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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

#151

Post by superkuh »

bluesomewhere wrote: post #92
superkuh wrote: post #3

Another way of saying this is, "Riot.im/Element.io corporation has taken over the reference protocol development from the matrix foundation (now defunct in that aspect, *1) . Now that matrix is controlled by Element.io corporation the remaining Matrix foundation does not have the resources to continue bridges. And Element.io decided that early bridges to bootstrap/steal users from other messenging networks are no lon…

This couldn't be further from the truth. The Matrix.org Foundation is expanding open governance, with a Governing Board that has representatives from all across the ecosystem: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/ And the protocol remains under the auspices of the Foundation, maintained by the volunteer Spec Core Team. Element may be where Matrix was incubated, but it spun up the Foundation as a nonprofit…

Further from the truth? It is an established fact that Element.io corporation has now re-taken over development of the matrix protocol reference implementations. I provided easy reference links to verify this. And matrix 2.0 and all it's new features and architecture are defined by the corporation's choices alone. The matrix foundation does not do this anymore.

What part of this do you claim is false? Your link does not make any such claims re: code. It is all about the composition in people of the matrix foundation. Unfortunately the health, vigor, and composition of the matrix foundation is irrelevant to the aforementioned code and protocol now. I'm not denying that some of them still contribute code, but it's all Element.io's choice now to include it or not. Without control of the reference implementation statements like, "Members of the Spec Core Team pledge to act as a neutral custodian for Matrix on behalf of the whole ecosystem and uphold the Guiding Principles of the project" ring hollow. Eventually a for-profit corporation is going to act like a for profit-corporation.

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

#152

Post by superkuh »

neiljohnson wrote: post #20
hwbehrens wrote: post #12

> Without advocacy, conferences, documentation and tutorials, Matrix would become a niche protocol used by a few enthusiasts for side projects, whilst big proprietary and siloed networks continue to hold the world’s communications. Advocacy and conferences aren't going to move the needle on mainstream adoption; those methods almost by definition are targeting the enthusiast crowd. In my view, the only factor that mat…

The Matrix Foundation's goals and structure are described here ( https://matrix.org/foundation/about/ ) Element is a for-profit company, originally set up to hire the Matrix Core team and is the primary driver for many projects in the Matrix eco-system. Element cannot be successful without a thriving Matrix eco-system. In the early days the line between Element and Matrix was rather blurred, which is why we set up th…

Except that the Matrix Foundation has already given up control of the reference implementation and protocol architectural choices back to Riot.im/Element.io corporation. This happened a year or two ago.

It was blurred for a handful of years. Now it is clearly in control of Element.io corporation again.

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

#153

Post by ensignavenger »

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…

Thank you for sharing that information. It seems like the foundation has been slowly moving in the right direction. I may have written a bit too harshly in my previous comment. I have been checking in on the development of Matrix, the Foundation, and monitoring that Github issue for quite some time.

Questions:

What is the narrow set of programs Matrix.org maintains? Is Trust and Safety referring to moderating the Matrix.org homeserver?

Are there strategies that could offload some of the homeserver hosting/moderation burden to community home server operators?

Are there strategies that could make the Matrix Conf closer to break even or perhaps even revenue positive?

Most importantly, how is the foundation protected and independent of its commercial sponsors? Currently 1/2 of the foundation's "Guardians", its top governance board, are from a single commercial entity. (I am profoundly grateful to Element for their past and continued support of Matrix and its operations, but as we have witnessed in other open source communities, having a single commercial interest having too much control can be disastrous over the long term).

I really, really hope Matrix succeeds in the long term. I am absolutely rooting for it.

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

#154

Post by bjoli »

magicalhippo wrote: post #110
jcranmer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. You can write xmpp parsers with thin wrappers around a push based sax parser. It is not hard, people are just not familiar with sax.

Sure, sax parsers have their limitations, but there are sax parsers that avoid the callback trouble by doing a tree-style fold over the XML structure instead of the linear fold over the XML stream. Not for the server, since it is not super efficient, but writing a client like that is easy peasy.

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

#155

Post by ValentineC »

bluesomewhere wrote: post #84
davidandgoliath wrote: post #69

They should consider asking Automattic & some of the other companies building on Matrix to contribute 8% of their revenue first.

You can trust that if there's anything obvious we should be doing, we are already doing it :) And I'm pleased to report that Automattic is one of our biggest sponsors.

The parent's "8%" is likely referring to the amount of revenue that Automattic is demanding from WP Engine:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-dra...

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

#156

Post by bronson »

Arathorn wrote: post #114
bronson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wait…

iOS. I suspect you are hitting perf issues on Android due to lack of caching (which bite Android way more than iOS due to JNA being way slower for calling the rust-sdk than Swift’s rust bindings). This should be fixed by https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk/issues/3280 , which as you can see from all the checkboxes is making progress.

That might be it. Re-running the race on an iPad results in ElementX winning handily. What's funny is that Discord is scrolling smoothly and elegantly, while ElementX is stuttering and floundering and looking pretty bad graphically ... but ElementX definitely moves faster.

