ok what's the deal with tuwunel vs continuwuity? why are there two forks of conduwuit?

@ariadne glad you asked

@fossdd ok but this does not explain why two forks. is this another "Jason does not play nice with others" thing?

> Tuwunel’s theme is empathy in communication defined by the works of Edith Stein. Empathy is the basis for how we approach every message and our responsibility to the other in every conversation.

what?

@fossdd @ariadne I'm glad to see Matrix continues the IRC legacy of incomprehensible fork trees

@val @fossdd I mean Jason originally turned Charybdis into a matrix server for whatever reason

@ariadne @fossdd do you mean https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct or is it something else entirely?

@val @fossdd yes

@fossdd @ariadne all those forks and none fixed the terrible database rot <3

@ptrc @fossdd i just want to install a matrix homeserver man

@pj @fossdd @ariadne isn't dendrite in the superposition of both not finished and already deprecated?

@pj @fossdd @ptrc PTSD from it dying every time I have ever used it, non-free software, looks dead

@pj @fossdd @ptrc they claim it just works?

@pj @fossdd @ptrc of course, matrix people always claim their software just works, so maybe i should be more skeptical

@ariadne @pj @fossdd @ptrc ye it always works in the context of Matrix servers — badly.

seriously, what does that even mean?

"we will be empathetic when the software inevitably fucks you over"

@ariadne they don't say RTFM say ask you to please consult the well written Documentation.

@ariadne are these real names or have I just been isekai'd in the worst of all possible worlds

@ska they are

@fossdd @ariadne hey achill. does this come up often enough to warrant a helpful infographic, or was this an autism moment <.<

@fossdd @domi they had this in 1 minute so...

@domi @fossdd @ariadne there's even a more up to date one! (curtsey of @HarHarLinks)

@networkexception @domi @fossdd @ariadne @HarHarLinks what 😭😭😭

@networkexception @domi @fossdd @ariadne oof #VerwaltungsLeaks or so

FTR this is not up to date either.

@lanodan @ariadne @ska if you say continuwuity fast enough you might glide the w out of existence

@ariadne Somehow we live in the worst of all possible worlds already

@ska @ariadne I don’t see an issuwue

@networkexception @domi @fossdd @ariadne this is my current version. the conduit, grapevine and continuwuity parts are peer reviewed by their maintainers as of FOSDEM. I added catalyst thanks to @clokep's https://patrick.cloke.us/homeserver-spec-versions/timeline.html project.

@networkexception @domi @fossdd @ariadne @clokep (if anyone has more info or a source about catalyst, please share)

@HarHarLinks @networkexception @domi @fossdd @ariadne

https://git.spec.cat/Nyaaori/catalyst was the repo, but it no longer exists. I have not found anyone who has it cloned, but I did find some upstreamed commits to conduit (first: https://gitlab.com/famedly/conduit/-/commit/2b7c19835b65e4dd3a6a32466a9f45b06bf1ced2, last: https://gitlab.com/famedly/conduit/-/commit/7cc346bc18d50d614bd07f4d2dbe0186eb024389).

There's also a reference in the 2022 Matrix.org year in review: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/01/03/matrix-community-year-in-review-2022/

If anyone has more info, please send it my way.

@ariadne one is official and the other is made by a bunch of people who harassed the conduwuit developer out of matrix development

@ariadne said harassment continues to this day and also my hosting provider was sent an abuse report for having the conduwuit developer exist on vern

@cobra @ariadne this is true i was going to say this but you said it better

@cobra @ariadne which is which?

