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For my company, we are using an hosted offer from Element.io[0]. It works wonderfully, it became a really nice hub of communication, information sharing with d

• benatkin 4y ago
  That seems like a pretty good open-core project with the core under the Apache 2.0 license. Still, unlike GitLab, I haven't heard of many running their own custom Element and until I do I'm a bit wary of lock-in.
  • Arathorn 4y ago
    How can you get locked into an open protocol?
    • benatkin 4y ago
      By getting locked into tools on top of it.
      • camgunz 4y ago
        I think generally the point here is: if you're worried about getting locked into a totally open ecosystem, there's nowhere for you to go.
        • benatkin 4y ago
          I specifically mentioned something that I was more comfortable with: GitLab So I don't know where you got "there's nowhere for you to go" from. Element has open source apps and that's great. It just seems to not have a very strong culture of people self-hosting it. Though one comment did provide me a place to look and I found this and am now more comfortable with it. https://schildi.chat/ https://schildi.chat/ Still it would be great to see it have some big instances like GitLab does with Debian, Freedesktop, and others. Then I wouldn't feel I was going it alone if I self-hosted it.
          • Arathorn 4y ago
            Like https://element.debian.social https://element.debian.social for instance? ;)
            • benatkin 4y ago
              Yeah that's pretty good. Not quite to where GitLab is, but in the right direction. GitLab is really helpful with self-hosting.
              • andrewshadura 4y ago
                What do you mean not quite? There are much more options than with GitLab, and a lot of people are self-hosting it actually.
                • benatkin 4y ago
                  I mean Element's website says very little about installing it and encourages using mobile apps which require going through the app store, while GitLab has all kinds of resources for self-hosting. They do try to steer you to self-hosting the ee version though. Element: landing page https://element.io/solutions/self-hosted-or-cloud-collaboration https://element.io/solutions/self-hosted-or-cloud-collaborat... GitLab: all the things https://about.gitlab.com/install/ https://about.gitlab.com/install/ at the bottom is the Debian package, but if you go to the Docker Page and click the username you can see gitlab-ce there as well.
                  • derin 4y ago
                    Gitlab and Element's website structure is different. element.io is the site for the managed product, so even their "on-premise" installer is meant to be used in a commercial relationship. For install docs you'd probably have to purchase their product (which isn't available freely). You probably want to read the open-source software's installation instructions at: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web https://github.com/vector-im/element-web TLDR, check out the project, run `yarn install`, then edit the config file, then `yarn build`. And, yes, that is all there is to it. It's significantly simpler to deploy than GitLab. Finally, you keep mentioning self-hosting; you _can_ just use a non-self hosted application like the downloadable version of Element, SchildiChat, Fluffychat, or any other client. No reason to bring hosting into the mix for the client, if that's causing concern.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
    There’s lots of element instances out there and alternative clients like Cinny. What’s harder to duplicate is the homeserver, Synapse. But even there there’s also Dendrite
    • benatkin 4y ago
      Well, I haven't heard of any and your comment doesn't help me to find any. I had heard of Cinny but currently I am assessing Element.
      • ripdog 4y ago
        matrix.org has a listing of clients. There are plenty if you only need basic features, but Element is the only feature-mostly-complete client.
        • benatkin 4y ago
          I had to look up each of them. This looks to be the only one that is based on Element: https://schildi.chat/ https://schildi.chat/
          • ripdog 4y ago
            Is it a requirement that you use an Element-based client?
            • benatkin 4y ago
              No, but since Element led by some of the same people as Matrix, I want to observe the type of open core project it is. Is it more like GitLab or more like Supabase? GitLab has a lot of help for self-hosting, while with Supabase if you want to run its components on your own it's up to you.
