25 ms·

Element raises $30M to boost Matrix

809 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Matrix people like to claim that it is a protocol, because it is 'governed by the foundation'. Make no mistake, it is not. It is a product. True foundation directs the development of a standard, and considers the interests of all parties. But in this case, there is just one party that means anything - the company that creates the actual product - and it is obvious that the foundation is powerless to resist any of its initiatives. Which makes the Matrix foundation just a facade, to better appeal to some people.
- kitkat_new 5y ago
  > But in this case, there is just one party that means anything not true, two more companies building on Matrix: - https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ - https://famedly.com/ https://famedly.com/
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    There were a lot of companies building on Twitter API back in 2010. Do you remember what happened to them?
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Most accurate comment right here. Anytime any legitimate criticisms get brought up they are quickly downvoted.. here on HN they get flagged so you can't even see them. If you want open and federated then go with XMPP.
  - rvz 5y ago
    I welcome these alternative suspicions and will be taking them with a grain of salt. We'll see what the Matrix ecosystem will do with the money. Until then, we can only sit back and wait. > Anytime any legitimate criticisms get brought up they are quickly downvoted.. here on HN they get flagged so you can't even see them. First time? I have the suspicion that someone on HN setup a downvote bot on me so that for any comment I post, it is immediately downvoted even when I follow the 'HN guidelines' and submit tons of evidence to backup my claims. This innocent comment will probably prove both of us right on our suspicions. Ultimately I want to be proven wrong here, but we'll see.
    - thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago
      Why don't you just stop posting. You're not welcome here.
      - dang 5y ago
        Whoa, you can't attack other users like this on HN, regardless of how wrong anyone else is or you feel they are. If you do it again we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    The downvotes you are getting only prove the echo chamber :(
    - unethical_ban 5y ago
      I think people complaining about echo chambers get downvoted for being annoying and without substance, which unfortunately validates their victim complex. The root comment of this thread isn't "oppressed" - at least he put effort into the post, and others in their rebuttal.
    - dang 5y ago
      The comment was correctly downvoted and flagged because it obviously broke the site guidelines. Please review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines like this. The rules are clear: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... This is for the extremely good reason that most (I do not say all, but certainly the overwhelming majority) of such perceptions prove to be imaginary when we investigate the actual data. We're still always willing to investigate when people ask—but you need to follow the protocol and not post garden-variety insinuations about it to the threads.
- FieryTransition 5y ago
  How do you know this is a negative influence? Element being made by the same people who made matrix, how much difference is there? Is it not possible to see the source code? Is it not possible to partake in the development process in the same way most other open source projects work? Is it hard to connect to the network? I see it more as a net positive given what is known.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    For a product, it is a positive influence. For protocol - not so much. Would you be happy if Google had the ability to unilaterally define web standards?
    - FieryTransition 5y ago
      But everything is based on a hunch with a negative worldview as a lens to view the information with, that just how it feels when giving out these speculations. Politely understand, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am saying it is wrong to assume malintent due to lack of information. And given their goal of being a general underlying protocol, to be used in different specific professional industries, it would be very damaging to close down feedback or the protocol in general, from outside influence. A hospital might need a specialized client to handle the needs of the profession, while a ministry might have a third, one does not fit all. But I see the skepticism, because if the protocol can be used by one party, which ends up hosting most of the servers, to gather metadata, then having widespread use would allow insight into a rather large dataset of people and countries. But the onsite premise of this software, is the whole reason that etc. the French government started to back the protocol and mistrust for foreign communication services. If you have secrets, why would you not just host this yourself? And there's the big difference between google and matrix, you can control all your data yourself, if you want. Totally block outside communication, setup private tunneling, separate a virtual network etc. I don't think twitter/whatsapp/whatever allows you to host their server infrastructure and block off access :-)
- Arathorn 5y ago
  Matrix is a protocol because... it's a protocol. The spec is at https://matrix.org/docs/spec https://matrix.org/docs/spec. There are loads of completely independent implementations of it, both clientside and serverside. Additionally, the spec is governed by the non-profit Matrix.org Foundation (https://matrix.org/foundation https://matrix.org/foundation). It's true that we (the team who created Matrix) also created Element as a for-profit startup to fund the core team to work fulltime on Matrix - and as anyone who works at Element will tell you, the reason the company exists is to grow Matrix and make it successful. In an ideal world Matrix ends up being a huge industry in its own right, effectively replacing the PSTN & email industries, and Element ends up with some small (10%?) marketshare alongside loads of other Matrix vendors out there doing their thing. Just as XMPP wouldn't have happened if Jabber Inc hadn't bootstrapped the ecosystem back in the day; Element has a similar (but hopefully more successful) mission with Matrix. Or, perhaps similar to how Netscape helped bootstrap the open Web. In other words: you are wrong; it's not a facade.
  - ThePhysicist 5y ago
    _
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      what are you talking about? Are you confusing Parity with Protocol Labs? They are completely unrelated companies (other than both beginning with the letter P :/)
      - ThePhysicist 5y ago
        Ah ok, my mistake, sorry.
  - jasonzemos 5y ago
    > Element ends up with some small (10%?) marketshare alongside loads of other Matrix vendors out there doing their thing. What is a good reason for Element to relegate itself to only 10% of its own market and allow other vendors to pick up the remaining 90%? Can you name a product or service which Element is unable or unwilling to provide that competing investment could make returns on? If you can, why not pivot into that yourself? Can you assure parties investing in Matrix that Element is a trustworthy and synergistic counter-party?
- roblabla 5y ago
  Every single time matrix comes up, people make this argument like it's some sort of massive illumination. Guess what? Every protocol started with a single major stakeholder. The internet was the military, HTTP/2 was google, and JS was netscape. The foundation is not a facade. It has a rather clear governance system, and while it is predominantly populated by Element employees, that's mostly because most people passionate about matrix end up working there. When the fondation was set up, it actually had a 50/50 split between community members and elements employees in the core team, but the community members ended up joining element. What makes matrix a protocol is that absolutely anyone can implement it, and anyone can get involved in the process to improve the spec.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    > What makes matrix a protocol is that absolutely anyone can implement it, and anyone can get involved in the process to improve the spec. What makes matrix a product is that nobody can tell Element what to do, and people who can get involved in the process of improving the specs would have to accept any changes brought to them by the people who truly own it.
  - staz 5y ago
    > Every single time matrix comes up, people make this argument it's often the same group of people too... Andrew_nenakhov "forgot" to mention it but he develops a XMPP client and likes to pop up in the comments ofpost on Matrix to complain edit: I'm not really taking a side on either XMPP or Matrix, I wish for both to succeed but I'm currently disappointed by both. I'm just getting a bit tired of XMPP fanboys spewing FUD every time Matrix is mentioned
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      why disappointed on the Matrix side ooi?
      - staz 5y ago
        Mainly messages getting delayed or undelivered (often on the IRC bridge), everything getting randomly very slow, encryption randomly breaking... sadly what I consider the usual for Matrix. I recently had a particularly vexing issue in a small encrypted room of 3 people, new messages were shown as undecrytable and then only readable a few hours later, we never figured out why. I re test it every few months/years because I hear it's getting better, the server is properly configured now, encryption system was remade, there is a new client, etc... Losing my whole chat history each time made the endeavor even more frustrating. I know not everyone keep logs but I can search my Mails and Irc logs from 20 years ago and I find it really useful. Sorry for the rant but since you asked. Like I said I fully support your work on Matrix, I just find it so ... frustrating and it make me sad because I really like the idea.
- user_agent 5y ago
  This is where I’m getting suspicious. 30M isn’t a trivial amount of money… @Andrew_nenakhov’s comment is on point. Normal initiatives of this kind are organized differently. This doesn’t look good regarding the future stability of the initiative. --- On top of that @sprash has mentioned some valid concerns about Matrix being a potential metadata sponge (below in the comments). Let me add some food for thought for you. Maybe you’re going to get suspicious too. a) On the Matrix website, the one with the news about getting the 30M, we’re being given only two kind of information: who’s behind the leading round regarding the investments made, and what features are going to be developed due to that donation. Now, we know nothing about who’s actually giving the money, because both Protocol Labs and Metaplanet serve as proxies here. On top of that pointing the reader to the new features part seems to me like a: „forget about the money part, take a look on what we’re going to do with that, take a look on all those shiny things!!!”. b) Both Protocol Labs and Metaplanet are kind of famous companies (proxies). The second one invested in the Boring Company for instance. It just looks so good. It’s like a miracle. Matrix is getting attention it deserves… But why on earth that happened? (take a look on (c)). c) Protocol Labs has strange ties to World Economic Forum [1][2]. They are interested in Protocol’s work in the internet space in general. I don’t like that at all. I fundamentally don’t trust WEF and I consider whatever they „touch” cancer. --- I’m on the market for something that’s going to help me and my friends replace Signal. Matrix looks very promising, but after a careful consideration it also looks like it really might be a metadata sponge. Yeah, it’s all rumors, and establishing real information about the parties involved and their motivations isn’t possible. But a suspicion is enough. It looks almost too good... This is how I decided to go with XMPP instead. Good luck. Make your own informed decisions. --- [1] https://www.weforum.org/organizations/protocol-labs https://www.weforum.org/organizations/protocol-labs [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/os8plh/the_world_economic_forums_interest_in_ipfs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/os8plh/the_world_econ...
