2 ms·

fwiw roughly 50% of Matrix is on the matrix.org instance currently. we consider this a bug, but also prioritise ease of onboarding over decentralisation purity

fwiw roughly 50% of Matrix is on the matrix.org instance currently. we consider this a bug, but also prioritise ease of onboarding over decentralisation purity ideology.

jchw 2y ago
I hate to be a downer but there's a lot of things Matrix could prioritize over decentralization. That said, the decentralization works pretty badly. Large federated joins are somewhere between comically slow and horrifically slow. Status does not seem to work well across federation either. I'm also a bit miffed that Dendrite was positioned as a "next generation" Matrix server but now it feels nearly orphaned with missing support for newer features, issues with various appservice bridges, few updates at a very slow pace, and no migration path out in sight. I know it came with a fair number of disclaimers, but that still bums me out as it seemed like it would be okay for a small non-critical homeserver, and now it seems likely I'll have to engineer my own path out when clients finally stop working with Dendrite. (It already happened once...) You have no idea how bad I want to love Matrix, but frankly if it was due to a focus on usability that decentralization "purity" has suffered, it simply does not show in the resulting usability improvements over years of time. Sorry to be harsh.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  if you feel miffed, imagine how the Dendrite team feels, given the lack of funding which means it is on best-effort dev currently. if you’re interested in progress on Matrix, https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/ is where it’s at.
  - jchw 2y ago
    I did see the Matrix 2.0 announcement, though for obvious reasons I can't actually use any of the features listed in it. Obviously, improvements to the basic chat functions of Matrix would be great. For now though, I am stuck with the reality that joining a large federated channel sometimes takes more than 6 hours. I wish I were exaggerating. edit: I guess though that faster room joins weren't a part of Matrix 2.0. Actually, I don't really have a huge problem with the sync taking too long personally. So maybe Matrix 2.0 wouldn't bring that big of an improvement for me anyway.
- tupolef 2y ago
  I share your feelings. I had switched to Dendrite 1 year ago and its flaws made me open my eyes to the major problems I had with the design of the protocol. I started to worry that it would not improve and I reexamined XMPP. Finally I switched to XMPP that I had abandoned more than 5 years ago because I think there is a better chance that the community will finally offer clients with the important features, on all platforms, in the coming year and that it will last over time.

fwiw roughly 50% of Matrix is on the matrix.org instance currently. we consider this a bug, but also prioritise ease of onboarding over decentralisation purity ideology.

jchw 2y ago

I hate to be a downer but there's a lot of things Matrix could prioritize over decentralization. That said, the decentralization works pretty badly. Large federated joins are somewhere between comically slow and horrifically slow. Status does not seem to work well across federation either. I'm also a bit miffed that Dendrite was positioned as a "next generation" Matrix server but now it feels nearly orphaned with missing support for newer features, issues with various appservice bridges, few updates at a very slow pace, and no migration path out in sight. I know it came with a fair number of disclaimers, but that still bums me out as it seemed like it would be okay for a small non-critical homeserver, and now it seems likely I'll have to engineer my own path out when clients finally stop working with Dendrite. (It already happened once...) You have no idea how bad I want to love Matrix, but frankly if it was due to a focus on usability that decentralization "purity" has suffered, it simply does not show in the resulting usability improvements over years of time. Sorry to be harsh.

Arathorn 2y ago
if you feel miffed, imagine how the Dendrite team feels, given the lack of funding which means it is on best-effort dev currently. if you’re interested in progress on Matrix, https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/ is where it’s at.
- jchw 2y ago
  I did see the Matrix 2.0 announcement, though for obvious reasons I can't actually use any of the features listed in it. Obviously, improvements to the basic chat functions of Matrix would be great. For now though, I am stuck with the reality that joining a large federated channel sometimes takes more than 6 hours. I wish I were exaggerating. edit: I guess though that faster room joins weren't a part of Matrix 2.0. Actually, I don't really have a huge problem with the sync taking too long personally. So maybe Matrix 2.0 wouldn't bring that big of an improvement for me anyway.
tupolef 2y ago
I share your feelings. I had switched to Dendrite 1 year ago and its flaws made me open my eyes to the major problems I had with the design of the protocol. I started to worry that it would not improve and I reexamined XMPP. Finally I switched to XMPP that I had abandoned more than 5 years ago because I think there is a better chance that the community will finally offer clients with the important features, on all platforms, in the coming year and that it will last over time.