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Provide a Matrix home server #3

Open matiasilva opened 3 years ago

matiasilva commented 3 years ago

Project/idea summary

Host a Matrix home server for communities of the University.

Motivation

Matrix is the new IRC, and with plenty of new features. As has been suggested in a feedback form, there are folks interested in maintaining this. There might not be huge demand with the rise of Discord and such, but a few folks might appreciate us providing this service.

Alternatives considered

We launched Mattermost but that seems very group/collaboration-oriented. For a few friends who want to chat casually, Matrix is a better option.

dalcde commented 3 years ago

As a matter of fact, we do have a matrix homeserver, which is used to bridge mattermost with IRC. There is an intention to bridge discord via matrix as well.

Currently, the matrix homeserver is closed to both federation and registration. This was helpful when developing the bridging system so that I can make large changes (since matrix is only used to bridge, I can nuke the whole system and start over). At this point I think it is stable enough that this is less of a concern.

If we were to open to registration, the natural way to do this is to let users authenticate via Goose/Raven via OpenID Connect, whose support was added in late May. I have not experimented with matrix's OIDC implementation and client support.