by tulir:

  • A dockerfile by jcgruenhage
  • Option to whitelist/blacklist automatic bridging of specific chats
  • Fixed many bugs

matrix-appservice-sms

eta has been working on matrix-appservice-sms this week:

I have managed to do the first phase of a massive refactor that makes it way more reliable (temporarily store SMS in the database before delivery)

this makes it more resilient to synapse hiccups, as well as general failures

Other Projects

matrixboard, from betz

betz runs the https://hackerspaces.be/ matrix server and has this week, inbetween repairing his Synapse install, been working on a project called matrixboard. This tool is used to output the last five messages from a given room to displayed as HTML, the idea being to display output from a specific room as a website widget. You can see an example using #matrix-dev here.

opsdroid room state connector

SolarDrew implemented a database modulefor opsdroid to allow Matrix room state to be used to persist chat bot memory. (Suggestion apparently came from Cadair, the human not the place.)

The idea of using the room state to encapsulate bot data per-room was well received, discussion in #TWIM:matrix.org suggests this is an estabilished practice for some developers.

matrix-python-sdk

No general GSOC round-up this week, &Adam shared the news that GSOC-student Zil0's first PR towards E2E in matrix-python-sdk landed on master. These PRs are working from efforts previously contributed by pik.

Ruma

Work continues in the Ruma space. This week saw the release of

  • ruma-events 0.10.0: ruma-events contains Serializable Rust types for the events in the Matrix specification. 0.10.0 sees a major update with code provided by mujx, and contains many breaking changes.
  • ruma-api-macros 0.2.2, and ruma-client-api] is also updated to use the new macro.

f0x account migration helper

f0x has started work on a tool to help migrate accounts - including across homeservers. Right now he's working on the GUI, but check out progress at https://github.com/f0x52/matrix-migrate.

DSN Traveller by Florian

Florian reports:

As part of my master's thesis, I wrote the DSN Traveller bot, which is crawling the matrix federation to measure the shape and size of the matrix network, and how distributed it currently is. The bot is already in a smaller number of rooms for testing, and will join the remaining rooms over the next days. All details at https://dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu/, room at #dsn-traveller:dsn-traveller.dsn.scc.kit.edu.

Synapse

  • GDPR policy management is welcomed in by Synapse 0.30
  • Means we get server notices too!
  • Explosion of Python 3 activity from notafile & Amber (hawkowl)
  • andrewsh has prepared a Debian package for the 0.30 release.

Dendrite

  • Anoa is on the case, having joined the core team on Monday - Dendrite is already sending events to ASes! Meanwhile APwhitehat is hacking away on his GSoC projects!

Spec

The Matrix Spec Change Proposals list is populated, popular, and under discussion at #matrix-spec:matrix.org. There are multiple issues ready to review, for example: TravisR is calling for attention on MSC1256: "Custom emoji and sticker packs in matrix".

New Rooms

GSOC

Last week I promised an update on the state of the various GSOC projects in the Matrix Ecosystem. There is activity happening but other than what's been discussed above we'll wait a week or two for more detailed updates.

See you soon

As always, if you have things to say, projects to advertise, or anything else, ping me or visit #TWIM:matrix.org. I'm keen to get everyone included and keep this community enthused about all the work going on in the Matrix ecosystem.

Check out this week's Matrix Live:

The Foundation needs you

The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit and only relies on donations to operate. Its core mission is to maintain the Matrix Specification, but it does much more than that.

It maintains the matrix.org homeserver and hosts several bridges for free. It fights for our collective rights to digital privacy and dignity.

Support us