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

matrix.org

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

#51

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

edhelas wrote: post #45
Jnr wrote: 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.

Like... XMPP ? IETF standard, massivelly used (video-games https://xmpp.org/uses/gaming/ , IM https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging/ , social...), modern features, managed by a fundation with a good ecosystem and plenty of alive projects: https://xmpp.org/software/ . Yes its not perfect, yes there's still things to improve, but the clients are there, working, on many platforms. The server-S (yes several of them!) a…

XMPP had its run and is dead, replaced by Matrix. Every single contact I've had on XMPP has migrated away from it.

Anyone telling me "actually nvm, I'm switching from Matrix to XMPP again" won't get me to replace the chat app that I keep just for this one person plus 2-3 others with another experimental, broken, soon to be replaced chat app, they'll get a link to Signal and an invite to send me a letter if they don't want to use that.

Matrix seems reasonably usable for 1:1 channels at least, and I've also successfully used it for groups, including ones bridged to discord and IRC.

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

#52

Post by kop316 »

aine wrote: post #36
kop316 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Hi Aine! I actually migrated to etke.cc when that happened, and have been really happy with your services.

I do get that the goals are different, and to be honest, I'm still not sure whether my post/annoyance is justified. EMS is within their rights to do what they want, and sure, single users/small instances like me may not be worth their time. I would just think that if they are still struggling to fund large public servers, I wouldn't turn own even smaller instances until I am financially solvent.

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

#53

Post by the__alchemist »

Jnr wrote: 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.

Concur. Element is embarrassingly buggy.

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

#54

Post by dvdkon »

neiljohnson wrote: post #19
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…

The intention is very much to offer greater financial transparency, in fact doing so is a prerequisite for multiple funding sources. The Matrix Foundation Governing Board now has a dedicated finance committee, I don't have concrete timelines for publishing, though I would expect this to happen within a small number of months. https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report...

I've never run a non-profit, but what's stopping the Foundation from releasing a raw dump of expenses?

Where I live, all government contracts/invoices need to be published before they come into effect. This obviously required some setup, but presumably you already have similar data as a source for the planned report, why not release it?

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

#55

Post by amatecha »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #51
edhelas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like... XMPP ? IETF standard, massivelly used (video-games https://xmpp.org/uses/gaming/ , IM https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging/ , social...), modern features, managed by a fundation with a good ecosystem and plenty of alive projects: https://xmpp.org/software/ . Yes its not perfect, yes there's still things to improve, but the clients are there, working, on many platforms. The server-S (yes several of them!) a…

XMPP had its run and is dead, replaced by Matrix. Every single contact I've had on XMPP has migrated away from it. Anyone telling me "actually nvm, I'm switching from Matrix to XMPP again" won't get me to replace the chat app that I keep just for this one person plus 2-3 others with another experimental, broken, soon to be replaced chat app, they'll get a link to Signal and an invite to send me a letter if they don't…

XMPP isn't dead, but think what you like. More and more people have been adopting it. "experimental, broken", that's not really how I describe software that's been in use since 2004 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajim / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software) ), 2014 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_(software) ) etc. If you want to describe something as experimental or broken just take a look at Element, which has never once been what I would describe as "polished".

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

#56

Post by rebeccaskinner »

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 technically focused, but I started using IRC in the first place because of the social channels where you could join games, talk about music, or find people with other shared interests.

Then there was a moment in time where community slack groups popped up, and again I mostly joined tech focused slack groups, but it still felt social and there were channels to talk about movies or games in addition to talk about careers or particular programming languages. Slack killed those kind of communities but they moved to discord. I left discord when they introduced ads.

Open up a Matrix client and look at the public rooms on any large server and you'll find places to talk about... the matrix protocol. and matrix servers. and matrix clients. If it's a really popular server you might also be able to talk about mastadon clients and servers too.

Even as someone who is enthusiastic about the idea of federation who might actually be interested in talking about the Matrix protocol or implementing particular servers, I still want to also talk about math or programming languages or movies. Without anything like that Matrix as a whole just gives off this general vibe of being kind of unwelcoming and not _fun_.

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

#57

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

babymode wrote: post #31
kop316 wrote: 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

If I type "matrix" into the Play store: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=matrix&c=apps I get "element" as the first result.

That means that regardless of what anyone wants, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app is the Matrix app, and either it works, or "Matrix" is broken, trash, and to be avoided.

Yes, I understand the differences between them. Normal users will not understand, and I will pretend to not understand, because I'm not willing to deal with such distinctions. Either a thing works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, I'm not willing to try which combination of homeservers and apps may make it work, because normal people won't be willing to do that and the people who are willing to do that will only want to talk to me about debugging their new chat app rather than actually interesting topics.

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

#58

Post by amatecha »

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…

There are giant, active channels for specific topics. I've been in the OpenBSD channel(s) for years and there is always relevant deep discussion there. Same for other technical topics like that.

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

#59

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

zenethian wrote: post #9

I still don't understand why Matrix exists. It feels like a solution looking for a problem to solve. I must be missing something? Can someone explain the gap it closes?

It seems to be the only currently existing open, e2e encrypted, chat application that reasonably supports both multi-device and large group chats. Essentially Slack or Discord without the centralization.

The nearest competitor is Signal but that's neither really open (it's source-available, maybe technically open source but it's clear that you aren't supposed to try to interop with the official network with non-offical clients) nor does it really seem to be made to support large group chats and a desktop-first experience.

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

#60

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

amatecha wrote: post #55
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMPP had its run and is dead, replaced by Matrix. Every single contact I've had on XMPP has migrated away from it. Anyone telling me "actually nvm, I'm switching from Matrix to XMPP again" won't get me to replace the chat app that I keep just for this one person plus 2-3 others with another experimental, broken, soon to be replaced chat app, they'll get a link to Signal and an invite to send me a letter if they don't…

XMPP isn't dead, but think what you like. More and more people have been adopting it. "experimental, broken", that's not really how I describe software that's been in use since 2004 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajim / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software) ), 2014 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_(software) ) etc. If you want to describe something as experimental or broken just take a look a…

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 worse than my recent experience with Element, and unless they have been rewritten from scratch, I wouldn't be willing to install them again. At least I can run Element in a browser tab where it can't pwn my system...

There seem to be three incompatible standards for e2ee on XMPP, the latest being https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html which is marked "experimental". I've never seen OpenPGP used, OTR was a compatibility nightmare, and I think by the time OMEMO started to be a thing XMPP started to stop being a thing.

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