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Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

deleted 2y ago
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superkuh 2y ago
Another way of saying this is, "Riot.im/Element.io corporation has taken over the reference protocol development from the matrix foundation (now defunct in that aspect, *1) . Now that matrix is controlled by Element.io corporation the remaining Matrix foundation does not have the resources to continue bridges. And Element.io decided that early bridges to bootstrap/steal users from other messenging networks are no longer needed and so will not help the matrix foundation with them or spend any resources to maintain them themselves." ref 1: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrite/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrit... , https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/
- dartos 2y ago
  It seems that neither user interest nor commercial interests are enough to keep protocol development going. It’s kind of sad.
  - mattl 2y ago
    I've found Matrix (clients, I guess) really hard to use... but I'm in IRC channels where lots of people are using Matrix. What are people using?
    - daef 2y ago
      iamb [1] tickles my vim fetish :) [1] https://iamb.chat/ https://iamb.chat/ edit: added link
    - dartos 2y ago
      Using matrix isn’t enough to support the foundation, sadly.
      - mattl 2y ago
        Sure. I can’t be the only person who doesn’t fully understand the Matrix ecosystem.
    - bluesomewhere 2y ago
      Might be worth revisiting, we've seen great improvement in the last year :) I use Element X as my mobile daily driver, and use Element Web on my laptops. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! (meta: I need to create a new account here... but engaging here with this one since it'd be suspicious to have a new account with zero karma weighing in.)
      - mattl 2y ago
        Hey Robin! Element Web is I believe what I’ve used in the past and didn’t enjoy. I like the UI of Slack but not the UI of Discord. I’ll give it another look. I asked on Mastodon for any native apps for desktop people are aware of. I’ll see if that yields anything.
- bluesomewhere 2y ago
  This couldn't be further from the truth. The Matrix.org Foundation is expanding open governance, with a Governing Board that has representatives from all across the ecosystem: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/ And the protocol remains under the auspices of the Foundation, maintained by the volunteer Spec Core Team. Element may be where Matrix was incubated, but it spun up the Foundation as a nonprofit and assigned the copyrights and governance of the protocol to that nonprofit. People can fearmonger all they want, but to Element's credit they've done a whole helluva lot more to preserve the integrity of open source – unlike Elastic, Redis, MongoDB, and dozens of other companies.
  - superkuh 2y ago
    Further from the truth? It is an established fact that Element.io corporation has now re-taken over development of the matrix protocol reference implementations. I provided easy reference links to verify this. And matrix 2.0 and all it's new features and architecture are defined by the corporation's choices alone. The matrix foundation does not do this anymore. What part of this do you claim is false? Your link does not make any such claims re: code. It is all about the composition in people of the matrix foundation. Unfortunately the health, vigor, and composition of the matrix foundation is irrelevant to the aforementioned code and protocol now. I'm not denying that some of them still contribute code, but it's all Element.io's choice now to include it or not. Without control of the reference implementation statements like, "Members of the Spec Core Team pledge to act as a neutral custodian for Matrix on behalf of the whole ecosystem and uphold the Guiding Principles of the project" ring hollow. Eventually a for-profit corporation is going to act like a for profit-corporation.
asah 2y ago
I'd think Google might benefit from Matrix bridges... ?
zenethian 2y ago
I still don't understand why Matrix exists. It feels like a solution looking for a problem to solve. I must be missing something? Can someone explain the gap it closes?
- hwbehrens 2y ago
  From my perspective, the biggest differentiator is that Matrix allows users to remove the centralized coordinator from their chat provider. That is, I can run my own Matrix server, where my users can chat with each other, without any interaction with Element.io or other operator. All other major providers (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc) all rely on a single operator to coordinate the system. Of course, it's still useful to be able to chat with people without accounts on your private server, which is why the federation is still important. You can link up with broader networks, but you're not reliant on them. Why this might matter is because if e.g. the UK government compels WhatsApp to implement a backdoor, as an end user I would never know. But, as someone operating entirely outside of the UK, they have no standing to compel me as a private person to implement a backdoor in my own deployment (or at the worst, at least I would know if it occurred). Think of it as the chat analog to running your own mail server. Does everyone need to run your own mailserver? No. But if we'd started with a siloed system in email, we'd probably still be sending emails only to people with our same TLDs to this day.
  - astro1 2y ago
    We've had this with XMPP already.
    - bjoli 2y ago
      Oh, but people don't like XML. XML means xmpp is awful apparently. I feel pretty alone in having a bad experience with matrix, but a good one with xmpp+omemo.
      - vr46 2y ago
        I found XMPP an absolute delight to work with and built all kinds of command-and-control messaging utils with it that allowed me the flexibility to use it as a chat service and RPC broker all at the same time, with bots as APIs. It was nuts but brilliant. Bring it back, I say.
deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hwbehrens 2y ago
> Without advocacy, conferences, documentation and tutorials, Matrix would become a niche protocol used by a few enthusiasts for side projects, whilst big proprietary and siloed networks continue to hold the world’s communications. Advocacy and conferences aren't going to move the needle on mainstream adoption; those methods almost by definition are targeting the enthusiast crowd. In my view, the only factor that matters to attracting users is UI/UX. Streamlining the user's experience will do more for user adoption than any number of bridges. It's possible that growing the community is the primary goal of Element.io rather than the Matrix Foundation, but in that case, it seems that there is a tension between the goals of the foundation vs Element. I'd like to understand the breakdown between the responsibilities of the foundation vs Element more clearly.
- neiljohnson 2y ago
  The Matrix Foundation's goals and structure are described here (https://matrix.org/foundation/about/ https://matrix.org/foundation/about/) Element is a for-profit company, originally set up to hire the Matrix Core team and is the primary driver for many projects in the Matrix eco-system. Element cannot be successful without a thriving Matrix eco-system. In the early days the line between Element and Matrix was rather blurred, which is why we set up the Foundation as a separate entity in 2018 to ensure that whatever happened to Element, Matrix could continue as an independent entity.
  - superkuh 2y ago
    Except that the Matrix Foundation has already given up control of the reference implementation and protocol architectural choices back to Riot.im/Element.io corporation. This happened a year or two ago. It was blurred for a handful of years. Now it is clearly in control of Element.io corporation again.
- solarkraft 2y ago
  I entirely agree. The advocacy they should be doing is making it as attractive as possible to develop new clients (with good UX) so that finally one with a good UX will come out.
- 2y ago
ensignavenger 2y ago
I love the concept behind the Matrix protocol, but I have zero faith in the Matrix Foundations ability to execute. Folks have been asking for financial tranparency for years now (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issuecomment-1820037667 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco...). And all that we get are posts like this complainging about not having enough money and threatening to shut things down, repeatedly. Maybe if they were more open and transparent, folks could help get them on the right track, either by making recomendations to improve, volunteering to help with things, or contributeing financially. I really want them to succeed, but this has been going on for years now.
- neiljohnson 2y ago
  The intention is very much to offer greater financial transparency, in fact doing so is a prerequisite for multiple funding sources. The Matrix Foundation Governing Board now has a dedicated finance committee, I don't have concrete timelines for publishing, though I would expect this to happen within a small number of months. https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report...
  - dvdkon 2y ago
