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Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

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Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#101

Post by Arathorn »

bronson wrote: post #97
Arathorn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the old Element apps were; have you tried Element X?

Yes ... my matrix.org account is still many times slower than my other chat apps and there's spam everywhere. It's not a great experience. I'm really hoping to see Matrix go big but it feels like there's still a long way to go. That said, ElementX's video and audio calls work really well. If you added the ability to ring people's phones, so I don't have to first negotiate people into the chat using text messages or a…

hm, Element X should outperform other chat apps; mine does and I’m in 5000 odd rooms. What platform and hardware are you on?

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#102

Post by dzaima »

amatecha wrote: post #94
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said - every single of my chat-app-militant contacts has migrated from XMPP (which they pushed early and aggressively) to Matrix, which includes groups like hacker spaces etc. (at least the ones that didn't just give up and migrate to closed solutions). I literally have no single person to talk to on XMPP. The software names you mention all trigger flashbacks of horrible experiences, with my last experience even…

OMEMO is the only E2EE standard to use now (I mean, barring occasional outliers, but OMEMO is the norm). That's cool, I'm talking to people on XMPP every day with people who have zero intention of moving unless something better (by their definition) comes along. XMPP seems to be gaining popularity as one of the last possible options for a genuinely decentralized encrypted chat protocol that isn't beholden to a singul…

Browser sandbox escape to userspace exploits are still much harder to make though, compared to... uh.. a userspace to userspace exploit, given that the latter takes literally (actually literally) zero effort, and as such you don't have one every couple weeks, but rather an ∞ of new exploits per second.

(that said, a web-based client has the aspect that an exploit could be inserted at any point with only a page restart necessary, whereas a native client would need updating; but hopefully you update your client, lest you start missing out on new protocol features!)

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#103

Post by mayli »

dingnuts wrote: post #29
astro1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had this with XMPP already.

yes and XMPP is actually a messaging protocol. Matrix is an eventually consistent database with a crappy messaging app implemented on top, and because of the insane architecture they are justifying decisions like message ordering that is non-deterministic[0] -- for multi user chat! What could possibly go wrong if users in a multi user chat see messages in different orders? This decision is a perfect example of how sm…

Yeah, similar but different path for bluesky, sometimes we don't really need a prefect technical solution, just something works for average user.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105028

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#104

Post by rebeccaskinner »

Arathorn wrote: post #63
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #56

I really want to like Matrix, and just last weekend I re-downloaded a matrix client and tried to give it another shot. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but from what I can tell it's suffering from the same problem that all of the fediverse services seem to suffer from: The only thing to talk about is the fediverse itself. Back in the heyday of IRC I spent a lot of time in technical channels on networks that were mostly te…

This is probably because we literally just deleted everything but Matrix-related rooms on the matrix.org room directory to deal with abuse: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-directories/

Reading the article was helpful to understand the other side of it. I definitely understand how it's a hard problem to solve on the part of the server owners.

I noticed in the linked post that there's not a clear way forward in the short term for people to submit their own room directories. Do you think there are other ways someone might be able to help with the need for discoverable fun community spaces on Matrix? I suppose running a server is one option, but it's both difficult to bootstrap a userbase and I suspect that anyone running a server that's open for public signups risks running into exactly the same problem.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#105

Post by baobun »

Arathorn wrote: post #66
baobun wrote: post #61

We are ready to donate. Unfortunately, none of the options work: Only credit card or bank wire transfer are accepted. Arathorn, neiljohnson, thibaultmartin: Could you please provide an option for private and anonymous donations? Throw up a BTC address at least. (For even better exposure while keeping volatility, risk, and overhead at bay, I guess also USDT on SOL+ETH alongside XMR as stretch would be fancy. That USDT…

https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ has our BTC and ETH addresses: Bitcoin (address: 1LxowEgsquZ3UPZ68wHf8v2MDZw82dVmAE) Ethereum (address: 0xA5f9a4f9E024F6D727f7afdA9257e22329A97485) Thank you for being up for supporting - it is very much appreciated!