  - jnsaff2 5y ago
    Metaplanet is the investment fund for Jaan Tallinn, one of the four founding engineers of Skype. He is definitely a very positive sign for this investment in my eyes. Having worked with him a long time ago and followed his doings and presentations [1] it gives me much hope for Matrix, especially as I run my own homeserver and really like the vision. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/27/element_seriesb_thirty_million_pounds_funding/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/27/element_seriesb_thirt... [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jaan+tallinn https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jaan+tallinn
shoto_io 5y ago
How will the investors get their money back on this investment?
- factorialboy 5y ago
  Self-managed Slack / Teams alternative for enterprise users?
  - Tomte 5y ago
    I'd rather see Zulip adopted.
    - factorialboy 5y ago
      That's fine, I'm just exploring monetization options, not making any claims of superiority.
    - dijit 5y ago
      Seeing the Rust-lang zulip has absolutely ruined slack for me.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Matrix is a protocol. There's a lot of tooling and applications to be made around said protocol, plenty of which could be sold on on a license basis, support for enterprises etc. Matrix has a fantastic B2B potential. It's just early.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    It should be mentioned that it also allows for distributed authentication providers (home servers). A very important feature and big tech strategy is not hiding this. But you can keep Google, Apple, Microsoft and similar completely out of the loop. The name of the protocol is very badly chosen though.
    - 5y ago
factorialboy 5y ago
How is Libera vs. Discord vs. Matrix playing out in the open source community?
- kungito 5y ago
  but Discord is closed source...
  - crazysim 5y ago
    And so is GitHub.
    - account42 5y ago
      Sure, but Discord is more closed than GitHub - at least with GitHub the core part - ie the git repos - can be fully used with the standard open-source git client. If github decides they want to fuck you over, you push your repo somewhere else and go on with your life (issues etc will need more work). If Discord decides to fuck you over, all your content and participants are gone.
- normaler 5y ago
  I think IRC vs. Matrix does not exist. There is a certain decision what is going to be the main communication source, but then you are going to bridge whatever you have on IRC to whatever you have on matrix.
- lucideer 5y ago
  I think Libera is (and only intends to be) restricted to catering to the pre-existing Freenode community; their sights are not particularly set on expanding/competing with newer platforms any more than the Freenode community's were. They just cater to people who like & want to stick to IRC, for whatever variety of reasons. I don't see any "growth" (nor "shrinkage") happening here beyond migration of users from Freenode. Discord is not open-source, so I don't see how it's relevant; it's "communities" are primarily gamers & streamers. While there are some open-source communities based on Discord, the same goes for other closed-source platforms such as Slack & Telegram, and I'm sure the number of software development communities on Slack is (sadly) much larger than on Discord. Of actual open-source options: Gitter, Discourse, Rocket, Mattermost, etc. - Matrix would seem to be competing relatively well.
Ambroisie 5y ago
The addition of threads and custom emoji, along with getting spaces out of beta, might finally mean the migration of my friends from Slack and Discord.
- ducktective 5y ago
  I have mixed feelings about threads. In Slack, it is not obvious whether one should continue discussion in a thread or a new post since the former would hurt the visibility of chat. Is "spaces" similar to Discord channels? (#)
  - Ambroisie 5y ago
    Spaces are a way to group channels together according to a topic : they are similar to Discord servers and groups of channels. You can add sub-spaces to further divide your channels, which is better than Discord's flat hierarchy.
    - ducktective 5y ago
      So it's just grouping? Couldn't it be done merely in UI? Also how to divide each chatroom according to a topic e.g. #general, #dev, #off-topic (like #namespaces in discord)
      - Arathorn 5y ago
        It's way more than just grouping. It's like directories in a filesystem: you can share them; they have access control; they let you curate your rooms into hierarchies either for your own edification or for the benefit of the wider network. Think of it more like carving Matrix into a set of USENET-style namespaces - or having a global hierarchical filesystem for realtime data.
      - feanaro 5y ago
        It's more than just grouping. Spaces are rooms under the hood, just like rooms in which you usually chat in Matrix. What makes spaces what they are is the ability to specify some rooms as belonging to a space, in the sense of a collection. Since spaces are just rooms, this includes other spaces as well (which are then called subspaces). This allows building a tree which can be used for e.g. representing a company hierarchy. A single room can also be a part of more than one space. Spaces also have the concept of members. Soon support will land for the ability to restrict room joining to the members of the space a room belongs to. This will make it possible to use this as an on-boarding tool. For instance when an employee joins a company, they'd get invited to a company space, allowing them to see all rooms therein and join the ones they need. There's also a distinction between public and private spaces. Private spaces can be used purely as a tool for personal categorization. This still needs to be supported server-side so that you can have the same view on all your clients.
rvz 5y ago
Congratulations to them on the fundraising. > However, there are no plans to use cryptocurrency incentives in Matrix or Element any time soon. Good. At least with this funding, I can clearly explicitly see they are NOT implementing a secret cryptocurrency coin to be listed on an exchange, but instead they are focused on improving the security and privacy features of Element and Matrix. Well done!
- brylie 5y ago
  > instead they are focused on improving the security and privacy features Hopefully they also improve the UX and new user onboarding experience in order to gain wider adoption. I really want to promote Matrix for communities where I am involved but it lacks the product-orientation of Discord and Slack.
  - rsa25519 5y ago
    > Hopefully they also improve the UX They're making great progress! There's still more work to do, but I've been very impressed by the improvements made by the Element team over the past year, ranging from many small details to large usability features like the UI for spaces as an easier way to organize communities
ducktective 5y ago
How do people connect to matrix? I'm yet to find a TUI client for matrix. I've checked those weechat plugins but the python one needs libolm3 dependency which is a hassle to install on my system and the Rust one is not ready. Element webapp is clunky and slow. Element desktop is an Electron resource-hog. There is a Go client (gomuks) which was very buggy. I've also tried a QT client which was alright but not on-par with the official Electron webapp in terms of features.
- the_duke 5y ago
  Fluffychat [1] is probably the best alternative client, written in Flutter. But it is also missing a lot of features and is not exactly polished. [1] https://fluffychat.im/ https://fluffychat.im/
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    On linux fluffy chat uses a lot more CPU than Element. That's not a compliment for Element, but rather a depiction of the poor state of Flutter apps. I tried pretty much all third party Matrix apps, if you want cross device signing, there's only Element, an element fork and some of these half working flutter clients. It's not great. The initial developer for the weechat client did a great job, but the move to rust has pretty much stalled from what I can tell.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      Nheko is not perfect and lacks polish in some places, but I like it a lot, and it supports cross-signing.
      - rjzzleep 5y ago
        Appreciate the comment, last time I tried it all of this was missing. Seems like it's a fully fledged alternative now. I'll try it out. Seems like they implemented most code in a mtxclient library, so it might be possible to reuse it for other clients.
4mmFp3ae 5y ago
I really hope they'll use the money to fix the confusing account creation and maintenance because I cannot use Element anymore for some reason. My main gripes are that you cannot reset a password by username, and you cannot add a phone number that belonged to a deactivated account.
easygenes 5y ago
There's some good analysis here on the proposition of Matrix vs XMPP from both a technical view and a who-has-your-interests-at-heart-view: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp TLDR is Matrix leaks heaps of metadata and it seems designed to do that so that the creators can data-mine it for intelligence.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Upvoting before you get flagged... It appears Matrix is trying the Microsoft approach to marketing. Gaslight the public until you become too big to fail.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Spot on. The level of fanboying is this thread is quite something. Not only Matrix leaks metadata all over the place, but it relies on the idea of encryption being safe FOREVER. In 30 or 40 years all your messages might be public.
ThePhysicist 5y ago
_
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I have a feeling they'll never do this with a foundation that truly values open source until they plan on announcing something else they can control.
- Arathorn 5y ago
  No, the foundation has 5 directors. Two are the people who started the project in the first place (me & Amandine); Three are completely independent: one is a university professor, one is a decentralisation tech lawyer, one is CEO at Parity (and there is zero relationship of any kind between Parity and Element). The foundation is very deliberately structured so that the Element people are in minority control.
