3 ms·

OK? What do we expect them to do with the money, exactly? As a donor, I would expect they fund the development of Matrix, which I believe Element is doing?

joshsimmons 3y ago
Thank you for being a donor! Naturally, you can expect us to eventually publish an annual report that details revenue, expenses, and programmatic activities. At a high level, the payments to Element includes administrative services (accounting, legal, etc), operation of the matrix.org homeserver, and secondment of several personnel whose responsibilities include advocacy, program management, standards work, and trust and safety. The MSA also includes provisions for the Foundation to reimburse Element for any bills they pay on our behalf. In terms of funding development, the Foundation's focus has mostly been on building open source trust and safety tooling since that is a gap that others haven't addressed.
zamalek 3y ago
EMS (New Vector Ltd.) is not the same thing as Element. It is the first-party SAAS offering of Element/Matrix. It would be like Terraform accepting donations, and paying Hashicorp. That being said, it's completely plausible that this is salary for development time. Being tight-lipped about it is suspicious though.
alohapersona3 3y ago
Luckily, it doesn't matter what individuals expect. There is written documentation on what the foundation is supposed to do or not to do: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/main/proposals/1779-open-governance.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/mai... Notably, "Code Core Team members must arrange their own funding for their time", which I understand as such that the Foundation does not pay directly the developers (same as other standards organizations like IETF). That said, if it was decided that developers get paid by Matrix.org Foundation for developing Matrix.org clients and servers, I wonder how this process works, given that I highly doubt that developers of Conduit, Fractal or Quaternion received any of the funds of Matrix.org foundation. Main tasks of Matrix.org Foundation is maintaining the spec, documentation, owning IP, promotion and the matrix.org home server. The home server is "generously hosted" by UpCloud (i.e. is not using New Vector EMS), at least according to the matrix.org website. Looking again at MSC1779, I noticed it says that one function of The Matrix.org Foundation is "Owns the copyright of the reference implementations of Matrix (i.e. everything in https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org). By assigning copyright to the Foundation, it’s protected against New Vector ever being tempted to relicense it." That protection apparently wasn't very effective, but also notably, New Vector and their leadership clearly have shown to not stand behind the goals of the Foundation. As the leadership of New Vector is also part of the leadership of the Foundation, I see some huge potential for COI here.
- EarlKing 3y ago
  Without looking at how this organization works, let me clarify: a 501(c)(3) cannot be paying for software development insofar as this constitutes Product Development. Product Development is outside the scope of charitable work and, if caught, would open them up to back taxes on those 'charitable' contributions plus fines. This is not something that applies just to Matrix, but to the Free Software Foundation for that matter. Not one fucking dime you give them ever goes to software development, and the fact that they don't make this clear upfront given the obvious misunderstanding on the part of the public and what they think they're funding, is fraudulent. TL;DR Donations to 501(c)(3)'s managing open source projects might as well be lit on fire because they do not and can not go to software development.
  - KomoD 3y ago
    > This is not something that applies just to Matrix FYI The Matrix foundation is not a 501(c)(3), it's not even registered in the US.
    - EarlKing 3y ago
      A quick search turned up a registration for them in the UK? Is this them?[1] And if so..... where is any of this even documented on the matrix.org website? Lastly, use of a CIC is a horrible idea for precisely the sort of shady shit we're seeing here. [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11648710 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
      - KomoD 3y ago
        That is them, yes. On the "About" page under "Legal Details".
- justin66 3y ago
  Who are you? What is the Matrix.org foundation to you?

joshsimmons 3y ago

Thank you for being a donor! Naturally, you can expect us to eventually publish an annual report that details revenue, expenses, and programmatic activities. At a high level, the payments to Element includes administrative services (accounting, legal, etc), operation of the matrix.org homeserver, and secondment of several personnel whose responsibilities include advocacy, program management, standards work, and trust and safety. The MSA also includes provisions for the Foundation to reimburse Element for any bills they pay on our behalf. In terms of funding development, the Foundation's focus has mostly been on building open source trust and safety tooling since that is a gap that others haven't addressed.

zamalek 3y ago

EMS (New Vector Ltd.) is not the same thing as Element. It is the first-party SAAS offering of Element/Matrix. It would be like Terraform accepting donations, and paying Hashicorp. That being said, it's completely plausible that this is salary for development time. Being tight-lipped about it is suspicious though.

alohapersona3 3y ago

Luckily, it doesn't matter what individuals expect. There is written documentation on what the foundation is supposed to do or not to do: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/main/proposals/1779-open-governance.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/mai... Notably, "Code Core Team members must arrange their own funding for their time", which I understand as such that the Foundation does not pay directly the developers (same as other standards organizations like IETF). That said, if it was decided that developers get paid by Matrix.org Foundation for developing Matrix.org clients and servers, I wonder how this process works, given that I highly doubt that developers of Conduit, Fractal or Quaternion received any of the funds of Matrix.org foundation. Main tasks of Matrix.org Foundation is maintaining the spec, documentation, owning IP, promotion and the matrix.org home server. The home server is "generously hosted" by UpCloud (i.e. is not using New Vector EMS), at least according to the matrix.org website. Looking again at MSC1779, I noticed it says that one function of The Matrix.org Foundation is "Owns the copyright of the reference implementations of Matrix (i.e. everything in https://github.com/matrix-org https://github.com/matrix-org). By assigning copyright to the Foundation, it’s protected against New Vector ever being tempted to relicense it." That protection apparently wasn't very effective, but also notably, New Vector and their leadership clearly have shown to not stand behind the goals of the Foundation. As the leadership of New Vector is also part of the leadership of the Foundation, I see some huge potential for COI here.

EarlKing 3y ago
Without looking at how this organization works, let me clarify: a 501(c)(3) cannot be paying for software development insofar as this constitutes Product Development. Product Development is outside the scope of charitable work and, if caught, would open them up to back taxes on those 'charitable' contributions plus fines. This is not something that applies just to Matrix, but to the Free Software Foundation for that matter. Not one fucking dime you give them ever goes to software development, and the fact that they don't make this clear upfront given the obvious misunderstanding on the part of the public and what they think they're funding, is fraudulent. TL;DR Donations to 501(c)(3)'s managing open source projects might as well be lit on fire because they do not and can not go to software development.
- KomoD 3y ago
  > This is not something that applies just to Matrix FYI The Matrix foundation is not a 501(c)(3), it's not even registered in the US.
  - EarlKing 3y ago
    A quick search turned up a registration for them in the UK? Is this them?[1] And if so..... where is any of this even documented on the matrix.org website? Lastly, use of a CIC is a horrible idea for precisely the sort of shady shit we're seeing here. [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11648710 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
    - KomoD 3y ago
      That is them, yes. On the "About" page under "Legal Details".
justin66 3y ago
Who are you? What is the Matrix.org foundation to you?