30 Apr
2026
30 Apr
'26
12:32 a.m.
On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 at 23:06, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote:
See above :)
There has been some progress, but not significant and not on any specification.
I think you have the wrong impression. With no standard it's
impossible to work within or without the standards process. The XSF
standards process literally begins with a document submission, but
nobody has written and submitted a suitable document.
On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 at 18:28, Matthew Wild <mwild1(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My point, if anything, was that "XSF activity" is vague enough to be
whatever anyone decides it is. See below, where you bring XSF
membership into the equation, but earlier you discounted XSF
membership status of individuals in determining whether something is
an XSF activity. As I said a couple of emails ago, this branch of the
discussion is only going to be circular.
On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 at 17:48, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote:
Not really, I used your definition, which you used to suggest GC3 was an XSF activity.
Modern XMPP, jabber.org, and even Prosody are all worked on by XSF members, including at
a sprint, and presented and discussed at an XSF summit.
My argument was that that your definition was demonstrably incorrect since none of those
are XSF activities; I didn't take anything to extremes. I didn't even pose a
strawman. I did explain why each of your criteria were flawed both individually and as a
whole, though, and since this was your argument for why GC3 is an XSF Activity, I felt
that demonstrated that at the very least, if it is an XSF Activity it's not for the
reasons you suggested.
Anyway, if you still insist it's an XSF activity, it doesn't really change
matters. On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 at 15:20, Matthew Wild
<mwild1(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think this is a pointless debate because the line can be drawn
wherever someone wants it to be drawn, and you've demonstrated it can
be taken to extremes. I would argue that your classification of GC3 as
not an XSF activity was taking it to the opposite extreme.
On Wed, 29 Apr 2026 at 14:31, Dave Cridland <dave(a)cridland.net> wrote:
> As far as I know, GC3 has no published specification and is not an XSF activity;
I've avoided that name to (hopefully) avoid confusion with it.
Okay, I'll take the bait... :)
Apart from being hashed out by multiple XSF members, including at a
sprint, and presented and discussed at an XSF summit...
I don't think that's the right definition of an XSF activity, is it?
By that set of metrics, other XSF activities include Modern XMPP and the Jabber.org XMPP
service. In fact, that even suggests Prosody is an XSF activity, doesn't it? Clearly
that cannot be the case. I don't
know... you as an individual just submitted it without (as far
as I know) any of the XSF being involved at all.
I'll assume this is just a joke.
Unless I've missed my reapplication window somehow. People have asked about GC3 both in the chatrooms and
on this list and received no response.
I can only apologize if I've missed queries, that was obviously
unintentional. I'll see if I can find where this happened. But I also
don't see why the whole thing has to depend on me - multiple people
with XSF experience have been involved, and could also be addressed
questions, and could also carry this forward.
On this mailing list, Nicolas, Singpolyma and Goffi
have been the only ones mentioning it, and only since September. Goffi explicitly asked
you for an update, and there was no response. I have to say evidence is against your
assertion there.
It seems that only the multiple people mentioning GC3 are the only
people mentioning it, indeed.
In addition, other people have more generally
mentioned new MUC features (including whole threads), and GC3 hasn't been explained in
any of them.
To be absolutely clear, I'm not suggesting you're doing anything wrong here.
People get busy, life gets in the way, and this is all a volunteer thing. I have certainly
dropped out for months at a time and been unresponsive. But having documents (if they
exist) published, and discussions in the open, means that other people can (and have,
thanks!) picked up work in my absence, and newcomers have joined, seen older dormant work,
and raIsed it again.
All this is true, and it would be amazing if people actually did that.
Ideally they
wouldn't just invent a group chat
protocol and submit it without researching existing efforts or
bringing it up at a summit.
I didn't want to wait another 10 months, and also I didn't write the XEP without
reviewing existing MUC options. In particular, I've spent roughly the past 3 years
working with ejabberd's muc-sub, and MongooseIM's muclight, and I think I've a
reasonable grasp of the benefits (and shortfalls) of both. I've also written a client,
from scratch, partly in order to understand what the best practice was for MUC, and better
understand its limitations with mobile. I have done my homework, though of course you may
disagree with the result.
Again, I have no visibility on GC3, and didn't actually think it was actively being
worked on; there have been no status updates in well over a year, and there's no other
suggestion of ongoing activity. I get the
impression that you think GC3 is some specification that is
being withheld from the XSF standards process. The only reason "the
GC3 XEP" hasn't been submitted is because it doesn't exist. To make it
exist, someone needs to collate the notes from the discussions at the
sprint, summit and online and write it up in XEP syntax. There are
still some unsolved questions about the approach (but, from a skim,
probably fewer than the document you have submitted).
You have the wrong impression. Certainly I think GC3 is outside of the standards process
we have in the XSF, and outside of its venues for discussion, and I think that's a
shame. I did ask you and Kev, back at the Summit in 2025, to
publish a XEP of some form, and I think I asked you to raise it on the mailing list. The
XEP I was told couldn't be written because there were too many disagreements about
what it would contain. I have a vague recollection that it couldn't be discussed on
the list for fear of overwhelming the list? In any case, I took this to mean it was to be
done outside of the XSF for the time being.
