For those interested, I've filed a similar ticket with the Fedora Council: https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issue/371

In general, openSUSE doesn't do very much on IRC outside of #opensuse-factory, #opensuse-admin, and #kubic channels right now.

Don't forget about #yast, while yes, it's mostly SUSE employees, you literally can't do some things without the access to that channels in terms of the contributions to openSUSE ;)

Also don't forget about #suse, which is still providing tech support help to a lot of people on a daily basis.

We do have our own Matrix server (courtesy of @hellcp) that we could pull the trigger and migrate to (most of our real-time chat occurs in the Matrix/Telegram/Discord bridged universe already...)

Until there is a possibility to log into that server, that's not going to happen, maybe someone can reserve me a SUSE IT employee for an evening to figure out what's wrong there >:D

It's probably not a hard issue to fix, but it needs to be fixed

From the people that I think should take part in this conversation are darix and henne, since both have op rights in a lot of our freenode rooms and may have more insight

FWIW, to me it feels the Matrix issue/migration is orthogonal, and if
openSUSE wants/needs to migrated our channels, we probably want to do
that as smoothly (for the users) and quickly as possible?

(To use one of my typical comparisons: if a ship is sinking, put the people
on a different ship as quickly and smoothly as possible, then think about
their flight home. Doesn't mean the flight is good or bad, just that other
ship more practical here and now. :-)

And I believe that those currently supporting/operating/... the current
openSUSE-related channels and those populating them should be the primary
decision makers - it's their place/home/venue after all.

And I believe that those currently supporting/operating/... the current
openSUSE-related channels and those populating them should be the primary
decision makers - it's their place/home/venue after all.

That's not really how this works for stuff under the #opensuse- namespace. That's entrusted to the Project (presumably someone on the Board is registered as one of the Group Contacts, which carried over to Libera.Chat). I assume #suse and #yast are also managed by that group contact.

And I believe that those currently supporting/operating/... the current
openSUSE-related channels and those populating them should be the primary
decision makers - it's their place/home/venue after all.

That's how I feel about this too. Though I'd fully support them going to libera.chat

And I believe that those currently supporting/operating/... the current
openSUSE-related channels and those populating them should be the primary
decision makers - it's their place/home/venue after all.

That's not really how this works for stuff under the #opensuse- namespace. That's entrusted to the Project (presumably someone on the Board is registered as one of the Group Contacts, which carried over to Libera.Chat). I assume #suse and #yast are also managed by that group contact.

In an ideal world yes they would be, we haven't done a good job of keeping this namespace up to date its quite possible the owners haven't changed in 10 years unless someone within the Heroes has done something here without mentioning it to the board so I couldn't tell you who our contacts are which is something we should address.

One of the long time (atleast 10 years) ops in #suse has already created #suse on Libera.Chat, I asked him nicely and he has made me an owner until we decide what we actually want to do here. There are also people sitting in #opensuse on Libera.Chat atm which redirects to #suse on freenode so we need to decide what to do there.

For everything other then #suse and #opensuse-chat and maybe #opensuse-project I think the decision is probably one that should be made by the people using #opensuse-factory and #opensuse-buildservice because most of the most significant users there are also the most active in all the other smaller channels and if they would like to move that one then moving most of the others will be straight forward. Again I think moving #yast is probably up to the yast team but I guess if others move they are much more likely to want to as well.

#opensuse-project is very low volume and could probably be bridged, sometimes people ask questions there but its only really worth keeping it if there are people willing to answer those questions now that we don't really use it for meetings.

As for #suse and #opensuse-chat as long as both servers exist I suspect we will see some people using each depending on where they are, in the same way we see people using discord or irc and I don't think that's the end of the world although under our contact info we should probably list one or the other not both.

This sounds like we have a bigger problem in that we don't have coherent ownership of our channels. This should be something to fix with Libera.Chat, at least.

This sounds like we have a bigger problem in that we don't have coherent ownership of our channels. This should be something to fix with Libera.Chat, at least.

Yeah the group exists because I tried to register #opensuse-e and couldn't it will just be a matter of updating the list but I expect that the people who need to make the change are quite busy so it might take us a little while (we should probably save some time and work out who we want first).

I don't have much of an IRC background, but a friendly soul pointed
me to

https://libera.chat/chanreg#project-registration

and it appears we should register #opensuse as a project?

Looking at the process it's probably best if I send the application,
just ... I don't think I've got a NickServ account and I'm not sure
I've got all the required.

Has anyone initiated the process yet?

If not, how about if we put together the message for me to send on
Etherpad and once we're good I'll push?

Hi,

I've also tried registering a few channels just to be sure they're not caught by someone from outside the project and with the intention of handing them over if/once we move to Libera.