@chaos @ariadne tuwunel is the official one and continuwuity is the other one

@chaos @cobra this entire situation is odd because Jason has a history of harassment dating back to 2017

@ariadne @cobra why are they both under the same org?

i feel like there is no good anything under the matrix protocol tbh, might check back in a year and see that its somehow worse than the last time (currently having to use 4 clients with 2 pinned to specific versions just to get a functioning matrix experience, not fun, may fix but chronic fatigue)

@ariadne @chaos not sure what that has to do with conduwuit devs saying june deserves to die and flooding matrix rooms with spam accounts and stuff but ok

@chaos @cobra are you certain it isn't just Jason joe-jobbing the continuwuity devs? the beauty of pseudonymous net abuse is that you can't know for certain who is actually doing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

@ariadne @chaos i can provide screenshots of a chat where nyx et al discusses doing this

@ariadne and jason hasnt done any of that black hat shit in like 4 years but god forbid people change instead of facing infinite suffering for mistakes

@cobra @ariadne please untag me

@ariadne im Quite certain. and your clear lack of willingness to even consider that maybe continuwuity is bad and that it must be All Jason Actually says a lot
https://ak.vern.cc/notice/B1YWQb94P4htf966gy
https://ak.vern.cc/notice/B1YWplIvllWGPTi0e0
https://ak.vern.cc/notice/B1YWtyNZ6FJA7QstbU
https://ak.vern.cc/notice/B1YXAc31Ne4TmZD3rM

@noisytoot @fossdd @ariadne yes, the ircd

@cobra my position is based on direct experience working with Jason on what became his first attempt at making a matrix server, construct.

It was originally built from parts of Charybdis, and his behavior created problems for the Charybdis project which in part led to the troubles with freenode.

I am willing to believe everyone involved sucks, but given that I have direct knowledge of his past behavior, I am not willing to believe he is purely innocent here.

@cobra for example, my first interaction with Jason was when he submitted a bunch of patches to Charybdis to "show the freenode staff that they are incompetent" or whatever it was.

In my naivete, I tried to redirect his maladaptive behavior into working on ircd. This led to a disagreement between myself (as the BDFL of the Charybdis IRC project) and Christel Dahlskljaer, wherein Christel threatened to KLINECHAN the entirety of #charybdis if we accepted code from Jason.

This is why I discussed the situation with rasengan, which set into motion the entire shitshow that happened next where he fired Christel and then proceeded to take over the network and run it into the ground.

But the reason Christel had the position she had was because Jason was harassing freenode staff due to their decision to not collaborate with him.

Her position was bad (threatening a FOSS project she depended on to deliver freenode services), but his conduct was also bad.

My goal was to redirect his conduct into something more productive.

Since then, I have heard about other instances which line up with the same pattern of behavior I was trying to redirect in the first place.

@cobra when he was working on Construct, he found a vulnerability in the way Synapse resolved DAG events that he exploited to brick #matrix-hq's history.

When he did that he crossed a line that personally made me feel uncomfortable working with him any further.

Maybe his behavior has changed since then, but the fact that there are two forks instead of one fork tells me that not much has changed.

Which is sad, because if what you are saying is right, it means I won't be spending my time on either fork.

This is unfortunate because I now need to have a reliable Matrix homeserver to continue interacting with certain projects that plan to deprecate their IRC chat.

@cobra with all of that said, I will note that when I started encouraging Jason to work on ircd rather than crapflood and harass freenode staff, he did actually redirect his energy toward that.

he isn't stupid, but his behavior has been harmful in the past, and I think he should reflect on the harms he has caused if he wants to make the case that he isn't still harmful.

it would be more convincing than saying his project is built around the philosophy of edith stein

@val @fossdd @ariadne I didn’t know Construct was Charybdis-based and was confused because Construct is ISC-licensed while Charybdis is GPL’d. I then looked at git blame LICENSE and apparently Jason just replaced the GPL with the ISC license!? That seems very much illegal unless he replaced every single line of Charybdis code (or somehow got permission from all contributors)

@noisytoot @cobra yes, but something pisses me off about that one too

@val @ariadne @fossdd Correction: not ISC, but a license that is almost identical except it has “is present in” instead of “appear in”.

Also apparently there’s still an IRC parser in Construct, is that actually used anywhere?