My question is, if you're so interested in getting something published
in this space, why not help with that?
That's allowed, of course. Lots of things happen
outside of the XSF. I do wish that some of them (including GC3, but also other things)
were done within the XSF, but I lost those arguments years ago.
Again, this "within" vs "without" distinction simply does not exist,
it's the same as the "XSF activity" debate.
But it does make it awkward to run things outside the
XSF then argue that I shouldn't do something within the XSF as a result. Besides,
standards work on XMPP outside of the XSF or IETF feels wrong to me - if it were anyone
else, I'd find it outright suspect.
Again, the "outside of the XSF" is just not a thing.
I don't know where GC3 is being discussed (if it
still is). There was a chatroom address on your presentation back in the Summit in 2025,
but I definitely cannot recall what that was, I don't know where to find it now, and
it has never been posted to this mailing list as far as I can find.
There was a MUC, yes, it was a last-minute addition to the slides so
that interested people could continue discussion of the topic. I
didn't think to post it to the list, because it's not the only place
where discussion is permitted (standards talk tends to happen here or
in the xsf/jdev MUCs).
Personally, I agree. If I thought for a single moment
I could write a successful MUC update/replacement of this magnitude on my own, I'd
code first and XEP later. But I don't think I can do this alone, and so I'm
drawing on the collective expertise. I already noted I don't think I've even got
the requirements right yet.
Where we disagree, I think, is how we get that expertise. I don't think we get it
effectively by trying to assemble a team outside of the XSF (or alongside, or however you
wish to put it). I think CG3 is, if anything, a demonstration of that not working.
I think this may be the whole basis of the misunderstanding? I don't
know what "team" you think was assembled. I don't think I have the
capacity to organise such a thing! I think I initially discussed GC3
with Zash and Jonas in the Prosody developer channel, and with Kev
around the same time. There was interest, and it organically became
one of the main topics of a sprint because I presented the notes and
ideas I had been making, and the people present (myself, Conversations
and Dino developers, and a few others) had some discussion about it.
Then the next round of feedback was at the summit.
Maybe, in hindsight, the correct thing to do would have been to
actually assemble a team, as a SIG or something. But I know back then
it didn't feel like a suitable option - my perspective at the time was
that the majority of the community was not really interested in a MUC
2.0, but rather MIX. Now I guess I was wrong, and there is significant
broad interest in a MUC 2.0.
All this to say, it was just some sharing of ideas and notes between
interested parties. It is not, and never has been, some grand
organised away-from-the-XSF scheme. Quite the opposite, if anything.
Just scraps of notes and ideas, with the goal of maturing into a XEP.
I cannot ignore something I don't know anything
about; please stop saying that, I've asked you already.
I'm sorry if you feel you know nothing about it. I presented it at the
summit, and you were there, so I guess I made assumptions in this
regard.
The trouble with this argument is, in any case, that
the very concept of GC3 actually slows things down. Of the four (!) mentions of GC3 on
this list, two are discussing other work predicated on GC3. Progress is hindered by the
threat of future conflicting work. It's like the dream of the perfect MUC replacement,
it becomes the enemy of the good MUC replacement, or something.
I absolutely agree.
Feel free to hijack this thread. I would be delighted
to have my ideas shot down by something more sensible.
With today's Prosody security release out of the way, I will make some
time tomorrow to gather everything GC3 related into a mailing list
post.
As I said in my previous email, I don't want to stop anyone from
working on a MUC successor that's in the spirit of "fix MUC" rather
than "replace MUC with an entirely different system" (i.e. MIX). Your
proposal is clearly aligned with that same GC3 approach, which is
great - I, and as I gradually discovered, others too, want to see such
a thing. But it's frustrating that it wasn't based on any of the work
that had been done so far. I accept a large part of the responsibility
for this, as based on your email I apparently managed to entirely
miscommunicate the whole thing, to the point where you didn't even
feel it was worth reaching out before publishing this alternative
proposal.
Someone once said, many years ago, that they believed most XMPP
developers were working on communication protocols because they were
actually rather bad at communication themselves. I sadly recognise
myself in such a statement. But I try...
I would happily incorporate them into the XEP, rename
the thing to GC3, and hand the whole thing over and remove my name. Ideal outcome.
This doesn't sound like an ideal outcome. It seems you are actually
interested in this space, and have the time and motivation to work on
it. I don't know why you should stop, or remove your name. I don't
even care what the document is called.
And if you don't have time, that's absolutely
fine too. I have had periods where I do not have time to read the mailing list, and missed
people asking me things, and I do dimly recall when my children were young enough to drag
me by the arm (and they're still able to distract me with parenting duties even now).
This is a volunteer organisation, and must always take second place to actual life. I
would caution, though, that everyone else does get to carry on without you.
Even the idea that things couldn't carry on without me would terrify
me. It's just painful to watch duplicated efforts, and that's
literally the only reason I care. I would have been satisfied if you'd
read through the notes and discussions on GC3 and dismissed them all
with good reasons. But noted, you didn't, because I evidently didn't
do a good enough job in presenting them. I'll try and remedy this
part.
Regards,
Matthew