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> what's so great about IRC? It's got a simple protocol that's easy to implement. There's no company who "owns" IRC, as there is with Matrix, and no "referenc

> what's so great about IRC? It's got a simple protocol that's easy to implement. There's no company who "owns" IRC, as there is with Matrix, and no "reference implementation". Extensions and enhancements are done by consensus of the people writing the clients and servers, there's no central agency that maintains extendion proposals like Python's PEP or Java's JEP. As a result, to be as interoperable as possible, most implementations stick to supporting the existing status quo. If you want to add something new to a client or a server, you run the risk of having that feature only work for a small fraction of users. If it's popular enough, other impementors may choose to make their clients and servers support it. IRCv3 is an attempt to make collaboration a little more formal, but it's a slow process.

ptman 1y ago
In fact the matrix specification is owned by the foundation, not the company.
- cbm-vic-20 1y ago
  "In fact", yes. But does Element still have an outsized influence over the foundation? Just last month the foundation posted a bit of a defensive blog about how "open source" they are to clear the air, but as far as I can tell, it appears that a majority of the foundation "Spec Core Team" are Element employees. I can't strongly back that up since the page that lists the members doesn't say who they're employed by, so I'm guessing based on what their linked GitHub profiles show. https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/
  - Arathorn 1y ago
    the spec core team’s employers are: * alexey (red hat) * clokep (simplisafe) * tulir (beeper) * travis (funded by fdn) * uhoreg (element) * richvdh (element) * dbkr (element) * andrew (element) * erik (element) and me from memory andrew & uhoreg all joined the team before later applying for jobs at Element - the fact being that if you wanted to be paid to work on Matrix back then, Element was pretty much the only place to do so (being the company formed by the team who created Matrix). I’m not going to fire people from Element or kick them off the SCT and lose their braintrust though.

ptman 1y ago

In fact the matrix specification is owned by the foundation, not the company.

cbm-vic-20 1y ago
"In fact", yes. But does Element still have an outsized influence over the foundation? Just last month the foundation posted a bit of a defensive blog about how "open source" they are to clear the air, but as far as I can tell, it appears that a majority of the foundation "Spec Core Team" are Element employees. I can't strongly back that up since the page that lists the members doesn't say who they're employed by, so I'm guessing based on what their linked GitHub profiles show. https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/
- Arathorn 1y ago
  the spec core team’s employers are: * alexey (red hat) * clokep (simplisafe) * tulir (beeper) * travis (funded by fdn) * uhoreg (element) * richvdh (element) * dbkr (element) * andrew (element) * erik (element) and me from memory andrew & uhoreg all joined the team before later applying for jobs at Element - the fact being that if you wanted to be paid to work on Matrix back then, Element was pretty much the only place to do so (being the company formed by the team who created Matrix). I’m not going to fire people from Element or kick them off the SCT and lose their braintrust though.