Hi all,
Most of us have by now returned home from this year's Summit and FOSDEM
(except perhaps poor Goffi, who seems to be on an involuntary quest to
obtain very, very, very detailed know-how about much of the European
railway system).
I had a wonderful time. I huge thank-you goes out to everyone that was
involved in organising every aspect of the events of last weekend! It was
great seeing many familiar faces, as well as some new ones. I hope to see
you again soon!
I really enjoyed many of the conversations I had with visitors of our stand
at FOSDEM. It was good to see that the room in which the only talk on XMPP
was completely full. From that, I conclude that there is quite a bit of
interest in our protocol.
If the term "XMPP" attracts such attention from the FOSDEM crowd, we should
consider using it more explicitly during FOSDEM. Specifically, I'd like us
to consider renaming the name of our stand "the Realtime Lounge" into
something that contains the letters "XMPP". I believe that this would help
a lot for recognition with the public.
People that now look through the list of stands on FOSDEM's website, or on
the printed maps at the venue itself, do not see "XMPP" anywhere. I believe
it would be helpful if they would. For the years that I've visited, I
cannot recall having a non-XMPP presence in our stand, so I don't think
that we would be excluding projects or people by implementing a rename (but
please do correct me if I'm wrong).
A secondary, but to me separate, change that we might consider is moving
away from the "lounge" concept. Although it's nice to have a place to chill
out, those bean bags also take up a lot of space. From what I've seen in
the past few years, the lounge is almost exclusively used by people manning
the stands (myself included), and not so much by visitors. I don't believe
it's doing much these days to help us engage in conversations with FOSDEM
visitors. Maybe we can find a better use for that space in future editions
of FOSDEM.
Please share your thoughts on this. I'm conscious that much of what we do
is rooted in tradition and history, and I certainly don't want to trample
on that - but if there is generic consensus that some changes may be
desirable, it's something that we can consider for 2026.
Kind regards,
Guus
Hi everyone,
Going through the CoC again, I notice that it has a few gaps we should
probably address.
While the current wording explicitly prohibits racist language, there are a
lot of other *-isms which are unfortunately quite present in various spaces on
the XMPP network and which sometimes roll into XSF rooms.
I do not think that we want to be perceived as, for instance, an anti-LGBTQIA+
community, so we should extend the CoC to:
a) send the clear message to the world that we won't tolerate behaviour that,
and
b) give our moderators (that includes me in some places) the necessary holding
to enforce when necessary
Concretely, I propose that we add to 2.4 Be respectful, the following items on
the list of things to avoid:
> - Use of racist, misogynistic, anti-trans, anti-gay, ableist slurs, or other
> derogatory pejoratives for oppressed identity groups against such groups.
>
> - Blatantly racist, casteist, ableist, sexist, anti-trans, or otherwise
> offensive and bigoted discourse.
In addition, before the list of things to avoid, I would like to add:
> Respect others requests for space. That includes to disengage from a
> discourse if your partner(s) indicate that they do not want to discuss a
> topic any further. It is not easy to let someone be "wrong" on the internet,
> but boundaries are there to be respected.
To section 2.5 ("Be friendly and supportive"), I would like to add after the
first paragraph:
> This includes being mindful of the abilities of others; nobody is born an
> expert in anything and we all had to learn at some point. Be supportive of
> newcomers and learners. Do not be patronizing or condescending.
I may propose a PR against XEP-0458, but before doing so I wanted to offer
this for discussion on this list.
kind regards,
Jonas
Dear all,
the XSF will planning to apply this year again for the GSoC 2025.
If we will be accepted as an umbrella organisation, that acts as supervising/reference organisation for your XMPP projects we recommend to act quickly and start preparing your project if you want to participate with your project. This means usually:
- Read the guidelines: https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/
- Read the setup and what you need to provide for last year: https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Google_Summer_of_Code_2024
- Collect feasible ideas for newcomers (!) (they unlikely will implement A/V or MUC, not even close)
- Promote and search for potential contributors (even if you are not participating you can help)
Remember that this is not just a great opportunity for your project and project community. It's also a good chance for XMPP as a whole network, ecosystem as well as inspiring people around open-source development.
If you want to help me organising and promoting for this you are also very welcome!
I'm general, reach out to me by next week if you have interest and can think of ideas. The earlier the better.
If I don't hear back, I will not consider to apply this year.
(Remember that the XSF has not yet been approved to participate in GSoC 2025.)
Kind regards,
Eddie
___________________________
XSF Org Admin, GSoC 2025
