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Would you say the Matrix specification is intended to compete more with messaging (Slack, Skype, etc), email, or both? What do you think people would use this f

Would you say the Matrix specification is intended to compete more with messaging (Slack, Skype, etc), email, or both? What do you think people would use this for, and what's the value proposition?

Arathorn 10y ago
Matrix itself is a fairly flexible building block for decentralised communication of any kind where you care about decentralising the conversation history. You can use it for messaging, VoIP, IoT data - and once threading lands it'll be good for email and forums too. Right now most of the clients are geared up for the messaging and VoIP use cases. The value prop is to provide a meta-network which connects together all the existing communication silos, so users can talk to folks on other platforms (eg Slack, IRC) without caring what service or client they are using. Ideally someone on Slack could end up talking to someone on IRC, bridged via a decentralised Matrix room, without even realising they are using Matrix. Alternatively you could use a native Matrix client like Vector.im or the Matrix API to get at the data. The key thing is that no single silo ends up owning or controlling the data - it is replicated over all the participants, who thus own the conversation equally. The end goal is to let users select which communication apps and services they want to trust with their data (including running their own, if they so desire), rather than the communication and contacts being fragmented over hundreds of different apps.
- moosingin3space 10y ago
  Does this imply that one could build a distributed GitHub-style issue tracker/pull-request manager on top of Matrix? That sounds pretty awesome, if true.
  - Arathorn 10y ago
    Yes, you could, although it's not a perfect fit right now as the only data structures you get in matrix are a timeline of arbitrary objects (events) for a room, and a key-value map of arbitrary "state" events. This is flexible enough for many purposes (and you could probably use them for issue tracking and PR management), but we can't efficiently store arbitrary object graphs or trees yet. It'd be great to get there though; meanwhile there are other projects like IPFS and IPDB which are active in that space too.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  On forums, here's how I'd like to have it work: https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-decentralized-hash-chained-discussion-system/ https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-dec... It isn't very technically detailed, but it should be clear enough. Your system sounds like a good match for what I imagine. The TL;DR: The messages are in focus, not the servers. Content-addressing using hashes, threads managed through messages referencing prior messages directly by their hashes. When creating forums, servers are just (optionally) defined to simplify routing / delivery. One could build discussion servers on top of the matrix home server, and discussion clients to match.
  - Arathorn 10y ago
    Heh, this is awesome and pretty much precisely what we have in mind with Matrix. All that is missing is threading and editable message support, which we are working on shortly. Help would be very very much appreciated, especially in building bridges to forums!!
Perceptes 10y ago
From a technology perspective, it could be used for either instant messaging or email-like conversations. The common use cases right now place it more in line with realtime messaging like Slack. We just launched some documentation about Matrix[1] on the Ruma site that explains pretty thoroughly why someone would want to use Matrix, why someone would want to run their own homeserver, and quite literally "Why Matrix Matters"[2]. In short, the value is being able to (eventually, once the software matures) use a single client application to chat with all your contacts across all the various chat networks, and to maintain ownership and control of your own data. [1] https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/ https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/ [2] https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/ https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/
- chjohasbrouck 10y ago
  The "Why" page comes across to me as a bit of an activist pitch. You can be right (and you probably are) about limited consumer choice, and the dangers of corporate consolidation, and the lack of privacy, but none of those things constitute a selling point to the average consumer. If they did, then the market would at least be in the process of solving these problems for you, and I don't see any sign of that at all. These things do matter to businesses though. I've seen multiple companies adopting Slack express discomfort over the idea that the communications are hosted and archived by Slack. Email is broken and horrible, but businesses still use it for a lot of the same reasons they might choose Matrix. Slack fixes the horrible, but lacks (and its business model is likely incompatible with) a federated protocol. There could be an opportunity there. That wouldn't be one company though, that'd be hundreds of different companies all providing their own clients and hosting solutions.
  - Perceptes 10y ago
    All good points. It will probably be helpful to have a bit more context on the goals of Ruma as a project. It is a passion project, and has no intention of ever having direct financial backing or a business model. The "Why" page sounding like activism is somewhat intentional—it explains the motivations for the project, but it is not specifically intended to "sell" it to a person who is not already sympathetic to the problems it tries to address. Perhaps a good comparison is the public reaction to Snowden's leaks about the NSA. They haven't been super big news outside of tech and certain political circles. The average person values convenience and a good user experience over any more philosophical or political beliefs related to privacy and security. The idea of a centralized service or company controlling data just doesn't matter to a lot of people. You're absolutely right that the business motivation is not quite there, because there isn't a strong public demand for it. Matrix itself does have some financial incentives—specifically, its development is funded in part by a company called OpenMarket, who are also the developers of Vector, a web-based client for Matrix that will at some point have a commercial product offering. Edit: In other words, Vector is planning to do exactly what you describe: provide a product that competes with Slack, but building it on a protocol where someone could create a competitor using the same protocol, allowing them to be interoperable. Ruma does not have a financial stake in the game, and I've chosen to build on Matrix because it is well aligned with my values.