    I've never run a non-profit, but what's stopping the Foundation from releasing a raw dump of expenses? Where I live, all government contracts/invoices need to be published before they come into effect. This obviously required some setup, but presumably you already have similar data as a source for the planned report, why not release it?
    - bluesomewhere 2y ago
      Because a raw dump of expenses obscures many important details, and sets people up for misunderstanding things and reporting them out of context. I'd love to get to a point of radical and automatic transparency as you describe, but that takes a great deal of effort to do well – and the Matrix.org Foundation is still in its infancy. Gotta learn to walk before we can run!
jisnsm 2y ago
Well, good luck finding it - it’s always in the last place you look!
Evidlo 2y ago
Anyone have an idea why the matrix.org bridges are so expensive to run? e.g. t2bot.io also runs Matrix bridges and the costs are only about $1.5k/mo [0], not $100k [0]: https://t2bot.io/donations/ https://t2bot.io/donations/
- snailmailstare 2y ago
  It looks like the site you are referring to quotes pure ISP costs while the matrix foundation bridge costs include maintaining bridge related software they would otherwise archive.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  the $100k is to fund folks to maintain the bridge software, as well as the hardware costs of running them.
- aine 2y ago
  Matrix.org is the hugest public Matrix server, plus $100k is not just infrastructure costs, but development and maintenance of the bridges as well. As an etke.cc developer, I can assure you that development, maintenance, and operations even a small bridge is no joke. t2bot's costs look like infrastructure and operation costs, not development and maintenance. Disclaimer: I'm Aine of etke.cc, we offer managed Matrix servers with numerous different components, including bridges. Some of the components (like Postmoogle - email bridge) are developed and maintained by our team.
merb 2y ago
why are there two irc briges?
- edhelas 2y ago
  Why are there several Linux distros ?
- Macha 2y ago
  To two different IRC servers. There used to be a third, but Libera asked them to shut it down.
  - merb 2y ago
    Ah I tough the bridge can send to all irc servers.
kop316 2y ago
Small Rant on this: I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact did pay for their hosting services. I am no stranger to self-hosting, and EMS was more expensive then other hosting services. But....I figured it would be nice to help pay for development. EMS then decided to say that if you didn't have a minimum of 50 users (at 5$/user), we wouldn't support you. So I had to migrate my instance, where I pay less for more service (etke.cc doesn't make you pay per user). I mean....it's EMS' call that they don't think supporting a single user instance is worth the hassle, and I get it, supporting what they do is expensive, but it rubs me the wrong way to see posts like this that they are complaining about operating costs when I used to pay to support the operating costs.
- babymode 2y ago
  Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a not-for-profit
  - kop316 2y ago
    While that's fair, My understanding is Element does fund matrix.org (They even state that in the article and it can be seen here: https://matrix.org/support/ https://matrix.org/support/). So I would think that money they get from those services would help.
    - aine 2y ago
      at the same time, they (Element) focus on bigger customers, where they can make bigger money and then fund the Foundation. On the contrary, etke.cc focuses on small, independent Matrix servers that could work as a single-user server, and as a small company/community internal server, and even a public server. Our focus is to be sustainable and to provide a way to own your communications in a hassle-free (or, at least, less painful) way. So, our goals are just different. Disclaimer: I'm Aine, one of the etke.cc developers
      - kop316 2y ago
Jnr 2y ago
I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.
- MortyWaves 2y ago
  Matrix feels like it’s in a strange place. I briefly tried it only to find vast quantities of porn and spam. Even the “programming” channel. I mentioned this in a thread on HN and got blasted by some Matrix maintainer, as if it was preposterous that I found this to not be a good thing. Apparently they are unable or unwilling to moderate and prevent spam, even on arguably probably the first channel a large part of their potential users would join first. That evaporated any remaining interest I had in it.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    It’s probably worth reading https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more context on that. (PS sorry for blasting you, if it was me :)
- vr46 2y ago
  I agree, I've tried every possible setup I could to get things running reliably for a client and ultimately just held up my hands and went, "exactly why are you not using a combination of Signal/Keybase/GPG" for your use case? Even PGP was easier to adopt en-masse than this.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc. But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.
  - pzmarzly 2y ago
cytocync 2y ago
[flagged]
- Arathorn 2y ago
  > I'm shocked that Matrix Foundation is considering shutting down if they don't raise $100K - what's going on behind the scenes here? That’s not what’s happening. The point is that running and maintaining bridges requires $, and without $ that won’t happen. The problem on financials is underfunding. edit: If you’re interested in how we’ve ended up there: https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-the-road-to-mainstream-matrix/slides/237411/2025-02-0_uVigysz.pdf https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-...
  - amatecha 2y ago
    It's a spam account, look at their profile, karma and other comments.
    - Arathorn 2y ago
      guess that explains the weird unicode middots. wonder if it’s random or targeted; anti-matrix/element spam seems to be a thing since certain govts started relying on it.
rebeccaskinner 2y ago
I really want to like Matrix, and just last weekend I re-downloaded a matrix client and tried to give it another shot. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but from what I can tell it's suffering from the same problem that all of the fediverse services seem to suffer from: The only thing to talk about is the fediverse itself. Back in the heyday of IRC I spent a lot of time in technical channels on networks that were mostly technically focused, but I started using IRC in the first place because of the social channels where you could join games, talk about music, or find people with other shared interests. Then there was a moment in time where community slack groups popped up, and again I mostly joined tech focused slack groups, but it still felt social and there were channels to talk about movies or games in addition to talk about careers or particular programming languages. Slack killed those kind of communities but they moved to discord. I left discord when they introduced ads. Open up a Matrix client and look at the public rooms on any large server and you'll find places to talk about... the matrix protocol. and matrix servers. and matrix clients. If it's a really popular server you might also be able to talk about mastadon clients and servers too. Even as someone who is enthusiastic about the idea of federation who might actually be interested in talking about the Matrix protocol or implementing particular servers, I still want to also talk about math or programming languages or movies. Without anything like that Matrix as a whole just gives off this general vibe of being kind of unwelcoming and not _fun_.
- amatecha 2y ago
  There are giant, active channels for specific topics. I've been in the OpenBSD channel(s) for years and there is always relevant deep discussion there. Same for other technical topics like that.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  This is probably because we literally just deleted everything but Matrix-related rooms on the matrix.org room directory to deal with abuse: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-directories/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-directories/
  - rebeccaskinner 2y ago
baobun 2y ago
We are ready to donate. Unfortunately, none of the options work: Only credit card or bank wire transfer are accepted. Arathorn, neiljohnson, thibaultmartin: Could you please provide an option for private and anonymous donations? Throw up a BTC address at least. (For even better exposure while keeping volatility, risk, and overhead at bay, I guess also USDT on SOL+ETH alongside XMR as stretch would be fancy. That USDT would get you access to memecoin gains without having to touch them even with a stick) Or if you're really feeling prevented from accepting anonymous donations: add a fourth payment integration with a provider who can accept and convert it for you without requiring non-zk KYC on the donor side?
- Arathorn 2y ago
  https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ has our BTC and ETH addresses: Bitcoin (address: 1LxowEgsquZ3UPZ68wHf8v2MDZw82dVmAE) Ethereum (address: 0xA5f9a4f9E024F6D727f7afdA9257e22329A97485) Thank you for being up for supporting - it is very much appreciated!
  - baobun 2y ago
