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> having entire foundation-authored blog posts dedicated to updates to Third Room (which I did not think was a project owned and maintained by the foundation?)
by Arathorn 3y ago
> having entire foundation-authored blog posts dedicated to updates to Third Room (which I did not think was a project owned and maintained by the foundation?)
TR is a Foundation project - its repo is github.com/matrix-org/thirdroom (not github.com/vector-im); its copyright is by the Foundation, etc. And the point is to provide spatial collaboration building blocks for Matrix (just like Olm provides e2ee building blocks; matrix-js-sdk provides IM & VoIP building blocks) etc.
> where other projects (e.g. Synapse, bridges, etc) don't get as much as a tweet nowadays (apart from the spec, i.e. Matrix itself)
That’s my bad; the projects seem to have fallen into the habit of publishing and tweeting/tooting/skeeting their updates in TWIM (eg friday’s 1.0.0 release of the IRC bridge) rather than via individual tweets and blog posts like we used to. The reason is that the various projects prefer to write software than blog posts/tweets, and I’ve lapsed in writing the posts/tweets myself (given I spend my life trying to fix funding and get Element X shipped) and haven’t successfully handed over to someone else to do it. It doesn’t mean the work isn’t happening though; we’re just failing to show off about it.
> Which imo sounds like Third Room being prioritised over moderation/t&s.
The rationale is that if TR generates money, that money can be put to more T&S and the rest of Matrix. It’s a way of trying to fix the funding nightmare. If it doesn’t generate money (by attracting innovation funding from people who actually like the idea of open spatial collaboration), then obviously folks won’t be able to work on it as their dayjob as there won’t be $ to do so.
I guess one way of thinking about is that we model TR’s funding as separate from the rest of the Foundation - it has to be able to fund itself, and it is not stealing resources from elsewhere. (You could argue it steals focus, but in turn it exercises large chunks of Matrix - VoIP, Hydrogen SDK, SFUs etc, which I believe compensates for that, in combination with the marketing value).
TL;DR: if TR doesn’t pay for itself via its own funding or by generating cash, then we won’t have $ to pay for it.