              • andrewshadura 4y ago
                Unlike GitLab, Matrix is not open core, and so isn't Element or Synapse, they properly and fully open source. Also, Element is just some JavaScript in your browser or electron shell, there's no need to self-host it really, although you can (just put some HTML+CSS+JS up on a webserver) — you want to self-host Synapse, and that's trivial to do (there's a Debian package, a Docker image and so on).
  • Ambroisie 4y ago
    I run my own self-hosted synapse (backend) and element (front-end). It's been working flawlessly since I deployed it (about 2 years ago now).
  • snerbles 4y ago
    I've been self-hosting a federated Matrix homeserver since 2018. It's small (about 20 active users), but it was enough like Discord and Slack that the less technically-inclined in the group have had little trouble adjusting to it. The main friction points have been the UI changes in Riot/Element over time ("where do I put the homeserver URL thingy again?"), and the fact that my friends seem to constantly forget their passwords and (this is really a separate issue from Synapse itself) setting up an account for transactional emails is a pain in the ass. Amusingly, two of my co-workers from a previous job also run their own homeservers, one a smaller private instance similar to mine and the other a single-user node that bridges many different chat systems together for personal use. The two of them also interact with the users on my homeserver on a regular basis in various public and private channels. I should note that only one of the active users in the channels on my server is from matrix.org - everyone else is from the same server or federated instances run by other people. Matrix.org could go down tomorrow and things for us would mostly keep running just fine. I do wish Synapse had a proper account invite system for private servers, and not the "spin up a matrix.org account and chuck the hapless fool in the hopefully-federated room" method that was there the last time I tried.
    • Aloha 4y ago
      How do you deal with the complexity of hosting Matrix? I was in the same position, wanted to set one up - decided it was too much work.
      • lannisterstark 4y ago
        There's not much complexity really. This handbook takes care of most stuff for you: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ Been hosting it alongside some bridges(like irc) for a while now.
        • spantaleev 4y ago
          I'm happy to hear that my Ansible playbook for managing Matrix is helpful to people and is being appreciated! Shameless plug - for people who'd rather not maintain their own server manually with Ansible, a few others and I are running https://etke.cc https://etke.cc - a completely FOSS service service built on top of the Ansible playbook. Hopefully, this provides the best of both worlds - ease of getting started (on your own or on a rented server), everything built on top of FOSS, no vendor-lock-in (you can migrate to using the playbook yourself at any time, etc.).
  • IceWreck 4y ago
    Really ? I have been self hosting for atleast three years. Dendrite, conduit and synapse - matrix homeserver software (you have to use one of them) have thousands of stars. I'm pretty sure atleast 10k+ matrix homeserver deployments exist - maybe someone from matrix.org can give a better number because each homeserver is probably federating with theirs. And thats to say nothing of unfederated servers i.e. orgs hosting matrix for internal use.
  • kosciak9 4y ago
    Well, I'm also running a small company (software house) and we're also using Element for it, but it's self-hosted, managed via https://etke.cc/ https://etke.cc/. I believe migration to element.io or from element.io would be rather seamless.
  • zamalek 4y ago
    Conduit was pretty straightforward to set up, I just have it running with podman+systemd. It also works great with heisenbridge, which is an IRC gateway.
  • pkulak 4y ago
    I do! It's a Docker container. I also run the Element web client, also as a Docker container. I kick back 5 bucks a month to the Matrix.org Foundation since it's probably my most-used piece of software behind my OS and my browser. Been absolutely rock solid for about 3 years now.
  • jrop 4y ago
    My self hosted matrix instance just imploded and we had to move 20 users off of it. I'm sure it was due to a sloppy mistake during a server upgrade or whatever but it seems pretty brittle to me.
• dmix 4y ago
  How are voice calls? Edit: looks like there's a 50 user minimum for business plans?
  • nehal3m 4y ago
    If you host a server yourself you can hook in coturn (it's enabled by the linked playbook by default): https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/blob/master/docs/configuring-playbook-turn.md https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/b... https://github.com/coturn/coturn https://github.com/coturn/coturn