Jekyll2024-03-14T21:02:08+00:00https://libera.chat/atom.xmlLibera ChatA next-generation IRC network for FOSS projects collaboration!New And Upcoming Features2023-12-04T00:00:00+00:002023-12-04T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/new-and-upcoming-features-2<p>Hello Libera.Chat users,</p>
<p>As we look towards the end of the year, we thought we’d put together an
update on what we have been up to behind the scenes.</p>
<h2 id="new-features">New Features</h2>
<h3 id="user-mode-i-disable-idle-time-display">User mode <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">I</code>: Disable idle time display</h3>
<p>This was an upcoming feature on
<a href="https://libera.chat/news/new-and-upcoming-features#user-mode-i">our previous New And Upcoming Features blog post</a>, and
it’s finally here!</p>
<p>Your idle time is the number of seconds since the last time you sent a
message. It is shown by <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/whois</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/who %l</code> queries that are sent to the
server you are on. This can be useful for people to determine if you are
available, but can also be a privacy concern.</p>
<p>User mode <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">I</code> hides your idle time, displaying a time of 0 seconds wherever it
would otherwise be displayed. Additionally, responses to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/whois</code> queries
about you will explicitly indicate that you are hiding your idle time. To keep
things fair, however, setting user mode <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">I</code> will also prevent you from seeing
others’ idle times, regardless of whether they have <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">I</code> set or not. Note that
staff will always be able to see users’ idle times.</p>
<h3 id="new-commands-for-group-contacts">New commands for Group Contacts</h3>
<p>We have added a bunch of nice things to the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ProjectServ</code> service that we use
to manage and document project and community registrations. These new features
are aimed at enabling peace of mind by providing information that allows
groups to audit their registered namespaces without needing to wait for staff
assistance:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ChanServ LISTGROUPCHANS</code> lets Group Contacts list all registered channels
in their namespaces.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">NickServ LISTGROUPCLOAKS</code> lets Group Contacts list all users with cloaks
belonging to their projects.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Group contacts now receive a notification whenever a new channel is
registered in one of their channel namespaces. The notifications look
like this:</p>
<pre><code class="language-irc"> -ProjectServ- The user veryrealbob (account name fakebob) has registered the channel #bobsproject-hates-kittens which is within the namespace (#bobsproject) of a project that you are a group contact for (bobsproject)
</code></pre>
</li>
<li>
<p>When Group Contacts of a namespace do <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ChanServ INFO</code> for a channel
registered in their namespace, they will now see a full list of both
public and unlisted/private Group Contacts assigned to their project.
Others will still only see public contacts when they use <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ChanServ INFO</code></p>
</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="extban-improvements">Extban improvements</h3>
<p>The existing <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x</code> extban has been improved. This extban allows the GECOS
string (also known as realname) to be matched in addition to the standard
nick, user, and host fields. The improvement is that the host component of
these masks will now also match against IP addresses if that address is
publicly visible. While matching both hosts and IP addresses was standard
behaviour for normal masks, it was previously not implemented for <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x</code> bans.
GECOS matches are generally most useful when matching bridged users where the
GECOS value is fixed by the bridge.</p>
<p>Help text: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x:<mask></code> - Bans all users with matching <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">nick!user@host#gecos</code></p>
<p>Example: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x:*!*@192.0.2.0/24#suspicious-gecos-here</code></p>
<p>The new <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$g</code> extban extends <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x</code> by only matching unidentified users. This
could be useful if unidentified bots or other undesirable connections were
coming from a specific service and a channel did not want to restrict chat
from all unidentified users. When a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#</code> character is present in the mask, this
ban works like <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$x</code> to match GECOS as well.</p>
<p>Help text: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$g:<mask></code> - Matches as a normal ban but excludes identified users</p>
<p>Example: <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">$g:*!*@undesirable.host.name</code></p>
<p>For documentation on all the extbans, please visit our
<a href="https://libera.chat/guides/channelmodes#available-extban-types">channel mode documentation</a>.</p>
<h2 id="upcoming-features">Upcoming features</h2>
<h3 id="easier-account-creation-and-verification">Easier account creation and verification</h3>
<p>This was announced <a href="https://libera.chat/news/new-and-upcoming-features#easier-account-creation-and-verification">late last year</a>,
and an initial iteration of this feature is finally complete.
We are currently working on an automated build and deployment pipeline
for it, which we should also be able to use for
our other projects written in Rust.</p>
<h3 id="sable-update">Sable update</h3>
<p>We’ve continued to work in the background on Sable, our experimental
next-generation server platform. It is currently possible to create
a network of Sable servers, connect to it, and use it for basic chat.