@cobra @noisytoot they tend to overpromise and underdeliver

@ariadne he has actually reflected and his behavior has changed since then, and its important that you are able to understand that he isnt the person youre describing anymore (i could speak endlessly on about the harm caused by disregarding character growth like this).
from everything june has told me about jason, and from what ive witnessed myself, jason is incredibly kind and helpful. conduwuit could not have existed without jason’s help. he saved the project multiple times. he never once was the person you seem to believe he still is throughout the entire time june has known him. i cannot stress this enough: jason is a better person now.

no one wants drama

@cobra I *do* understand that people grow up. I am literally a comparative psychologist by training, which is entirely about measuring and quantifying growth, both internal and against environmental pressures.

At the same time I haven't seen any public reflection from him, and in the absence of data I have to assume there is none.

It does not change the fact that he crossed a lot of red lines, such as bricking #matrix-hq history. People will be skeptical in the absence of data.

@cobra So, to ask directly:

1. Has Jason apologized for his behavior to the people and groups he has harmed?

2. What steps have the Tuwunel project taken to ensure they can participate in Matrix spec development?

3. If the answer is none, how can the project provide assurances that it is sustainable. Part of sustainability in a server implementation is active development of the protocol itself. For example how Charybdis kick started IRCv3.

@ariadne @cobra

Tuwunel has made thousands of users happy over the past year and I've worked to continue improving the Matrix experience for everyone one deployment at a time. You are mistaken that sustainability has anything to do with protocol development, but even if it did, we have been active participants starting from the work I did under Project Hydra.

The companies and governments that started to rely on conduwuit required the sustainability it currently enjoys today with Tuwunel.

@ariadne @cobra

What happened to June was really upsetting and I can't find a single word in any of your posts with the slightest amount of empathy. Maybe it's you who should read some Edith Stein rather than mocking it.

Please don't stir inter-project drama. Please don't solicit apologies vicariously. A lot has happened in the past ten years: it's time you let go of your ambitions to be an IRCop and blaming me or anyone else about freenode. Nobody has any idea what you're talking about.

@ariadne @cobra isn’t that every matrix implementation (and matrix in general)? although some are worse than others (the worst definitely being cloudflare’s vibe-coded “post-quantum” matrix homeserver that doesn’t check signatures)

@cobra @ariadne literally ZERO of the people involved in the transfem.dev flood were Conduwuit developers, nor did ANY of the Conduwuit developers say June should die.

@cobra @jasonzemos what ambition to be an ircop? Been there, done that, multiple times including on freenode. Who cares? I have no desire to relive the glory days of my youth K-Lining GNAA script kiddies and getting DDoSed at home.

I am just trying to figure out what matrix server is not a waste of my time, because it is the present and I want to maintain my own sovereignty.

Maybe from a technical point of view your project is fine for my needs. I have no doubt there. But free software is also about ethics and sustainability.

Therefore, I think asking if you have sorted out your problem with matrix.org after breaking #matrix-hq is a relevant question to that end given that if you ever need changes to the protocol you will need to work with them. So, have you?

Given that every time I have tried to use a Matrix server that is not Synapse it eventually quit working because it fell behind the spec, I think it is important to be able to work with the people maintaining the spec.

I believe asking these questions and being candid about concerns is aligned with Edith Stein's model of empathetic communication.

@ariadne @cobra

1. Your premise is provably inapposite: Dendrite worked with the spec in literally the same office and it wasn't sustainable.

2. Your concern is ethically dubious: you accused me of harassing people, yet it only crosses your moral line when it comes to stealing ops in a chatroom?

3. You spent 95% of the thread answering your own question by libeling me. So what did you learn from yourself today?

You are like 45, what are you still doing on here arguing with these teenagers

@jasonzemos @ariadne @cobra this is like textbook DARVO, do you take us all for idiots or what

@cobra @jasonzemos

1. You harassed Christel on numerous occasions, including commenting on her weight and dietary habits. This was in retaliation for being K-Lined, the tit for tat harassment for K-Line pattern was sustained for months.

