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Lots of confusion here. The lobsters comment is from me, a year ago, talking about the spec and implementation work published by the Matrix core team - i.e. th

Lots of confusion here. The lobsters comment is from me, a year ago, talking about the spec and implementation work published by the Matrix core team - i.e. the contents of https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org. Matrix started in 2014, and the core team formed Element in 2017 to fund its work, so it should hardly be surprising that much of that code comes from Element employees. Just as if Linus had chosen to fund himself to work on the linux kernel by creating a startup, the balance of code in the kernel would be different. Nowadays I'd guess it's more like 75% of the code at github.com/matrix-org which comes from Element employees contracted to work on Matrix by the Matrix.org Foundation. However, across the wider ecosystem, Element's contributions are an increasingly small minority. There are completely new independent implementations out there like Conduit.rs (rust server) or the whole FluffyChat stack (cross-platform flutter clients) which have almost no contributions from Element and build on entirely different codebases to the reference implementations at https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org. So, where it counts, I'd guess that Element probably does <20% of the overall code in the Matrix ecosystem? > Likewise, the vast majority (>80% anecdotally) of users on the main Matrix federated network live on a single instance centrally administered by matrix.org. Looking at the phonehome stats, it's more like 30%. > My worry is that the fate of Matrix rests on Element Co, which seems to be a default-dead start up Nope, if you read the Element blog post at https://element.io/blog/element-raises-30m-as-matrix-explodes/ https://element.io/blog/element-raises-30m-as-matrix-explode..., you'll see that Element is explicitly default-alive. > repeatedly needs to seek funding Nope, we didn't need to seek funding in this instance; we consciously chose to. We could have just continued profitably at a slower rate, but we wanted to go faster in order to compete with Discord & Teams etc. > and nearly went bust in the past. Nope, Element was formed after we lost funding for the original Matrix work... which is why we formed the company.