While <a href="https://github.com/orgs/Libera-Chat/projects/2/views/1?sortedBy%5Bdirection%5D=desc&sortedBy%5BcolumnId%5D=Status">there’s a long way to go yet</a>,
Sable will allow us to offer a greatly improved user experience,
including persistent presence and history without the need for bouncers and
much better resilience to network interruptions. If you’d like to get involved
in this effort, or just observe how we’re progressing, come and join us in
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-dev</code>.</p>
<h2 id="documentation-updates">Documentation updates</h2>
<p>We were asked in the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-communities</code> channel if we could
provide a quick reference to help operators know when and how to set various
types of access control measures for their channels. This has been asked and
attempted several times in the past, but this time we did manage to pull a
simple guide together! You can now find a <a href="/guides/quickops">Quick Ops Guide</a>
in the <a href="/guides">guides area of this site</a>.</p>
<p>In the future we hope to supplement this guide another more comprehensive
reference text that summarises some of the more advanced features and
practices available. If there are any other guides you would like to see,
let us know.</p>
<p>We have also updated our <a href="/chanreg">channel registration</a> guide which explains
channel namespaces, what is considered on-topic, and the formal group
registration process. The previous guide was quite confusing in many respects,
leading people to be unsure where their channels belong or whether or not they
were allowed to register channels with <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ChanServ</code> without also going through a
formal group registration process for their projects. We hope that the new
guide clears up all of this confusion and becomes a more useful point of
reference.</p>
<h2 id="libera-merch">Libera merch</h2>
<p>As a reminder, we have a lineup of
<a href="https://www.freewear.org/Libera.Chat">Libera.Chat merch at FreeWear.org</a>
including shirts, mugs, and stickers. We get a small cut of every purchase
made on the platform, so it is a good way to show your support in addition
to repping the network in real life.</p>
<p>If that’s not quite your thing but you’d like to show your support in other
ways, you can give us a <a href="/contributing/donate">donation</a> or contribute to
the <a href="/contributing/development">many open source projects</a> that Libera.Chat
relies on.</p>el, glguy, moonmoon, She, spbHello Libera.Chat users,Official Matrix bridge farewell2023-11-28T00:00:00+00:002023-11-28T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/official-matrix-bridge-farewell<p>Hello, I am the bearer of unfortunate news.</p>
<p>Following the
<a href="https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospective">disabling of the official Element Matrix Services (EMS) operated bridge</a>
between the Matrix network and Libera.Chat IRC network, staff of Libera Chat
met with staff from The Matrix.org Foundation in mid October to discuss the
future of the bridge.</p>
<p>Due to various constraints, The Foundation informed us that it cannot take on
the obligation of the needed modifications in a timely manner, nor can it
commit to operating the official bridge going forward.</p>
<p>Upon receiving this information we requested that The Foundation and EMS
arrange a graceful sunset of the bridge, a clean-up of bridged rooms so that
users are no longer misled or confused due to the presence of non-functional
ghosts, and to take accountability for the delay in wrapping things up. You
can <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/28/shutting-down-bridge-to-libera-chat">read about their plan on their blog</a>.</p>
<p>We have written a <a href="https://libera.chat/guides/matrix">new FAQ about Matrix</a> to address this sunset
and give more information about the future of Matrix use on Libera.Chat. We
would also like to extend to our communities a sincere apology; it has taken
far too long to coordinate communications with EMS and The Foundation to
clarify the fate of the bridge, and we regret any inconvenience the delay of
this information has caused.</p>elHello, I am the bearer of unfortunate news.Matrix Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective2023-08-10T00:00:00+00:002023-08-10T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospective<p>Hello Libera users,</p>
<p>Some people have requested transparency into how Libera came to the conclusion
that we needed to take the drastic action of requesting that Element Matrix
Services (EMS) <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/postponing-libera-chat-deportalling/">deactivate the portalling bouncer-like feature of the Matrix bridge</a>
and limit it to explicitly opted-in plumbed rooms, and then escalate to more
serious action in <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/08/libera-bridge-disabled/">requesting the bridge be disabled fully</a>.
We have been reluctant to go into detail before now because the last thing we
wanted was to put our communities through another public dispute with a
for-profit company. However we believe you, our users, deserve to know the
circumstances of our decision, so this post is an attempt to satisfy your
expectation of transparency from us as an organisation. It is going to be a
long one, so fetch a snack or beverage and settle in. There is also a quick
tl;dr<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> if you want that instead.</p>
<p>Back when we first launched Libera.Chat in May 2021, we did not have hopes of
becoming a large network, and we honestly did not care if we did or not. We
quickly exceeded expectations on that front because of the trust that you all
have placed in us to have the best interests of your communities as our
guiding principle. Several of these communities requested a bridge that would
allow their channels to be accessible from Matrix. We were initially vocally
reluctant due to prior experiences with the bridge on another network.
