[kwlug-disc] Skype (replacement)

[Bob Jonkman]

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A followup on my adventures with Wire: I'm no longer running it as a
chat application as I do with IRC or XMPP. I find the client too large
and bloated, consuming too much RAM and CPU to be running continuously
in the background.  And slow too -- coming back online after a while
the client takes minutes to decrypt the existing messages.
Communication is supposed to be faster than that.

And the user community in the "Wire World Group" is too inactive to
make running a client worthwhile.

I may keep Wire installed for the occasional short video conference at
a pre-arranged time, but not as a background task.

XMPP is still a better solution for me. If someone wants to experiment
with #Wire then you can contact me via !XMPP to set up a Wire session
:-) xmpp:bjonkman at sobac.com

- --Bob.


On 2017-11-29 02:20 AM, Bob Jonkman wrote:
> Hubert wrote:
>> - Wire doesn't seem to have any official place for community 
>> discussion
> 
> True, and a complaint I made to them on Twitter: 
> https://twitter.com/KWVoIP/status/934882104374067206
> 
> As a result I got an invite to the "Wire World Group", started by
> Siim Teller of Wire.  Connect with me on Wire (I'm @BobJonkman) and
> I can add KWLUGgers to the group too. There's also a KWVoIP group,
> and we can start our own KWLUG group.
> 
> --Bob, who intends to spin up a Matrix instance any day now.
> 
> 
> 
> On 2017-11-28 09:49 PM, Hubert Chathi wrote:
>> On Tue, 28 Nov 2017 16:26:29 -0500, Keefer Rourke 
>> <mail at krourke.org> said:
> 
>>>> Matrix has been open and federated from the beginning,
>>>> whereas Wire only recently open sourced their server code,
>>>> and as far as I know, they still don't support federation.
> 
>>> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Wire has 
>>> laid plans publicly for self-hosting and federation, and is
>>> *now* fully open- source; for whatever reasons (I suspect
>>> code-quality or readiness to publish since it was in beta until
>>> recently) it was kept behind closed doors. What makes software
>>> philosophically superior depending on when it was open-sourced?
>>> Linux didn't start out as FLOSS for instance.
> 
>> The point is that, at least to me, Matrix *feels* more like a
>> open source community project, whereas Wire *feels* more like a 
>> centralized project that allows other people to tinker with
>> their code.  It's just the impression that I get, whether not
>> it's the truth. It's reflected not only in when it was
>> open-sourced (the fact that it took a long time for Wire to open
>> their code (and the fact that their server code still doesn't
>> have build instructions) makes it seem like they don't "get" open
>> source), but also in the fact that, for example:
> 
>> - Matrix includes links to alternative clients, libraries,
>> servers, etc. - Matrix has published fairly detailed
>> specifications for how clients talk to servers, and how servers
>> talk to each other - Wire doesn't seem to have any official place
>> for community discussion
> 
>> Having been in the Matrix community for a while, and not having 
>> any experience with Wire, I'm probably biased, and given that
>> it's still the early days of Wire's open sourcing, things may
>> change in the future, but that is the impression that I get of
>> the two projects.
> 
>>> I think we're comparing apples to oranges here...
> 
>>>> Looking at Wire's features page, it looks like it has several
>>>>  limitations that Matrix does not have.  For example, it
>>>> only supports 128 members in a group chat (one (unencrypted)
>>>> Matrix room I'm in has over 11,000 members, and the largest
>>>> encrypted Matrix room I'm in has 172 members), which means
>>>> that Wire can't be used as an IRC replacement,
> 
>>> Skype and most other video-first platforms don't support that 
>>> many users in a group at a time. Wire makes for an acceptable 
>>> Skype replacement, but I never said anything about replacing
>>> IRC? What's wrong with IRC? Long live IRC!
> 
>> Sure, if your only aim is to replace Skype, then Wire is
>> probably fine. I personally would rather, where possible, to have
>> one app that can handle multiple uses.  Matrix gives me
>> everything from 1:1 communication and larger group chats.  I can
>> even join the IRC channels that I want to with it.  But then
>> again, I don't do many 1:1 chats, so the deficiencies in that
>> area of Riot's 1:1 chat UI don't affect me much.


- -- 
Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>          Phone: +1-519-635-9413
SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting
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