hjhcxz 5y ago
I'm sure the comment you're replying to is being downvoted by employees of your company and your fanboys, but it isn't false, even if you contradict the claims without evidence. And yes, I know who you are. It's very unprofessional how you conduct yourself on HN, wading into the comments. People are allowed to question the motivations of your company. I know I do, and your petty replies on HN continually convince me that Matrix is a joke; the CEO can't even let the community handle criticism of the project, no, he always takes it personally. Call me when dendrite is feature complete (never) or when a third party homeserver is completed (definitely will never happen, you list some and your site has listed them for years, but they aren't usable. It's a lie, one I'm flabbergasted you have repeated above, frankly. A bald faced lie, but since Matrix is a fake federation protocol the layers of lies shouldn't surprise me) Wake me up when you figure out how to do username account routing with DNS like XMPP does so that you don't need a centralized identity server Or does it benefit you somehow that Matrix isn't able to be implemented by a third party? Does the centralized identity server benefit you? Probably. Enjoy fleecing more investors and sucking the air out of the federated chat space!
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  I downvoted you (I'm not an employee or affiliated with Matrix in any way except that I selfhost Synapse because it's cool) because you've veered off the good faith criticism path into paranoia and what looks like a personal vendetta, which I can't understand what for. This is a tech chat product but the way you dig into it makes it sound like you have bones to pick with someone who came to your house and killed your cat.
  - hjhcxz 5y ago
    "Arathorn" is the only tech CEO who has personally insulted me in past comments, when I used to be much more charitable, so yeah it's personal. I listed problems I had trying to run Synapse and explained the fake identity federation and he came out of the woodwork to run interference about how it's ONLY name addressing that isn't federated, as though that matters So yeah, it is personal. I love chat protocols and federation and want to be excited about Matrix but "Arathorn" is a liar and an asshole and he's made it personal. The protocol has serious problems and isn't above criticism but "Arathorn" isn't open to it. And he's sullying a good JRR Tolkien reference with his handle. He doesn't deserve that handle, that's why it's in scare quotes.
    - soupbowl 5y ago
      You come into every matrix comment section to grief Arathorn, you come off as the bad guy.
    - kazoomonger 5y ago
      Looking at https://matrix.org/faq/ https://matrix.org/faq/, I see this: Can I run my own identity server? See also: What is an identity server? Yes - the reference implementation is sydent and you can run your own ID server cluster that tracks 3rd party to Matrix ID mappings. This won't be very useful right now, though, and we don't recommend it. If you want your server to participate in the global replicated Matrix ID service then please get in touch with us. Meanwhile, we are looking at ways of decentralising the 'official' Matrix identity service so that identity servers are 100% decentralised and can openly federate with each other. N.B. that you can use Matrix without ever using the identity service - it exists only to map 3rd party IDs (e.g. email addresses) to matrix IDs to aid user discovery. As someone that really likes Matrix because of its decentralized nature, I'm not really seeing a problem here. TBH, I don't really care about mapping a foo@bar.com to @foo:bar.com. All of my matrix contacts I've just asked them what their username is, then started chatting with them.
easygenes 5y ago
I think those "phonehome stats" are exactly what most people are up in arms about. Particularly the exhaustive non-depersonalized nature of them. [0] It appears that the data which is collected includes [1]: Message senders Message senders are never encrypted Session/device IDs Due to Matrix's design, encrypting this would break verification Message timestamps It's impossible to prevent timestamps from leaking, since the server can simply note when an event is received anyway Room members (join/leave/invite events) Join/leave/invite and other room events are never encrypted Message edit events While contents are not leaked, an attacker can know when messages are edited Message reactions Reactions are never encrypted Read receipts Read receipts are never encrypted Nicknames Nicknames are never encrypted Profile pictures Profile pictures are never encrypted Put another way [2]: The Matrix ID of users, usually including their username. Email addresses, phone numbers of the user and their contacts. Associations of Email, phone numbers with Matrix IDs. Usage patterns of the user. IP address of the user, which can give more or less precise geographical location information. The user’s devices and system information. The other servers that users talks to. Room IDs, potentially identifying the Direct chat ones and the other user/server. -- [0] <https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html> [1] <https://serpentsec.1337.cx/matrix https://serpentsec.1337.cx/matrix> [2] <https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html#facing-the-real-and-clear-facts https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html#facing-the-real-and...>
- Arathorn 5y ago
  no, the "phonehome stats" i was referring to are the opt-in anonymous aggregated usage stats that synapse provides: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/synapse/app/phone_stats_home.py#L71 https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/synapse/ap... etc. All the stuff you enumerate is metadata that your server stores in order to store your conversations. Until P2P Matrix lands, if you're worried about metadata, only talk to people on servers whose admins you trust.
  - easygenes 5y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. Congrats on your round. Best wishes for turning that into a robust truly decentralized E2EE communications platform that the average person won't shy from. Btw, I hope SNEK sticks!

hjhcxz 5y ago

I'm sure the comment you're replying to is being downvoted by employees of your company and your fanboys, but it isn't false, even if you contradict the claims without evidence. And yes, I know who you are. It's very unprofessional how you conduct yourself on HN, wading into the comments. People are allowed to question the motivations of your company. I know I do, and your petty replies on HN continually convince me that Matrix is a joke; the CEO can't even let the community handle criticism of the project, no, he always takes it personally. Call me when dendrite is feature complete (never) or when a third party homeserver is completed (definitely will never happen, you list some and your site has listed them for years, but they aren't usable. It's a lie, one I'm flabbergasted you have repeated above, frankly. A bald faced lie, but since Matrix is a fake federation protocol the layers of lies shouldn't surprise me) Wake me up when you figure out how to do username account routing with DNS like XMPP does so that you don't need a centralized identity server Or does it benefit you somehow that Matrix isn't able to be implemented by a third party? Does the centralized identity server benefit you? Probably. Enjoy fleecing more investors and sucking the air out of the federated chat space!