    That's encouraging, thank you for still keeping lights on. Will make sure to follow up. FWIW, I did do a cursory look around and search before posting GP and still didn't find those. Might do you well to make those if not prominent then at least discoverable from CTAs.
  - JohnTHaller 2y ago
    Please see my parallel reply to the parent about some Donate page suggestions. I think your page is getting in the way of people giving you money.
- JohnTHaller 2y ago
  I think the Donate page may need a rework. Listing only Donorbox and then Other Options at the top adds unnecessary resistance. I have never heard of Donorbox, I have to click again to see what other options there are. Ok, click. There's also Patreon (which means ongoing donation in my mind) and Librepay (which I've heard of but never used... and is apparently also ongoing donations weekly/monthly/etc). Can't I just use a credit card or PayPal to make a one time donation for instance? After playing around, it seems you can but you have to click DonorBox and then change it to one time. Having a preferred way of donating is great. But most folks who donate just want to give you money. They don't care about whatever service you're using or how much it costs you. I like you, I have some money to give you, make it as friction free as possible. Organize it by how people want to pay (credit card, wire transfer, crypto, etc) and if they want to make it one time or recurring. As an example assume you're a user wanting to make a one-time Euro donation via wire transfer. Ignoring the design (which is long overdue for an update) follow the path on my donation page for my open source project: https://portableapps.com/donate https://portableapps.com/donate May also make sense to separate out Sponsors from the Donate page since they're kinda separate groups.
IlikeKitties 2y ago
So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4
- Arathorn 2y ago
  making progress actually: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/
  - IlikeKitties 2y ago
    I'm happy to see that! To be fair > 14.02.2025 That's pretty recently
    - bluesomewhere 2y ago
      Yeah the post is new but we've been steadily ramping up investment in Trust & Safety the whole time I've been leading the Foundation :) Having added a couple moderators to the team late last year, our T&S team now has a little breathing room to do more proactive, strategic work to improve the situation. Previously, they were almost constantly on their back foot trying to keep up incident management.
- baobun 2y ago
  IDK, have you? Has Apple, Google, Linux? Have we really solved it as a society until we have reached the end-game of Zero Trust Architecture; locked down all bootloaders to only run trusted firmware; locked down firmware to only boot trusted os; enforce attestation at service auth so only genuine devices with client-side "safety" rootkits are accepted?
  - IlikeKitties 2y ago
    If you actually watched the linked video you would see that random matrix servers were co-opted to spread CSAM on a massive scale due to what is essentially a design flaw and there was until very very recently not much done to make it possible for server admins to fight that. It's not as black and white as your comment makes it seem.
davidandgoliath 2y ago
They should consider asking Automattic & some of the other companies building on Matrix to contribute 8% of their revenue first.
- bluesomewhere 2y ago
  You can trust that if there's anything obvious we should be doing, we are already doing it :) And I'm pleased to report that Automattic is one of our biggest sponsors.
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    The parent's "8%" is likely referring to the amount of revenue that Automattic is demanding from WP Engine: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-dra...
like_any_other 2y ago
> Without Trust & Safety efforts, bad actors and communities would proliferate on the network and make it unlivable for the rest. What exactly does this mean? How is, say, my friend group chat affected by unconnected "bad communities"? Why do we care if those communities use matrix, or http, or xmpp, or skype?
- Arathorn 2y ago
  because if your friends start roaming around the public Matrix network and find public chatrooms full of abusive content, then they will indeed be affected. see https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more.
  - kevincox 2y ago
    This seems like tough choices to make. I see a lot of concerns. 1. The Matrix Foundation wants to promote communities to encourage adoption. 2. Matrix needs tools for moderating communities, even if the Matrix Foundation doesn't run communities. So it probably does make sense for the Foundation to take this problem on, even if not directly required to making a chat protocol.
    - cvwright 2y ago
      It’s a super hard problem. So much so that it’s looking like maybe federation is not the best model. Your server ends up hosting any room and potentially any media that any of your users gets into. So naturally server admins must take an interest us in what their users are doing. This is in conflict with the top level goals of freedom and privacy. Maybe the simpler client-server model of the web is better after all. Then if some user on my server is also into some super weird stuff, I don’t have to know. Because they connect to the weird server directly from their client, not through me.
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
I do hope they get what they need. If nothing else, I think they've chosen a solid and well-founded strategy to manage the situation - the focus areas they mentioned are more important than bridging. Maintaining bridges has always struck me as something hugely resource intensive. I applaud their stewardship. My story with moving to Matrix is similar to many others. I was enthusiastic about it, managed to persuade my groups to try it out, but then everyone was "unable to decrypt message", lost confidence in Matrix and left. The frequency with which the Matrix folks have to repeat "this is fixed in Element X and Matrix 2.0" is worrying. They keep repeating it everywhere, constantly. This indicates to me that an extremely large percentage of people have dismissed Matrix and not looked at it since their initial bad impression. This is a tough challenge to overcome, so I see why they are prioritizing evangalizing the protocol over bridges. Reputation is valuable and they need to get it back, they're definitely trying. I hope they succeed.
- bluesomewhere 2y ago
  Thank you! I am optimistic that we'll pull through. And yes, I think you're right to be a bit worried about how frequently we need to ask people if they've tried Matrix recently. First impressions matter a lot, and a lot of early adopters had bad first impressions. At some point we need a more concerted communication and outreach strategy to address that issue.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  the frustrating thing is that Element X really did fix the encryption issues. getting people to give it a second chance is hard though.
  - tylergetsay 2y ago
    I just downloaded it and there is no way to reset my password. I had to go to the element web interface to do so. There is still a lot to do
    - Arathorn 2y ago
      This is probably because you’re using matrix.org, which hasn’t yet rolled out the new Matrix 2.0 authentication thet Element X uses (given it involves migrating 50M accounts or something). This is planned for March however.
carlosjobim 2y ago
If they only had a dollar for every time any hacker made a comment on how great it is.... Then they'd have much more than 100k
- Arathorn 2y ago
  and if we had a dollar for every time someone said how much it sucked when they tried it 5 years ago, we’d have more than the $1.2M target! :D
moralestapia 2y ago
Lmao, imagine having a project no one gaf about and the best idea you come up with is asking for ransom from the same people that dgaf about it. Developers say the darndest things!
2Gkashmiri 2y ago
I was a huge matrix user, had converted "most" of my family and extended family to join matrix to be able to talk to me and it was generally a fine experience. Not great, just fine. But.... then the government imposed a ban and I continued to use it and last year the police knocked on my door with an Armada thinking me and my family were hosting some "terrorist". My.family forced me to cut ties to matrix then and there.
- nipah 2y ago
  Sorry for your dictatorial government, buddy.
- IlikeKitties 2y ago
  What country has banned matrix?
  - 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
    like my name. kashmir. government of india
Obertr 2y ago
Start to earn money guys! You can do that! P.S. donated.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Another way of saying this is, "Riot.im/Element.io corporation has taken over the reference protocol development from the matrix foundation (now defunct in that aspect, *1) . Now that matrix is controlled by Element.io corporation the remaining Matrix foundation does not have the resources to continue bridges. And Element.io decided that early bridges to bootstrap/steal users from other messenging networks are no longer needed and so will not help the matrix foundation with them or spend any resources to maintain them themselves." ref 1: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrite/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrit... , https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/