2. Later when you had a disagreement with Matthew of matrix.org, you injected an invalid event into #matrix-hq which broke the channel history prior to 2017 permanently. This is why #matrix-hq history is not browsable past the point of your invalid event. As a result you were excluded from participation in matrix.org spaces.

3. Several other people have privately DMed evidence of harassment from you targeted at them. I have no comment on that evidence as I did not directly observe the behavior.

4. Given the above there are two forks of a project that you were heavily involved in. One side seems to be pretty clear about their fork intentionally excluding you. You and your associates assert that these people harassed the founder of Conduwuit, but there are only screenshots of individuals talking which lack any authenticating information, and without authenticating information these screenshots could be easily staged. Every event in Matrix is signed, show us the signatures.

5. Given the above points I am led to believe that Conduwuit splintering into two downstream forks is at least somehow related to your behavior.

6. You did not answer my question: have you resolved your CoC issue with Matrix.org or not? Based on your evasion of this question I am forced to assume not.

7. Yes, I think a permanent DoS on a production channel's history crosses a line that most ethical security researchers would not cross. I also think channel takeovers (which was not the result of what you did, but maybe that was your intent) are an ethical security line most ethical security researchers would not cross.

@ariadne @cobra You plagiarized my patches in charybdis which fixed your bugs at christel's request. Once you took that bait they outed you as being dishonest and charybdis never saw a minute of deployment on freenode. You're still angry about that, but I'm not the one you should blame. Blame yourself.

@ariadne I can prove what you did since it's all still permanently on GitHub. My commits, your theft of my commits. It's all there.

All this other babble you're quacking on about isn't worth the protocol you're spamming it on.

@cobra @jasonzemos No. After great deliberation, we rewrote the git history to delete your patches in their entirety and then re-fixed a few bugs. The alternative was to have the entire project KLINECHAN'd which would have done great harm to the careers of several core Charybdis authors since at that time freenode was the hub of FOSS development discussion.

And, freenode ran a customized version of Charybdis for 15 years called ircd-seven. And now Libera runs Solanum, which is a continuation of that very tree where your patches were stripped.

To be clear, I think christel overstepped in threatening the project but I was not going to kill everyone's career over it. That's why everyone quit the project after giving her what she wanted, myself included.

You still haven't answered my question about the Matrix.org CoC ban.

@ariadne @cobra Listen, you have acted incredibly callous and disrespectful to June this entire time and it's gross. I have no interest in answering any of your questions. I don't care what your assessment of the software ecosystem is or the dramatic narratives you find entertaining. I don't need you as a user and I wouldn't wish this on any community.

Ultimately I don't care which server you choose, and you shouldn't bring this garbage to either of them.

@cobra @jasonzemos how is asking questions about *you* disrespectful to someone else?

@ariadne @cobra You've completely minimized the feelings and shrugged the experience of someone who I worked with to build something of value. We've made a lot of people happy, and now we've saved a lot of businesses money. We put in the work. Twice. When drama like this was too much for conduwuit to endure, we started it from scratch all over again and built it back beyond where it was. What have you done? Throw around accusations and judgments? Try to tear it down? You're capable of better.

@cobra @jasonzemos I have acknowledged the screenshots, but screenshots are meaningless in a protocol where every event is cryptographically attested by design.

I do not think asking for the events in the screenshots to be authenticated back to the alleged actors is unreasonable in a protocol that is designed to provide this level of attestation.

@cobra @jasonzemos or put more directly: Matrix anti-abuse model is built around cryptographic attestation.

anyone can make a bunch of sockpuppet accounts and say whatever they want and then screenshot it.

it is the event signatures that count, as they tell the real story: whether the accounts in the screenshot are real or sockpuppets.

just like on ActivityPub.