Would you say the Matrix specification is intended to compete more with messaging (Slack, Skype, etc), email, or both? What do you think people would use this for, and what's the value proposition?

Arathorn 10y ago

Matrix itself is a fairly flexible building block for decentralised communication of any kind where you care about decentralising the conversation history. You can use it for messaging, VoIP, IoT data - and once threading lands it'll be good for email and forums too. Right now most of the clients are geared up for the messaging and VoIP use cases. The value prop is to provide a meta-network which connects together all the existing communication silos, so users can talk to folks on other platforms (eg Slack, IRC) without caring what service or client they are using. Ideally someone on Slack could end up talking to someone on IRC, bridged via a decentralised Matrix room, without even realising they are using Matrix. Alternatively you could use a native Matrix client like Vector.im or the Matrix API to get at the data. The key thing is that no single silo ends up owning or controlling the data - it is replicated over all the participants, who thus own the conversation equally. The end goal is to let users select which communication apps and services they want to trust with their data (including running their own, if they so desire), rather than the communication and contacts being fragmented over hundreds of different apps.

moosingin3space 10y ago
Does this imply that one could build a distributed GitHub-style issue tracker/pull-request manager on top of Matrix? That sounds pretty awesome, if true.
- Arathorn 10y ago
  Yes, you could, although it's not a perfect fit right now as the only data structures you get in matrix are a timeline of arbitrary objects (events) for a room, and a key-value map of arbitrary "state" events. This is flexible enough for many purposes (and you could probably use them for issue tracking and PR management), but we can't efficiently store arbitrary object graphs or trees yet. It'd be great to get there though; meanwhile there are other projects like IPFS and IPDB which are active in that space too.
Natanael_L 10y ago
On forums, here's how I'd like to have it work: https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-decentralized-hash-chained-discussion-system/ https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/a-dec... It isn't very technically detailed, but it should be clear enough. Your system sounds like a good match for what I imagine. The TL;DR: The messages are in focus, not the servers. Content-addressing using hashes, threads managed through messages referencing prior messages directly by their hashes. When creating forums, servers are just (optionally) defined to simplify routing / delivery. One could build discussion servers on top of the matrix home server, and discussion clients to match.
- Arathorn 10y ago
  Heh, this is awesome and pretty much precisely what we have in mind with Matrix. All that is missing is threading and editable message support, which we are working on shortly. Help would be very very much appreciated, especially in building bridges to forums!!

Perceptes 10y ago

From a technology perspective, it could be used for either instant messaging or email-like conversations. The common use cases right now place it more in line with realtime messaging like Slack. We just launched some documentation about Matrix[1] on the Ruma site that explains pretty thoroughly why someone would want to use Matrix, why someone would want to run their own homeserver, and quite literally "Why Matrix Matters"[2]. In short, the value is being able to (eventually, once the software matures) use a single client application to chat with all your contacts across all the various chat networks, and to maintain ownership and control of your own data. [1] https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/ https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/ [2] https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/ https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/

chjohasbrouck 10y ago
The "Why" page comes across to me as a bit of an activist pitch. You can be right (and you probably are) about limited consumer choice, and the dangers of corporate consolidation, and the lack of privacy, but none of those things constitute a selling point to the average consumer. If they did, then the market would at least be in the process of solving these problems for you, and I don't see any sign of that at all. These things do matter to businesses though. I've seen multiple companies adopting Slack express discomfort over the idea that the communications are hosted and archived by Slack. Email is broken and horrible, but businesses still use it for a lot of the same reasons they might choose Matrix. Slack fixes the horrible, but lacks (and its business model is likely incompatible with) a federated protocol. There could be an opportunity there. That wouldn't be one company though, that'd be hundreds of different companies all providing their own clients and hosting solutions.
- Perceptes 10y ago
  All good points. It will probably be helpful to have a bit more context on the goals of Ruma as a project. It is a passion project, and has no intention of ever having direct financial backing or a business model. The "Why" page sounding like activism is somewhat intentional—it explains the motivations for the project, but it is not specifically intended to "sell" it to a person who is not already sympathetic to the problems it tries to address. Perhaps a good comparison is the public reaction to Snowden's leaks about the NSA. They haven't been super big news outside of tech and certain political circles. The average person values convenience and a good user experience over any more philosophical or political beliefs related to privacy and security. The idea of a centralized service or company controlling data just doesn't matter to a lot of people. You're absolutely right that the business motivation is not quite there, because there isn't a strong public demand for it. Matrix itself does have some financial incentives—specifically, its development is funded in part by a company called OpenMarket, who are also the developers of Vector, a web-based client for Matrix that will at some point have a commercial product offering. Edit: In other words, Vector is planning to do exactly what you describe: provide a product that competes with Slack, but building it on a protocol where someone could create a competitor using the same protocol, allowing them to be interoperable. Ruma does not have a financial stake in the game, and I've chosen to build on Matrix because it is well aligned with my values.