I agree that using etherpad would be nice, so I started writing the application form at https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/libera-chat-application .

I suggest Gerald or someone from the board [1] sends the application form to projects@libera.chat once you agree it's ok (I just started it in order to help, but of course, the board has the final word).

[1] It has to be:

• The project founder
• A lead developer
• Someone in a management position
• or a board member

I registered with Libera.Chat (/nick Gerald and account) and so has
Simon and am happy to help.

mrueckert@ shared with me that
https://files.nordisch.org/opensusechans.txt
are scheduled to be bulk registered; still registering as a project
seems to make sense?

I registered with Libera.Chat (/nick Gerald and account) and so has
Simon and am happy to help.

mrueckert@ shared with me that
https://files.nordisch.org/opensusechans.txt
are scheduled to be bulk registered; still registering as a project
seems to make sense?

We should definitely register as a project. We should own the #opensuse- prefix, and we should also make sure that all these openSUSE channels are "owned" by the project so that we can easily do project-wide things (such as plumbing channels to our Matrix server properly, as an example).

We should also go through that list and cull a bunch of the channels that probably have no one in them we should also decide if #opensuse should still redirect to #suse or if we should make the most of the opportunity to swap them

We should also go through that list and cull a bunch of the channels that probably have no one in them we should also decide if #opensuse should still redirect to #suse or if we should make the most of the opportunity to swap them

If the #opensuse- namespace is owned, we don't need to register dead channels, since LiberaChat will let us do that whenever we need them again.

As for #opensuse <-> #suse, I think it probably makes sense to implement that swap.

I submitted the application to register openSUSE as a project with
Libera.Chat (on behalf of the project) - thanks to Antonio and LCP
for their help and several others for their encouragement and work.

As an update, openSUSE successfully registered with Libera.Chat now.

Two minor changes wrt. our original submission:

==== quote ====
1) kl_eisbaer is not a currently registered account on Libera, so they
have not be assigned as a GC
2) Channel namespaces on wildcard at the end, so we can not set one up
programmatically. We're happy to work with you to help you register and
configure these channels, however.
==== end quote ====

Further practical details:

==== quote ====
As such, channels in your namespace can now be registered with chanserv (/msg chanserv help register), or if registration is not possible due to a previous registration/channel inhabitants, via claim (/msg chanserv help claim).

You and your group contacts are also invited to #libera-community , where you can get project related support such as cloak assignments, help/advice in configuring channels, etc.
==== end quote ====

I brought this up on the weekly release meeting yesterday and reached
out to project@ and factory@ as discussed (sadly did not get to that
yesterday already):

https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/message/LCFCHULXR6774YKWKX5ASKQG3ABN6B3P/

If there are no broad objections or new information appearing, the
move shall commence tomorrow (whatever timezone).

Hi
With reference to https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/4 and
the list at https://files.nordisch.org/opensusechans.txt can we please
ensure that #opensuse-forums is allocated to it's own channel as it is
used by a number of regular Forum users as well as alternative contact
point for Forum issues. As the old Freenode Channel operator, whomever
has the power on change to allocate this authority, can it be
transferred to myself (malcolmlewis) and one of our Forum moderators
(Sauerland) it would be appreciated.

@sysrich has already gone through and set up a number of channels where requested this includes #opensuse along with the main ones we use for development.

Hi
With reference to https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/4 and
the list at https://files.nordisch.org/opensusechans.txt can we please
ensure that #opensuse-forums is allocated to it's own channel as it is
used by a number of regular Forum users as well as alternative contact
point for Forum issues. As the old Freenode Channel operator, whomever
has the power on change to allocate this authority, can it be
transferred to myself (malcolmlewis) and one of our Forum moderators
(Sauerland) it would be appreciated.

I'll pass this one on

Could we establish an #opensuse-hams channel for amateur radio related chat?
I'm currently in that channel.

JFYI 65 channels are now registered to me (and for most it means registered to opensuse)

a few channels still need to be transferred to the organisation. not sure yet how to handle the transfer of all configs and flags.

I updated irc.opensuse.org to irc.libera.chat for https://progress.opensuse.org/issues/93291

Can someone please write a nice news.o.o article about that and include that https://chat.opensuse.org/ now works with our openSUSE logins?

It's on my list. I'm working through my oSVC talk and then I'll write that up.

The redirect from #suse to #opensuse is now done so the ticket isn't waiting on that.

News post drafted: https://github.com/openSUSE/news-o-o/pull/93

The news post has gone out: https://news.opensuse.org/2021/07/07/irc-matrix-announcement/

Cool, that's a very nice one! Thank you.