4 ms·

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. Ho

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
  All the best of luck. Genuinely, I hope it works out because I despise all the closed chat platforms and view the lack of a compelling FOSS alternative to be strange, frustrating and even embarrassing when someone uses it as an example of why FOSS just doesn't work for consumer software. As for the wording, it's on the front page of https://matrix.org https://matrix.org, just below the fold. Scroll down once and it's centre of the page. https://imgur.com/a/jonz89P https://imgur.com/a/jonz89P The fold below that is "A cozy, safe, supercharged place for your community" and the image says "Kayak club". Which, yes, is Matrix not Element, but it recommends Element specifically in the click through.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    Oh! Well, yes, Matrix itself would love to be a cosy safe supercharged place for your community (even if i’m not sure a protocol should describe itself like that tbh). Some clients like Cinny or FluffyChat are close to that. Element will also get there eventually. In terms of why consumer FOSS software often sucks: * Good UX requires top down product discipline: cathedral model, not bazaar. * Product folks are less likely to contribute to FOSS, especially in their spare time * Therefore they need to do it as their dayjob. * Running a sustainable FOSS company is hard.
    - grues-dinner 2y ago
      > even if i’m not sure a protocol should describe itself like that tbh Aren't you the matrix.org project lead though? (if not, maybe your bio needs an update).
      - Arathorn 2y ago
        yup. the problem on the matrix.org website is a tradeoff between a very dry “this is a protocol”, like w3c.org - versus trying to give some more accessible use cases for people who expect to find an instant messaging network. the current wording oversteers.
    - 2y ago

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
All the best of luck. Genuinely, I hope it works out because I despise all the closed chat platforms and view the lack of a compelling FOSS alternative to be strange, frustrating and even embarrassing when someone uses it as an example of why FOSS just doesn't work for consumer software. As for the wording, it's on the front page of https://matrix.org https://matrix.org, just below the fold. Scroll down once and it's centre of the page. https://imgur.com/a/jonz89P https://imgur.com/a/jonz89P The fold below that is "A cozy, safe, supercharged place for your community" and the image says "Kayak club". Which, yes, is Matrix not Element, but it recommends Element specifically in the click through.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  Oh! Well, yes, Matrix itself would love to be a cosy safe supercharged place for your community (even if i’m not sure a protocol should describe itself like that tbh). Some clients like Cinny or FluffyChat are close to that. Element will also get there eventually. In terms of why consumer FOSS software often sucks: * Good UX requires top down product discipline: cathedral model, not bazaar. * Product folks are less likely to contribute to FOSS, especially in their spare time * Therefore they need to do it as their dayjob. * Running a sustainable FOSS company is hard.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    > even if i’m not sure a protocol should describe itself like that tbh Aren't you the matrix.org project lead though? (if not, maybe your bio needs an update).
    - Arathorn 2y ago
      yup. the problem on the matrix.org website is a tradeoff between a very dry “this is a protocol”, like w3c.org - versus trying to give some more accessible use cases for people who expect to find an instant messaging network. the current wording oversteers.
  - 2y ago