However, at the end of a very hectic May we sat down with EMS and came up
with some baseline expectations.</p>
<p>One of our requirements included <a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/1337">the rollout of the privacy filter</a>
which prevents Matrix users being able to invisibly watch IRC conversation or
engage in abusive behaviour on the Matrix side without being seen in that
room’s respective IRC channel. While this might seem like double standards
compared to “one to many” bridging in which one bot acts as a puppet for many
individuals, such bridges are observable and typically only serve one
community each. The agreement also included the statement <a href="https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-bridge">we quoted previously</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the bridge may be subject to temporary closure (on your side or ours) in the
event of future privacy issues, dependent on severity and predicted
resolution timeframes, with honest public-facing explanations.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As 2021 progressed, we worked with EMS to address the bridge’s instability,
often notifying them of pending allowance or service disruption issues before
their own monitoring did. We also kept watch for double-bridges which would
expose other networks to potential abuse by bridging their services to us. We
also found ourselves needing to prompt EMS to respond to the concerns of some
projects they hosted. Within a few months after welcoming the bridge, we were
routinely dealing with a sizable and often automated abuse load from the
bridge that made use of easy anonymous registration and the protocol’s
persistent and distributed archiving of files, including images, videos, and
long messages converted to pastebins. The abuse was targeted at both plumbed
and portalled channels.</p>
<p>In February 2022, Matrix was chosen to host a major open source event that
went online-only during the pandemic. The event rooms were bridged to Libera.
Throughout that event, Libera’s abuse mitigation folk responded to a massive
spike in bot waves whose impact favored but was not limited to the event’s
channels. Late nights were spent monitoring for bots, temporarily toggling a
drastic anti-abuse measure that bounced any Matrix puppets, processing
connection data logs, manually screening for obvious false positives, and
issuing many thousands of network bans targeting individual puppets or
open-registration homeservers respectively. We provided EMS a list of
homeservers that were involved and asked that they help with outreach to get
them configured correctly and cleaned up.</p>
<p>Rather unexpectedly, the bot abuse continued to be bridged to Libera long
after it had ceased on the Matrix side. Some of our abuse mitigation stopped
the bots from bridging to begin with. Operating under assurances that failed
connection and messaging attempts would not be bridged, we began to relax our
abuse mitigation measures, only for some of those bots’ puppets (on homeservers
that had not been cleaned up) to reconnect to Libera, join channels, and send
“federation delayed” spam even half a year later. Furthermore, these returning
bots were consuming a portion of the bridge’s connection limit, and also
contributed to some misconfigured Matrix rooms filling channels to the point
of overloading some clients because the idle puppet cleanup process could not
work.</p>
<p>After the event ended, we arranged to meet with EMS in early March 2022 to
debrief and negotiate a path forward where the workload of managing bridged
abuse by Libera staff would be reduced. It was at this meeting that we first
raised the idea of disabling portalling. As EMS agreed to work on a homeserver
blocklist and actually did implement it for us, we did not pursue deportalling
at this time. This meeting also had promises from EMS that reductions in
bridge restart noise and reliable removal of media could be expected some
time later in 2022. Currently, we do not believe there is a reliable way
to quickly remove abusive hosted media without homeserver admin intervention.</p>
<p>Through 2022 and into 2023 we were made aware of <a href="https://matrix.org/category/security/">various security vulnerabilities</a>
and privacy leaks in the bridge. At least one issue this year, for a recurring
privacy leak, needed us to advocate for a fix that was then released without a
transparent announcement <a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/1700">until that oversight was pointed out</a>
causing third party bridges and the bridge of at least one other network to
lag in getting fixed. As a result of all this, we feel we are unable to be
confident that reported issues have been acknowledged or addressed, and some
folks have expressed a lack of motiviation to report issues due to past
experiences. Our confidence in EMS’s capacity to respond to future issues was
further eroded with the <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update-2022/#trust-safety">“reset” of their trust and safety team</a>
during layoffs at the end of last year.</p>
<p>We acknowledge that the security concerns were the least visible issue for
you, our users. There have also been several serious outages this year which
EMS failed to notice until Libera staff put substantial effort into
documenting the symptoms in the coordination channel, often needing to find
alternative ways to make contact when no response was forthcoming. We likewise
continuously forwarded reports of spam originating from the Matrix network to
varying success and also requested Matrix developers find a solution to avoid
IRC users being listed in the Matrix network’s expansive user directory, which
was causing some people to receive unwanted attention and problematic spam in
private messages.</p>
<p>After many discussions among staff and with frustrated channel operators about
the overall situation, we decided to put an item on the agenda for our
<a href="https://libera.chat/minutes/2023-02-24-public">February 2023 Monthly General Meeting (MGM)</a> to discuss our
options for reducing the negative impacts arising from the bridge instability,
the company’s ongoing communication deficits regarding security and privacy
flaws, and the difficulty in getting things addressed long term. We
acknowledged that some communities are locked into using Matrix due to their
workflows and thus ought to be able to opt-in explicitly to using the platform
while we scaled back the bridge’s reach.</p>
<p>Those attending that MGM concluded that we should first consult the
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-communities</code> channel to which all <a href="https://libera.chat/chanreg/">Group Contacts</a> on the
network have standing invites. Additionally, we committed to reaching out to
some of the key communities that originally requested Matrix bridging. During
these consultations we explained the deportalling option, and the responses we
received were ambivalent to positive. At the
<a href="https://libera.chat/minutes/2023-03-31-public">March MGM</a> we reviewed the
responses and decided to proceed with asking EMS to disable
portalling on the official Libera bridge that they operate. EMS were informed
that same day (March 31st, 2023) and were asked to communicate with us on a
plan for going forward.</p>
<p>At the end of May 2023, we noticed a bot named “<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">archive[m]</code>” joining
a large number of channels unsolicited, including portalled channels such as
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera</code>. After disconnecting the bot and investigating its origins, we
became aware of the <a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-viewer/">Matrix Public Archive, now known as Matrix Viewer</a>.
