2009/8/27 Derek Ross <[log in to unmask]>

As part of the discussion about Security - in particular not having a private list to discuss security issues with UK Site admins (TB-Support is public)  it was suggested to set up a chat room, after Jeremy left a few of us hung around and discussed this in the evo chat window, I've pasted the relevant part of the log below to get opinions from others on the TB-Support list.

Derek


[12:14:05] Winnie Lacesso - I would prefer EVO meetings myself not IRC chat...
[12:14:12] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think it might be useful, but IIRC when it's come up before various sites firewall IRC pretty badly.
[12:14:33] Stephen Burke - irc used to be banned at RAL, not sure about the current status
[12:14:35] Sam Skipsey - And, indeed, other chat systems - jabber, Skype chat, etc.
[12:14:51] Ewan Mac Mahon - The external logging concern goes for EVO as well.
[12:15:22] Rob Fay - it's not that hard to run an irc server, and 24/7 live chat can be useful... if people use it
[12:15:47] Dug McNab - it needs to be something the tier1 can use, so whatever is allowed there would be the way to go
[12:16:22] Peter Love - sign up for google-wave
[12:16:54] Rob Fay - google wave might be a solution, but not yet
[12:17:45] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think if we;re setting up something ourselves I'd go for jabber rather than IRC,
[12:18:55] Derek Ross - problems is that may only fix the problem for one site - would other sites be happy about using a service hosted at another univeristy to discuss internal security issues?
[12:19:19] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think EVO is supposed to be able to do jabber-y things like presence notification etc. but I've never tried to use it like that.
[12:19:36] Rob Fay - Derek, if they're not, nothing will work
[12:19:47] Duncan Rand - well maybe a 'not for security issues' to start with
[12:19:56] Sam Skipsey - Why use EVO, though, since Jabber already solves those problems?
[12:20:15] Christopher Walker - I'm not familiar with jabber. How does it differ
[12:20:23] Christopher Walker - from IRC
[12:20:27] Rob Fay - argument for evo: everyone already uses it, argument against evo: jabber can be run by us with the advantages that entails
[12:20:38] Rob Fay - whereas evo can't AFAIK
[12:20:41] Derek Ross - evo is quite resource intensive
[12:20:46] Ewan Mac Mahon-  Well, we do sort-of all use EVO already as well, and it does have the possibility of turning a chat into an audo conversation.
[12:21:09] Sam Skipsey - EVO is used by use because people keep scheduling meetings on it, not because it necessarily solves the problem we want to solve.
[12:21:14] Rob Fay - audio is overrated, at least with text you can't hear the other people in graeme's office typing
[12:21:19] Ewan Mac Mahon - Plus, AIUI it's trickier to get jabber to do chat rooms, it's more one-to-one.
[12:21:43] Ewan Mac Mahon - I know it /can/ do multi-user, I'm just not sure how to do it.
[12:21:45] Derek Ross - can be done its not that hard - the Tier 1 has one
[12:21:51] Sam Skipsey - Jabber does do chat rooms, it's not too hard.
[12:21:54] Derek Ross - we use conference.jabber.org
[12:22:02] Ewan Mac Mahon - I think it needs setting up on the server though, doesn't it.
[12:22:08] Sam Skipsey - Yes.
[12:22:13] Derek Ross - Pidgin (a jaber client) seems well set up to use them
[12:22:16] Christopher Walker - What we want - or to be more precise, what I want is a way of saying - hmm I've got this problem anyone have the same problem, or have anyideas.
[12:22:22] Ewan Mac Mahon - You can't just /join #newchannel like you can on IRC.
[12:22:33] Rob Fay - http://www.jabber.org/index.php/faq/#chatrooms
[12:22:43] Sam Skipsey - However, IRC is horribly insecure, Ewan.
[12:23:00] Derek Ross - true its hard to split off for small sub discussions with jabber unles they are 1-1
[12:23:38] Ewan Mac Mahon - Sam: It's unencrypted, but (unless you're using something like OTR) so is jabber. How's IRC any worse?
[12:23:39] Sam Skipsey - And, according to Rob's link, it is quite possible to do IRC style "#newchannel" conference creation in RJabber.