This is our little booth setup today at the final event / demo day of our funding period by @PrototypeFund in Berlin.

Sorry, small mistake: Our talk is on Friday ;)

The schedule for #MatrixSummit in Berlin has been released. We will be giving a little talk about our bridge project there on Saturday afternoon. Hope there will be a recording/livestream, too. Let us know if you're there. #Matrix https://cfp.summit2022.matrixmeetup.de/matrix-summit-conference-2022/schedule/#

Did you see, that we were on "Matrix Live" this weeek and talked about our Threema bridge project? @matrix @PrototypeFund https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LrUHTn5iEA

Guess what? IT'S RELEASE DAY 🎉! Here's our first alpha version that can be tested by other users. Yes, we know, there's still a lot missing. And yes, the Gateway API pricing model is very unattractive for bridge users currently – but still: This is the first (pre-)release of a working Matrix/Threema bridge (to our knowledge). @threemaapp @matrix @PrototypeFund #FOSS https://github.com/bitbetterde/Threematrix/tree/v0.1.0

Oh I forgot: We wrote it all down here in our little blog/wiki: https://github.com/bitbetterde/Threematrix/wiki/Finally:-actual-code-being-written-(Alpha-release-soon)

Guess what? After many weeks of planning, exploration and diplomacy, this weekend we actually sat down and wrote some code 🎉 – quite a lot actually. So we now have a first alpha version running locally, which supports bidirectional text message sync between Threema and Matrix. We will do some more cleanup work and then release it for others to test in the upcoming days. It's getting real ;)

A couple of weeks have passed since then and it turns out the Gateway API actually does support group messages – it's just not documented. But we were able to figure it out. So we're back to building the first release built on the Gateway API. We will create a release which can be tested by others during the next days.

@rumo @threemaapp Mit "klar gegen Interoperabilität positioniert" meinst du die Haltung gegenüber den aktuellen EU-Maßnahmen?

This means we're back to exploring the "client mode" approach. So we're investigating existing Libraries and the official Android App to see whether we can build a bridge as a Threema client. Also, we're trying to get in contact with @threemaapp to talk to them about our approach and whether we can find a way to work together.

So, we have some good news: Using the #Threema Gateway API and the official #Rust SDKs for @threemaapp and @Matrix we were able to get a two-way 1:1 conversation between Threema and Matrix working.

But we also have some very bad news: The Gateway API doesn't seem to be the right fit for us – mainly because it doesn't allow interaction with group messages (neither reading nor writing). However these are one of our main motivations to create this bridge. So we're basically back to square one.

Sorry for the silence during the last weeks. Just to re-clarify, because some people got the wrong idea: On average the two of us are only spending one day per week on this project – this is by no means a fulltime project. So progress is very slow. And during the last 3-4 weeks we have been learning Rust and exploring the Rust and Matrix SDKs. But we also have some updates in the next toot.

Noch bis Mitternacht könnt ihr euch für unsere 12. Förderrunde bewerben!
Es winken bis zu 47.500 € vom @bmbf_bund, Beratung, Coachings und Vernetzung.
Alle Infos rund um Bewerbung und Förderung findet ihr hier:
https://prototypefund.de/bewerbung/faq/

Just testing out Mastodon -> Matrix automation. Feel free to ignore this toot.

Glad to see that the top-level source of our funding, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is now on #Mastodon, too. @bmbf_bund Welcome to the #Fediverse! And thanks for keeping the wonderful @PrototypeFund alive!

Today, we evaluated different programming languages and SDKs for our #Threematrix bridge. This is a complex topic as there are many pros and cons to each language. Eventually we settled on #Rust, b/c there are popular and actively maintained "official" SDKs for both #Threema|s Gateway API and for #Matrix. https://github.com/bitbetterde/Threematrix/wiki/Picking-a-Programming-Language---SDK-for-our-Gateway-API-bridge

@stereo Thanks! Whalebird looks nice!

Any good ideas how to switch betweeen multiple #Mastodon accounts? Want to keep track of my private account and this "project related" account. I guess easiest way is to use browser profiles?

So we spent last week doing some planning. Mostly on legal topics. While Threema IS an open source project, it still needs to earn money. So we do not want to hurt Threema financially in any way. We will start to implement the Bridge with their paid Gateway API. Maybe later we will also try to implement a "client mode" bridge. https://github.com/bitbatter/Threematrix/wiki/Legal-thoughts-and-Threema's-business-model

@stereo @PrototypeFund @okfdeblog@newsbots.eu We're just getting started. It will take a couple of months before there will be anything to try out.