5 ms·

On one hand, the playbook of exploiting Office's dominance to push Teams is very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. On the other han

On one hand, the playbook of exploiting Office's dominance to push Teams is very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. On the other hand, Slack's walled garden is also effectively anti-competitive; trying to create a monopoly via vendor lock-in to the Slack product & ecosystem. It feels like a better bet would be for both of them to adopt and support open interoperability standards, so users can avoid being locked into any single vendor, and have full sovereignty over their conversation data. (Disclaimer: as project lead for Matrix I may be biased :)

Arathorn 6y ago
actually, come to think of it, an excellent way for Microsoft to fend off this anti-competition accusation would be to go embrace Matrix for use in Teams and demonstrate they support data portability, and are serious about not locking users in. On the Matrix side we'd be happy to help them do so (we have a few big undisclosed projects already on the go to expose existing chat systems natively into Matrix :)
- jnsaff2 6y ago
  "for Microsoft to <snip> go embrace Matrix" This may not have come off as you intended ...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    heh; i'm thinking of embrace in the same way that MS have embraced Linux (which hopefully isn't a run-up to the other two Es ;P)
    - mikro2nd 6y ago
      This is the "new" Microsoft. Just like the old Microsoft. The other two Es will follow just as soon as the optics permit. eta: (Sorry to sound old and curmudgeonly, but... I am old and curmudgeonly. I do not believe for one little instant that any corporate culture is capable of reversing its lifelong ingrained habits and postures.)
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Indeed. But Matrix seems in a much more dangerous place in that regard then Linux. That being said, if MS does in good faith embrace Matrix for Teams, that would be amazing.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Are there any alternatives to matrix protocol right now? I use matrix and like it but I would love to see more competition in the federation space.
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    XMPP and ActivityPub are the other obvious federated communication protocols (albeit with very different emphases; XMPP being message-passing at its core; ActivityPub being subscribing to activity streams at its core; Matrix being history-replication at its core).
  - mtgx 6y ago
    None that embraces end-to-end encryption as much as it does, at least.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    Where Matrix needs competition most is in homeserver implementations. There are partial Go, C++/RockDB(?!), Rust, Elixir, and Java projects, but none full-featured. It's nice that the full-featured Python one can use Postgres, and succeed at operating Matrix.org, but it's not nice that you have to frequently "restart its synchrotrons" for users to be able to adjust their notification preferences. Python is a capable language for smaller systems, but at >120K lines, it worries me. It also worries me that there is no way to split traffic to an overloaded system out to two not-overloaded systems. Is that fundamental to the architecture? That seems like the top priority to fix. Can it be done without breaking the five other server implementation projects too badly?
    - Arathorn 6y ago
      There's a lot of stale/wrong info here. I'd say that we have pretty healthy competition in homeserver implementation these days. The four options currently in active development are Synapse (Python), Dendrite (Go), Conduit (Rust) and Construct (C++). In terms of Synapse (https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse): originally the initial prototype for Matrix, historically it had performance and architectural issues given we were frantically implementing features to prove Matrix rather focusing on perf. Since hitting 1.0 a year ago though things have improved massively. Almost all of Synapse scales horizontally; we've switched to Python 3 and have almost finished switching to asyncio (improving perf and maintenance massively); and lots of schema perf issues have been shaken out. Unsure what you're thinking about w.r.t. "restart its synchrotrons", but that just sounds like a bug that got shaken out years ago. Dendrite (https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite), meanwhile, is in very active dev by the core Matrix team - there was a long hiatus while we had to focus exclusively on Synapse, but since the beginning of this year there are folks working fulltime on it, and it's looking super promising as a very microservices-driven model, with each service scaling arbitrarily horizontally, connected via append-only logs. All the P2P Matrix work is built on it (running it clientside, as it's such small footprint). It's effectively in competition with Synapse, and worked on by different teams. It federates today and can be run as late alpha, but the CS API is missing some features that we're currently adding. Conduit (https://conduit.rs https://conduit.rs) is the new kid on the block, written by the community in Rust, using a strictly monolithic structure for now, using Sled as a key value store for storage. It's incredibly fast, and has impressively good CS API coverage (including E2EE, whereas Dendrite's E2EE support is only landing this week), but federation work hasn't begun yet (which is a bit worrying, as you need to design/build with federation in mind from square 1). It has a great community though, and is entirely independent of the core Matrix team, and you could say it's in competition with Dendrite. Construct (https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct) is a C++ server using rocksdb for storage. It's a community project entirely independent of the core Matrix team; it federates, and has extensive CS API coverage, but unfortunately the project's author has been incredibly antagonistic to the core Matrix team over the years, which makes it rather hard for us to comment further. TL;DR: Matrix homeserver dev is in a good place right now :)
Hokusai 6y ago