  - ThePhysicist 5y ago
    Indeed, my bad.
dingo454 5y ago
The Element foundation should use some of that sweet money to: 1) buy FluffyChat and some serious UI designers, because Element is probably one of the worst matrix clients in terms of UX. 2) fix decryption issues that happen randomly even by just using Element on the matrix.org server: https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/1721 https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/1721 as it's a real show-stopper once you hit it 3) add support for multiple accounts and identities (too many requests to list on the issue tracker), since federation is great, but it's not always wanted. Disclaimer: I managed to convince a group of technical users to switch over to matrix. We stay for the principle, but not really for the experience so far. FluffyChat is the best client we tried on mobile. On desktop, I'm glad weechat-matrix and gomuks exist, because all the other clients "reek" to us. And even if you like the modern chat UIs, they're really not bug-free either. Overall many clients and some severs to choose from, but I did prefer irc just for the simple-no-BS-clients alone (the protocol has nothing to do with it).
- bennyp101 5y ago
  > because Element is probably one of the worst matrix clients in terms of UX I'm genuinely curious why? I use it on desktop and mobile, and I haven't found it lacking in anything? I've heard this said before, but I don't get it
  - gregoriol 5y ago
    I do agree it is quite ok, it has all the basic features, but it feels "slow" and "beta" at some points. In addition to some decryption issues that made some of my friends hate Element (they could view messages on one device but not another one, and there was no clear action to fix this), one of the issues I think could be easily worked on is the settings: the current layout is way too complicated, too much scrolling, too many options, it doesn't feel clear at all. Also the stickers are really crappy: they are not useful for any serious chat (ie. work), and not useful for any fun chat (ie. friends).
  - kinow 5y ago
    Using it everyday too at $work, also used Slack and Gitter (and FreeNode/IRC FWIW). Quite happy with the current Element UI. They have slowly added features and fixed issues. I tried a beta some time ago with... topics? Rooms grouped in some sort of topic I think. It was really buggy, but I forgot about that I haven't seen it yet. So I assume they are doing some A/B testing, trying things slowly and seeing what works.
Uke 5y ago
The biggest thing i'd like to have would be bots in fully encrypted chats and the android client to not break the encryption between clients all the time.
- kitkat_new 5y ago
  Isn't this already possible (if a given bot supports it)? See t2bot.io which has some bots with encryption hosted: https://t2bot.io/docs/encrypted-integrations/ https://t2bot.io/docs/encrypted-integrations/
jmakov 5y ago
Why would anybody use Matrix after reading https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html ?
- trasz 5y ago
  This article seems all about a particular implementation, not the protocol.
- Kinrany 5y ago
  The only section that doesn't end with "we suspect foul play but did not investigate" is a citation of [1], so might as well read that instead. [1]: https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-matrix.org https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-mat...
- jeddy3 5y ago
  That article makes it seem like private servers unconditionally sends metadata to official servers (is this really the case, seems odd?) Other articles mentions sending metadata only to servers you have users from (which of course can be a problem, but at least is explainable).
- remirk 5y ago
  "Why would anyone use X after reading a critic blog post about it?"
- Saris 5y ago
  This doesn't seem to have any reasons to avoid matrix that I can see. The whole bridges section is strange since that's set up by each homeserver admin, and you can just.. not do that.
- Arathorn 5y ago
  Perhaps because the vast majority of points in the article are obviously false or exaggerated out of context? Needless to say Matrix servers and clients don't send any data (private or otherwise) by default to central servers. The only central services we have are the identity lookup service (i.e. map phone number & email to a matrix ID), which is strictly opt-in and various anonymous stats reporting (which is also strictly opt-in).
jillesvangurp 5y ago
A few key differences with other OSS companies that IMHO are positive: 1) Element or other matrix components do not require a copy right transfer. That means Element is hard to re-license under another license than its current one. 2) The license for Element is Apache 2.0. A fine choice for any OSS project looking to maintain a healthy ecosystem of contributors for decades to come. 3) The ecosystem has a diversity of stakeholders and contributors outside of Element the company maintaining various components, integrations, etc. It's an ecosystem that already serves many millions of users. 4) Not all the Matrix components are under the Element umbrella (see 3). Element is probably dominant in this community but it's based on merit rather than ownership. E.g. the Matrix foundation is mostly run by people outside of Element. Even the Element apps have contributions from outside Element the company (see 1). 5) Decentralization is at the core of the Element sales pitch. They are unlikely to want to walk back on that; or even be able to do that without damaging their credibility. For better or worse, that's what they are selling and stuck with. And they seem successful with it too. Hence the investment.
- j1elo 5y ago
  > 1) Element or other matrix components do not require a copy right transfer. That means Element is hard to re-license under another license than its current one. That helps a lot with future-proofing the openness of an open-source project [1], and it's a critical detail often overlooked, mainly because it's a technicality of copyright licensing and most people understandably just want to know if something is open-source or not, without getting into the details. The simplistic gist of it (not getting into differences between Licenses) is that if you contribute to an open source project that requires copyright assignments, then its only promise is that current versions of the code will remain with the same (open-source) license. Future versions might as well become proprietary while benefiting from your code. So depending on your willingness to accept that, it's an important factor to consider. Sometimes you just don't care, then all right just go ahead. Other times you might have a stronger position on this, then step back and think about it. On the other hand if you contribute to a project that won't ask you for any copyright assignment, then your contribution is yours, its license cannot change in the future without asking for your explicit permission (or dropping your code altogether). This is, if your contribution was a significant enough work; I don't know where the line is drawn legally, but I know (from reading here in HN) that trivial enough contributions might not need permission to be relicensed. [1]: On the other hand, it might hinder the ability to commercialize it, which might end up meaning that there are no devs pouring serious work into it, which in turn might end up meaning there is no project at all :-) "pick your poison", I guess.
eimrine 5y ago
Element is strange, Ive tried to connect a buddy and he told me that he cannot read my msgs depsite I can read his ones. So, we decided to switch to xmpp and it works great for us.
Amin699 5y ago
Needless to say, Matrix wouldn't exist without you: the protocol and network would have fizzled out long ago were it not for all the people supporting it (the matrix.org server can now see over 35.5M addressible users on the network!) - and meanwhile the ever-increasing energy of the community and the core team combines to keep the protocol advancing forwards faster than ever.
xvilka 5y ago
Finally they have money to get rid of Electron.
- justshowpost 5y ago
  LOL! I hope so. Just looking at their GitHub, they have an ridiculous amount of 7000+ open issues (5k on Web, 1k on each Android and iOS). Assuming they'd use a generous 1/4th of the money to fix outstanding bugs, assuming no duplicate bugs, and assuming a 100$/hour salary for the developers, they can spent on average about 10 hours to solve each bug (30000000$/4/7000/100$).
  - jryans 5y ago
    Many issues are pie in the sky enhancement / feature requests that may or may not be implemented some day. There is no intention to drive the number of open issues to 0 just for the sake of it. As long as Element and Matrix continues to grow, I expect the number of open issues will grow indefinitely, and that is a sign of success.
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      +1000000000. Judging a project by its number of open issues is like judging a book by its number of pages.
egberts 5y ago
I wonder. it were to be a non-compliant of Matrix Foundation guideline if the federate feature can be turned off at the server-side, just to contain the metadata leakage. Just askin’.
- miloignis 5y ago
  Yes, private federation is supported.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Nothing is going to change unless we break free of this shit VC funny money cycle.
- zaik 5y ago
  You might like XMPP then - IETF Internet standard, always had decentralization and e2e encryption. I still don't understand why so much energy was invested in building a seperate ecosystem. Matrix claims to be fundamentally different, but all their major selling points (dencentralization, e2ee, open protocol) were already there. And since the Matrix encryption protocol is incompatible with all the other ones there's currently no way to securely communicate with someone outside their network.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    But XMPP failed (as a decentralized open protocol in the wider picture).
    - olah_1 5y ago
      Maybe it failed in the consumer app space because it couldn’t keep up with user experience expectations. But if that is the metric, then Matrix already failed too, right? One new server + consumer app combo could revive XMPP for consumers quite easily.
      - tffgg 5y ago
        So not keeping up to users expectations - no matter how much - makes a failure? I think your argumentation is flawed. If your server+consumer app combo can do that, do that
        olah_1 5y ago
        I was giving the person above me the benefit of the doubt. I assume that was their argument, not mine. But i entertained the idea regardless.
pt_PT_guy 5y ago
Nice! Now please: 1) Kill the electron crap. Just look how awesome, fast, funcional, beautiful and feature-rich telegram is 2) Kill synapse. Is close to impossible to run a home server with all that python shit going on. Dendrite is the way I guess, but it is super resource-consuming to have a small home server (and slow) 3) Make it accessible and interesting for the casual john doe: FluffyChat is one possible route
- hestefisk 5y ago
