`continuwuity` vs `tuwunel`: where to go from `conduwuit`? (Update: probably `continuwuity`.)

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

If you've been selfhosting conduit or conduwuit, you probabl are aware that the conduwuit project was discontinued a couple months back.

I've been holding out on updating my matrix homeserver until it becomes clear which fork(s) will survive long term.

I feel like I can't put off updating for much longer now, plus the tuwunel nixpkg and -module were merged yesterday, so now the two most promising forks are both options for me.

Still, I'm unsure what route to take. Here's my thoughts:

• not going through another round of this in a couple of months from now would be great, so stability and long-term maintenance promises would be great
• I assume incompatibility between the forks, if not now then very soon; this is a "pick an option, then stick with it and pray" situation
• tuwunel apparently has a full-time paid dev working on it now, which is great; at the same time, that means features will follow the priorities of the (as of now unknown) sponsor of the project
• it is, however, the officially endorsed successor
• it also seems like few other people are actively involved, putting in question development practices, reviews, and what happens should the lead dev throw in the towel
• lastly, while there's been a lot of apparently rapid progress (with releases 1.0.0, 1.1.0, and 1.2.0 at quite a fast pace), the repo itself seems... empty? Few issues, few PRs, commentlessly-deleted issues
• on the other hand, continuwuity seems more active by commit/contributors count, but is seemingly 100% volunteer work
• they do seem to backport tuwunel changes and features, which is great!
• they are not officially endorsed

In short: I fucking hate community drama. What fork did you go with? Is there anything else to consider? I just want an up-to-date matrix homeserver, and not to have to tell my users "sorry, starting from scratch because we picked the wrong fork..."

Update: there's been some back and forth on the nixpkgs PR, esp. one user who posted a lot of receipts here:

@scvalex @queeek180 @Askhalion you wanted links, here's some links

claim legitimacy over or de legitimise other projects:

https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$V9aN1Wn0pId-JWbxH1WV5I8PAVMajooX7WMFKmDyh6E
https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$IsfOfe8anRYqbRAwj7OdlX_hS-kBbHUJTVhQW-32Etk
https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$-Bswk96jj3ns8xpSISKH0Y24pXZ2Xcd6Rwl8mRZQIaM (ironic)
https://matrix.to/#/#meowlnir:maunium.net/$zOmf7-NIHfQ_f_Ku9Q794GeKyu8n9v2MAvPtYjlGJIE (ironic that he asked https://matrix.to/#/#meowlnir:maunium.net/$nE57Bi_DmvodZJe7JDPS7NxUBlxeDLUBhYIWNzgNk0g despite having cherrypicked a bunch of fixes from continuwuity already)
https://matrix.to/#/#tuwunel:grin.hu/$svIUeuWfm2VWuHGSUMeT5VWWcZclraKcmUaDK3NiYEM ("June and I dealt with another "continuwuity" called "grapevine" last year")

threats against the project:

https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$o27P102ebbFa9U80e-FK-DxGTupy8IJ3TSWFYJm6hIs
https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$priRlTsBuH2YfTo_pb04xHUJpTeU2DKXdJ7tAVrR5w4

personal threats:

https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$5YefXN_uVR5WiGfj32j3Po9Q1JMKuTTfxve_8IHp1J8
https://matrix.to/#/#ping:maunium.net/$L-dXYMXucfJiLkyc5dvv4t7pQqUKMwnLEd9zzLjZlu0

attempting to get security details released early (knowing only he and three other servers have finished implementing):

https://matrix.to/#/!NasysSDfxKxZBzJJoE:matrix.org/$_d2wJk45JtwblMHRVBdfeEV1cAU5flPuRebTAvfOr-s?via=nexy7574.co.uk&via=matrix.org&via=element.io
https://matrix.to/#/#tuwunel:grin.hu/$mgi2dDGnL-L9Jqjm_YZPhu4NoAx8q3OMF9KIfRiGwFs

other trivia:

Jason getting his server ACL'ed from all foundation rooms:
https://matrix.to/#/!WuBtumawCeOGEieRrp:matrix.org/$u8YRBq_s-OrOpl4IGt15iUHPBKubKa4A_n-u_WbgqAU` - zemos.net ban
https://matrix.to/#/!WuBtumawCeOGEieRrp:matrix.org/$l8pKC-mR0tjLFnbnmi_8xSXbHGA3vgew-QTRWAk-kCs - wildcard ban on his domain

if any of these events get redacted, feel free to reach out and I will provide the original events - unredacted. just as another layer of certainty, when i provide the events, you can verify the server signing keys yourself, fairly trivially, as well as calculate the event ID (which is a hash). fetching the event from your $CONDUWUIT_DESCENDANT homeserver is as simple as running @conduit debug get-pdu $id in your admin room, as well as checking validity with @conduit debug verify-json or @conduit debug verify-pdu.