This is good news! Put ElementX on the desktop, make the UI less weird, fix the room key sharing bugs (I last saw "message couldn't be decrypted" last month), and Matrix could really become something.

Thanks for correcting my misconception.

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

#157

Post by Arathorn »

bronson wrote: post #156
Arathorn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS. I suspect you are hitting perf issues on Android due to lack of caching (which bite Android way more than iOS due to JNA being way slower for calling the rust-sdk than Swift’s rust bindings). This should be fixed by https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk/issues/3280 , which as you can see from all the checkboxes is making progress.

That might be it. Re-running the race on an iPad results in ElementX winning handily. What's funny is that Discord is scrolling smoothly and elegantly, while ElementX is stuttering and floundering and looking pretty bad graphically ... but ElementX definitely moves faster. This is good news! Put ElementX on the desktop, make the UI less weird, fix the room key sharing bugs (I last saw "message couldn't be decrypted"…

> What's funny is that Discord is scrolling smoothly and elegantly, while ElementX is stuttering and floundering and looking pretty bad graphically ... but ElementX definitely moves faster.

Can I check which platform you are doing the comparison on with Discord? Is this on the iPad or Android?

EX on iOS should be at least as smooth as Discord.

> fix the room key sharing bugs (I last saw "message couldn't be decrypted" last month),

This should also be fixed; i hit undecryptable messages way more on whatsapp and signal than I do on Matrix these days. If you hit them, please report them on both sender and receiver as we jump on each one at high priority (which thankfully we can afford to do these days, given they are rare.)

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

#158

Post by eredengrin »

Arnavion wrote: post #138
Arathorn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the frustrating thing is that Element X really did fix the encryption issues. getting people to give it a second chance is hard though.

It absolutely has not. I'm looking at messages in Element X right now that don't decrypt, ie "Waiting for this message", from one user interspersed between decrypted messages from other users. Meanwhile my other two clients (app.element.io and pantalaimon) happen to be able to read all of them.

This is quite rare but it did happen to me (exactly) once. Report it as a bug, they put very high priority on unable to decrypt reports and my issues stopped happening within a few days (can't promise that is always the result since I don't know what happens behind the scenes, but it won't hurt, and reporting bugs from within the app is pretty straightforward - hit the username icon at top left to get to settings, then "Report a problem").

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

#159

Post by thibaultamartin »

ensignavenger wrote: post #153
thibaultamartin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for sharing that information. It seems like the foundation has been slowly moving in the right direction. I may have written a bit too harshly in my previous comment. I have been checking in on the development of Matrix, the Foundation, and monitoring that Github issue for quite some time. Questions: What is the narrow set of programs Matrix.org maintains? Is Trust and Safety referring to moderating the Mat…

> What is the narrow set of programs Matrix.org maintains? Is Trust and Safety referring to moderating the Matrix.org homeserver?

Yes, the Foundation is currently:

- Running the matrix.org homeserver from a technical perspective (servers & services costs + SRE) - Keeping the matrix.org homeserver free of spam. That's a notoriously difficult task on a tight budget but we're writing tools and working with contractors to get more efficient. - Maintaining and running several bridges (to Slack, XMPP and several IRC networks) - Maintaining the matrix.org website - Working with the community to promote the most active/interesting projects in our weekly post This Week in Matrix and our YouTube show Matrix Live - Organizing The Matrix Conference, FOSDEM, and contributing to several conferences

The Foundation is not developing server or client software. There is a SDK under the matrix-org/ umbrella for historical reasons but the Foundation doesn't contribute to it.

> Are there strategies that could offload some of the homeserver hosting/moderation burden to community home server operators?

There is already a community effort to help with moderation, and third party tooling funded by NLNet (https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir).

We have a post dedicated to our approach to T&S at: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix

> Are there strategies that could make the Matrix Conf closer to break even or perhaps even revenue positive?

There are two things we can do:

- Either get more sponsors to keep an event of this scale - Or do some cost compression by doing a smaller scale event, being hosted in a university or some sponsors' offices for free, reducing the catering, etc.

It's probably going to be an act of balance. Make the event too modest, and you miss out on potential businesses, make the event too extravagant and you go bankrupt.

> how is the foundation protected and independent of its commercial sponsors?

Can you be more specific of the threats you're envisioning here?

> Currently 1/2 of the foundation's "Guardians", its top governance board, are from a single commercial entity.

Yes, there used to be 5 Guardians before one stepped down. The Guardians are looking for another 5th peer to replace her.

> I really, really hope Matrix succeeds in the long term. I am absolutely rooting for it.

Thank you for your support, and thanks for holding us accountable :)

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

#160

Post by thibaultamartin »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #136
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…

I think the Donate page may need a rework. Listing only Donorbox and then Other Options at the top adds unnecessary resistance. I have never heard of Donorbox, I have to click again to see what other options there are. Ok, click. There's also Patreon (which means ongoing donation in my mind) and Librepay (which I've heard of but never used... and is apparently also ongoing donations weekly/monthly/etc). Can't I just…

Thanks for the feedback. The website is long overdue an update, and the donation page is part of it. I'm factoring it in the requests I'm making to designers.
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