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bergmal.mdwn

Bergmal is a system for clients and for servers, which aims to provide a complete interface for sending, receiving and viewing conversations and notifications.

Problem

Today, both sides - client and server - lack general-purpose convenient tools for managing conversations, messages and notifications. Or they don’t use properly the tools they do have.

On the server side, many websites have their own implementation of forums, discussions, comments etc. Their own databases, schemas, models, user interfaces, user accounts. Yes, OpenID does exist, but only corporate proprietary providers support it, so if you want to avoid them you can’t use OpenID. And yes, something decentralized like PGP could be used, but hardly anyone uses it.

Servers also usually don’t support more than one notification method. Often it’s just RSS for the website’s content, and e-mail for user-specific event notifications. Some tools are smarter and can integrate with IRC and Jabber, but they are very specific and rare.

On the client side, people have many ongoing conversations on many different websites and services, with many different people, through many user accounts with different names and different passwords, and there’s no way to see them all in a unified UI and keep track of open and closed items. There’s also no unified UI for making the conversations themselves. Some services support interaction through e-mail, such as GNU Mailman and Debian’s bug tracking system, but again these are rare cases. There’s also bitlbee, which provides access to many IM protocols through an IRC interface, and I2PBote, which provides access to a distributed anonymous serverless messaging system through an IMAP interface, allowing access from regular e-mail clients.

These situations also cause separation between systems. It’s impossible to share a conversation between servers and systems, or invite users from other instances. Two examples where it does happen is Jabber, which supports server federation, and e-mail, which allows cross-posting between mailing lists.

Solution

On the server side, have a complete robust conversation and notification system. Allow transports between different systems, have an API for desktop access, support federation between instances, support notifications to many different systems (e-mail, IRC, Jabber, Tox and more).

On the client side, have a tool which can organize all the ongoing conversations, display notifications, send them, support P2P between users, perhaps can act as a home server / peer, integrate with existing related applications.

Development Status

Nothing yet. Start with some research, see which software is in use and what is available, and plan a solution.

Name

The name Bergmal comes from Icelandic, in which it means “echo”, at least according to [[!wiktionary echo desc=Wiktionary]].

[See repo JSON]