Problems with Espernet

[LPChip]

I think it is vital to at least have a forum topic about this, given that someone may miss the fuss about Espernet's problems, wanting to connect and then can't but don't know why.

Short reason:

01:13 -- Global (Global@services.esper.net): [Network Notice] kbuck - Hi all, you may be aware that we have not been able to send NickServ emails for a few weeks now. In addition to this outage, we are also currently unable to renew TLS certificates and update DNS records, both critical infrastructure for IRC operation. We do not currently have time or resources to replace this infrastructure.
01:13 -- Global (Global@services.esper.net): [Network Notice] Currently, our DNS caches are expiring, which has resulted in some users being unable to connect. As time goes on, the DNS issues will worsen. Additionally, on March 25, our TLS certificates will expire and not be renewed. This will render the IRC network largely unusable. We recommend that you put plans into place to move your communities elsewhere. Thanks, EsperNet staff.

On our IRC there The topic is 'WE ARE MOVING to <ircs://irc.libera.chat:6697/#openmpt> because of <@kbuck>

This made me wonder. Is it not time to switch to Discord now? Many communities have already made the switch and as a result, I rarely visit IRC anymore. I can setup an OpenMPT discord server if anyone wants.

I'm interested in anyones opinion if they prefer IRC, Discord or if it doesn't really matter to you?

[Exhale]

How about 'matrix' primarily? I dont know anything about it, just that it can be linked to discord and is possibly a kinda free and open source version of discord. We have a 'matrix bridge' set up on the mineclone discord which makes a bot for every matrix user so that their messages can show up on discord... that way hopefully we can have the best of both worlds... i am ok with discord, i just dont like it completely*.
* the people running it are worrying, the selling and leaking of data is a massive risk there especially since it is part owned by a chineese company which are all ccp bitches, but i have a few discord accounts and have had for years now... so i am far from not using it. I do have guilded too, but i dont think that is all that much better, just not quite as well known, a positive about guilded is that the stuff discord locks behind their paid crap is free on guilded, negative is it is roblox linked. I guess i am saying that we have some options here even if the preferred option is discord or and discord like system.

[manx]

Just NO to any of this from my side.

Supporting yet another support channel is not going to happen. It is not the communities business to demand which support channel we provide. Both Saga Musix and myself are already kind of overloaded to various degrees, and Discord (or really any other additional support channel) will make this just worse. The community is so small anyways that providing yet another means of communication will just cause even more fragmentation.

And we cannot drop IRC, because IRC can be joined anonymously without having to create an account first. It is the only support channel we have that provides this feature. Discord cannot provide that, and neither can Matrix. This is not even up for discussion - at all!

Libera.Chat was chosen specifically because it is the biggest IRC network, and thus on average the easiest to expect users to join. While I agree that Discord probably has even more users already, the fact that it requires account creation before being able to do anything (even read-only access) is really a hard blocker for an Open Source project, IMHO. I am aware that other communities have chosen differently, and I strongly disagree with their decisions.

[LPChip]

Espernet update:

-Global- [Network Notice] kbuck - Good news everyone: We are in the process of deploying a new DNS server to restore service. This will allow us to continue operating for the near future. We are continuing to work on restoring other backend services.

[manx]

EsperNet is dead for me. Even if they manage to survive for the "near future", this will inevitably cause the trouble of moving once again in the future. We move now, just to for the sake of reducing my workload.

[LPChip]

Just NO to any of this from my side.

Supporting yet another support channel is not going to happen. It is not the communities business to demand which support channel we provide. Both Saga Musix and myself are already kind of overloaded to various degrees, and Discord (or really any other additional support channel) will make this just worse. The community is so small anyways that providing yet another means of communication will just cause even more fragmentation.

And we cannot drop IRC, because IRC can be joined anonymously without having to create an account first. It is the only support channel we have that provides this feature. Discord cannot provide that, and neither can Matrix. This is not even up for discussion - at all!

Libera.Chat was chosen specifically because it is the biggest IRC network, and thus on average the easiest to expect users to join. While I agree that Discord probably has even more users already, the fact that it requires account creation before being able to do anything (even read-only access) is really a hard blocker for an Open Source project, IMHO. I am aware that other communities have chosen differently, and I strongly disagree with their decisions.

Please don't feel offended by my post. I was just curious about things. Now that Esper.net seems likely to be resolved, we could not move and we could keep libera.chat as fallback too.

I can see your standpoint too. Again, I was just curious, and the biggest reason for making a forum topic was actually not a discussion, but more an information source that this IRC thing was happening, in case someone was lost and did not know how to reach us.

[Exhale]

I think I understand... creating accounts to post on this forum isnt the same as discord since this is the official place for development and is inextrably linked via the webpage. The perifferal communities be they irc or others shouldnt create accounts or they would fragment the already tiny community. I hope that is a fairly decent summation manx?
I can certainly appreciate a hatred for the concept of every webpage demanding the user create a new account on their webpage, an online practice i personally hate. I know I hated creating my first discord account for that reason... yet another place to put in a password etc... but ended up creating two eventually over the years.
I am sorry for turning this into a discussion, i thought since a connected community was being talked about i would throw out some suggestions i had heard about that might be a viable option, especially since i really think discord would be a bad idea these days, have been wondering about matrix, and personally prefer, from experience, at this moment, guilded since it doesnt have half the features locked behind a paywall.

[manx]

Fair enough, I am not offended and also did not mean to offend anyone. I just wanted to make clear why IRC is not going away, at least for me. While it certainly has some drawbacks, it also has the advantages I outlined. And given how (relatively) small the OpenMPT community is, I really think we should not provide too many different communication channels because of fragmentation.

We currently have at least 6 (unless I am missing something): IRC, Forum, Issue Tracker, Security Contact eMail, GitHub Pull Requests, Un4Seen Forum for xmp-openmpt. All of them serve somewhat different purposes, and I really do not want to add even more if at all possible.

[Saga Musix]

In addition to everything manx said, I would also not want to build an open-source community on top of a service that requires people to register with their phone number and randomly bans people for using alternative clients.