Notices by Daniel Gultsch (daniel@gultsch.social)

The "Open source developers don’t care about UI" trope is incredibly insulting.

It’s like telling the forth runner across the finish line at a marathon they clearly don’t care about winning.

Nobody wants their app to look bad. We can and do look at other apps and try to follow trends. Trends change rapidly and UI development is difficult and time consuming.

The good news is you don’t have to wait for the slow, democratic process of the European Union to impose tariffs on US-based digital services. You can boycott Amazon, WhatsApp, and Signal today.

@samueljohnson Glad you asked. Signal is a centralized service run on Big Tech infrastructure. You can decide to trust Signal as your service provider; That’s absolutely fine and reasonable even. But they don’t allow federation or inter-op with anyone who wants to make different choices.

#XMPP gives you that choice. Don’t trust me to be your server operator? That’s fine: pick a different one.

Donations to Signal are directly funding Amazon, Google and Microsoft.¹

¹: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840

Looks like Dino is enabling #OMEMO by default for the next release¹. I think that was the last of the major #XMPP clients to do so. Hopefully we can now put the "But XMPP is not encrypted by default" debate to rest.

¹: https://github.com/dino/dino/commit/fc6447c56e7fdaf6f6d843a2215d870caee4aba0

You are encouraged to self-host #XMPP but you are not required to. We try to make self hosting as easy as possible. I think it is one step above hosting your own website but way easier than hosting your own e-mail.

If you are medium tech-savvy I recommend getting your own domain and going for an XMPP provider that let’s you bring your own domain (for example: https://account.conversations.im/domain/) this gives you the flexibility to self host or switch providers later.

I think I’ve found a relatively nice solution for #FediLinks in #Conversations_im.

You can put web+ap URIs into a message (or room description) and ideally a click on those will open your Mastodon client. However if no installed app supports those (the only app that I’m aware of is Fedilab) Conversations will open a browser instead.

Currently no app will create web+ap links but it is fairly easy to handcraft them.

cc @SoniEx2

#XMPP #ActivityPub

Today I’m announcing a 45% tariff for #Conversations_im sold in the USA.

@apps I assume you are testing with this exact commit? https://codeberg.org/tom79/Fedilab/commit/db17df93f0bd3851941d948a8b6dbfed28d57481

If you wanted web+activitypub: to work (without the //) you can’t have host and pathPattern in there. Only <data android:scheme="web+activitypub" /> analogous to the gist I linked earlier.

However see my comments on the Tusky issue tracker on why I believe fedilinks is better than FEP-07d7: https://github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/issues/5027#issuecomment-2764451529

fedilinks uses :// anyway

@apps @jenniferplusplus Conversations has been able to open xmpp: URIs (without //) for years.

Just to be sure I tested this with web+activitypub: URIs quickly to make sure web+ URIs don’t get special treatment - and it’s working fine in both Firefox and Chrome on Android.

Here is the intent filter I was using: https://gist.github.com/iNPUTmice/79757b4edc5fbfc8c9aab2b965cdcb87

I have no strong opinions on whether the // should go in there. But I’m advocating for consistency. (And clarity in the FEP)

@jenniferplusplus @apps personally I belive it's fine to assume https as the transport. While ActivityPub may or may not work over telnet I don't think we'd be using a web+ scheme for that.

However - assuming that we can agree on https - my question was just: is it
a) web+activitypub:something
b) web+activitypub://something

The examples in the FEP indicate a although there isn't any normative text.

The web+soup example here https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#custom-handlers also uses variant (a)

@wiktor I understand the concern about bad fallback on the web. I just wish people would be a bit more pragmatic about it and at least add support for reading / opening such URIs. Nobody suggested replace all Follow buttons with web+activitypub: links.

Can we have support for FEP-07d7 in #Tusky and #Fedilab? (cc @Tusky @apps)

It shouldn’t be that hard to implement at least one of the possible URI schemes in #Conversations_im, #Lttrs, #Tusky and #Fedilab. Maybe get @delta on board too?

For the next #Conversations_im release I’m refactoring how URIs are linked / made clickable. I’m adding a bunch of URI schemes like tel and mailto on top of the existing xmpp, http(s) and geo but removing support for "things that look like web URLs but aren’t actually URIs" (like 'example.com') to avoid some false positives.

Once the 2.18.0-beta comes out tomorrow or so let me know if you see things that isn’t matched and should be matched or vice versa.

Is there any #ActivityPub / #Mastodon URI scheme used in the wild that would allow me to open an ActivityPub account directly in my Android app?

I've seen 'acct' and 'web+ap' mentioned but none seem to be implemented.

The goal is that given a text of "Here is my Mastodon profile acct:daniel@gultsch.social" #Conversations_im can link that directly into #Tusky. (Just like mailto and xmpp URIs open my E-Mail or IM app respectively)

Have @apps or @Tusky considered that? If not way not?

Das Komoot an private equity verkauft wird ist wirklich schade. Komoot war immer mein goto tool zur Routenplanung fürs Wandern und Radfahren. 😢

Nach außen wirkte die Firma eigentlich immer ganz cool. Ich hab da sogar 1-2 mal in die Stellenausschreibungen geguckt weil ich mir vorstellen konnte da zu arbeiten.

https://www.heise.de/news/Wander-App-Komoot-wird-verkauft-10324277.html (@heiseonline)

If you're still recommending #Signal, you may have missed the tech oligarchs' takeover of the US government. The best time to recommend European alternatives was 8 years ago; the second best is now.

#Conversations_im #XMPP #Jabber

For a protocol that's often accused of accumulating vast amounts of metadata, it's surprisingly difficult to determine how many people use #XMPP and which clients they prefer.

I don’t usually do this kind of evangelism, but if you’re looking for a reason to try #XMPP on #GlobalSwitchDay, now’s the perfect time: #Conversations_im is currently free on Google Play!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations

The Matrix.org/Element saga isn’t about sustaining Open Source development—it’s a tale of venture capital and corporate greed playing out exactly as foretold.

#Matrix

I love open source, and I want young people to know there’s a career path outside of #FAANG. Open source can be financially sustainable—it just gets super hard if one of your key goals is making your investors even richer. #Conversations_im is about the same age as #Matrix. I never took VC funding, and I’m doing fine.

#OpenSource

Gerade ein sehr angenehmes Interview von Tilo Jung mit Jan van Aken zu Ende gehört.

Bei dem, was Jan van Aken über Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Verkehrspolitik zu sagen hat, gibt es von mir ja viel Zustimmung.

Ich würde mir wünschen, @dielinke hätte mehr Bewusstsein dafür, dass, wenn ein Autokrat in ein wehrloses Europa einfällt, wir die ganze schöne Sozialpolitik auch nicht mehr umsetzen können.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls0tBHgy_xI

#BTW25