> adopt and supporting open interoperability standards Can you imagine not being able to send a UPS packet to a DHL address or not being able to call an AT&T phone from a Verizone one? And how long until I cannot send mails from my Gmail address to you Outlook one? We live in the Wild West of the digital age. I still remember the times that Microsoft was trying to own the WWW thru non-compatible Internet Explorer extensions. And, also, the time that Microsoft tried to own Java by adding Microsoft extensions to it. (https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/) Companies have many incentives to create lock-in software and proprietary protocols that go against the interest of their own users.
- sascha_sl 6y ago
  One of them being complexity and and how fast you can move on new features. Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process, this is the reason the developer of Signal decided against decentralization. You end up building XMPP, and that doesn't go so well if your specs are not very explicit. You can see this in how unreliable OMEMO is with multiple resources connected. The Web is already a mature platform and has not actually made things more interoperable. It replaced a lot of the previous internet infrastructure that was (IRC, Newsgroups, SMTP which still somewhat clings to life)
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    > Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process It doesn't have to be. The Web evolves relatively rapidly these days, and Matrix does too (although it could be faster, for sure). It's important to support freedom as well as privacy - as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom.
  - syshum 6y ago
    >> Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process Only if your not one of the Big Tech companies.... If your Google you just say "We are doing this, you can either add it to the spec or not, but we are doing it" Then it magically gets added the spec very quickly
ascorbic 6y ago
Even if they were both open standards it wouldn't affect this. The issue here is pricing, and specifically bundling. There's no way anyone can compete fairly when Teams is bundled with a seperate monopoly product.
- threeseed 6y ago
  a) Office isn't a monopoly. b) Slack could just build their own Office suite. Google did.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Nobody on earth is going to switch to slack office.
O_H_E 6y ago
> as project lead for Matrix I may be biased :) I actually chuckled.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
> very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. The idea of Windows pushing IE by bundling it seems laughably quaint to me these days where most people can't even install a different rendering engine on their device than the stock and choice is purely illusionary and very few seem to bat an eyelid or even notice.
- NoSorryCannot 6y ago
  The only common platform I'm aware of that has this limitation is iOS. Are there others?
  - fakedang 6y ago
    I think various custom Androids qualify. Most people don't know how to install apps, that apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp are preloaded onto the OS before shipping.
gthtjtkt 6y ago
> very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. Reminiscent? They recently pushed out a mandatory windows update that caused IE to take over your entire screen upon restart, pin itself to your taskbar, and attempt to set itself as the default app for numerous functions: https://www.theverge.com/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-forced-update-chromium-editorial https://www.theverge.com/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-for...
- smileybarry 6y ago
  > attempt to set itself as the default app for numerous functions That's false, if you install any new browser -- Chrome, Opera, Firefox -- the next time you open a URL or HTML file, Windows will ask you if you still want to use your existing default browser or change it. This is done because apps can no longer set the default browser themselves and must ask the user to do it. Regardless, your existing default browser is still the top choice, clearly spaced from the rest: https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/popup-dialog-on-Windows-10-startup.png https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/popup-dialog... (in this example, Firefox Nightly was recently installed, causing the prompt) Pinning itself to your taskbar is debatable because it effectively replaced Edge, which comes pinned to taskbar out of the box.
unixhero 6y ago
Can we ditch the disclaimer already. Fair notice yes, but you do not need to post a dis claimer. This is an internet chatroom, there is no need to file a disclaimer as if it has any legal currency. In this case: Thanks for your fair notice, that's interesting you're working on Matrix, I'm intrigued and I might have some interesting comments and it got me thinking further. But no no I won't sign your disclaimer. There is no legal effect or otherwise statute limiting outcomes of posting a disclaimer. And why not? We all have biases, and posting a disclaimer won't absolve you of still having the intentions you may have and bring to a discussion. That's the nature of human society and simply by being an actor you already accept this fact. So in conclusion, nope, no disclaimer needed.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  I like the disclaimers. I don't think they always need to be there, but when someone is working for or on a competitor or for the company being discussed I think it helps keep the discussion above board. It also means that there is less risk that the person is being accused of shilling since they have been up front about their association.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  You are wrong. Disclaimers are a quick and simple way for users to let others know that there might be some specific view, or conflict of interest, or bias, so that the others can take that into account.
  - unixhero 6y ago
    Disclaimer is exactly that; a disclaimer, it's a legal function. It's something you put in a contract or an agreement. A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship.
rickycook 6y ago
i _adore_ matrix! keep up the good work!