  Why is Synapse “impossible to run”? I agree it’s not the most performance but for a small home server it’s quite fast to set up. Dendrite is definitely going to be faster but it also has a lot more complexity (multiple databases, Kafka etc). Synapse is quite simple to understand and reason about.
- justshowpost 5y ago
  That would be the sensible business decisions. Feed new horses, don't feed old horses. But they are hackers and have no idea of management. I'm really curious, if they manage to burn through 30 million and still keeping Element being crappy. At least thanks to Matrix being an open protocol anyone can develop a better alternative.
- vfclists 5y ago
  > Synapse is a reference "homeserver" implementation of Matrix from the core development team at matrix.org, written in Python/Twisted. It is intended to showcase the concept of Matrix and let folks see the spec in the context of a codebase and let you run your own homeserver and generally help bootstrap the ecosystem. Is a reference "homeserver" implementation supposed to go into production on a large scale?
- cvwright 5y ago
  If running an Ansible playbook [1] is "close to impossible" for you, then there are a few different companies who will host a server for you. Including the guys mentioned in the main article here. Sure, Synapse's performance isn't great, but still. Last summer I was able to run Synapse on a 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM droplet from Digital Ocean. I had 100 copies of a bot running, each with their own room, constantly sending messages and replies to each other. With all 100 going at once, it was super slow. But with fewer bots, or with a lower chance of replying to a message, it worked pretty well. Not bad for like $10 / month. Also, if you want light and fast, check out Conduit, the homeserver written in Rust: https://conduit.rs/ https://conduit.rs/ [1] https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
foreign-inc 5y ago
Everyone who thinks that because Matrix is Apache v2 license, it will remain permissive open source is ignoring the reality of an active project. If Matrix changes license tomorrow, the old code will still be Apache v2. But are you going to fork the project to keep it Apache v2? For some data point, look at recent relicense of MinIO, Grafana, Loki, Vector.dev etc.
- lolinder 5y ago
  Top comment right now points out that Matrix doesn't require copyright assignment, which means they have to get permission from every contributor or rewrite the code in order to relicense.
  - foreign-inc 5y ago
    They don't. They can fork the "apache v2" version and start adding non apache v2 code given they are the primary contributor. If they own the trademark, they can call the new forked version "matrix". What non having copy right assignment means is that they can't change the license of existing stuff. But they can change the license of future stuff using existing apache v2 licensed code which is permitted.
usbfingers 5y ago
Fluffychat is mentioned a lot here as a good UI/UX alternative to Element. Just wanted to bring up another that I'm working on called Syphon. It's not at the stage where it can compete with Fluffychat in terms of spec parity or maturity, but I think it's worth discussing as an effort. https://syphon.org https://syphon.org https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon Like I said, it's still very much in Alpha and needs quite a bit of work, but the UX flows and design have been well received by others. Though there is an opinionated default UX and design paradigm, there is a focus is to make everything customizable and the theming options are growing over every release. The goal is to eventually find a sweet spot between Discord and Signal and bridge the gap to Matrix between those communities. I have a demanding day job and other obligations that keep me busy, but I spend nearly all my free time and every vacation in the last year working on this project. We're constantly looking for other contributors and there's several other ways to help including donations. Feel free to join the official room for updates to track progress and please feel free to reach out with feedback! https://matrix.to/#/#syphon:matrix.org https://matrix.to/#/#syphon:matrix.org Additionally, I just merged Multi-account support this week and it will be in the next release. Not sure of any other Matrix client that has this feature, so there's some unique features that we're focusing on to set it apart.
- simcop2387 5y ago
  > Additionally, I just merged Multi-account support this week and it will be in the next release. Not sure of any other Matrix client that has this feature Mirage has this but it's the only one i know of. it also didnt seem to work with cross device signing last i tried it. https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/mirage https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/mirage
  - usbfingers 5y ago
    Very glad there's other clients supporting this. Thanks for the heads up! I was under the impression some of the desktop clients had it in the form of swapping CLI flags on start, but it seems to support switching under the settings menu in the latest release. Much like email, many people will have more than one user they'd like to swap between so very glad to see other clients adding this feature with user friendly UX.
Artistry121 5y ago
I have a pretty firm belief that matrix will form a core background of the next era and am building a software solution for project and life management that’s completely decentralized on top of it. There’s a magic here in the interoperability and fact that so much hard work has been done to make it ready. The ability for this and IPFS to work together is pretty remarkable in the scope of what can be created.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Artistry121 5y ago
  I imagine that these eventually become an “OS” that ties and links together peoples interactions through time. And the federation allows people to share timelines / information in a way that allows for new forms of collaboration- ones where it’s less focused on owner - employee relations and more P2P. Email me if you’re interested. I need some final designs made and am looking for developer partners - I have business cases and clients set up.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Matrix isn't P2P. You didn't even provide an email. No one is going to reach out unless you can create something to document at a high level what you think is so special about your ideas.
    - seizethegdgap 5y ago
      > Matrix isn't P2P Incorrect. https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone It's nowhere near mature/stable, but they are definitely working on it.
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        First, just because they are working on something doesn't make it something. That is like saying... hey I'm working on adding encryption. It isn't there yet, but I can still claim my app is encrypted. Also, P2P overlays already exist in multiple forms.. Yggdrasil, Nebula, Tor, etc. Yet another example of them trying to re-invent the wheel when it isn't even necessary. Tox already does this.
goodpoint 5y ago
Not only Matrix leaks metadata all over the place, but it relies on the idea of encryption being safe FOREVER. In 30 or 40 years all your messages might be public.
- hellcow 5y ago
  They use perfect forward secrecy through OLM, no?
  - blendergeek 5y ago
    "Perfect Forward Secrecy", better termed "Forward Secrecy", allows old messages to remain secret even if the long-term secrets are leaked. If current cryptographic primitives are fundamentally broken, all data can be decrypted if it is saved. This is why it is safest to destroy everything if you are worried about threats in the distant future.
    - hellcow 5y ago
      Got it. So the concern is that there's no support for time-based deletion of messages? That is on their public roadmap, and I think it's reasonable to assume that'll be deployed before modern ECC is broken. Or am I misunderstanding the concern?
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        You cannot delete encrypted data once it has been shared with the whole world.
        kitkat_new 5y ago
        messages don't get shared with the whole world, but only the users and the homeservers the users choose
      - blendergeek 5y ago
        The main concern is that the encrypted data is stored on the server long-term. The longer it is on the server, the more likely it becomes that it is saved by an adversary. If data is only stored for a minimal amount of time, we lower the risk of an adversary acquiring it
grishka 5y ago
I want to love Matrix, but it still hasn't got a real native macOS client (not qt, not electron, native one made with Cocoa). It's really a shame. Though I do see its potential as a protocol, and the nice part is that it's federated.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  I don't have a Mac, so I can't test it, but isn't Seaglass [0] a native Mac client? [0] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/seaglass https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/seaglass
  - grishka 5y ago
    Yes. Of course that was the first thing I installed. It's buggy and abandoned.
    - 29083011397778 5y ago
      My mistake then, sorry. Nearly every other client on that page that I've tried has gotten better over the past year, so I was hoping Seaglass had moved forwards as well.
aasasd 5y ago
I hope fifty bucks out of this go toward Element on Android not slapping together separate paragraphs. And another hundred to display images that are larger than 5.5 mb.
realA12l 5y ago
> adding Threading to Element (yes, it's finally happening!) Arathorn: Please make it similar to how Zulip works, and not how Slack or Discord have implemented it.
notyourday 5y ago
So... how is whoever invested in Element going to exit?
xj9 5y ago
building matrix is really expensive i guess. i wish them luck, but so far i haven't been sold. probably wont be either.
ymolodtsov 5y ago
I've just decided to give it a try and honestly, their apps are a travesty. Even Signal, with all the criticism it gets for its UX and lack of certain features feel more mature. I've tried Element and FluffyChat on iOS. Element is very slow. They messed the sign-up screen somehow and iOS suggested a "strong password" but didn't remember it, or didn't assign the log in to it. I went to generate a new password and couldn't log in since it required me to confirm my session from other devices, then gave an error that I have none. FluffyChat has a very unfriendly log in screen that gives zero explanation about Matrix or how you should type in your login with the server. Also, no validation (they could try to adjust your login with @ and : symbols automatically if they see something is wrong). It's not like I want to dunk on their developers, but it's hard for me to see this protocol and its apps getting many consumer users when it's so unfriendly and alien to them. Yes, some government European agencies and old-fashioned corporations who want an on-premises chat app would use it, but I don't care much about them.
- kitkat_new 5y ago
  > they could try to adjust your login with @ and : symbols automatically if they see something is wrong how specifically? especially the ":"
  - ymolodtsov 5y ago
    When it asked me to type the full log in with the server I made a guess and typed user@matrix.org. I also think it didn't even accept user:matrix.org without the "@" in front.

