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Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

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Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#81

Post by Closi »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #63
dep_b wrote: post #60

It's interesting how Microsoft both showcases a really bad example of a JS hybrid application (Teams) and the more rare good example of it (VS Code). These guys should have talked sometime I hoped.

> These guys should have talked sometime I hoped. Hah. DevDiv never talks to the Office org. For one thing, they’re on opposite sides of the campus; secondarily (and most disappointingly) the golden-age of Office/VS integration ended by Office 2007 when it was clear the VB6-derived VBA editor in VS was frozen on ice (and remember the InterDev-derived Script Debugger in Office 2003?). For the past 14+ years, the Offic…

I think another reason that the VBA editor is frozen in ice is because Microsoft doesn't really want you to build stuff in VBA/VB6 anymore.

VBA doesn't play well with the multi-user and cloud-based push that Microsoft has been trying to go for.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#82

Post by e3bc54b2 »

thekyle wrote: post #22
tabbott wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I hadn't appreciated that Matrix was switching from fully open source to an open core model.

I'm not sure if I would go so far as to say this is an open core model. This is more like someone developing a proprietary WordPress plug-in, but WordPress itself is completely FOSS.

Similar to how vscode is open source but all the important extensions (remote dev, CPP, Python,new Python LSP) are all closed source?

I would call that open core.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#83

Post by e3bc54b2 »

mannerheim wrote: post #57
blendergeek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would remind the community that Freedom(R) is very important. I think the least they could do is release it under the AGPLv3. That license is accepted by the Free Software community while being universally rejected by business as toxic and dangerous. No business will pick up the bridge and use it, while Free Software people can still use it for their own purposes (whatever those might be).

It's a bridge to a proprietary service. Free software adherents don't have MS Teams subscriptions, and those with MS Teams subscriptions aren't going to care about the bridge being proprietary.

There are people who might have to use Teams due to network effect, but prefer to keep closed source crap off their machines. Such people like myself might use Reddit (closed source for some time now), but use open source app like Slide or plain old Firefox.

For such people, an open source element bridge to teams is best of both worlds.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#84

Post by worstbranding »

Arathorn wrote: post #77
tabbott wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, "Open core" doesn't have a great definition. Certainly I agree this is a pretty contained feature, and I shouldn't have written "switching ... to an open core model" given the evidence in this thread. But "Element Matrix Services" (aka New Vector) launching and marketing a product/feature that is not open source is AFAIK something new, and it'd be very surprising if this is the last such feature they announce.…

This may be a matter of definitions, but I really don't think that it's correct to describe this as open core. First of all, Matrix itself is a non-profit foundation, and absolutely everything it does is FOSS, and accepts contributions from everywhere. The majority come from Element (formerly New Vector) though, the for-profit that the original Matrix team set up in order to work on Matrix full time. Element has alwa…

You changed the name of the company to match the renamed client? Besides the weird use of a nonprofit to distract from your for profit business, for unknown reasons since there's nothing shameful about making profit to support your endeavors, your business has the absolute worst and most confusing branding I've ever encountered.

Matrix was never a great name, and confuses people. Riot was named after violence, but Element sounds like nothing, and now you've introduced a namespace collision for no good reason between the renamed product and the company.

What's next, rename Synapse to Element Server and Matrix to The Element Protocol?

It's like you want to lose

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#85

Post by worstbranding »

Sporktacular wrote: post #67
encryptluks2 wrote: post #37

I still see absolutely no benefit in using Matrix compared to other open source options. The only thing they have going for them is they sure spend a lot of money on marketing and PR.

I don't think new features are meant to be the attraction, at least not yet. They seem to want it to become the next email, but for online messaging, voice, video, presence etc. To be an address on business cards. None of those things are new but marketing, a catchy name and a clean start will all help to get wide adoption beyond the tech types. Necessary but not sufficient - some clean, rock solid clients as the fac…

Matrix doesn't work as the next email because it doesn't use DNS for address routing, it uses a centralized identity server, by default the one operated by New Vector at vector.im. You can use a different one, but then you can't map human friendly Matrix addresses to Matrix IDs on the public server. Hosting your own identity server creates a diaspora of Matrix networks.