dartos 2y ago
It seems that neither user interest nor commercial interests are enough to keep protocol development going. It’s kind of sad.
- mattl 2y ago
  I've found Matrix (clients, I guess) really hard to use... but I'm in IRC channels where lots of people are using Matrix. What are people using?
  - daef 2y ago
    iamb [1] tickles my vim fetish :) [1] https://iamb.chat/ https://iamb.chat/ edit: added link
  - dartos 2y ago
    Using matrix isn’t enough to support the foundation, sadly.
    - mattl 2y ago
      Sure. I can’t be the only person who doesn’t fully understand the Matrix ecosystem.
  - bluesomewhere 2y ago
    Might be worth revisiting, we've seen great improvement in the last year :) I use Element X as my mobile daily driver, and use Element Web on my laptops. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions! (meta: I need to create a new account here... but engaging here with this one since it'd be suspicious to have a new account with zero karma weighing in.)
    - mattl 2y ago
      Hey Robin! Element Web is I believe what I’ve used in the past and didn’t enjoy. I like the UI of Slack but not the UI of Discord. I’ll give it another look. I asked on Mastodon for any native apps for desktop people are aware of. I’ll see if that yields anything.
bluesomewhere 2y ago
This couldn't be further from the truth. The Matrix.org Foundation is expanding open governance, with a Governing Board that has representatives from all across the ecosystem: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/ And the protocol remains under the auspices of the Foundation, maintained by the volunteer Spec Core Team. Element may be where Matrix was incubated, but it spun up the Foundation as a nonprofit and assigned the copyrights and governance of the protocol to that nonprofit. People can fearmonger all they want, but to Element's credit they've done a whole helluva lot more to preserve the integrity of open source – unlike Elastic, Redis, MongoDB, and dozens of other companies.
- superkuh 2y ago
  Further from the truth? It is an established fact that Element.io corporation has now re-taken over development of the matrix protocol reference implementations. I provided easy reference links to verify this. And matrix 2.0 and all it's new features and architecture are defined by the corporation's choices alone. The matrix foundation does not do this anymore. What part of this do you claim is false? Your link does not make any such claims re: code. It is all about the composition in people of the matrix foundation. Unfortunately the health, vigor, and composition of the matrix foundation is irrelevant to the aforementioned code and protocol now. I'm not denying that some of them still contribute code, but it's all Element.io's choice now to include it or not. Without control of the reference implementation statements like, "Members of the Spec Core Team pledge to act as a neutral custodian for Matrix on behalf of the whole ecosystem and uphold the Guiding Principles of the project" ring hollow. Eventually a for-profit corporation is going to act like a for profit-corporation.

