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European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

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Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#101

Post by Arathorn »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #69
Arathorn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you try it? Both Matrix the protocol and implementations like Element X have improved immeasurably over the last year or so.

It's been more than a year, and Element X does honestly look a lot better. But it's been mobile-only for years. And if I'm correct, the desktop/web clients still require you to use embedded Jitsi. And what about non-Element clients? As a user, I just need stuff like this to be standard, and work for every participant regardless of what client they use.

Element Desktop/Web (and Element X) use Element Call for proper encrypted group VoIP/Video these days rather than Jitsi - since Sept 2024. Meanwhile we're busy upgrading Element Web to use the same rust-sdk engine as Element X (although this will take a year or so).

In terms of non-Element clients... I can't really speak for them, but I hear really good things about Cinny for folks who want a more Discord-like experience on desktop, and we livecoded an Element Call integration for it at the Matrix Conference in October (hopefully it merged). I think FluffyChat also may support the new MatrixRTC calling too.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#102

Post by Macha »

pseudalopex wrote: post #88
Macha wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is in Europe. Brexit didn't float the country out several hundred miles.

The Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty defined digital sovereignty as the EU and its Member States' ability to act autonomously and to freely choose their own solutions, while reaping the benefits of collaboration with global partners, when possible. The UK is not the EU or a member state. Part of Russia is in Europe. Do you believe Russian products were considered?

And this comment chain adds what exactly?

It’s pretty obvious why the UK is considered more European than the US, and equally obvious too why Russia is not considered in that tent.

Pretending it’s not just so you can disagree with a comment adds nothing and is an example of why HN is so often a tedious place.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#103

Post by Arathorn »

eptcyka wrote: post #95
Arathorn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you try it? Both Matrix the protocol and implementations like Element X have improved immeasurably over the last year or so.

You will always say that.

Probably, but much like the sitar player's sitar in Moulin Rouge, I aim to only speak the truth :)

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#104

Post by jacquesm »

Arathorn wrote: post #96
yabones wrote: post #39

My team started using Matrix/Element after years of frustration with Teams and Slack. It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful. I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS. My dream is that Matrix can do for…

> It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful. I think there are three main reasons it's not perfect yet: 1. Building both a decentralised open standard (Matrix) at the same time as a flagship implementation (Element) is playing on hard mode: everything has to be specified under an open governance process ( https://spec.matrix.org/proposals ) so that t…

Have you considered raising capital?

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#105

Post by Arathorn »

jacquesm wrote: post #104
Arathorn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful. I think there are three main reasons it's not perfect yet: 1. Building both a decentralised open standard (Matrix) at the same time as a flagship implementation (Element) is playing on hard mode: everything has to be specified under an open governance process ( https://spec.matrix.org/proposals ) so that t…

Have you considered raising capital?

yes, Element is venture-funded, which is where much of the money came to build all this in the first place - see the bottom of https://element.io/en/about.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#106

Post by thibaut_barrere »

yabones wrote: post #39

My team started using Matrix/Element after years of frustration with Teams and Slack. It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful. I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS. My dream is that Matrix can do for…

France is leveraging Matrix in Tchap https://element.io/fr/case-studies/tchap (part of La Suite Numérique https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/#products recently featured on HN).

Presumably there is funding or resources because of that.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#107

Post by pembrook »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #70
jaredklewis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know much about Matrix. Maybe in this case the key is money. But having worked at various startups and enterprises, it is very common for lots of money and resources to thrown at projects and for little or no progress to be made. Money might be a necessary condition but it’s definitely not a sufficient one. See Microsoft teams. Again I know nothing about Matrix, but I found your comment about UX concerning. U…

Sometimes good enough is good enough. Slack, Teams, Matrix, whatever, as long as you're meeting most daily driving requirements, everything else is maintenance and long tail quality of life improvement (imho). What else are Teams users going to get out of Microsoft chasing an ever increasing enterprise valuation and stock price target with regards to their user experience? Email just works, make teams comms that just…

Yea, if you have to waste an extra 15 minutes per day due to bad UX who cares, it’s much better that you get the self-satisfied feeling of sticking it to “the man” (American big tech).

I mean it only adds up to 90 days of your life wasted over a 30 year career. European peoples time has a lower salary value anyways. UX doesn’t even matter that much, the political meme of the day is much more important.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#108

Post by kkfx »

The real issue is that there is no easy-to-self-host complete enough solution. We do not have something go install-able, pio-able, without a gazillion of deps web-app who offer:

- a direct call UI

- a chat UI, with optional group chats

- a simple web site to be used as a wiki-like tool to share textual stuff + common media, storage internally managed

We have anything to do all of the above, but all very complex, spread across many different projects, fragile, hyper tedious to set up etc.

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#109

Post by mmooss »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #4

Help me here Why can’t a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app? There’s are EU companies that make teams alternatives: https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams Even if those don’t work SAP, Dassault, etc… make massively complex software and services across multiple verticals and could trivially ship a competitor

One major issue is system management:

Installing another app, such as Signal, on your personal computer is one thing. On 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 computers, installing it, configuring it, changing settings, updating it, backing it up, locking down settings from user changes (such as retention) - all that requires special tools to do it efficiently at scale. Without the management tools, no way that bit of IT can be used.

The most common tool by far is Microsoft's Active Directory and Group Policy, which has the best compatibility with Windows and with Microsoft applications, including Office. If AD/GP is already deployed, imagine the burden of deploying a second tool to your 1K/10K/100K computers, setting up the server, learning to use it ... you're not doing that for one application unless it's very valuable. The exception is a tool bundled with the application for its own management, but that's going to have to be efficient to deploy, learn, and use to be worthwhile.

Therefore, for many organizations, any application must be effectively managed by AD/GP, which requires the application's developer to create AD/GP management components.

Do Matrix, Signal, or any other application have system management tools?

Re: European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams

#110

Post by Macha »

simianwords wrote: post #11

I don’t know how Teams even got the approval to be released. It must be so embarrassing to be Satya and be forced to use this shitty piece of software. I can’t believe that software of this quality is used so widely. Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing unfortunately.

Slack costs new money. You’re already paying for teams if you use office/ms365/etc.

That’s all many companies need to see in their purchasing decisions. It’s not just “is slack better” but “is it enough better to pay out“

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