809 points by Sami_Lehtinen 5y ago

Matrix people like to claim that it is a protocol, because it is 'governed by the foundation'. Make no mistake, it is not. It is a product. True foundation directs the development of a standard, and considers the interests of all parties. But in this case, there is just one party that means anything - the company that creates the actual product - and it is obvious that the foundation is powerless to resist any of its initiatives. Which makes the Matrix foundation just a facade, to better appeal to some people.

kitkat_new 5y ago
> But in this case, there is just one party that means anything not true, two more companies building on Matrix: - https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ - https://famedly.com/ https://famedly.com/
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  There were a lot of companies building on Twitter API back in 2010. Do you remember what happened to them?
encryptluks2 5y ago
Most accurate comment right here. Anytime any legitimate criticisms get brought up they are quickly downvoted.. here on HN they get flagged so you can't even see them. If you want open and federated then go with XMPP.
- rvz 5y ago
  I welcome these alternative suspicions and will be taking them with a grain of salt. We'll see what the Matrix ecosystem will do with the money. Until then, we can only sit back and wait. > Anytime any legitimate criticisms get brought up they are quickly downvoted.. here on HN they get flagged so you can't even see them. First time? I have the suspicion that someone on HN setup a downvote bot on me so that for any comment I post, it is immediately downvoted even when I follow the 'HN guidelines' and submit tons of evidence to backup my claims. This innocent comment will probably prove both of us right on our suspicions. Ultimately I want to be proven wrong here, but we'll see.
  - thrwaeasddsaf 5y ago
    Why don't you just stop posting. You're not welcome here.
    - dang 5y ago
      Whoa, you can't attack other users like this on HN, regardless of how wrong anyone else is or you feel they are. If you do it again we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- goodpoint 5y ago
  The downvotes you are getting only prove the echo chamber :(
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    I think people complaining about echo chambers get downvoted for being annoying and without substance, which unfortunately validates their victim complex. The root comment of this thread isn't "oppressed" - at least he put effort into the post, and others in their rebuttal.
  - dang 5y ago
    The comment was correctly downvoted and flagged because it obviously broke the site guidelines. Please review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines like this. The rules are clear: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... This is for the extremely good reason that most (I do not say all, but certainly the overwhelming majority) of such perceptions prove to be imaginary when we investigate the actual data. We're still always willing to investigate when people ask—but you need to follow the protocol and not post garden-variety insinuations about it to the threads.
FieryTransition 5y ago
How do you know this is a negative influence? Element being made by the same people who made matrix, how much difference is there? Is it not possible to see the source code? Is it not possible to partake in the development process in the same way most other open source projects work? Is it hard to connect to the network? I see it more as a net positive given what is known.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  For a product, it is a positive influence. For protocol - not so much. Would you be happy if Google had the ability to unilaterally define web standards?
  - FieryTransition 5y ago
    But everything is based on a hunch with a negative worldview as a lens to view the information with, that just how it feels when giving out these speculations. Politely understand, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am saying it is wrong to assume malintent due to lack of information. And given their goal of being a general underlying protocol, to be used in different specific professional industries, it would be very damaging to close down feedback or the protocol in general, from outside influence. A hospital might need a specialized client to handle the needs of the profession, while a ministry might have a third, one does not fit all. But I see the skepticism, because if the protocol can be used by one party, which ends up hosting most of the servers, to gather metadata, then having widespread use would allow insight into a rather large dataset of people and countries. But the onsite premise of this software, is the whole reason that etc. the French government started to back the protocol and mistrust for foreign communication services. If you have secrets, why would you not just host this yourself? And there's the big difference between google and matrix, you can control all your data yourself, if you want. Totally block outside communication, setup private tunneling, separate a virtual network etc. I don't think twitter/whatsapp/whatever allows you to host their server infrastructure and block off access :-)
Arathorn 5y ago
Matrix is a protocol because... it's a protocol. The spec is at https://matrix.org/docs/spec https://matrix.org/docs/spec. There are loads of completely independent implementations of it, both clientside and serverside. Additionally, the spec is governed by the non-profit Matrix.org Foundation (https://matrix.org/foundation https://matrix.org/foundation). It's true that we (the team who created Matrix) also created Element as a for-profit startup to fund the core team to work fulltime on Matrix - and as anyone who works at Element will tell you, the reason the company exists is to grow Matrix and make it successful. In an ideal world Matrix ends up being a huge industry in its own right, effectively replacing the PSTN & email industries, and Element ends up with some small (10%?) marketshare alongside loads of other Matrix vendors out there doing their thing. Just as XMPP wouldn't have happened if Jabber Inc hadn't bootstrapped the ecosystem back in the day; Element has a similar (but hopefully more successful) mission with Matrix. Or, perhaps similar to how Netscape helped bootstrap the open Web. In other words: you are wrong; it's not a facade.
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  _
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    what are you talking about? Are you confusing Parity with Protocol Labs? They are completely unrelated companies (other than both beginning with the letter P :/)
    - ThePhysicist 5y ago
      Ah ok, my mistake, sorry.
- jasonzemos 5y ago
  > Element ends up with some small (10%?) marketshare alongside loads of other Matrix vendors out there doing their thing. What is a good reason for Element to relegate itself to only 10% of its own market and allow other vendors to pick up the remaining 90%? Can you name a product or service which Element is unable or unwilling to provide that competing investment could make returns on? If you can, why not pivot into that yourself? Can you assure parties investing in Matrix that Element is a trustworthy and synergistic counter-party?
roblabla 5y ago
Every single time matrix comes up, people make this argument like it's some sort of massive illumination. Guess what? Every protocol started with a single major stakeholder. The internet was the military, HTTP/2 was google, and JS was netscape. The foundation is not a facade. It has a rather clear governance system, and while it is predominantly populated by Element employees, that's mostly because most people passionate about matrix end up working there. When the fondation was set up, it actually had a 50/50 split between community members and elements employees in the core team, but the community members ended up joining element. What makes matrix a protocol is that absolutely anyone can implement it, and anyone can get involved in the process to improve the spec.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > What makes matrix a protocol is that absolutely anyone can implement it, and anyone can get involved in the process to improve the spec. What makes matrix a product is that nobody can tell Element what to do, and people who can get involved in the process of improving the specs would have to accept any changes brought to them by the people who truly own it.
- staz 5y ago
  > Every single time matrix comes up, people make this argument it's often the same group of people too... Andrew_nenakhov "forgot" to mention it but he develops a XMPP client and likes to pop up in the comments ofpost on Matrix to complain edit: I'm not really taking a side on either XMPP or Matrix, I wish for both to succeed but I'm currently disappointed by both. I'm just getting a bit tired of XMPP fanboys spewing FUD every time Matrix is mentioned
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    why disappointed on the Matrix side ooi?
    - staz 5y ago
      Mainly messages getting delayed or undelivered (often on the IRC bridge), everything getting randomly very slow, encryption randomly breaking... sadly what I consider the usual for Matrix. I recently had a particularly vexing issue in a small encrypted room of 3 people, new messages were shown as undecrytable and then only readable a few hours later, we never figured out why. I re test it every few months/years because I hear it's getting better, the server is properly configured now, encryption system was remade, there is a new client, etc... Losing my whole chat history each time made the endeavor even more frustrating. I know not everyone keep logs but I can search my Mails and Irc logs from 20 years ago and I find it really useful. Sorry for the rant but since you asked. Like I said I fully support your work on Matrix, I just find it so ... frustrating and it make me sad because I really like the idea.
user_agent 5y ago
This is where I’m getting suspicious. 30M isn’t a trivial amount of money… @Andrew_nenakhov’s comment is on point. Normal initiatives of this kind are organized differently. This doesn’t look good regarding the future stability of the initiative. --- On top of that @sprash has mentioned some valid concerns about Matrix being a potential metadata sponge (below in the comments). Let me add some food for thought for you. Maybe you’re going to get suspicious too. a) On the Matrix website, the one with the news about getting the 30M, we’re being given only two kind of information: who’s behind the leading round regarding the investments made, and what features are going to be developed due to that donation. Now, we know nothing about who’s actually giving the money, because both Protocol Labs and Metaplanet serve as proxies here. On top of that pointing the reader to the new features part seems to me like a: „forget about the money part, take a look on what we’re going to do with that, take a look on all those shiny things!!!”. b) Both Protocol Labs and Metaplanet are kind of famous companies (proxies). The second one invested in the Boring Company for instance. It just looks so good. It’s like a miracle. Matrix is getting attention it deserves… But why on earth that happened? (take a look on (c)). c) Protocol Labs has strange ties to World Economic Forum [1][2]. They are interested in Protocol’s work in the internet space in general. I don’t like that at all. I fundamentally don’t trust WEF and I consider whatever they „touch” cancer. --- I’m on the market for something that’s going to help me and my friends replace Signal. Matrix looks very promising, but after a careful consideration it also looks like it really might be a metadata sponge. Yeah, it’s all rumors, and establishing real information about the parties involved and their motivations isn’t possible. But a suspicion is enough. It looks almost too good... This is how I decided to go with XMPP instead. Good luck. Make your own informed decisions. --- [1] https://www.weforum.org/organizations/protocol-labs https://www.weforum.org/organizations/protocol-labs [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/os8plh/the_world_economic_forums_interest_in_ipfs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/os8plh/the_world_econ...
- jnsaff2 5y ago
  Metaplanet is the investment fund for Jaan Tallinn, one of the four founding engineers of Skype. He is definitely a very positive sign for this investment in my eyes. Having worked with him a long time ago and followed his doings and presentations [1] it gives me much hope for Matrix, especially as I run my own homeserver and really like the vision. [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/27/element_seriesb_thirty_million_pounds_funding/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/27/element_seriesb_thirt... [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jaan+tallinn https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jaan+tallinn

shoto_io 5y ago

How will the investors get their money back on this investment?