Given previous privacy incidents involving Matrix leaking channel info, we
became deeply concerned that this archive was violating our public logging or
scraping policies for a large number of portalled channels. Further
investigation was difficult since the archive was very clearly a
work-in-progress, often returning cryptic errors for basic operations or just
being slow to respond. EMS later assured us that the archive was mostly benign
from a privacy standpoint, and renamed it to indicate that the bot itself
didn’t archive but accessed already archived data. Given it was assumed this
behaviour was opted into based on room configurations which did not disclose
that they applied to the Matrix Viewer publishing logs to the web, we
remained skeptical and unhappy that it could roam into channels without
warning or explanation. The lack of proactive communication surrounding this
bot only served to reinforce the lack of confidence we felt we could afford to
EMS on such matters.</p>
<p>By this point, EMS appear to have assumed the cause of the deportalling
request was entirely about stability issues, and set about working on the
previously promised measures to reduce the connection noise caused by the
bridge. This resulted in a feature known as seamless restarts, where
connections over the bridge are maintained through the bridge restart process
by a proxy, which landed earlier in 2023. Unfortunately this has led
to many new problems; message drops, which had occurred previously but were
mostly manageable, skyrocketed. The bridge began silently dropping ranges of
messages, resulting in roughly one out of every five messages being dropped
during periods of high bridge activity. These issues were often undetectable
by the average user on either side, and we have no doubt that they caused
breakdowns in communication that harmed people’s relationships with projects
and frustrated their support volunteers.</p>
<p>At our <a href="https://libera.chat/minutes/2023-06-30-public">June MGM</a> we discussed if we would
enforce the decision of the March MGM and set a deadline for deportalling.
That deadline was originally July 31st, but at EMS’s request we extended it
for two weeks to August 11th. During this transition period, the bridge
management bot was unresponsive for several days while channels tried
fruitlessly to set up plumbing. After we granted the deadline extension, the
bridge was fully restarted in order to implement an attempted fix for the
silent message drops.Shortly before midnight UTC on the 31st, almost all the
bridge’s connections timed out. The bridge was not brought back online until
more than 24 hours later, further disrupting people’s ability to arrange
plumbing for their channels.</p>
<p>As mentioned in the <a href="https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-bridge">previous blog post</a>, on August 2nd we noticed
a serious regression and immediately notified EMS. That regression was that
the privacy filter feature, the earlier mentioned prerequisite for the
bridge’s access to the network, was somehow not functioning. A Libera.Chat
staff member was able to see IRC channel comments on their Matrix account
while their Matrix puppet was not connected to the Libera.Chat network at all.