UPDATE: i've just been informed json signing is based on the redacted event, not the full input.

Honestly, that first link is all the info I needed. Keep reading, <100 messages and it becomes clear that I do not want to put the continuation of my homeserver into Jasons/tuwunels hands. Going to migrate to continuwuity later today.

[hendrik@palaver.p3x.de]

I'm in the same boat. Keep me updated if you go forwards. I think I'm going to wait 2 more weeks or so and then make a decision. Community-driven sounds nice. I wasn't aware of cuntinuwuity yet. And yes, all the drama and burnt-out people isn't nice or healthy at all. It's a shame that this is the state of messengers these days.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Roger, will do.

Yeah, community driven sounds like unless there's new drama. But yeah, currently tending towards continuwuity. Purely vibes based from snooping around both repos.

[gravitywell@sh.itjust.works]

I only setup my server a month ago. it seemed like continuwuity was the most active so thats what i went with.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Nice, how's it been going?

[arisunz@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Gotta be honest, I got fed up and just... shut down my server when conduwuit died. I might come back to matrix if the ecosystem becomes less of a joke, but I'm really not holding my breath about it. Community drama is the worst.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Understandable. Funny thing is, I'm not even federated; I think that keeps me away from a lot of drama.

But yeah. The drama sucks, and so does the Matrix Foundation. So many dumb decisions, so many years old issues that could easily boost acceptance and usability, but... Nah. No better alternatives around though if you want to own your data, have proper multi-client support, and at least the option to federate.

[gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com]

what's wrong with conduit proper?

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

There's nothing technically wrong with it, it's just a glacial development speed. I tried contributing there myself when I wanted a specific feature (which had been requested years prior by someone else and was deemed a good idea), it took months before I even got a single comment back.

In the meantime, I had switched to conduwuit because it was a much, MUCH more active project. However, conduwuit has diverged substantially from conduit, including irreconcilable database changes, so it is not possible to migrate back, that would require starting from a fresh slate and loosing all user data.

[daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

I don't really like synapse, because it performs really bad. But at least it has a stable development. So that's what I use.

But more and more I'm questioning if matrix is really the federated messaging platform we want. A lot of the drama and development issues of any synapse alternative seem to have their roots in how hard and unsatisfactory is trying to follow the matrix protocol which is subdued to synapse development in a weird form, apparently.

I still use it. But I'm too tired of the drama, and wondering if there's even a chance for a long term synapse alternative, or if matrix devs are actually doing something that prevents that for ever happening.

[sunglocto@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

After conduwuit died, I just completely stopped using Matrix. I have zero faith in the current developers of these forks to not do the same bullshit that June did.

[mora@pawb.social]

No better alternatives around though if you want to own your data, have proper multi-client support, and at least the option to federate.

What about XMPP? What can Matrix do, that XMPP cant?

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Hm, fair enough, I actually have very little experience with XMPP. (Only through prosody, which I personally am on a war footing with.) From a cursory glance, I also couldn't find an Android lient I'd really want to use, but of course that is subjective.

In any case: I have a matrix server up and running, and it has been a pain to get friends and family on there; I do not want to do all of that again with a new protocol/clients. As long as it's sustainable, I want to stay with the same server installation, and that means choosing a conduwuit for me.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Understandable.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Yes, completely agree. It seems that the matrix foundation could easily take a different path to allow the community to flourish and third-party servers to have a much easier time. Since I'm not federated, I wouldn't even mind if whatever fork I'll end up on eventually says "fuck this, we're not following synapse specs any more".

But yeah, I am sure selling premium accounts on matrix.org is what will save the matrix ecosystem... ‍️

[mora@pawb.social]

Understandable, trying to move friends and family between platforms is an herculean effort.

For everyone else interested in XMPP, you might want to check out:

• Snikket as a Server (intended to run on a cheap VPS): https://snikket.org/service/quickstart/
• Conversations.im as a Client: https://conversations.im/
• ejabberd/prosody if you want to setup your own from scratch
• this compliance scanner which checks for (probably) the most common extensions for a chat server: https://compliance.conversations.im/

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Update: seems to me tuwunel is drama waiting to happen. See updated post for details.

[hendrik@palaver.p3x.de]

Thanks for your update here. Decision seems pretty easy then. I'll see if I can find some time next week, do a database snapshot and move to continuwuity as well.

[smiletolerantly@awful.systems]

Ah crap, forgot to ping you! Sorry!!

Yep, easy decision now. Migration went smoothly, just had to move the state dir and chown it to continuwuity:continuwuity. Might be different on docker though, no idea, sorry

[hendrik@palaver.p3x.de]

No worries, I pressed PieFed's notification bell, so you pinged me by adding the top-level comment about the update I happen to be using NixOS as well. So it's going to be the same. Now lets hope this project turns out good.