RFC: Bridge the Discord community to Matrix

[Jackdaw-Zero]

Problem: The community for the Open Source Society University should not be trapped exclusively on a closed, proprietary platform like Discord. As evidenced by the controversial Twitter takeover and subsequent migration to Mastodon, access over open protocols makes online communities both more inclusive and more robust.

Duration: 2 months (to account for the holidays)

Background: This is an update to https://github.com/ossu/computer-science/issues/903 as I think the difficulty of implementing this was either overestimated at the time or has been lowered by the introduction of the t2bot.io host service since the last request was closed.

Previously, OSSU has made use of a Gitter instance to support community chat on an open protocol at https://gitter.im/open-source-society/home. These rooms are now abandoned and all communication directs the community to the Discord server.

Using a matrix.org host and a bot hosted by t2bot.io powered by https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-discord, it is possible to allow participation over an open protocol without additional hosting resources or moderator effort.

Proposal:

• Create Matrix rooms on the matrix.org public server for the OSSU curricula.
• Using the instructions at https://t2bot.io/discord/ bridge the Matrix rooms to the existing discord rooms.

Alternatives:

• Show the existing Gitter (https://gitter.im/open-source-society/home) as an alternative to the Discord server in README files
• IRC remains an option