@jasonzemos @ariadne @cobra@ak.vern.cc it may be a good time for you to take a break, drink some water, have a sandwich :)

@cobra @jasonzemos @ariadne I've used matrix since riot-im just use xmpp or deltachat

@fluttersh unfortunately, the projects I want to continue interacting with are moving to Matrix and the IRC side experience is horrible

@ariadne oof yeah matrix is cooked from a trustless federation standpoint unless federation is off then it's pretty decent or with a global allowlist

@ariadne it's a lot like federation with IRC imo not meant to be public federation just a set of trusted operators

@fluttersh ok. that does not change anything.

@ariadne @cobra Did you read June's shutdown doc for conduwuit and grok the scale of abuse? That's what this is about. Those recent screenshots are a fart in a hurricane. See the big picture here: you don't hit delete on a thousand star github project from a namecall or two.

Companies had already marked savings for the year by switching from Synapse and came begging to keep it alive. Do you realize what this 18 year old gave up while contemplating suicide during that time?

Why fabricate this?

@ariadne ye it's doesn't, but the server implementation doesn't matter either that much so long as open source projects can agree on a set of allowed matrix hosts and be able to enforce that

@ariadne people create sockpuppet accounts just to make screenshots? Have they not heard of image editors? 😅

@jasonzemos @cobra oh, to be clear, I have no doubt that June was dealing with unprecedented levels of abuse.

the problem is that sockpuppet accounts can be used to abuse others too. in fact, it happens all the time.

in a protocol like Matrix where sockpuppet accounts are cheap (basically free) and the only way to know the authenticity of an origin for certain is by auditing the signatures, something the target of abuse is unlikely to do (due to being overwhelmed from being the target of abuse), it seems likely that the abuse could come from sources other than the sources they appear to be.

hence why auditing the signatures is critical to know for certain.

in other words, i believe it is fully possible that another party led june to believe that the continuwuity developers were the ones abusing her, when it could very easily have been anyone who stood to gain from her deleting the project.

hell, it could have been someone on kiwifarms for that matter.

the point is that you can't make assertions about where abuse comes from without auditing the signatures in a protocol where signatures are the only thing that matter.

@equinox what I am actually implying is that the Matrix anti-abuse model is really friendly to Joe jobbing.

@ariadne I got that. I am somewhat concerned about establishing tech requirements for being believed as a victim. That's, like, … no. At least in the general case.

But I also don't use Matrix and don't know how bad it really is from the tech side. And the people involved seem to know Matrix "rather well"… (which is the only reason I haven't immediately gone "hoooooldup" on that "tech requirement")

It does feel like Matrix is a bit of a crappy protocol though. Just from the outside.

@equinox I am not saying in the general case. I am saying in the case of a Matrix protocol expert who is working with another Matrix protocol expert, who are accusing other Matrix protocol experts.

@ariadne ACK (was already trying to say, yeah, I can see it *in this case*)

Just hoping random other people down the line won't pull this out of context and go "sigs or your harassment didn't happen". Some idiot always takes shit out of context and argues disingenuously.

@ariadne @cobra A lot of the abuse was off-platform, much of it here. But even on Matrix what are you expecting, to verify it's another matrix.org account? What difference does it make? You don't need crypto for this, just use your head.

conduwuit's deletion didn't benefit us at all having to rebuild it.

I haven't trashed other matrix projects anywhere on this thread and I'm not going to start now. I don't need to. There are just those making aggressive counter-claims. How did they benefit?

@jasonzemos @cobra

I don't see anyone making aggressive counter-claims, but rather the claim that they did not say the things in the screenshot. I don't know, because I wasn't there.

The signatures would say for sure.

I am perhaps aggressively asking questions about this, but that is because I want to understand the risks of using this software.

To be clear, I do not *care* about your behavior 8-10 years ago if I can establish that it is different *now*.

That is what I am trying to do.

From my perspective, there are three possibilities:

1. The continuwuity developers are lying and actually did originate the harassment.

I rate this a solid maybe. Fedi does have a lot of "mean girl" shit.