asah 2y ago

I'd think Google might benefit from Matrix bridges... ?

zenethian 2y ago

I still don't understand why Matrix exists. It feels like a solution looking for a problem to solve. I must be missing something? Can someone explain the gap it closes?

hwbehrens 2y ago
From my perspective, the biggest differentiator is that Matrix allows users to remove the centralized coordinator from their chat provider. That is, I can run my own Matrix server, where my users can chat with each other, without any interaction with Element.io or other operator. All other major providers (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc) all rely on a single operator to coordinate the system. Of course, it's still useful to be able to chat with people without accounts on your private server, which is why the federation is still important. You can link up with broader networks, but you're not reliant on them. Why this might matter is because if e.g. the UK government compels WhatsApp to implement a backdoor, as an end user I would never know. But, as someone operating entirely outside of the UK, they have no standing to compel me as a private person to implement a backdoor in my own deployment (or at the worst, at least I would know if it occurred). Think of it as the chat analog to running your own mail server. Does everyone need to run your own mailserver? No. But if we'd started with a siloed system in email, we'd probably still be sending emails only to people with our same TLDs to this day.
- astro1 2y ago
  We've had this with XMPP already.
  - bjoli 2y ago
    Oh, but people don't like XML. XML means xmpp is awful apparently. I feel pretty alone in having a bad experience with matrix, but a good one with xmpp+omemo.
    - vr46 2y ago
      I found XMPP an absolute delight to work with and built all kinds of command-and-control messaging utils with it that allowed me the flexibility to use it as a chat service and RPC broker all at the same time, with bots as APIs. It was nuts but brilliant. Bring it back, I say.