EMS informed us that this flaw could not be remedied quickly. Meanwhile the
symptoms were being mentioned by concerned users in public channels so it
became clear that it was only a matter of time before this would be noticed
and employed by bad actors; a <a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/pull/1755">recently discovered bug in the blocklist</a>
mechanism had been noticed because problematic content had been bridged as a
result. As portal removal was not yet ready for rollout, we could not reduce
the vulnerability to opted-in channels.</p>
<p>As a result of this network-level risk, staff consensed that the responsible
course of action was to escalate our request and asked that the whole EMS
Matrix bridge be shut down as soon as possible, until this and other critical
issues have been addressed. We gave them 36 hours to do so. At 1400UTC on
August 5th 2023, EMS shut down their Libera.Chat Matrix bridge at our request.</p>
<p>This is not a choice we wanted to have to make on the behalf of our users, and
we’ve held off as long as we could to avoid this disruption in your
communities. Throughout this whole process the employees of EMS have engaged
with us professionally with the limited resources afforded to them, and we
would like to acknowledge their efforts and thank them for their work and
patience, in particular Halfy, Thib, and Neil. We are genuinely sorry that
this is where we have ended up.</p>
<p>Third party bridges will remain unaffected and are not subject to the request
for shutting down. As with any bridging on the Libera.Chat network, third
party bridges will be judged on a case by case basis if problems arise. We
are hoping that this will be a temporary measure. We anticipate the official
EMS bridge will return plumbed-only, depending on the issues addressed by EMS,
at some point in the future.</p>
<p>As per the our prior post, staff are available for questions and concerns
about this decision in private message or in the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code> IRC
channel.</p>
<p>Regards,
el, She, Allie, Ben, and the rest of the Libera.Chat staff body.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>tl;dr: We asked for portalling to be disabled due to compounding
concerns such as abuse mitigation workload, various privacy and security
issues, and overall stability. We escalated to the temporary shutdown
due to a recurring privacy issue where Matrix users not connected to
Libera.Chat could see channel content. The issue could not be addressed
quickly or limited to opted-in channels. Third party bridges remain
welcome and will be judged individually if concerns arise. Questions? PM
staff or ask in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code>. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>el, She, Allie, BenHello Libera users,Temporarily disabling the Matrix Bridge2023-08-05T00:00:00+00:002023-08-05T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-bridge<p>Hello Libera users,</p>
<p>As you know per <a href="https://libera.chat/news/">previous blogs</a>, we have been liasing with
Element Matrix Services (EMS) as they transition the Matrix bridge to
an opt-in configuration that aims to allow plumbed channels (channels that
opted in to being accessed by Matrix) while deactivating
portalled channel access (where Matrix users could
roam freely on the network). This process was undertaken at our request
due to various security and privacy concerns that EMS have been unable to
address to our satisfaction due to time constraints.
During this transition period, a number of new issues have arisen, and
we have already <a href="https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay">extended the deadline</a> for
the deportalling transition by two weeks, at the request of
EMS. Some of these issues are specific to the bridge operated
for Libera.Chat and may not affect bridges on other networks.</p>
<p>When we agreed to accept the Matrix bridge onto Libera.Chat at the request of
a few projects early in 2021 part of that agreement was the following clause:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the bridge may be subject to temporary closure (on your side or ours)
in the event of future privacy issues, dependent on severity and
predicted resolution timeframes, with honest public-facing explanations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On August 2nd, we notified EMS of a serious regression in our
coordination channel after close of business London, UK time
(where EMS is based). After no response we requested acknowledgement 24 hours
later on the 3rd. At this point we were informed that no attention had been
or could be given to the issue. Having subsequently investigated and
confirmed the issue was still occuring, today, Friday August 4th at the
start of business hours, we notified EMS that they had until
1400UTC Saturday August 5th to address the issue.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, EMS have informed us that they cannot satisfy this deadline.</p>
<p>In order to protect our users and our IRC-first communities from
mounting stability, security, and privacy issues, we requested that EMS
remove the Matrix bridge from Libera.Chat until this serious regression can
be fixed, and all other outstanding issues are likewise resolved. EMS agreed
to <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/08/libera-bridge-disabled/">shut the bridge down</a> by 1400UTC Saturday August 5th.
We cannot anticipate a timeline for the bridge’s return,
but we hope it will be soon.</p>
<p>We will put together a more complete retrospective for publication
in the near future, and we invite projects to make
<a href="https://libera.chat/guides/faq#are-bridges-allowed">alternative bridging arrangements</a> in the meantime.
