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There is zero logical reason you cannot do both, especially as a lab (which are all minimal value adds and have been broken for years). This has been open for 8

There is zero logical reason you cannot do both, especially as a lab (which are all minimal value adds and have been broken for years). This has been open for 8 years. And there have been many people willing to implement it for free, who have gone out of their way to work around the painful busywork involved, where they would selflessly rework it as needed to fit within the MSC once the SCT fully approved one. Are you telling me that with the multi-millions of dollars you get from law enforcement, you cannot delegate a manager to, as a minor part time duty, oversee the free work given to you? Especially when the various Element apps have been in an effective maintenance mode for at minimum the last year? This sounds like either Element is run very poorly and despite the massive funds rolling in can barely maintain themselves, or there is a distinct distain for external work that does not generate immediate revenue for the company. Trust me, I understand full well what you’re saying. You’re maximizing profits with no care for the “freeloaders”. That’s fine, you can do that, but don’t act like I have to care.

Arathorn 2y ago
> Are you telling me that with the multi-millions of dollars you get from law enforcement, you cannot delegate a manager to, as a minor part time duty, oversee the free work given to you? Correct. We are not profitable, and frantically trying to get sustainable by focusing on things which generate money so we can keep paying our salaries, rather than taking on maintenance of new “free” contributed features when we’re still focused on the core. The reason we don’t have more $ is because we gave away everything as Apache licensed FOSS, and turned out most people were happy to use that gratis rather than paying for anything. The most likely manager to oversee custom emoji was laid off last year due to lack of $. Fwiw, we make almost no money from law enforcement. > there is a distinct distain for external work that does not generate immediate revenue for the company. No. We really appreciate the various custom emoji PRs, and I personally feel awful they are stuck. At this point the most likely way to get them merged is if i do so myself. > You’re maximizing profits with no care for the “freeloaders”. No. We are not profitable. We are trying to stop losing money, so we might actually be sustainable.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  If you don't mind my asking, what are the features that you're working on to become profitable? I know custom emojis sound dumb, but they are basically the differentiation factor for how Discord gets their billions. People almost literally pay hundreds of dollars for Nitro just to get their emojis/reactions. Other than bigger uploads, that's all the lower Nitro tier does. Some people just laugh in my digital face when I suggest Matrix, because they will never, ever, countenance losing their emojis. I don't know why they care that much, but they absolutely do. It feels a bit like trying to sell a car without Bluetooth. You might think it's a trivial frill and a distraction from the best engine ever, but the interest will be lukewarm at the very best. I bought a car without Bluetooth but then I fitted my own adapter. Even that isn't possible here.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    So we do care about custom emoji, and they are obviously critical for folks looking for an encrypted Discord alternative. However, right now we're not focusing on building an encrypted Discord alternative but instead a self-hosted WhatsApp (or Teams) replacement for governments: https://element.io/sectors https://element.io/sectors, on the basis that they are the ones paying. Sure, we could have gone after Discord ~5 years ago and launched our own Nitro equivalent, and perhaps we should have. But instead we observed that governments REALLY want to run their own encrypted interoperable comms systems, and we thought that having Matrix used as the backbone for public sector communication would be a good way to prove and fund it sustainably. Ideally we could then use the public sector as a launchpad into other areas - a bit like how email & the web and even the internet spread from DARPA / NSFNet / academic etc to the rest of the world. After all, what better endorsement for Matrix than someone like NATO using it for comms? As a result, custom emoji are stuck in the middle of the todo list still. Some of the other features that we've worked on instead have been: * Making encryption stable. As hilarious as https://www.reddit.com/r/elementchat/comments/1evz3kk/unable_to_decrypt_message/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementchat/comments/1evz3kk/unable... is. * Make encryption secure - i.e. migrating from the old C/C++ libolm implementation to the rust vodozemac implementation. * Instant login/sync/launch - i.e. an entirely new sync mechanism. * Rather than developing 4 different client stacks (js-sdk, ios-sdk, android-sdk and rust-sdk), converge on a single one: matrix-rust-sdk, and make it excellent. * Rework the core UX to make encryption invisible (rather than full of confusing unactionable warnings and verification nags etc). * Native Matrix-encrypted scalable voip/video calling. * Migrating to OpenID Connect for auth, so getting 2FA/MFA etc * Public sector enterprise features: antivirus, regulatory compliance, secure border gateways, cross-domain gateways, active directory sync, SCIM sync, kubernetes operators, etc. etc. Now, the plan is to use the govtech business to get back to funding mainstream Matrix uptake. But first we need to be able to fund ourselves to work on it.