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hwbehrens 2y ago

> Without advocacy, conferences, documentation and tutorials, Matrix would become a niche protocol used by a few enthusiasts for side projects, whilst big proprietary and siloed networks continue to hold the world’s communications. Advocacy and conferences aren't going to move the needle on mainstream adoption; those methods almost by definition are targeting the enthusiast crowd. In my view, the only factor that matters to attracting users is UI/UX. Streamlining the user's experience will do more for user adoption than any number of bridges. It's possible that growing the community is the primary goal of Element.io rather than the Matrix Foundation, but in that case, it seems that there is a tension between the goals of the foundation vs Element. I'd like to understand the breakdown between the responsibilities of the foundation vs Element more clearly.

neiljohnson 2y ago
The Matrix Foundation's goals and structure are described here (https://matrix.org/foundation/about/ https://matrix.org/foundation/about/) Element is a for-profit company, originally set up to hire the Matrix Core team and is the primary driver for many projects in the Matrix eco-system. Element cannot be successful without a thriving Matrix eco-system. In the early days the line between Element and Matrix was rather blurred, which is why we set up the Foundation as a separate entity in 2018 to ensure that whatever happened to Element, Matrix could continue as an independent entity.
- superkuh 2y ago
  Except that the Matrix Foundation has already given up control of the reference implementation and protocol architectural choices back to Riot.im/Element.io corporation. This happened a year or two ago. It was blurred for a handful of years. Now it is clearly in control of Element.io corporation again.
solarkraft 2y ago
I entirely agree. The advocacy they should be doing is making it as attractive as possible to develop new clients (with good UX) so that finally one with a good UX will come out.
2y ago

ensignavenger 2y ago

I love the concept behind the Matrix protocol, but I have zero faith in the Matrix Foundations ability to execute. Folks have been asking for financial tranparency for years now (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issuecomment-1820037667 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco...). And all that we get are posts like this complainging about not having enough money and threatening to shut things down, repeatedly. Maybe if they were more open and transparent, folks could help get them on the right track, either by making recomendations to improve, volunteering to help with things, or contributeing financially. I really want them to succeed, but this has been going on for years now.

neiljohnson 2y ago
The intention is very much to offer greater financial transparency, in fact doing so is a prerequisite for multiple funding sources. The Matrix Foundation Governing Board now has a dedicated finance committee, I don't have concrete timelines for publishing, though I would expect this to happen within a small number of months. https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report/ https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report...
- dvdkon 2y ago
  I've never run a non-profit, but what's stopping the Foundation from releasing a raw dump of expenses? Where I live, all government contracts/invoices need to be published before they come into effect. This obviously required some setup, but presumably you already have similar data as a source for the planned report, why not release it?
  - bluesomewhere 2y ago
    Because a raw dump of expenses obscures many important details, and sets people up for misunderstanding things and reporting them out of context. I'd love to get to a point of radical and automatic transparency as you describe, but that takes a great deal of effort to do well – and the Matrix.org Foundation is still in its infancy. Gotta learn to walk before we can run!

jisnsm 2y ago

Well, good luck finding it - it’s always in the last place you look!

Evidlo 2y ago

Anyone have an idea why the matrix.org bridges are so expensive to run? e.g. t2bot.io also runs Matrix bridges and the costs are only about $1.5k/mo [0], not $100k [0]: https://t2bot.io/donations/ https://t2bot.io/donations/

snailmailstare 2y ago
It looks like the site you are referring to quotes pure ISP costs while the matrix foundation bridge costs include maintaining bridge related software they would otherwise archive.
Arathorn 2y ago
the $100k is to fund folks to maintain the bridge software, as well as the hardware costs of running them.
aine 2y ago
Matrix.org is the hugest public Matrix server, plus $100k is not just infrastructure costs, but development and maintenance of the bridges as well. As an etke.cc developer, I can assure you that development, maintenance, and operations even a small bridge is no joke. t2bot's costs look like infrastructure and operation costs, not development and maintenance. Disclaimer: I'm Aine of etke.cc, we offer managed Matrix servers with numerous different components, including bridges. Some of the components (like Postmoogle - email bridge) are developed and maintained by our team.

merb 2y ago

why are there two irc briges?

edhelas 2y ago
Why are there several Linux distros ?
Macha 2y ago
To two different IRC servers. There used to be a third, but Libera asked them to shut it down.
- merb 2y ago
  Ah I tough the bridge can send to all irc servers.

kop316 2y ago

Small Rant on this: I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact did pay for their hosting services. I am no stranger to self-hosting, and EMS was more expensive then other hosting services. But....I figured it would be nice to help pay for development. EMS then decided to say that if you didn't have a minimum of 50 users (at 5$/user), we wouldn't support you. So I had to migrate my instance, where I pay less for more service (etke.cc doesn't make you pay per user). I mean....it's EMS' call that they don't think supporting a single user instance is worth the hassle, and I get it, supporting what they do is expensive, but it rubs me the wrong way to see posts like this that they are complaining about operating costs when I used to pay to support the operating costs.

babymode 2y ago
Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a not-for-profit
- kop316 2y ago
  While that's fair, My understanding is Element does fund matrix.org (They even state that in the article and it can be seen here: https://matrix.org/support/ https://matrix.org/support/). So I would think that money they get from those services would help.
  - aine 2y ago
    at the same time, they (Element) focus on bigger customers, where they can make bigger money and then fund the Foundation. On the contrary, etke.cc focuses on small, independent Matrix servers that could work as a single-user server, and as a small company/community internal server, and even a public server. Our focus is to be sustainable and to provide a way to own your communications in a hassle-free (or, at least, less painful) way. So, our goals are just different. Disclaimer: I'm Aine, one of the etke.cc developers
    - kop316 2y ago