Arathorn 6y ago

actually, come to think of it, an excellent way for Microsoft to fend off this anti-competition accusation would be to go embrace Matrix for use in Teams and demonstrate they support data portability, and are serious about not locking users in. On the Matrix side we'd be happy to help them do so (we have a few big undisclosed projects already on the go to expose existing chat systems natively into Matrix :)

jnsaff2 6y ago
"for Microsoft to <snip> go embrace Matrix" This may not have come off as you intended ...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Arathorn 6y ago
  heh; i'm thinking of embrace in the same way that MS have embraced Linux (which hopefully isn't a run-up to the other two Es ;P)
  - mikro2nd 6y ago
    This is the "new" Microsoft. Just like the old Microsoft. The other two Es will follow just as soon as the optics permit. eta: (Sorry to sound old and curmudgeonly, but... I am old and curmudgeonly. I do not believe for one little instant that any corporate culture is capable of reversing its lifelong ingrained habits and postures.)
  - Shared404 6y ago
    Indeed. But Matrix seems in a much more dangerous place in that regard then Linux. That being said, if MS does in good faith embrace Matrix for Teams, that would be amazing.
searchableguy 6y ago
Are there any alternatives to matrix protocol right now? I use matrix and like it but I would love to see more competition in the federation space.
- Arathorn 6y ago
  XMPP and ActivityPub are the other obvious federated communication protocols (albeit with very different emphases; XMPP being message-passing at its core; ActivityPub being subscribing to activity streams at its core; Matrix being history-replication at its core).
- mtgx 6y ago
  None that embraces end-to-end encryption as much as it does, at least.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Where Matrix needs competition most is in homeserver implementations. There are partial Go, C++/RockDB(?!), Rust, Elixir, and Java projects, but none full-featured. It's nice that the full-featured Python one can use Postgres, and succeed at operating Matrix.org, but it's not nice that you have to frequently "restart its synchrotrons" for users to be able to adjust their notification preferences. Python is a capable language for smaller systems, but at >120K lines, it worries me. It also worries me that there is no way to split traffic to an overloaded system out to two not-overloaded systems. Is that fundamental to the architecture? That seems like the top priority to fix. Can it be done without breaking the five other server implementation projects too badly?
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    There's a lot of stale/wrong info here. I'd say that we have pretty healthy competition in homeserver implementation these days. The four options currently in active development are Synapse (Python), Dendrite (Go), Conduit (Rust) and Construct (C++). In terms of Synapse (https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse): originally the initial prototype for Matrix, historically it had performance and architectural issues given we were frantically implementing features to prove Matrix rather focusing on perf. Since hitting 1.0 a year ago though things have improved massively. Almost all of Synapse scales horizontally; we've switched to Python 3 and have almost finished switching to asyncio (improving perf and maintenance massively); and lots of schema perf issues have been shaken out. Unsure what you're thinking about w.r.t. "restart its synchrotrons", but that just sounds like a bug that got shaken out years ago. Dendrite (https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite), meanwhile, is in very active dev by the core Matrix team - there was a long hiatus while we had to focus exclusively on Synapse, but since the beginning of this year there are folks working fulltime on it, and it's looking super promising as a very microservices-driven model, with each service scaling arbitrarily horizontally, connected via append-only logs. All the P2P Matrix work is built on it (running it clientside, as it's such small footprint). It's effectively in competition with Synapse, and worked on by different teams. It federates today and can be run as late alpha, but the CS API is missing some features that we're currently adding. Conduit (https://conduit.rs https://conduit.rs) is the new kid on the block, written by the community in Rust, using a strictly monolithic structure for now, using Sled as a key value store for storage. It's incredibly fast, and has impressively good CS API coverage (including E2EE, whereas Dendrite's E2EE support is only landing this week), but federation work hasn't begun yet (which is a bit worrying, as you need to design/build with federation in mind from square 1). It has a great community though, and is entirely independent of the core Matrix team, and you could say it's in competition with Dendrite. Construct (https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct) is a C++ server using rocksdb for storage. It's a community project entirely independent of the core Matrix team; it federates, and has extensive CS API coverage, but unfortunately the project's author has been incredibly antagonistic to the core Matrix team over the years, which makes it rather hard for us to comment further. TL;DR: Matrix homeserver dev is in a good place right now :)