There are various options available, such as
<a href="https://github.com/whitequark/catircservices.org/">catircservices</a> and <a href="https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge">heisenbridge</a>.</p>
<p>As always, Libera.Chat staff will be on hand via PMs,
and in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code> to answer any questions.</p>
<p>Regards,
Allie & el on behalf of the entire Libera.Chat staff body</p>Allie and elHello Libera users,Delays in Disabling Matrix Portalling2023-07-28T00:00:00+00:002023-07-28T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay<p>Good afternoon, all</p>
<p><a href="https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling">At the start of this month</a> my colleague Allie wrote a blog post
detailing the reasons and process leading up to the Matrix bridge having one
mode of operation, portalling, disabled. In this post we set out a timeline,
agreed with our colleagues at Matrix, stating that this would happen by the 31st
of July.</p>
<p>Yesterday evening our partners at Matrix contacted us stating that a number of
security vulnerabilities had been identified in the bridge that have pre-empted
work on the deportalling process. Combined with lingering issues with Plumbing
(the alternate bridge mode that will be maintained going forward), and an
under-resourced team working on the bridge, they have requested an extension to
the deadline we have previously agreed.</p>
<p><strong>Given the nature of the issues, we have agreed to extend the deadline to the
11th of August, 2023, providing an additional 2 weeks to address these high
priority issues and improve the plumbing situation. New portal creation will be
disabled on the 31st, with all portals being turned off on the 11th.</strong></p>
<p>We understand that this means breaking the promise we have made to our users,
and we’re sorry for any users who have rushed ahead of their preferred schedule
to move to plumbed rooms, but on balance we decided it was better to provide an
extension than it would be to demand Matrix decide between running an insecure
bridge or face being shut off entirely.</p>
<h2 id="moving-forward">Moving forward</h2>
<p>While delays and surprises have been a common theme of our working relationship
with Matrix, our colleagues have been honest and upfront with this issue, and
have posted a blog you can read <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/postponing-libera-chat-deportalling/">here</a>. This post acknowledges the
issues that have lead to missing the deadline we agreed, and confirms their
desire to do the right thing for users and communities on Libera and Matrix.</p>
<p>With that in mind, and with Matrix having identified their limiting factors, we
do not see any reason to delay beyond the 11th. If resourcing is an issue, it is
Matrix’s responsibility to provide adequate attention to the task or else risk
major disruption to our mutual communities.</p>
<h2 id="questions-comments">Questions? Comments?</h2>
<p>As always, Libera.Chat staff will be available in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code>
to offer assistance and discussion.</p>
<p>Yours aye,</p>
<p>kline</p>klineGood afternoon, allDisabling Matrix Portalling2023-07-03T00:00:00+00:002023-07-03T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling<p>Hello again, Libera.Chat users!</p>
<p><a href="https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates">Last month</a>, I wrote about the actions we were considering taking in
the wake of the issues with the Libera.Chat<>Matrix bridge.</p>
<p>We have been closely following the developments with the Matrix bridge since,
and we have come to the following decision:</p>
<p><strong>Libera.Chat will request that EMS disable Portalled channels, and that EMS
do this by 31st July 2023 but not before 25th July 2023.
If disabling Portalled Channels is not possible, Libera.Chat will ask that
EMS to disable the full Matrix bridge in the same timeframe.</strong></p>
<p>Switching to only plumbed channels has the effect of making the Matrix bridge
an opt-in decision for channel operators, as well as reducing the number of
Libera.Chat<>Matrix connection - both of these should improve the
IRC-side Matrix experience.</p>
<p>We will <strong>not</strong> be disabling plumbed channels: If your community relies on
the bridge to link your IRC and Matrix presences, we would recommend
you look into plumbing <strong>now</strong> if you have not already.
See <a href="https://matrix-org.github.io/matrix-appservice-irc/latest/irc_operators.html#portals-and-plumbed">the Matrix documentation</a>
for the difference between portal and plumbed channels.</p>
<h2 id="looking-into-the-future-a-new-matrix-channel-mode">Looking into the future: A new Matrix Channel Mode</h2>
<p>We understand the impact that disabling portalled channels will have a
significant impact on some communities: Ideally, we would like to be able to
facilitate portalled access to Libera.Chat again.</p>
<p>To do this, we’re exploring options to introduce a new channel mode which
would permit the Matrix bridge into to a channel.
We’ll provide more information about this in time.</p>
<h2 id="questions-comments">Questions? Comments?</h2>
<p>We understand that this is a disruptive change: As always,
Libera.Chat staff will be available in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code> to
offer assistance and discussion.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your understanding,</p>
<p>Allie @ Libera.Chat</p>AllieHello again, Libera.Chat users!Updates on the matrix<>IRC bridge2023-06-07T00:00:00+00:002023-06-07T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates<p>Hello Libera.Chat users,</p>
<p>We are aware that the Libera.Chat matrix<>IRC bridge
(operated by Element Matrix Services, ‘EMS’) has experienced
a number of issues as of late, including
silently dropping messages, dropping connections,
and leaking information about the existence of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">+s</code> (<a href="https://libera.chat/guides/channelmodes">secret</a>) channels to
users not in those channels.</p>
<p>As a number of you rely on the bridge to act as an IRC bouncer,
we understand the current situation is not sustainable in the long-term.
We are in conversations with EMS to better define a long-term future for
the bridge and the users who rely on it,
as well as the wider Libera.Chat userbase.</p>
<p>As a reminder, there are two kinds of bridged channel:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Portalled channels</strong> behave much like an IRC bouncer: a matrix user
joins, say, <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix:libera.chat</code> and this causes the bridge to
join a ‘puppet’ to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">#libera-matrix</code> on IRC. This requires no involvement
on IRC, and crucially presents no opt-out for channel operators.</li>
<li><strong>Plumbed rooms</strong> are the traditional ‘IRC bridge’ experience, and
requires involvement from IRC channel operators and matrix room admins.</li>
</ul>
<p>Whilst we’re hoping for the most minimally disruptive outcome of
these conversations, if a long-term ‘business as usual’ solution is not
possible we may need to make some changes that will disrupt
the function of the matrix<>IRC bridge. In the interest of giving you
as much time possible to prepare,
<strong>on July 30th 2023 we will be taking one of the following actions</strong>:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Business as usual, no changes.</strong></li>
<li><strong>We will ask EMS to disable portalled channels.</strong>
This has the effect of making the bridge ‘opt-in’ from
a Libera.Chat channel operator perspective.</li>
<li><strong>We will ask EMS to disable the bridge in its entirety.</strong>
We do not intend to do this, but it is an option available to us.</li>
</ol>
<p>We will endeavour to provide 28 days’ notice
about the action we have chosen to take.</p>
<p>These changes will <strong>only affect the EMS-run general purpose bridge</strong> -
that is, the one that appears as the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">libera.chat</code> homeserver.