Jnr 2y ago

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

MortyWaves 2y ago
Matrix feels like it’s in a strange place. I briefly tried it only to find vast quantities of porn and spam. Even the “programming” channel. I mentioned this in a thread on HN and got blasted by some Matrix maintainer, as if it was preposterous that I found this to not be a good thing. Apparently they are unable or unwilling to moderate and prevent spam, even on arguably probably the first channel a large part of their potential users would join first. That evaporated any remaining interest I had in it.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  It’s probably worth reading https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more context on that. (PS sorry for blasting you, if it was me :)
vr46 2y ago
I agree, I've tried every possible setup I could to get things running reliably for a client and ultimately just held up my hands and went, "exactly why are you not using a combination of Signal/Keybase/GPG" for your use case? Even PGP was easier to adopt en-masse than this.
Arathorn 2y ago
The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc. But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.
- pzmarzly 2y ago

cytocync 2y ago

[flagged]

Arathorn 2y ago
> I'm shocked that Matrix Foundation is considering shutting down if they don't raise $100K - what's going on behind the scenes here? That’s not what’s happening. The point is that running and maintaining bridges requires $, and without $ that won’t happen. The problem on financials is underfunding. edit: If you’re interested in how we’ve ended up there: https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-the-road-to-mainstream-matrix/slides/237411/2025-02-0_uVigysz.pdf https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-...
- amatecha 2y ago
  It's a spam account, look at their profile, karma and other comments.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    guess that explains the weird unicode middots. wonder if it’s random or targeted; anti-matrix/element spam seems to be a thing since certain govts started relying on it.

rebeccaskinner 2y ago

I really want to like Matrix, and just last weekend I re-downloaded a matrix client and tried to give it another shot. Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but from what I can tell it's suffering from the same problem that all of the fediverse services seem to suffer from: The only thing to talk about is the fediverse itself. Back in the heyday of IRC I spent a lot of time in technical channels on networks that were mostly technically focused, but I started using IRC in the first place because of the social channels where you could join games, talk about music, or find people with other shared interests. Then there was a moment in time where community slack groups popped up, and again I mostly joined tech focused slack groups, but it still felt social and there were channels to talk about movies or games in addition to talk about careers or particular programming languages. Slack killed those kind of communities but they moved to discord. I left discord when they introduced ads. Open up a Matrix client and look at the public rooms on any large server and you'll find places to talk about... the matrix protocol. and matrix servers. and matrix clients. If it's a really popular server you might also be able to talk about mastadon clients and servers too. Even as someone who is enthusiastic about the idea of federation who might actually be interested in talking about the Matrix protocol or implementing particular servers, I still want to also talk about math or programming languages or movies. Without anything like that Matrix as a whole just gives off this general vibe of being kind of unwelcoming and not _fun_.

amatecha 2y ago
There are giant, active channels for specific topics. I've been in the OpenBSD channel(s) for years and there is always relevant deep discussion there. Same for other technical topics like that.
Arathorn 2y ago
This is probably because we literally just deleted everything but Matrix-related rooms on the matrix.org room directory to deal with abuse: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-directories/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-directories/
- rebeccaskinner 2y ago

baobun 2y ago

We are ready to donate. Unfortunately, none of the options work: Only credit card or bank wire transfer are accepted. Arathorn, neiljohnson, thibaultmartin: Could you please provide an option for private and anonymous donations? Throw up a BTC address at least. (For even better exposure while keeping volatility, risk, and overhead at bay, I guess also USDT on SOL+ETH alongside XMR as stretch would be fancy. That USDT would get you access to memecoin gains without having to touch them even with a stick) Or if you're really feeling prevented from accepting anonymous donations: add a fourth payment integration with a provider who can accept and convert it for you without requiring non-zk KYC on the donor side?

Arathorn 2y ago
https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ has our BTC and ETH addresses: Bitcoin (address: 1LxowEgsquZ3UPZ68wHf8v2MDZw82dVmAE) Ethereum (address: 0xA5f9a4f9E024F6D727f7afdA9257e22329A97485) Thank you for being up for supporting - it is very much appreciated!
- baobun 2y ago
  That's encouraging, thank you for still keeping lights on. Will make sure to follow up. FWIW, I did do a cursory look around and search before posting GP and still didn't find those. Might do you well to make those if not prominent then at least discoverable from CTAs.
- JohnTHaller 2y ago
  Please see my parallel reply to the parent about some Donate page suggestions. I think your page is getting in the way of people giving you money.
JohnTHaller 2y ago
I think the Donate page may need a rework. Listing only Donorbox and then Other Options at the top adds unnecessary resistance. I have never heard of Donorbox, I have to click again to see what other options there are. Ok, click. There's also Patreon (which means ongoing donation in my mind) and Librepay (which I've heard of but never used... and is apparently also ongoing donations weekly/monthly/etc). Can't I just use a credit card or PayPal to make a one time donation for instance? After playing around, it seems you can but you have to click DonorBox and then change it to one time. Having a preferred way of donating is great. But most folks who donate just want to give you money. They don't care about whatever service you're using or how much it costs you. I like you, I have some money to give you, make it as friction free as possible. Organize it by how people want to pay (credit card, wire transfer, crypto, etc) and if they want to make it one time or recurring. As an example assume you're a user wanting to make a one-time Euro donation via wire transfer. Ignoring the design (which is long overdue for an update) follow the path on my donation page for my open source project: https://portableapps.com/donate https://portableapps.com/donate May also make sense to separate out Sponsors from the Donate page since they're kinda separate groups.