factorialboy 5y ago
Self-managed Slack / Teams alternative for enterprise users?
- Tomte 5y ago
  I'd rather see Zulip adopted.
  - factorialboy 5y ago
    That's fine, I'm just exploring monetization options, not making any claims of superiority.
  - dijit 5y ago
    Seeing the Rust-lang zulip has absolutely ruined slack for me.
scrollaway 5y ago
Matrix is a protocol. There's a lot of tooling and applications to be made around said protocol, plenty of which could be sold on on a license basis, support for enterprises etc. Matrix has a fantastic B2B potential. It's just early.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It should be mentioned that it also allows for distributed authentication providers (home servers). A very important feature and big tech strategy is not hiding this. But you can keep Google, Apple, Microsoft and similar completely out of the loop. The name of the protocol is very badly chosen though.
  - 5y ago

factorialboy 5y ago

How is Libera vs. Discord vs. Matrix playing out in the open source community?

kungito 5y ago
but Discord is closed source...
- crazysim 5y ago
  And so is GitHub.
  - account42 5y ago
    Sure, but Discord is more closed than GitHub - at least with GitHub the core part - ie the git repos - can be fully used with the standard open-source git client. If github decides they want to fuck you over, you push your repo somewhere else and go on with your life (issues etc will need more work). If Discord decides to fuck you over, all your content and participants are gone.
normaler 5y ago
I think IRC vs. Matrix does not exist. There is a certain decision what is going to be the main communication source, but then you are going to bridge whatever you have on IRC to whatever you have on matrix.
lucideer 5y ago
I think Libera is (and only intends to be) restricted to catering to the pre-existing Freenode community; their sights are not particularly set on expanding/competing with newer platforms any more than the Freenode community's were. They just cater to people who like & want to stick to IRC, for whatever variety of reasons. I don't see any "growth" (nor "shrinkage") happening here beyond migration of users from Freenode. Discord is not open-source, so I don't see how it's relevant; it's "communities" are primarily gamers & streamers. While there are some open-source communities based on Discord, the same goes for other closed-source platforms such as Slack & Telegram, and I'm sure the number of software development communities on Slack is (sadly) much larger than on Discord. Of actual open-source options: Gitter, Discourse, Rocket, Mattermost, etc. - Matrix would seem to be competing relatively well.

Ambroisie 5y ago

The addition of threads and custom emoji, along with getting spaces out of beta, might finally mean the migration of my friends from Slack and Discord.

ducktective 5y ago
I have mixed feelings about threads. In Slack, it is not obvious whether one should continue discussion in a thread or a new post since the former would hurt the visibility of chat. Is "spaces" similar to Discord channels? (#)
- Ambroisie 5y ago
  Spaces are a way to group channels together according to a topic : they are similar to Discord servers and groups of channels. You can add sub-spaces to further divide your channels, which is better than Discord's flat hierarchy.
  - ducktective 5y ago
    So it's just grouping? Couldn't it be done merely in UI? Also how to divide each chatroom according to a topic e.g. #general, #dev, #off-topic (like #namespaces in discord)
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      It's way more than just grouping. It's like directories in a filesystem: you can share them; they have access control; they let you curate your rooms into hierarchies either for your own edification or for the benefit of the wider network. Think of it more like carving Matrix into a set of USENET-style namespaces - or having a global hierarchical filesystem for realtime data.
    - feanaro 5y ago
      It's more than just grouping. Spaces are rooms under the hood, just like rooms in which you usually chat in Matrix. What makes spaces what they are is the ability to specify some rooms as belonging to a space, in the sense of a collection. Since spaces are just rooms, this includes other spaces as well (which are then called subspaces). This allows building a tree which can be used for e.g. representing a company hierarchy. A single room can also be a part of more than one space. Spaces also have the concept of members. Soon support will land for the ability to restrict room joining to the members of the space a room belongs to. This will make it possible to use this as an on-boarding tool. For instance when an employee joins a company, they'd get invited to a company space, allowing them to see all rooms therein and join the ones they need. There's also a distinction between public and private spaces. Private spaces can be used purely as a tool for personal categorization. This still needs to be supported server-side so that you can have the same view on all your clients.

rvz 5y ago

Congratulations to them on the fundraising. > However, there are no plans to use cryptocurrency incentives in Matrix or Element any time soon. Good. At least with this funding, I can clearly explicitly see they are NOT implementing a secret cryptocurrency coin to be listed on an exchange, but instead they are focused on improving the security and privacy features of Element and Matrix. Well done!

brylie 5y ago
> instead they are focused on improving the security and privacy features Hopefully they also improve the UX and new user onboarding experience in order to gain wider adoption. I really want to promote Matrix for communities where I am involved but it lacks the product-orientation of Discord and Slack.
- rsa25519 5y ago
  > Hopefully they also improve the UX They're making great progress! There's still more work to do, but I've been very impressed by the improvements made by the Element team over the past year, ranging from many small details to large usability features like the UI for spaces as an easier way to organize communities

ducktective 5y ago

How do people connect to matrix? I'm yet to find a TUI client for matrix. I've checked those weechat plugins but the python one needs libolm3 dependency which is a hassle to install on my system and the Rust one is not ready. Element webapp is clunky and slow. Element desktop is an Electron resource-hog. There is a Go client (gomuks) which was very buggy. I've also tried a QT client which was alright but not on-par with the official Electron webapp in terms of features.

the_duke 5y ago
Fluffychat [1] is probably the best alternative client, written in Flutter. But it is also missing a lot of features and is not exactly polished. [1] https://fluffychat.im/ https://fluffychat.im/
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  On linux fluffy chat uses a lot more CPU than Element. That's not a compliment for Element, but rather a depiction of the poor state of Flutter apps. I tried pretty much all third party Matrix apps, if you want cross device signing, there's only Element, an element fork and some of these half working flutter clients. It's not great. The initial developer for the weechat client did a great job, but the move to rust has pretty much stalled from what I can tell.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    Nheko is not perfect and lacks polish in some places, but I like it a lot, and it supports cross-signing.
    - rjzzleep 5y ago
      Appreciate the comment, last time I tried it all of this was missing. Seems like it's a fully fledged alternative now. I'll try it out. Seems like they implemented most code in a mtxclient library, so it might be possible to reuse it for other clients.

4mmFp3ae 5y ago

I really hope they'll use the money to fix the confusing account creation and maintenance because I cannot use Element anymore for some reason. My main gripes are that you cannot reset a password by username, and you cannot add a phone number that belonged to a deactivated account.

easygenes 5y ago

There's some good analysis here on the proposition of Matrix vs XMPP from both a technical view and a who-has-your-interests-at-heart-view: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp TLDR is Matrix leaks heaps of metadata and it seems designed to do that so that the creators can data-mine it for intelligence.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Upvoting before you get flagged... It appears Matrix is trying the Microsoft approach to marketing. Gaslight the public until you become too big to fail.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Spot on. The level of fanboying is this thread is quite something. Not only Matrix leaks metadata all over the place, but it relies on the idea of encryption being safe FOREVER. In 30 or 40 years all your messages might be public.

