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

matrix.org

31–40 of 163 posts

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

#31
post #27

Small Rant on this: I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact did pay for their hosting services. I am no stranger to self-hosting, and EMS was more expensive then other hosting services. But....I figured it would be nice to help pay for development. EMS then decided to say that if you didn't have a minimum of 50 users (at 5$/user), we wouldn't support you. So I had to migrate my instance, where I…

Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a not-for-profit

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

#32

> 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…

I entirely agree. The advocacy they should be doing is making it as attractive as possible to develop new clients (with good UX) so that finally one with a good UX will come out.

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

#33
post #27

Small Rant on this: I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact did pay for their hosting services. I am no stranger to self-hosting, and EMS was more expensive then other hosting services. But....I figured it would be nice to help pay for development. EMS then decided to say that if you didn't have a minimum of 50 users (at 5$/user), we wouldn't support you. So I had to migrate my instance, where I…

Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a not-for-profit

While that's fair, My understanding is Element does fund matrix.org (They even state that in the article and it can be seen here: https://matrix.org/support/). So I would think that money they get from those services would help.

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

#34
post #30

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

Matrix feels like it’s in a strange place. I briefly tried it only to find vast quantities of porn and spam. Even the “programming” channel. I mentioned this in a thread on HN and got blasted by some Matrix maintainer, as if it was preposterous that I found this to not be a good thing.

Apparently they are unable or unwilling to moderate and prevent spam, even on arguably probably the first channel a large part of their potential users would join first.

That evaporated any remaining interest I had in it.

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

#36
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a not-for-profit

While that's fair, My understanding is Element does fund matrix.org (They even state that in the article and it can be seen here: https://matrix.org/support/ ). So I would think that money they get from those services would help.

at the same time, they (Element) focus on bigger customers, where they can make bigger money and then fund the Foundation.

On the contrary, etke.cc focuses on small, independent Matrix servers that could work as a single-user server, and as a small company/community internal server, and even a public server. Our focus is to be sustainable and to provide a way to own your communications in a hassle-free (or, at least, less painful) way.

So, our goals are just different.

Disclaimer: I'm Aine, one of the etke.cc developers

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

#37
post #30

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

I agree, I've tried every possible setup I could to get things running reliably for a client and ultimately just held up my hands and went, "exactly why are you not using a combination of Signal/Keybase/GPG" for your use case?

Even PGP was easier to adopt en-masse than this.

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

#38
post #28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had this with XMPP already.

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.

I found XMPP an absolute delight to work with and built all kinds of command-and-control messaging utils with it that allowed me the flexibility to use it as a chat service and RPC broker all at the same time, with bots as APIs. It was nuts but brilliant. Bring it back, I say.

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

#39
post #30

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

Matrix feels like it’s in a strange place. I briefly tried it only to find vast quantities of porn and spam. Even the “programming” channel. I mentioned this in a thread on HN and got blasted by some Matrix maintainer, as if it was preposterous that I found this to not be a good thing. Apparently they are unable or unwilling to moderate and prevent spam, even on arguably probably the first channel a large part of the…

It’s probably worth reading https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more context on that. (PS sorry for blasting you, if it was me :)

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

#40
post #30

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

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.

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