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That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a defini
by dividedbyzero 6y ago
That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a definite liability, trying to introduce people to Matrix, when the de-facto default client's name evokes all kinds of unhelpful associations – it doesn't sound like work at all and it does sound like gamers, toys, apparently even like a far-left political organisation. Element should be fine for everyone.
- neiljohnson 6y agoGlad you like it, the original idea was to think of Riot in terms of a 'Riot of Colour', though in practice it can be interpreted in lots of different ways. We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.
- choward 6y agoI've honestly never heard it used that way. I have no idea what that means. Is it a British thing? I've only ever heard it used one way.
- AdmiralGinge 6y agoBritish here, I've definitely heard it used that way but it's not the first thing that comes to mind.
- pdabbadabba 6y agoAmerican here. It's not just a British thing, but it's definitely not a very common use of the word. I think "riot of color," however, is just one instance of a particular, positive use of the word "riot." More broadly, "riot" can mean something like "a really fun thing" (as in "Let's hang out with that guy, he's a riot!"). But I'm not surprised that Element/Riot found that this was not the primary association that folks were making.
- WorldMaker 6y agoIn the previous post comments there was an interesting debate on the etymology of the word riot. It's a French borrow in the Middle English era, so its etymology is at best "complicated". The "riot of color" idiom was one of the first written usages in English indeed predating the use of the term for violence, but the French word was "debate/quarrel" so it's hard to rule out that violence or negative connotations weren't always hand in hand in the metaphor underlying "riot of color".
- rv-de 6y agohttps://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/riot+of+colours https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/riot+of+colours Still doesn't make any sense ...
- dmos62 6y agoI'm just now understanding that moving away from the name Riot was to distance it from recent US riots in mental space.
- raxxorrax 6y agoEven if these "toys" were instrumental in driving technological progress, it makes sense to rename it for "conservative" organisations. Some say the smarter ones should give in, so just make it easy to swallow. Although I don't see widespread adoption yet if Matrix bridges aren't implemented by the common household names. Conservative organisations use solutions from Apple or Microsoft. There is no deeper thought behind it. That said, I think they just did it because of trademark issues. Private users are probably converted by their environment and probably don't think too much about the name.
- neiljohnson 6y agoWorth pointing out that some of the largest proponents of Matrix today are governments and civic institutions. The federated nature and ability to self host are really important to them. The French government's installation has been in the public domain for sometime (https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed-as-the-basis-for-frances-secure-instant-messenger-app https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed...) More recently the German Education authority has announced that it will roll out a 500K user installation - this is the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service (https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/ https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/)
- raxxorrax 6y agoTrue. An important first step. Glad to see that there is a conscious effort now. Hope Matrix succeds and sees widespread applications.
- jojobas 6y ago>The federated nature and ability to self host are really important to them. It's important to everyone, whether they realize it or not.
- dividedbyzero 6y agoAnd if not already, then it is definitely becoming so.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoIf I'm an organisation, e.g. a company, I don't want end-to-end encryption, I want to make sure I have access to all messages within the company and between employees. So I'm not sure a tool that is encrypted end-to-end will be that appealing to me not matter the name unless there is a feature around that. On the other hand, individuals who are savvy enough to look for such a tool may not worry too much about the name.
- neiljohnson 6y agoElement is end to end encrypted by default for private rooms and 1:1 chats, but the Matrix protocol does not mandate the use of end to end encryption since it doesn't make sense for some use cases, particularly for public world readable rooms and IoT application. There are organisations today that use Element without e2ee, though in practice we find that most see e2ee as a plus point - especially with the recent UX improvements (https://element.io/blog/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing-is-here/ https://element.io/blog/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-sign...).
- mytailorisrich 6y agoGood to know that it can be used without e2e encryption. I don't see e2e as a plus point in a corporate environment because there is always a need to retrieve communications in some cases (which has nothing to do with UX).
- zanny 6y agoSince you run the matrix server in that environment you can add a hook for a master corporate account to be auto included in every room made. It would then be privy to any encryption keys.
- srg0 6y agolooking at you, git
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y agofunny thing about git is as a non-Brit, I thought for the longest time it was a made up word.
- Xenoamorphous 6y agoI thought so too (not a native English speaker, had never seen that word before) until I read a quote from Linus saying that he likes to name his projects after himself.
- rayhem_ 6y agoAll words are made up words.
- numpad0 6y agoReal developer™ use something called Subversion anyway
- bartread 6y agoI've always wondered about that one too. I mean naming is a minefield, but using a name that's well known to be at least mildly offensive in a particular dialect of English is probably something I would have chosen to avoid. I suppose at least they didn't call it "prck", "twt", or "cnt". One has to be grateful for small mercies.
- WorldMaker 6y agoFrom what I recall it was intentional on part of the early git team. They did want to make it clear it was a "dumb" VCS compared to work going on in some of the smarter ones such as darcs. git has always had something of the Unix "worse is better" philosophy at its core, and it is amusing it chose to wear that so much on its sleeve that it took that as a name.
- 6y ago
- starfallg 6y agoDoes the name really inhibit adoption in a corporate environment that much, or is it just an excuse people put down in questionnaires? Plenty of popular tools with questionable names. Splunk and slack comes to mind.
- szquadri 6y agoI can vouch that I avoided deploying it in corp environments due to the questionable name. "Element" is fine and is generic just like "Matrix". So name really does matter (specially in formal/corporate environments).
- Barrin92 6y agopurely anecdotal but I've seen it twice that a piece of software was rejected because of a weird name. Probably doesn't happen often, but there's people when they have a few alternatives they'll just throw the strange sounding one out first.
- sanqui 6y agoI'd think I'm far from the only one who finds CockroachDB simply repulsive merely for its name.
- sam_goody 6y agoOT, but I refer to it as RoachDB and that helps a lot. Roach could be a last name, or a type of chocolate...
- Certhas 6y agoThis comment section is remarkable. If the name change is perceived to be in order to be welcoming to corporate, nobody has a problem with that. Imagine if the name change was perceived to be in order to be more welcoming to underrepresented people. We would have endless discussions about pc culture, and how the name is not bad at all, etc...
- robalni 6y agoDo you have an example of when a name change has generated such discussions?
- uryga 6y agorecent thing with github and renaming "master"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Karunamon 6y ago? Seems like there's plenty of disagreement on the name here.
- ATsch 6y agoMakes sense, considering HN has plenty of people from corporations and more or less no people from marginalized groups.