That's encouraging, thank you for still keeping lights on. Will make sure to follow up.

FWIW, I did do a cursory look around and search before posting GP and still didn't find those. Might do you well to make those if not prominent then at least discoverable from CTAs.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#106

Post by tredre3 »

thibaultamartin wrote: post #21
ensignavenger wrote: post #14

I love the concept behind the Matrix protocol, but I have zero faith in the Matrix Foundations ability to execute. Folks have been asking for financial tranparency for years now ( https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco... ). And all that we get are posts like this complainging about not having enough money and threatening to shut things down, repeatedly. Maybe if they were more open and transpar…

Per https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$xga3TYyV... > T&S staffing alone is about $360k/yr, and server and SRE costs about $240k/yr And per https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$pupglsTX... > There's a rough cost breakdown available to the Governing Board right now in Discourse, which we'll be polishing and publishing after our first Finance and Fundraising Committee meeting So the finan…

> Can you expand on your doubts for the ability to execute?

I have faith that the foundation manages its finance properly. I believe the Matrix protocol (and ecosystem) is full of good, needed, ideas.

But the software produced by the foundation is simply bad. From the clients to the servers. In every single matrix threads, complaints about the UX or performance abound. Usually followed by people from the foundation saying it's fixed in X or 2.0. Or by fanboys saying it's not a real problem and wasting resources on UX is dumb.

That's been going on for almost a decade now. That's a clear demonstration of a lack of ability to execute on a good idea.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#108

Post by bronson »

Arathorn wrote: post #101
bronson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes ... my matrix.org account is still many times slower than my other chat apps and there's spam everywhere. It's not a great experience. I'm really hoping to see Matrix go big but it feels like there's still a long way to go. That said, ElementX's video and audio calls work really well. If you added the ability to ring people's phones, so I don't have to first negotiate people into the chat using text messages or a…

hm, Element X should outperform other chat apps; mine does and I’m in 5000 odd rooms. What platform and hardware are you on?

Pixel 9. Here's an example: GrapheneOS General is mirrored to Discord. Open both and start scrolling up. ElementX shows the spinner for 3 seconds at a time, Discord spins for 1/2 second or so. Go ahead and race them, it's not even close.

Another example: Matrix HQ is always notoriously slow. Just now I opened it and there are no messages ... none. No spinner. Just a note at the bottom saying "27 room changes." I waited for at least 10 seconds. Force quit the app, reload, and the messages are there.

What platform are you using that performs so much better than mine?

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#109

Post by Arathorn »

zenexer wrote: post #80
Arathorn wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc. But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.

I disagree--it doesn't feel resolved. I've been trying to use Matrix for so long now, and just recently gave another shot at helping my partner get up and running with Element X on her M4 iPad. It's still so clunky and so difficult to get off the ground. To start, E2E key verification just wouldn't work on Element X; she had to install Element, verify my key there, and go back to Element X. That would be easy to over…

This sounds very strange. Element X on iOS is a native Swift UI app, and for me (even in an enormous account) it’s super snappy - similar to WhatsApp or Telegram or iMessage. It’s not Electron, which is only for desktop apps; is there a chance you’re mixing up Element X with Element Web/Desktop (which is still sluggish, but should get much-needed upgrades this year)?

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#110

Post by magicalhippo »

jcranmer wrote: post #89
bjoli wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but people don't like XML. XML means xmpp is awful apparently. I feel pretty alone in having a bad experience with matrix, but a good one with xmpp+omemo.

AIUI (from talking to people who had to implement XMPP), the problem isn't that "XMPP is XML", the problem is that XMPP is XML done badly. An XMPP connection is essentially a giant XML document that's never closed, which most XML libraries tend to handle very poorly, so you often end up writing your own XML library to handle XMPP. With all of the pain that entails.

SAX parsers should have no issue with that, or? So is the pain that you're forced to use SAX parsing or roll your own?

At least the SAX parsers I've used allowed to get partial "subnode DOMs", which makes it quite easy to use in practice.

That said I've only parsed ~1GB XML files (no embedded binaries), not sure if that counts as large enough.

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