Hokusai 6y ago

> adopt and supporting open interoperability standards Can you imagine not being able to send a UPS packet to a DHL address or not being able to call an AT&T phone from a Verizone one? And how long until I cannot send mails from my Gmail address to you Outlook one? We live in the Wild West of the digital age. I still remember the times that Microsoft was trying to own the WWW thru non-compatible Internet Explorer extensions. And, also, the time that Microsoft tried to own Java by adding Microsoft extensions to it. (https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/ https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/) Companies have many incentives to create lock-in software and proprietary protocols that go against the interest of their own users.

sascha_sl 6y ago
One of them being complexity and and how fast you can move on new features. Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process, this is the reason the developer of Signal decided against decentralization. You end up building XMPP, and that doesn't go so well if your specs are not very explicit. You can see this in how unreliable OMEMO is with multiple resources connected. The Web is already a mature platform and has not actually made things more interoperable. It replaced a lot of the previous internet infrastructure that was (IRC, Newsgroups, SMTP which still somewhat clings to life)
- Arathorn 6y ago
  > Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process It doesn't have to be. The Web evolves relatively rapidly these days, and Matrix does too (although it could be faster, for sure). It's important to support freedom as well as privacy - as per https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom.
- syshum 6y ago
  >> Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process Only if your not one of the Big Tech companies.... If your Google you just say "We are doing this, you can either add it to the spec or not, but we are doing it" Then it magically gets added the spec very quickly

ascorbic 6y ago

Even if they were both open standards it wouldn't affect this. The issue here is pricing, and specifically bundling. There's no way anyone can compete fairly when Teams is bundled with a seperate monopoly product.

threeseed 6y ago
a) Office isn't a monopoly. b) Slack could just build their own Office suite. Google did.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Nobody on earth is going to switch to slack office.

O_H_E 6y ago

> as project lead for Matrix I may be biased :) I actually chuckled.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

> very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. The idea of Windows pushing IE by bundling it seems laughably quaint to me these days where most people can't even install a different rendering engine on their device than the stock and choice is purely illusionary and very few seem to bat an eyelid or even notice.

NoSorryCannot 6y ago
The only common platform I'm aware of that has this limitation is iOS. Are there others?
- fakedang 6y ago
  I think various custom Androids qualify. Most people don't know how to install apps, that apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp are preloaded onto the OS before shipping.

gthtjtkt 6y ago

> very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE. Reminiscent? They recently pushed out a mandatory windows update that caused IE to take over your entire screen upon restart, pin itself to your taskbar, and attempt to set itself as the default app for numerous functions: https://www.theverge.com/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-forced-update-chromium-editorial https://www.theverge.com/21310611/microsoft-edge-browser-for...

smileybarry 6y ago
> attempt to set itself as the default app for numerous functions That's false, if you install any new browser -- Chrome, Opera, Firefox -- the next time you open a URL or HTML file, Windows will ask you if you still want to use your existing default browser or change it. This is done because apps can no longer set the default browser themselves and must ask the user to do it. Regardless, your existing default browser is still the top choice, clearly spaced from the rest: https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/popup-dialog-on-Windows-10-startup.png https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/popup-dialog... (in this example, Firefox Nightly was recently installed, causing the prompt) Pinning itself to your taskbar is debatable because it effectively replaced Edge, which comes pinned to taskbar out of the box.

unixhero 6y ago

Can we ditch the disclaimer already. Fair notice yes, but you do not need to post a dis claimer. This is an internet chatroom, there is no need to file a disclaimer as if it has any legal currency. In this case: Thanks for your fair notice, that's interesting you're working on Matrix, I'm intrigued and I might have some interesting comments and it got me thinking further. But no no I won't sign your disclaimer. There is no legal effect or otherwise statute limiting outcomes of posting a disclaimer. And why not? We all have biases, and posting a disclaimer won't absolve you of still having the intentions you may have and bring to a discussion. That's the nature of human society and simply by being an actor you already accept this fact. So in conclusion, nope, no disclaimer needed.

SahAssar 6y ago
I like the disclaimers. I don't think they always need to be there, but when someone is working for or on a competitor or for the company being discussed I think it helps keep the discussion above board. It also means that there is less risk that the person is being accused of shilling since they have been up front about their association.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
You are wrong. Disclaimers are a quick and simple way for users to let others know that there might be some specific view, or conflict of interest, or bias, so that the others can take that into account.
- unixhero 6y ago
  Disclaimer is exactly that; a disclaimer, it's a legal function. It's something you put in a contract or an agreement. A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship.

rickycook 6y ago

i _adore_ matrix! keep up the good work!