ThePhysicist 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
I have a feeling they'll never do this with a foundation that truly values open source until they plan on announcing something else they can control.
Arathorn 5y ago
No, the foundation has 5 directors. Two are the people who started the project in the first place (me & Amandine); Three are completely independent: one is a university professor, one is a decentralisation tech lawyer, one is CEO at Parity (and there is zero relationship of any kind between Parity and Element). The foundation is very deliberately structured so that the Element people are in minority control.
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  Indeed, my bad.

dingo454 5y ago

The Element foundation should use some of that sweet money to: 1) buy FluffyChat and some serious UI designers, because Element is probably one of the worst matrix clients in terms of UX. 2) fix decryption issues that happen randomly even by just using Element on the matrix.org server: https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/1721 https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/1721 as it's a real show-stopper once you hit it 3) add support for multiple accounts and identities (too many requests to list on the issue tracker), since federation is great, but it's not always wanted. Disclaimer: I managed to convince a group of technical users to switch over to matrix. We stay for the principle, but not really for the experience so far. FluffyChat is the best client we tried on mobile. On desktop, I'm glad weechat-matrix and gomuks exist, because all the other clients "reek" to us. And even if you like the modern chat UIs, they're really not bug-free either. Overall many clients and some severs to choose from, but I did prefer irc just for the simple-no-BS-clients alone (the protocol has nothing to do with it).

bennyp101 5y ago
> because Element is probably one of the worst matrix clients in terms of UX I'm genuinely curious why? I use it on desktop and mobile, and I haven't found it lacking in anything? I've heard this said before, but I don't get it
- gregoriol 5y ago
  I do agree it is quite ok, it has all the basic features, but it feels "slow" and "beta" at some points. In addition to some decryption issues that made some of my friends hate Element (they could view messages on one device but not another one, and there was no clear action to fix this), one of the issues I think could be easily worked on is the settings: the current layout is way too complicated, too much scrolling, too many options, it doesn't feel clear at all. Also the stickers are really crappy: they are not useful for any serious chat (ie. work), and not useful for any fun chat (ie. friends).
- kinow 5y ago
  Using it everyday too at $work, also used Slack and Gitter (and FreeNode/IRC FWIW). Quite happy with the current Element UI. They have slowly added features and fixed issues. I tried a beta some time ago with... topics? Rooms grouped in some sort of topic I think. It was really buggy, but I forgot about that I haven't seen it yet. So I assume they are doing some A/B testing, trying things slowly and seeing what works.

Uke 5y ago

The biggest thing i'd like to have would be bots in fully encrypted chats and the android client to not break the encryption between clients all the time.

kitkat_new 5y ago
Isn't this already possible (if a given bot supports it)? See t2bot.io which has some bots with encryption hosted: https://t2bot.io/docs/encrypted-integrations/ https://t2bot.io/docs/encrypted-integrations/

jmakov 5y ago

Why would anybody use Matrix after reading https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html ?

trasz 5y ago
This article seems all about a particular implementation, not the protocol.
Kinrany 5y ago
The only section that doesn't end with "we suspect foul play but did not investigate" is a citation of [1], so might as well read that instead. [1]: https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-matrix.org https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-mat...
jeddy3 5y ago
That article makes it seem like private servers unconditionally sends metadata to official servers (is this really the case, seems odd?) Other articles mentions sending metadata only to servers you have users from (which of course can be a problem, but at least is explainable).
remirk 5y ago
"Why would anyone use X after reading a critic blog post about it?"
Saris 5y ago
This doesn't seem to have any reasons to avoid matrix that I can see. The whole bridges section is strange since that's set up by each homeserver admin, and you can just.. not do that.
Arathorn 5y ago
Perhaps because the vast majority of points in the article are obviously false or exaggerated out of context? Needless to say Matrix servers and clients don't send any data (private or otherwise) by default to central servers. The only central services we have are the identity lookup service (i.e. map phone number & email to a matrix ID), which is strictly opt-in and various anonymous stats reporting (which is also strictly opt-in).

jillesvangurp 5y ago

A few key differences with other OSS companies that IMHO are positive: 1) Element or other matrix components do not require a copy right transfer. That means Element is hard to re-license under another license than its current one. 2) The license for Element is Apache 2.0. A fine choice for any OSS project looking to maintain a healthy ecosystem of contributors for decades to come. 3) The ecosystem has a diversity of stakeholders and contributors outside of Element the company maintaining various components, integrations, etc. It's an ecosystem that already serves many millions of users. 4) Not all the Matrix components are under the Element umbrella (see 3). Element is probably dominant in this community but it's based on merit rather than ownership. E.g. the Matrix foundation is mostly run by people outside of Element. Even the Element apps have contributions from outside Element the company (see 1). 5) Decentralization is at the core of the Element sales pitch. They are unlikely to want to walk back on that; or even be able to do that without damaging their credibility. For better or worse, that's what they are selling and stuck with. And they seem successful with it too. Hence the investment.

j1elo 5y ago
> 1) Element or other matrix components do not require a copy right transfer. That means Element is hard to re-license under another license than its current one. That helps a lot with future-proofing the openness of an open-source project [1], and it's a critical detail often overlooked, mainly because it's a technicality of copyright licensing and most people understandably just want to know if something is open-source or not, without getting into the details. The simplistic gist of it (not getting into differences between Licenses) is that if you contribute to an open source project that requires copyright assignments, then its only promise is that current versions of the code will remain with the same (open-source) license. Future versions might as well become proprietary while benefiting from your code. So depending on your willingness to accept that, it's an important factor to consider. Sometimes you just don't care, then all right just go ahead. Other times you might have a stronger position on this, then step back and think about it. On the other hand if you contribute to a project that won't ask you for any copyright assignment, then your contribution is yours, its license cannot change in the future without asking for your explicit permission (or dropping your code altogether). This is, if your contribution was a significant enough work; I don't know where the line is drawn legally, but I know (from reading here in HN) that trivial enough contributions might not need permission to be relicensed. [1]: On the other hand, it might hinder the ability to commercialize it, which might end up meaning that there are no devs pouring serious work into it, which in turn might end up meaning there is no project at all :-) "pick your poison", I guess.

eimrine 5y ago

Element is strange, Ive tried to connect a buddy and he told me that he cannot read my msgs depsite I can read his ones. So, we decided to switch to xmpp and it works great for us.

Amin699 5y ago

Needless to say, Matrix wouldn't exist without you: the protocol and network would have fizzled out long ago were it not for all the people supporting it (the matrix.org server can now see over 35.5M addressible users on the network!) - and meanwhile the ever-increasing energy of the community and the core team combines to keep the protocol advancing forwards faster than ever.

xvilka 5y ago

Finally they have money to get rid of Electron.

justshowpost 5y ago
LOL! I hope so. Just looking at their GitHub, they have an ridiculous amount of 7000+ open issues (5k on Web, 1k on each Android and iOS). Assuming they'd use a generous 1/4th of the money to fix outstanding bugs, assuming no duplicate bugs, and assuming a 100$/hour salary for the developers, they can spent on average about 10 hours to solve each bug (30000000$/4/7000/100$).
- jryans 5y ago
  Many issues are pie in the sky enhancement / feature requests that may or may not be implemented some day. There is no intention to drive the number of open issues to 0 just for the sake of it. As long as Element and Matrix continues to grow, I expect the number of open issues will grow indefinitely, and that is a sign of success.
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    +1000000000. Judging a project by its number of open issues is like judging a book by its number of pages.

egberts 5y ago

I wonder. it were to be a non-compliant of Matrix Foundation guideline if the federate feature can be turned off at the server-side, just to contain the metadata leakage. Just askin’.

miloignis 5y ago
Yes, private federation is supported.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Nothing is going to change unless we break free of this shit VC funny money cycle.

zaik 5y ago
You might like XMPP then - IETF Internet standard, always had decentralization and e2e encryption. I still don't understand why so much energy was invested in building a seperate ecosystem. Matrix claims to be fundamentally different, but all their major selling points (dencentralization, e2ee, open protocol) were already there. And since the Matrix encryption protocol is incompatible with all the other ones there's currently no way to securely communicate with someone outside their network.
- dathinab 5y ago
  But XMPP failed (as a decentralized open protocol in the wider picture).
  - olah_1 5y ago
    Maybe it failed in the consumer app space because it couldn’t keep up with user experience expectations. But if that is the metric, then Matrix already failed too, right? One new server + consumer app combo could revive XMPP for consumers quite easily.
    - tffgg 5y ago
      So not keeping up to users expectations - no matter how much - makes a failure? I think your argumentation is flawed. If your server+consumer app combo can do that, do that
      - olah_1 5y ago
        I was giving the person above me the benefit of the doubt. I assume that was their argument, not mine. But i entertained the idea regardless.

