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   TravisR (travisr@mstdn.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 06:12:17 JST TravisR

   I'm very excited to be presenting at FOSDEM in February! I've been working on messaging interoperability for about 2 years now with much of that focus being on developing an open standard for that exact purpose. We'll be exploring how #Matrix works as an existing decentralized open standard for *interoperable* communications, and how other protocol development work interacts with Matrix.

   Join me for a technical look at #MIMI, #DMA, and the Matrix protocol: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3157-interoperability-matrix/

   • clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 06:12:23 JST clacke

     in reply to

     @travisr Cool! I only heard of MIMI for the first time this week. Looking forward to your talk, it sounds interesting!

     I bet some of the first questions that pop into people's minds are:
     1) How is MIMI not yet another XMPP
     2) How is MIMI not yet another Matrix
     3) In general, how does this not suffer from #xkcd927

     Have you or someone else already given a talk or written a blogpost that addresses those concerns? I'd like to get a head start until February. =)

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     TravisR (travisr@mstdn.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Dec-2023 09:18:26 JST TravisR

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke thanks! I'm not sure there's written material on it, but the intention of MIMI is to learn from prior attempts at an interoperable protocol to build something which actually works. XMPP has largely not been adopted in this sphere, though is popular in its own right. Matrix has additional features that don't translate well to other providers as well (we'll talk about this in the talk).

     It definitely feels a bit like XKCD 927, but this time we're going to interoperate with all of them :)

     clacke likes this.
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     Dawid Rejowski (didek@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 09:55:07 JST Dawid Rejowski

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke @travisr

     MIMI is not a protocol, but rather something like a working group to discuss what protocol to focus on :).

     "More Internet Messaging Interoperability" it stands for

     clacke repeated this.
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     TravisR (travisr@mstdn.ca)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 09:55:09 JST TravisR

     in reply to

     • clacke
     • Dawid Rejowski

     @didek @clacke https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ralston-mimi-protocol/ describes the protocol nature of MIMI.

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 10:10:36 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Dawid Rejowski
     @travisr @didek Interoperability between protocols always leads to another protocol. 😃
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     Dawid Rejowski (didek@101010.pl)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 11:19:24 JST Dawid Rejowski

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke @travisr

     Bridging exists. Matrix had a nice seamless interaction with IRC for example (now matrix.org do not host it, but can still be selfhosted).

     Especially when both XMPP and Matrix are on the way to implement MLS encryption in the future.

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Dec-2023 11:19:25 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Dawid Rejowski

     @didek @travisr That's fair! But that's just the initial phase. If everyone wants to interoperate, that means m×n bridges.

     Then someone tries to systematically enable interoperability and writes a shared vocabulary for the bridges, and then someone else will go "screw it, I'll just implement the shared vocabulary directly" and that's how a protocol pidgin turns into a protocol creole. Arguably that's what happened with e.g. TCP/IP.

     In the case of Matrix they tried to leapfrog this whole process and make themselves the bridge protocol.