Arathorn 2y ago

> Are you telling me that with the multi-millions of dollars you get from law enforcement, you cannot delegate a manager to, as a minor part time duty, oversee the free work given to you? Correct. We are not profitable, and frantically trying to get sustainable by focusing on things which generate money so we can keep paying our salaries, rather than taking on maintenance of new “free” contributed features when we’re still focused on the core. The reason we don’t have more $ is because we gave away everything as Apache licensed FOSS, and turned out most people were happy to use that gratis rather than paying for anything. The most likely manager to oversee custom emoji was laid off last year due to lack of $. Fwiw, we make almost no money from law enforcement. > there is a distinct distain for external work that does not generate immediate revenue for the company. No. We really appreciate the various custom emoji PRs, and I personally feel awful they are stuck. At this point the most likely way to get them merged is if i do so myself. > You’re maximizing profits with no care for the “freeloaders”. No. We are not profitable. We are trying to stop losing money, so we might actually be sustainable.

grues-dinner 2y ago
If you don't mind my asking, what are the features that you're working on to become profitable? I know custom emojis sound dumb, but they are basically the differentiation factor for how Discord gets their billions. People almost literally pay hundreds of dollars for Nitro just to get their emojis/reactions. Other than bigger uploads, that's all the lower Nitro tier does. Some people just laugh in my digital face when I suggest Matrix, because they will never, ever, countenance losing their emojis. I don't know why they care that much, but they absolutely do. It feels a bit like trying to sell a car without Bluetooth. You might think it's a trivial frill and a distraction from the best engine ever, but the interest will be lukewarm at the very best. I bought a car without Bluetooth but then I fitted my own adapter. Even that isn't possible here.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  So we do care about custom emoji, and they are obviously critical for folks looking for an encrypted Discord alternative. However, right now we're not focusing on building an encrypted Discord alternative but instead a self-hosted WhatsApp (or Teams) replacement for governments: https://element.io/sectors https://element.io/sectors, on the basis that they are the ones paying. Sure, we could have gone after Discord ~5 years ago and launched our own Nitro equivalent, and perhaps we should have. But instead we observed that governments REALLY want to run their own encrypted interoperable comms systems, and we thought that having Matrix used as the backbone for public sector communication would be a good way to prove and fund it sustainably. Ideally we could then use the public sector as a launchpad into other areas - a bit like how email & the web and even the internet spread from DARPA / NSFNet / academic etc to the rest of the world. After all, what better endorsement for Matrix than someone like NATO using it for comms? As a result, custom emoji are stuck in the middle of the todo list still. Some of the other features that we've worked on instead have been: * Making encryption stable. As hilarious as https://www.reddit.com/r/elementchat/comments/1evz3kk/unable_to_decrypt_message/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementchat/comments/1evz3kk/unable... is. * Make encryption secure - i.e. migrating from the old C/C++ libolm implementation to the rust vodozemac implementation. * Instant login/sync/launch - i.e. an entirely new sync mechanism. * Rather than developing 4 different client stacks (js-sdk, ios-sdk, android-sdk and rust-sdk), converge on a single one: matrix-rust-sdk, and make it excellent. * Rework the core UX to make encryption invisible (rather than full of confusing unactionable warnings and verification nags etc). * Native Matrix-encrypted scalable voip/video calling. * Migrating to OpenID Connect for auth, so getting 2FA/MFA etc * Public sector enterprise features: antivirus, regulatory compliance, secure border gateways, cross-domain gateways, active directory sync, SCIM sync, kubernetes operators, etc. etc. Now, the plan is to use the govtech business to get back to funding mainstream Matrix uptake. But first we need to be able to fund ourselves to work on it.