pt_PT_guy 5y ago

Nice! Now please: 1) Kill the electron crap. Just look how awesome, fast, funcional, beautiful and feature-rich telegram is 2) Kill synapse. Is close to impossible to run a home server with all that python shit going on. Dendrite is the way I guess, but it is super resource-consuming to have a small home server (and slow) 3) Make it accessible and interesting for the casual john doe: FluffyChat is one possible route

hestefisk 5y ago
Why is Synapse “impossible to run”? I agree it’s not the most performance but for a small home server it’s quite fast to set up. Dendrite is definitely going to be faster but it also has a lot more complexity (multiple databases, Kafka etc). Synapse is quite simple to understand and reason about.
justshowpost 5y ago
That would be the sensible business decisions. Feed new horses, don't feed old horses. But they are hackers and have no idea of management. I'm really curious, if they manage to burn through 30 million and still keeping Element being crappy. At least thanks to Matrix being an open protocol anyone can develop a better alternative.
vfclists 5y ago
> Synapse is a reference "homeserver" implementation of Matrix from the core development team at matrix.org, written in Python/Twisted. It is intended to showcase the concept of Matrix and let folks see the spec in the context of a codebase and let you run your own homeserver and generally help bootstrap the ecosystem. Is a reference "homeserver" implementation supposed to go into production on a large scale?
cvwright 5y ago
If running an Ansible playbook [1] is "close to impossible" for you, then there are a few different companies who will host a server for you. Including the guys mentioned in the main article here. Sure, Synapse's performance isn't great, but still. Last summer I was able to run Synapse on a 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM droplet from Digital Ocean. I had 100 copies of a bot running, each with their own room, constantly sending messages and replies to each other. With all 100 going at once, it was super slow. But with fewer bots, or with a lower chance of replying to a message, it worked pretty well. Not bad for like $10 / month. Also, if you want light and fast, check out Conduit, the homeserver written in Rust: https://conduit.rs/ https://conduit.rs/ [1] https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

foreign-inc 5y ago

Everyone who thinks that because Matrix is Apache v2 license, it will remain permissive open source is ignoring the reality of an active project. If Matrix changes license tomorrow, the old code will still be Apache v2. But are you going to fork the project to keep it Apache v2? For some data point, look at recent relicense of MinIO, Grafana, Loki, Vector.dev etc.

lolinder 5y ago
Top comment right now points out that Matrix doesn't require copyright assignment, which means they have to get permission from every contributor or rewrite the code in order to relicense.
- foreign-inc 5y ago
  They don't. They can fork the "apache v2" version and start adding non apache v2 code given they are the primary contributor. If they own the trademark, they can call the new forked version "matrix". What non having copy right assignment means is that they can't change the license of existing stuff. But they can change the license of future stuff using existing apache v2 licensed code which is permitted.

usbfingers 5y ago

Fluffychat is mentioned a lot here as a good UI/UX alternative to Element. Just wanted to bring up another that I'm working on called Syphon. It's not at the stage where it can compete with Fluffychat in terms of spec parity or maturity, but I think it's worth discussing as an effort. https://syphon.org https://syphon.org https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon Like I said, it's still very much in Alpha and needs quite a bit of work, but the UX flows and design have been well received by others. Though there is an opinionated default UX and design paradigm, there is a focus is to make everything customizable and the theming options are growing over every release. The goal is to eventually find a sweet spot between Discord and Signal and bridge the gap to Matrix between those communities. I have a demanding day job and other obligations that keep me busy, but I spend nearly all my free time and every vacation in the last year working on this project. We're constantly looking for other contributors and there's several other ways to help including donations. Feel free to join the official room for updates to track progress and please feel free to reach out with feedback! https://matrix.to/#/#syphon:matrix.org https://matrix.to/#/#syphon:matrix.org Additionally, I just merged Multi-account support this week and it will be in the next release. Not sure of any other Matrix client that has this feature, so there's some unique features that we're focusing on to set it apart.

simcop2387 5y ago
> Additionally, I just merged Multi-account support this week and it will be in the next release. Not sure of any other Matrix client that has this feature Mirage has this but it's the only one i know of. it also didnt seem to work with cross device signing last i tried it. https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/mirage https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/mirage
- usbfingers 5y ago
  Very glad there's other clients supporting this. Thanks for the heads up! I was under the impression some of the desktop clients had it in the form of swapping CLI flags on start, but it seems to support switching under the settings menu in the latest release. Much like email, many people will have more than one user they'd like to swap between so very glad to see other clients adding this feature with user friendly UX.

Artistry121 5y ago

I have a pretty firm belief that matrix will form a core background of the next era and am building a software solution for project and life management that’s completely decentralized on top of it. There’s a magic here in the interoperability and fact that so much hard work has been done to make it ready. The ability for this and IPFS to work together is pretty remarkable in the scope of what can be created.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Artistry121 5y ago
I imagine that these eventually become an “OS” that ties and links together peoples interactions through time. And the federation allows people to share timelines / information in a way that allows for new forms of collaboration- ones where it’s less focused on owner - employee relations and more P2P. Email me if you’re interested. I need some final designs made and am looking for developer partners - I have business cases and clients set up.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Matrix isn't P2P. You didn't even provide an email. No one is going to reach out unless you can create something to document at a high level what you think is so special about your ideas.
  - seizethegdgap 5y ago
    > Matrix isn't P2P Incorrect. https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone It's nowhere near mature/stable, but they are definitely working on it.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      First, just because they are working on something doesn't make it something. That is like saying... hey I'm working on adding encryption. It isn't there yet, but I can still claim my app is encrypted. Also, P2P overlays already exist in multiple forms.. Yggdrasil, Nebula, Tor, etc. Yet another example of them trying to re-invent the wheel when it isn't even necessary. Tox already does this.

goodpoint 5y ago

Not only Matrix leaks metadata all over the place, but it relies on the idea of encryption being safe FOREVER. In 30 or 40 years all your messages might be public.

hellcow 5y ago
They use perfect forward secrecy through OLM, no?
- blendergeek 5y ago
  "Perfect Forward Secrecy", better termed "Forward Secrecy", allows old messages to remain secret even if the long-term secrets are leaked. If current cryptographic primitives are fundamentally broken, all data can be decrypted if it is saved. This is why it is safest to destroy everything if you are worried about threats in the distant future.
  - hellcow 5y ago
    Got it. So the concern is that there's no support for time-based deletion of messages? That is on their public roadmap, and I think it's reasonable to assume that'll be deployed before modern ECC is broken. Or am I misunderstanding the concern?
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      You cannot delete encrypted data once it has been shared with the whole world.
      - kitkat_new 5y ago
        messages don't get shared with the whole world, but only the users and the homeservers the users choose
    - blendergeek 5y ago
      The main concern is that the encrypted data is stored on the server long-term. The longer it is on the server, the more likely it becomes that it is saved by an adversary. If data is only stored for a minimal amount of time, we lower the risk of an adversary acquiring it

grishka 5y ago

I want to love Matrix, but it still hasn't got a real native macOS client (not qt, not electron, native one made with Cocoa). It's really a shame. Though I do see its potential as a protocol, and the nice part is that it's federated.

29083011397778 5y ago
I don't have a Mac, so I can't test it, but isn't Seaglass [0] a native Mac client? [0] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/seaglass https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/seaglass
- grishka 5y ago
  Yes. Of course that was the first thing I installed. It's buggy and abandoned.
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    My mistake then, sorry. Nearly every other client on that page that I've tried has gotten better over the past year, so I was hoping Seaglass had moved forwards as well.

aasasd 5y ago

I hope fifty bucks out of this go toward Element on Android not slapping together separate paragraphs. And another hundred to display images that are larger than 5.5 mb.

realA12l 5y ago

> adding Threading to Element (yes, it's finally happening!) Arathorn: Please make it similar to how Zulip works, and not how Slack or Discord have implemented it.

notyourday 5y ago

So... how is whoever invested in Element going to exit?

xj9 5y ago

building matrix is really expensive i guess. i wish them luck, but so far i haven't been sold. probably wont be either.

ymolodtsov 5y ago

I've just decided to give it a try and honestly, their apps are a travesty. Even Signal, with all the criticism it gets for its UX and lack of certain features feel more mature. I've tried Element and FluffyChat on iOS. Element is very slow. They messed the sign-up screen somehow and iOS suggested a "strong password" but didn't remember it, or didn't assign the log in to it. I went to generate a new password and couldn't log in since it required me to confirm my session from other devices, then gave an error that I have none. FluffyChat has a very unfriendly log in screen that gives zero explanation about Matrix or how you should type in your login with the server. Also, no validation (they could try to adjust your login with @ and : symbols automatically if they see something is wrong). It's not like I want to dunk on their developers, but it's hard for me to see this protocol and its apps getting many consumer users when it's so unfriendly and alien to them. Yes, some government European agencies and old-fashioned corporations who want an on-premises chat app would use it, but I don't care much about them.

kitkat_new 5y ago
> they could try to adjust your login with @ and : symbols automatically if they see something is wrong how specifically? especially the ":"
- ymolodtsov 5y ago
  When it asked me to type the full log in with the server I made a guess and typed user@matrix.org. I also think it didn't even accept user:matrix.org without the "@" in front.