Individuals and homeservers are of course welcome to
facilitate their own access to IRC
(although we ask you be mindful of our <a href="https://libera.chat/guides/faq#are-bridges-allowed">guidelines</a> on the subject).</p>
<p>In the meantime, users should continue to report any issues with the bridge
directly to <a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/libera-chat/issues">EMS</a>.</p>
<p><em>NB: A previous version of this post linked to the matrix.org contact page.
EMS have now set up an issue tracker specifically for Libera.Chat bridge
issues, and the link above has been updated to reflect this.</em></p>
<p>We’d really like to stress that EMS are working very hard to find a
solution to the long-term sustainability of the bridge, and the work
they’re doing is appreciated; the road ahead is not a trivial endeavour
and we will continue to work closely with EMS to find a solution that
is minimally disruptive to Libera.Chat users.</p>
<p>Cheers,
Allie @ Libera.Chat</p>AllieHello Libera.Chat users,Happy 2nd Birthday, Libera Chat!2023-05-19T00:00:00+00:002023-05-19T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/happy-2birthday-libera-chat<p>Hello everyone,
today we celebrate the second anniversary of Libera.Chat going public!</p>
<h2 id="what-happened-this-year">What happened this year</h2>
<p>Last year <a href="https://libera.chat/news/happy-birthday-libera-chat">we blogged about our first anniversary</a> and everything that
happened since Libera.Chat, the new IRC network for free, open source
software and peer directed projects was founded by volunteers.</p>
<p>While certainly less turbulent and active than the first year,
especially the first few months after founding, we still had quite
some activity this year. While the <a href="https://netsplit.de/networks/statistics.php?net=Libera.Chat">numbers of users and channels</a>
have been mostly stable, with a new record of 51522 users connected
this February, we had a couple of new projects arriving at Libera.
As usual these come in various sizes and include all kind of topics.
The biggest new entry in our family is probably the GNOME desktop
environment and community, <a href="https://foundation.gnome.org/2022/11/21/gnome-moves-irc-traffic-to-libera-chat/">which migrated over from their own network.</a></p>
<p>Our communication channels stayed roughly the same and stable,
with some growth around our Fediverse presence due to external circumstances
involving a turbulent flight of a certain blue bird. As a fancy new
extra, we can now <a href="https://libera.chat/news/freewear-libera-merch">offer Libera.Chat branded merch</a> through our
partnership with FreeWear, which also adds some funds in addition to the
donations we receive. There is a handful of upcoming new stuff there and about
our noncorporate identity too, but we unfortunately can’t give an ETA yet.</p>
<p>Development around the software stack that we use is also going smoothly.
Both with regards to the IRC daemon and services that we use, which got
a handful of long time <a href="https://libera.chat/news/new-and-upcoming-features">requested features</a> and
<a href="https://libera.chat/news/login-failure-notice">settings to fine tune ones experience</a>, and also with regards
to the new IRCD that we are developing, <a href="https://github.com/Libera-Chat/sable">Sable</a>.
While it is not production ready yet, it is slowly taking shape and
we can already do some testing with it.</p>
<p>Our operations team kept the network running smooth and without any
bigger issues or outages, and most of the configuration management
can now be seen by all staff, which makes it a lot easier for everyone
to contribute and to verify how and if things work correctly.</p>
<p>We’re also working hard at keeping our users safe and them feeling welcome
on our network, regardless of who they are.
Our trust and safety team, despite running entirely on volunteer work as
the rest of the network, is handling incidents in comparable and sometimes
even better speed as some corporate solutions similar to ours.
Of course you can always contact our volunteer staff if something made you
feel uneasy on our network or if you are seeing content that should not be
on Libera.Chat.</p>
<p>You can find more detailed numbers and activity reports of our various
teams in the <a href="https://libera.chat/annual-reports/2022/">annual report for 2022 on our website.</a></p>
<p>In summary we are still going strong and now have more time for working
on a stable foundation and refining some rough spots left over from a
very busy and intense first year. All of this would not have
been possible without many helping hands. So we want to send out a big thank
you for all the volunteers, sponsors, projects and users that supported us
and keep supporting us.</p>
<h2 id="what-the-future-holds">What the future holds</h2>
<p>As usual, one of the biggest issues IRC is facing is its old age,
due to which it lacks some features that most users expect these days.