I can barely understand how this counts as federation, but I'm sure Arathorn will come tell me why I'm wrong

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#86

Post by driminicus »

ridethebike wrote: post #35
Jtsummers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The markdown formatting doesn't even work consistently. Some days things show up bold, some days they don't, some days I get inline code, some days I don't. It's very random and seems to be based on my typing speed at the time. That is, type ` and then wait a moment before typing the next bit and it works more reliably, but if I type like normal (around 100 wpm) it rarely registers properly.

Microsoft Teams Cons: slow, consumes lot of memory plus all of the above Pros: not as buggy as Skype for Business

My $employer is still on skype for business. I usually liken the choice between SkypeFB and teams between having a broken leg (Skype) or a stubbed toe (teams).

Of course given this binary choice I would prefer a stubbed toe, but can we just move to something that is actually pleasant? Thanks!

Given this bridge moving to element seems like a no-brainer for anyone on teams.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#87

Post by ssivark »

mannerheim wrote: post #57
blendergeek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would remind the community that Freedom(R) is very important. I think the least they could do is release it under the AGPLv3. That license is accepted by the Free Software community while being universally rejected by business as toxic and dangerous. No business will pick up the bridge and use it, while Free Software people can still use it for their own purposes (whatever those might be).

It's a bridge to a proprietary service. Free software adherents don't have MS Teams subscriptions, and those with MS Teams subscriptions aren't going to care about the bridge being proprietary.

It’s a matter of principle, more than anything else.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#88

Post by Arathorn »

worstbranding wrote: post #84
Arathorn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a matter of definitions, but I really don't think that it's correct to describe this as open core. First of all, Matrix itself is a non-profit foundation, and absolutely everything it does is FOSS, and accepts contributions from everywhere. The majority come from Element (formerly New Vector) though, the for-profit that the original Matrix team set up in order to work on Matrix full time. Element has alwa…

You changed the name of the company to match the renamed client? Besides the weird use of a nonprofit to distract from your for profit business, for unknown reasons since there's nothing shameful about making profit to support your endeavors, your business has the absolute worst and most confusing branding I've ever encountered. Matrix was never a great name, and confuses people. Riot was named after violence, but El…

I feel flattered that you registered a throwaway just to rant about the horror of a company who shares the same name as their product :D (c.f. Slack, Mattermost, Rocket.chat, Zulip, Airtable, Figma, Sketch... in fact, it's hard to think of a company outside old school megacorps like Microsoft and Adobe who don't name their company and product the same thing!)

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#89

Post by ldarby »

unclekev wrote: post #13
schoolornot wrote: post #3

Will this bridge be be open source?

No > The bridge itself is not going to drop into the open-source Matrix code any time soon. Hodgson explained: "This is an entirely new bridge that we've built as Element exclusively for Element Matrix Services, which is the SaaS hosting platform we provide in order to keep the lights on for Matrix development and for Element in general. > "We are taking the position that people who are rich enough to buy into Team's…

> "We are taking the position that people who are rich enough to buy into Team's ecosystem and throw lots of money to Microsoft might as well throw a little bit of money to Element to keep funding Matrix development."

This is a mistake. If they're already paying for Teams, then what exactly is the incentive to "throw a little bit of money to Element"? They aleady have a communications tool (Teams), so a) why are they going to pay for another one, and b) people who already bought Teams most likely do not care about the values Matrix stands for.

Re: Element Matrix Services Launches Bridging for Microsoft Teams

#90

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

k__ wrote: post #80
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These guys should have talked sometime I hoped. Hah. DevDiv never talks to the Office org. For one thing, they’re on opposite sides of the campus; secondarily (and most disappointingly) the golden-age of Office/VS integration ended by Office 2007 when it was clear the VB6-derived VBA editor in VS was frozen on ice (and remember the InterDev-derived Script Debugger in Office 2003?). For the past 14+ years, the Offic…

Can't someone from the top force the office people to use code libraries?

Microsoft made an announcement recently that the next major version of Office Access will use the Monaco editor for the SQL editor (with auto-complete and intellisense) instead of the horribly broken black+white editor presently in Access.

Their choice of Monaco is interesting because it's a HTML+JS-based editor - this hints that Access might be transitioning its entire UI over to HTML+CSS+JS - this might be a good thing - or it might be a very bad thing.

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