2. Another Matrix protocol expert joe-jobbed the continuwuity developers.

To be direct: you are a Matrix protocol expert who has gained from the deletion of conduwuit: now you directly lead the tuwunel fork which has been named its successor instead of continuwuity.

You are also a Matrix protocol expert who has exploited the Matrix protocol in the past.

I rate this a solid maybe, as well, perhaps slightly more than (1) simply due to the technical expertise.

3. KiwiFarms (or some other community like it) saw a transwoman with vulnerable mental health that they could abuse for 'the lulz'. They get bonus lulz by making it appear the developers of continuwuity are behind the attack, because again, Fedi has a lot of mean girl shit and is just as joe job friendly as Matrix is.

From my perspective I actually rate this as the most likely.

But to get to the truth, the other two possibilities must be eliminated.

@ariadne @cobra I'm sorry I can't allow you to stack that deck.

You're claiming that maybe I double-crossed my co-maintainer with such a perfect far-reaching reality-immersing plot that they even trusted me with the successor project, only for me to make them co-maintainer once again after they recovered having gone full 360.

Hold on while I screw my head back on.

I'm flattered, but this isn't a television drama. It's also insulting to June's intelligence and moral acuity. Can you not?

@jasonzemos @cobra

okay, so we cancel out half of the bullshit and we arrive back at "the continuwuity fork exists because they don't like jzk".

this is compatible with "June got trolled when her project took off and she did not have the mental health support she needed to deal with it."

@jasonzemos @cobra I guess my point here is if we must blame one or more Matrix protocol expert(s) for the abuse that occurred, amongst Matrix protocol experts with relevant intersectionality you are just as suspicious as the continuwuity developers are.

You have had several opportunities to agree with the supposition that the abuse came from somebody who was *not* a Matrix protocol expert. It is curious that you counter rather than deflect.

@ariadne Servers discard messages that are not correctly signed, so why do you think someone receiving abuse needs to verify the signature? Checking the MXID should be enough.

@js that is basically what I am getting at, yes

@js one side has PDUs, the other has screenshots. that is my point.

@ariadne @cobra The abuse wasn't directed at me so I have no inclination to agree, counter, deflect, or anything on the subject.

@ariadne My point was rather that you can rule out Joe jobs because the server would just discard unsigned/incorrectly signed messages and never even show them.

@ariadne @cobra I don't even know these people. They don't like jzk because you don't like jzk. They, on the other hand, have no idea who jzk is. Do they need to? You know the answer to that.

@cobra @jasonzemos

I don't like nor dislike jzk at this time. I am just trying to ascertain which fork I should use and the pros and cons of both. To do that I must learn about the differences of both forks.

But in my research I have seen e.g.

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/420740#issuecomment-3101117326

and

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/420740#issuecomment-3111902374

which lists a lot of PDUs from you that do not seem particularly flattering.

I have seen screenshots that are alleged to be from the continuwuity devs, but they are not backed up by PDUs.

PDUs seem like the stronger "receipt", no?

@ariadne @cobra If this is the decision-making process for the software you run I suggest you stick with it. The most important factor is finding the right fit. It works both ways. You need to make the decision that feels right for you. If I sell you or convince you otherwise, you won't actually be sold or convinced- you'll just hold a debt of expectation until sometime later; understand? You're free to research the market as you see fit. Please allow others to enjoy the same freedom.

@ariadne @cobra i prefer this one though https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/420740#issuecomment-3111636501

@ska @ariadne me when i’m definitely not transmisogynistic

@tauon Ma'am this is a Wendy's

@cobra @ariadne you know zero of the people highlighted here are even affiliated with the Continuwuity project let alone developers right? I also have receipts of Jason threatening me in public rooms which is quite public knowledge now but I’m trying to brush that under the rug so that we can just get on with our individual projects. The one sided beef is getting tiring now, please don’t spread misinformation like this.

i would reply to this thread, but ive learned that no matter what i say no one will believe me, and in fact it will make people believe the opposite just in spite of me and my existence so