Interaction with the service can be clumsy and not very intuitive as well.
But we have to compete against more modern, freshly developed solutions
which some projects migrate to as it is expected by their community.
We hope to address most of these issues with our new software stack
mentioned above, which is developed from scratch and will most likely
break with some traditional ways of IRC, without sacrificing the many
advantages, lightness and simplicity of it.</p>
<p>We encourage you to keep an eye on our website, our social media channels
and our source code repositories for news and announcements. During our
Birthday and maybe for a day or two more, we will also
open up #libera-birthday for celebrations, similar to the new years channel.
Why don’t you drop by for a quick chat and some virtual cake and confetti?</p>
<p>We would like to also conclude this years Happy Birthday post with another
big thank you. Without our users, projects, sponsors and volunteers
Libera.Chat could not exist, run smoothly and keep growing strong.
We hope that you are enjoying the services we provide to our communities,
and you are always welcome to drop by in #libera for comments, questions
or a quick chat with us.</p>FuchsHello everyone, today we celebrate the second anniversary of Libera.Chat going public!Changing Default For Login Failure Notices2023-04-02T00:00:00+00:002023-04-02T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/badpasswdmsg-default<p>Hello Libera.Chat users,</p>
<p>In January, we added the <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">BADPASSWDMSG</code> setting to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">NickServ</code>.
This setting allows registered users to stop receiving login failure notices.
For users who have common nicknames grouped to their accounts,
login failure notices can be incessant and a needless source of worry.</p>
<p>Currently these notices are still being sent to users by default.
We are going to be changing the default on 2023-04-16.
Accounts that have not set <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">BADPASSWDMSG</code> to <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ON</code> or <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">OFF</code>
will default to <em>not</em> being sent these notices.
Our reasoning for doing so remains unchanged since
<a href="https://libera.chat/news/login-failure-notice">the news post announcing this feature</a>.</p>
<p>If you wish to continue receiving these notices,
please <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">/msg NickServ SET BADPASSWDMSG ON</code> if you have not already.
Your setting will be preserved when we change the default.</p>
<p>Have a good day!</p>SheHello Libera.Chat users,Libera.Chat and FreeWear.org partnership for merchandise2023-02-10T00:00:00+00:002023-02-10T00:00:00+00:00https://libera.chat/news/freewear-libera-merch<p>Hello Libera Chat users,</p>
<p>We are happy to announce a partnership with
<a href="https://www.freewear.org">FreeWear.org</a> for Libera.Chat merchandise.</p>
<h2 id="whats-the-deal">What’s the deal?</h2>
<p>FreeWear.org is an online FOSS merchandising store and a print shop.
Since 2006, they have worked with various FOSS orgs and groups
such as Debian GNU/Linux, Arch Linux, the KDE and GNOME communities
and many more, offering branded merchandise. For each item sold,
these organizations will receive some money.
We now entered the same kind of partnership.</p>
<h2 id="how-does-this-benefit-liberachat">How does this benefit Libera.Chat?</h2>
<p>The advantage of such merchandise for us is two-fold: Not only will
this of course spread the word about Libera.Chat when people use
coffee mugs or wear clothes with our logo on it, but as per the
above we will also receive a small amount of money every time
someone buys Libera.Chat merch on FreeWear, currently up to
around 2.5 Euro per piece sold.</p>
<h2 id="does-this-change-anything-about-what-liberachat-is-or-how-it-operates">Does this change anything about what Libera.Chat is or how it operates?</h2>
<p>The money we receive via this channel is handled the very same
as donations. As per our <a href="/contributing/donate/">donations page</a>,
we will use this money to cover the operational costs of the network
as well as the administrative upkeep of the legal entity.
If our funding situation permits it, we may also invest in improving
our services. This additional channel of income does not change anything
about what we are and how we operate; We are and stay a volunteer-run
organisation, backed by a Swedish non-profit as our legal entity.</p>
<h2 id="okay-what-cool-stuff-is-available-and-where-can-i-get-it">Okay, what cool stuff is available and where can I get it?</h2>
<p>We start off with a small amount of base items with our logo on it.
You can find Libera.Chat branded stuff at
<a href="https://www.freewear.org/Libera.Chat">the Libera subsection on FreeWear.org</a>.
We might add more designs in the future.</p>
<p>As usual, we would like to thank our supporters who,
together with our volunteers and sponsors, keep the network up and running.
We would love to see some of you at FOSS events, congresses and the likes
running around in Libera.Chat clothes or drink your fresh hot brew out
of a Libera branded mug.</p>
<p>Lots of love and keep rocking!</p>FuchsHello Libera Chat users,