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> 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

> 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.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    I see your point, and it sounds like an invidious and existential position to be in and you have my sympathy to be fighting uphill against legacy like that. Honestly though, I would contest the logic here: > bit like how email & the web and even the internet spread from DARPA / NSFNet / academic etc to the rest of the world. It spread because it was useful and revolutionary, not because DARPA specifically used it. Yes there were network effects, but the network effect overlap today between "NATO" and "a friend group hangout" is pretty minimal. > what better endorsement for Matrix than someone like NATO using it for comms? Honestly, if all I knew was NATO funded and used it, I'd assume it was enterprise-grade cost-plus shitware 15 years behind the curve, and with zero organisational interest, if not outright hostility, to it being used by anyone without a governmental chequebook and service contract in hand, and steer well clear. It's OK to write software for NATO and governments for the foreseeable future, but the website still says "communicate with friends, family, communities and co-workers", so you can see why people might think it's still targeted at them and then wonder why it doesn't even provide the baseline of human-interest features people have been getting from other platforms for about a decade. Not that it helps pays the bills to court Brian Everyman and his Warhammer group chat, I do realise that.
    - Arathorn 2y ago
      yeah. i'm not saying we've made the optimal choice here: for instance, we could have focused on growing mainstream usage at all cost without distractions of enterprise or govtech (similar to Bluesky), and assume that once we have enough users we'd be able to figure out monetisation somehow via a Discord Nitro style scheme. However, we're at where we are now, and we're committed as to the current path as a way to get sustainable and then go back to supporting mainstream users (including Brian and his Warhammer clan). Perhaps a profitable govtech business can subsidise mainstream FOSS Matrix without having to do Nitro style value gates (which are tough to enforce anyway in a decentralised world). > but the website still says "communicate with friends, family, communities and co-workers" That was the messaging prior to early 2023, when we shifted gear to "get sustainable by focusing on govtech". Which is why the frontpage of the website currently doesn't say anything about friends/family/communities, sadly. I just had to fish around to find out where you saw the old wording - i'm guessing it's in the footer for element.io/blog? ...which is a snafu due to the blog being Ghost and the website being Webflow.

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.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  I see your point, and it sounds like an invidious and existential position to be in and you have my sympathy to be fighting uphill against legacy like that. Honestly though, I would contest the logic here: > bit like how email & the web and even the internet spread from DARPA / NSFNet / academic etc to the rest of the world. It spread because it was useful and revolutionary, not because DARPA specifically used it. Yes there were network effects, but the network effect overlap today between "NATO" and "a friend group hangout" is pretty minimal. > what better endorsement for Matrix than someone like NATO using it for comms? Honestly, if all I knew was NATO funded and used it, I'd assume it was enterprise-grade cost-plus shitware 15 years behind the curve, and with zero organisational interest, if not outright hostility, to it being used by anyone without a governmental chequebook and service contract in hand, and steer well clear. It's OK to write software for NATO and governments for the foreseeable future, but the website still says "communicate with friends, family, communities and co-workers", so you can see why people might think it's still targeted at them and then wonder why it doesn't even provide the baseline of human-interest features people have been getting from other platforms for about a decade. Not that it helps pays the bills to court Brian Everyman and his Warhammer group chat, I do realise that.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    yeah. i'm not saying we've made the optimal choice here: for instance, we could have focused on growing mainstream usage at all cost without distractions of enterprise or govtech (similar to Bluesky), and assume that once we have enough users we'd be able to figure out monetisation somehow via a Discord Nitro style scheme. However, we're at where we are now, and we're committed as to the current path as a way to get sustainable and then go back to supporting mainstream users (including Brian and his Warhammer clan). Perhaps a profitable govtech business can subsidise mainstream FOSS Matrix without having to do Nitro style value gates (which are tough to enforce anyway in a decentralised world). > but the website still says "communicate with friends, family, communities and co-workers" That was the messaging prior to early 2023, when we shifted gear to "get sustainable by focusing on govtech". Which is why the frontpage of the website currently doesn't say anything about friends/family/communities, sadly. I just had to fish around to find out where you saw the old wording - i'm guessing it's in the footer for element.io/blog? ...which is a snafu due to the blog being Ghost and the website being Webflow.