IlikeKitties 2y ago

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

Arathorn 2y ago
making progress actually: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/
- IlikeKitties 2y ago
  I'm happy to see that! To be fair > 14.02.2025 That's pretty recently
  - bluesomewhere 2y ago
    Yeah the post is new but we've been steadily ramping up investment in Trust & Safety the whole time I've been leading the Foundation :) Having added a couple moderators to the team late last year, our T&S team now has a little breathing room to do more proactive, strategic work to improve the situation. Previously, they were almost constantly on their back foot trying to keep up incident management.
baobun 2y ago
IDK, have you? Has Apple, Google, Linux? Have we really solved it as a society until we have reached the end-game of Zero Trust Architecture; locked down all bootloaders to only run trusted firmware; locked down firmware to only boot trusted os; enforce attestation at service auth so only genuine devices with client-side "safety" rootkits are accepted?
- IlikeKitties 2y ago
  If you actually watched the linked video you would see that random matrix servers were co-opted to spread CSAM on a massive scale due to what is essentially a design flaw and there was until very very recently not much done to make it possible for server admins to fight that. It's not as black and white as your comment makes it seem.

davidandgoliath 2y ago

They should consider asking Automattic & some of the other companies building on Matrix to contribute 8% of their revenue first.

bluesomewhere 2y ago
You can trust that if there's anything obvious we should be doing, we are already doing it :) And I'm pleased to report that Automattic is one of our biggest sponsors.
- ValentineC 2y ago
  The parent's "8%" is likely referring to the amount of revenue that Automattic is demanding from WP Engine: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-dra...

like_any_other 2y ago

> Without Trust & Safety efforts, bad actors and communities would proliferate on the network and make it unlivable for the rest. What exactly does this mean? How is, say, my friend group chat affected by unconnected "bad communities"? Why do we care if those communities use matrix, or http, or xmpp, or skype?

Arathorn 2y ago
because if your friends start roaming around the public Matrix network and find public chatrooms full of abusive content, then they will indeed be affected. see https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more.
- kevincox 2y ago
  This seems like tough choices to make. I see a lot of concerns. 1. The Matrix Foundation wants to promote communities to encourage adoption. 2. Matrix needs tools for moderating communities, even if the Matrix Foundation doesn't run communities. So it probably does make sense for the Foundation to take this problem on, even if not directly required to making a chat protocol.
  - cvwright 2y ago
    It’s a super hard problem. So much so that it’s looking like maybe federation is not the best model. Your server ends up hosting any room and potentially any media that any of your users gets into. So naturally server admins must take an interest us in what their users are doing. This is in conflict with the top level goals of freedom and privacy. Maybe the simpler client-server model of the web is better after all. Then if some user on my server is also into some super weird stuff, I don’t have to know. Because they connect to the weird server directly from their client, not through me.

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

I do hope they get what they need. If nothing else, I think they've chosen a solid and well-founded strategy to manage the situation - the focus areas they mentioned are more important than bridging. Maintaining bridges has always struck me as something hugely resource intensive. I applaud their stewardship. My story with moving to Matrix is similar to many others. I was enthusiastic about it, managed to persuade my groups to try it out, but then everyone was "unable to decrypt message", lost confidence in Matrix and left. The frequency with which the Matrix folks have to repeat "this is fixed in Element X and Matrix 2.0" is worrying. They keep repeating it everywhere, constantly. This indicates to me that an extremely large percentage of people have dismissed Matrix and not looked at it since their initial bad impression. This is a tough challenge to overcome, so I see why they are prioritizing evangalizing the protocol over bridges. Reputation is valuable and they need to get it back, they're definitely trying. I hope they succeed.

bluesomewhere 2y ago
Thank you! I am optimistic that we'll pull through. And yes, I think you're right to be a bit worried about how frequently we need to ask people if they've tried Matrix recently. First impressions matter a lot, and a lot of early adopters had bad first impressions. At some point we need a more concerted communication and outreach strategy to address that issue.
Arathorn 2y ago
the frustrating thing is that Element X really did fix the encryption issues. getting people to give it a second chance is hard though.
- tylergetsay 2y ago
  I just downloaded it and there is no way to reset my password. I had to go to the element web interface to do so. There is still a lot to do
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    This is probably because you’re using matrix.org, which hasn’t yet rolled out the new Matrix 2.0 authentication thet Element X uses (given it involves migrating 50M accounts or something). This is planned for March however.

carlosjobim 2y ago

If they only had a dollar for every time any hacker made a comment on how great it is.... Then they'd have much more than 100k

Arathorn 2y ago
and if we had a dollar for every time someone said how much it sucked when they tried it 5 years ago, we’d have more than the $1.2M target! :D

moralestapia 2y ago

Lmao, imagine having a project no one gaf about and the best idea you come up with is asking for ransom from the same people that dgaf about it. Developers say the darndest things!

2Gkashmiri 2y ago

I was a huge matrix user, had converted "most" of my family and extended family to join matrix to be able to talk to me and it was generally a fine experience. Not great, just fine. But.... then the government imposed a ban and I continued to use it and last year the police knocked on my door with an Armada thinking me and my family were hosting some "terrorist". My.family forced me to cut ties to matrix then and there.

nipah 2y ago
Sorry for your dictatorial government, buddy.
IlikeKitties 2y ago
What country has banned matrix?
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
  like my name. kashmir. government of india

Obertr 2y ago

Start to earn money guys! You can do that! P.S. donated.