Company Element acquires Gitter at GitLab, to adapt the service for operation in a federated network Matrix. This is the first major messenger that is planned to be transparently migrated to a decentralized network along with all users and message history.
Gitter is a free centralized tool for group communication among developers. In addition to typical team chat functionality, it is essentially similar to non-free Slack, Gitter also provides tools for close integration with collaborative development platforms like GitLab and GitHub. In the past, the service was proprietary, until it was acquired by GitLab.
Matrix, on the other hand, is a free protocol for implementing a federated network based on a directed acyclic graph of events (DAG). The main implementation of this network is a messenger with support for end-to-end encryption and VoIP (audio and video calls, group conferences). The reference implementations of clients and servers are developed by the commercial company Element, whose employees also head the non-profit organization Matrix.org Foundation, overseeing the development of the Matrix protocol specification.
Currently, users of Gitter and Matrix communicate using the "bridge" matrix-appservice-gitter, relaying messages between them. When a message is sent, for example, from Gitter to a chat connected to Matrix, the "bridge" creates a virtual user for the sender from Gitter on the Matrix server, on behalf of which the message is delivered to the chat from the Matrix side, and vice versa accordingly. This type of integration can be connected directly from the chat settings on the Matrix side, but this method of communication will be marked as outdated.
In the short term, users will not notice any visible changes: they will be able to use the messenger just as before the acquisition. In the future, the process of transformation from a centralized service to a decentralized entity of the federation will be achieved by organizing a new Matrix server and integrating the "bridge," similar to matrix-appservice-gitter, directly into the codebase of Gitter. Existing chats in Gitter will be available as Matrix rooms, such as "#angular_angular:gitter.im," with imported message history.
After successful integration, users from both networks will benefit: Matrix users will be able to transparently communicate with Gitter users, and Gitter users will be able to use Matrix clients, such as mobile apps, as the development of official Gitter applications has been discontinued.Ultimately, Gitter can be considered one of the Matrix network clients. However, Gitter significantly lags behind the capabilities of the standard Matrix client — Element, so instead of bringing Gitter's functionality up to parity with Element, it was decided to implement all the missing features from Gitter into Element. In the long term, Gitter will be replaced by Element.
Useful features of Gitter that can be adapted for Element include:
- High performance when viewing chats with a significant number of users and messages;
- Tight integration with collaborative development platforms like GitLab and GitHub;
- Hierarchical chat directory;
- Search engine-friendly static view of public chats;
- Support for KaTeX markup;
- Threaded message branching.
Element promises that the Gitter frontend will only be replaced with Element once Element reaches functionality parity. Until then, the Gitter codebase will be maintained up to date without regressions in functionality.
Gitter employees will also work for the benefit of Element.
Source: linux.org.ru