emptysongglass 5y ago
I downvoted you (I'm not an employee or affiliated with Matrix in any way except that I selfhost Synapse because it's cool) because you've veered off the good faith criticism path into paranoia and what looks like a personal vendetta, which I can't understand what for. This is a tech chat product but the way you dig into it makes it sound like you have bones to pick with someone who came to your house and killed your cat.
- hjhcxz 5y ago
  "Arathorn" is the only tech CEO who has personally insulted me in past comments, when I used to be much more charitable, so yeah it's personal. I listed problems I had trying to run Synapse and explained the fake identity federation and he came out of the woodwork to run interference about how it's ONLY name addressing that isn't federated, as though that matters So yeah, it is personal. I love chat protocols and federation and want to be excited about Matrix but "Arathorn" is a liar and an asshole and he's made it personal. The protocol has serious problems and isn't above criticism but "Arathorn" isn't open to it. And he's sullying a good JRR Tolkien reference with his handle. He doesn't deserve that handle, that's why it's in scare quotes.
  - soupbowl 5y ago
    You come into every matrix comment section to grief Arathorn, you come off as the bad guy.
  - kazoomonger 5y ago
    Looking at https://matrix.org/faq/ https://matrix.org/faq/, I see this: Can I run my own identity server? See also: What is an identity server? Yes - the reference implementation is sydent and you can run your own ID server cluster that tracks 3rd party to Matrix ID mappings. This won't be very useful right now, though, and we don't recommend it. If you want your server to participate in the global replicated Matrix ID service then please get in touch with us. Meanwhile, we are looking at ways of decentralising the 'official' Matrix identity service so that identity servers are 100% decentralised and can openly federate with each other. N.B. that you can use Matrix without ever using the identity service - it exists only to map 3rd party IDs (e.g. email addresses) to matrix IDs to aid user discovery. As someone that really likes Matrix because of its decentralized nature, I'm not really seeing a problem here. TBH, I don't really care about mapping a foo@bar.com to @foo:bar.com. All of my matrix contacts I've just asked them what their username is, then started chatting with them.

easygenes 5y ago

I think those "phonehome stats" are exactly what most people are up in arms about. Particularly the exhaustive non-depersonalized nature of them. [0] It appears that the data which is collected includes [1]: Message senders Message senders are never encrypted Session/device IDs Due to Matrix's design, encrypting this would break verification Message timestamps It's impossible to prevent timestamps from leaking, since the server can simply note when an event is received anyway Room members (join/leave/invite events) Join/leave/invite and other room events are never encrypted Message edit events While contents are not leaked, an attacker can know when messages are edited Message reactions Reactions are never encrypted Read receipts Read receipts are never encrypted Nicknames Nicknames are never encrypted Profile pictures Profile pictures are never encrypted Put another way [2]: The Matrix ID of users, usually including their username. Email addresses, phone numbers of the user and their contacts. Associations of Email, phone numbers with Matrix IDs. Usage patterns of the user. IP address of the user, which can give more or less precise geographical location information. The user’s devices and system information. The other servers that users talks to. Room IDs, potentially identifying the Direct chat ones and the other user/server. -- [0] <https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html> [1] <https://serpentsec.1337.cx/matrix https://serpentsec.1337.cx/matrix> [2] <https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html#facing-the-real-and-clear-facts https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html#facing-the-real-and...>

Arathorn 5y ago
no, the "phonehome stats" i was referring to are the opt-in anonymous aggregated usage stats that synapse provides: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/synapse/app/phone_stats_home.py#L71 https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/synapse/ap... etc. All the stuff you enumerate is metadata that your server stores in order to store your conversations. Until P2P Matrix lands, if you're worried about metadata, only talk to people on servers whose admins you trust.
- easygenes 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. Congrats on your round. Best wishes for turning that into a robust truly decentralized E2EE communications platform that the average person won't shy from. Btw, I hope SNEK sticks!