4 ms·

"Pull requests welcome" is all I can say to anyone who puts energy into long rants about the "state" of a FOSS project. If you think volunteer dev is so easy t

"Pull requests welcome" is all I can say to anyone who puts energy into long rants about the "state" of a FOSS project. If you think volunteer dev is so easy then get stuck in and be the change you want to see.

AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
Matrix is not a some sort of volunteer project. It is used by NATO as their NI2CE, as well as by many other governmental entities. Matrix runs on European taxpayer's money.
- hammyhavoc 1y ago
  You're thinking of Element: https://element.io/case-studies/nato https://element.io/case-studies/nato Now do Nextcloud and many other projects. It's FOSS. There are volunteer contributors. https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ > Matrix is not just an open standard for secure communication, it’s an openly governed and collaboratively developed ecosystem of projects powered by a growing community of volunteers and vendors. In this way, Matrix exemplifies the open source ethos, encourages greater innovation, and defies those who would try to build businesses based on extractive behavior and vendor lock-in. Oh look, more calls for volunteers, despite "running on European taxpayer money": https://conference.matrix.org/volunteer/ https://conference.matrix.org/volunteer/ Sorry, but idiotic remarks like this stink of having an agenda. You don't even put a name and identity to your HN account and provide zero sources. At best, you're clueless, at worst you're spreading FUD.
  - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
    Oh, it seems you are here to just troll and insult everyone. Matrix by calling it just a some sort of volunteer project run by nerds in basements, and those too, who are not pleased with it's problems. What exactly does have a "call for volunteers" to haul around stuff in a some sort of conference has to do with anything? What has Nextcloud to do with this? You'd have known that Matrix ecosystem has lots of paid professionals working on it, if you made even a cursory research on the subject before starting to write cheeky comments. You claimed the problems with Matrix can be solved with a few pull requests. It's your duty to back it up.
    - hammyhavoc 1y ago
      Nowhere did I say "a few pull requests". I said "pull requests welcome". Every accusation is a confession—you are the troll. If you are insulted then that is on you. Name these paid professionals.
      - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
        https://uk.linkedin.com/company/matrix-org https://uk.linkedin.com/company/matrix-org https://uk.linkedin.com/company/element-hq?trk=similar-pages https://uk.linkedin.com/company/element-hq?trk=similar-pages etc.
- Arathorn 1y ago
  The Matrix Foundation is currently massively underfunded (contributing significantly to many of the complaints in this thread, especially around Trust & Safety) and even then losing money. It gets no money from folks like France or NATO despite their use of Matrix. You can see the list of financially contributing projects at https://matrix.org/support https://matrix.org/support - there are only two governmental entities who support Matrix directly today; Gematik in Germany and another unlisted European govt. Element on the other hand does have a bunch of customers like NATO, but is also losing money, thanks to governmental Matrix deals often going to system integrators who win contracts with Element's FOSS software and then don't contribute any $ back to Element. I explained the mess at FOSDEM: https://youtu.be/lkCKhP1jxdk?t=740 https://youtu.be/lkCKhP1jxdk?t=740 and there's a good article about a typical instance of this (in German) at https://www.heise.de/news/Wie-Behoerden-und-ihre-Auftragnehmer-Open-Source-Software-ausbeuten-10274161.html https://www.heise.de/news/Wie-Behoerden-und-ihre-Auftragnehm... (by the way, you seem to spend a a lot of time telling everyone how shit Matrix is; don't you have anything better to do? :)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    > thanks to governmental Matrix deals often going to system integrators who win contracts with Element's FOSS software and then don't contribute any $ back to Element Are they contributing code? Money (explicitly to a single specific entity, especially) is hardly the only way to support something.
    - Arathorn 1y ago
      France has contributed back some code in lieu of money, but it’s a very mixed blessing given we then have to maintain that code, which costs way more in the long term than writing it in the first place. It also actively damages the braintrust of the team if Element has to let staff go because we can’t pay them, and get code instead (as happened with France).
      - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
        If those contributions are more a liability than an asset, why not reject them?
goku12 1y ago
Pull requests aren't going to solve the current issues with Matrix. I believe that the problem arises from the protocol design itself. And cutting back on the current specification is not viable for an already deployed project. Here are some reasons why I think it's the protocol. Synapse is the only fully functional home server. Both dendrite and conduit are struggling to reach feature parity. This could be either due to the protocol being too complex or it being extended too fast. I have seen signs of both. Meanwhile, practically all web clients like element, cinny and schildi are all based on the same codebase. Native clients like Fractal and Nheko do exist. But it looks like they are also going to need the rust library behind elementx to attain full function. This lack of diversity among the clients are also indicative of the protocol complexity (similar to how nearly every web browser is based on Chrome's blink engine).
- Arathorn 1y ago
  This is not correct. Matrix is deliberately asymmetrical - it’s easier to write clients than servers (although that balances has shifted somewhat with E2EE). The reason Dendrite has fallen behind is simply because we couldn’t afford to split focus between it and Synapse. Meanwhile the various Conduit projects seem to be keeping up quite well despite being entirely hobby projects. Clientside, there are entirely separate production grade stacks with full featuresets in at least typescript (eg Element Web), rust (EX, Fractal), Dart (FluffyChat), KMP (Trixnity), C++ (Nheko), Go (Beeper) and more. I can guarantee their authors would very heavily push back on the “you need rust-sdk to attain full function”, not least as many of those have more features than rust-sdk. This is not a WebKit situation.

AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago

Matrix is not a some sort of volunteer project. It is used by NATO as their NI2CE, as well as by many other governmental entities. Matrix runs on European taxpayer's money.

hammyhavoc 1y ago
You're thinking of Element: https://element.io/case-studies/nato https://element.io/case-studies/nato Now do Nextcloud and many other projects. It's FOSS. There are volunteer contributors. https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths/ > Matrix is not just an open standard for secure communication, it’s an openly governed and collaboratively developed ecosystem of projects powered by a growing community of volunteers and vendors. In this way, Matrix exemplifies the open source ethos, encourages greater innovation, and defies those who would try to build businesses based on extractive behavior and vendor lock-in. Oh look, more calls for volunteers, despite "running on European taxpayer money": https://conference.matrix.org/volunteer/ https://conference.matrix.org/volunteer/ Sorry, but idiotic remarks like this stink of having an agenda. You don't even put a name and identity to your HN account and provide zero sources. At best, you're clueless, at worst you're spreading FUD.
- AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
  Oh, it seems you are here to just troll and insult everyone. Matrix by calling it just a some sort of volunteer project run by nerds in basements, and those too, who are not pleased with it's problems. What exactly does have a "call for volunteers" to haul around stuff in a some sort of conference has to do with anything? What has Nextcloud to do with this? You'd have known that Matrix ecosystem has lots of paid professionals working on it, if you made even a cursory research on the subject before starting to write cheeky comments. You claimed the problems with Matrix can be solved with a few pull requests. It's your duty to back it up.
  - hammyhavoc 1y ago
    Nowhere did I say "a few pull requests". I said "pull requests welcome". Every accusation is a confession—you are the troll. If you are insulted then that is on you. Name these paid professionals.
    - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
      https://uk.linkedin.com/company/matrix-org https://uk.linkedin.com/company/matrix-org https://uk.linkedin.com/company/element-hq?trk=similar-pages https://uk.linkedin.com/company/element-hq?trk=similar-pages etc.
Arathorn 1y ago
The Matrix Foundation is currently massively underfunded (contributing significantly to many of the complaints in this thread, especially around Trust & Safety) and even then losing money. It gets no money from folks like France or NATO despite their use of Matrix. You can see the list of financially contributing projects at https://matrix.org/support https://matrix.org/support - there are only two governmental entities who support Matrix directly today; Gematik in Germany and another unlisted European govt. Element on the other hand does have a bunch of customers like NATO, but is also losing money, thanks to governmental Matrix deals often going to system integrators who win contracts with Element's FOSS software and then don't contribute any $ back to Element. I explained the mess at FOSDEM: https://youtu.be/lkCKhP1jxdk?t=740 https://youtu.be/lkCKhP1jxdk?t=740 and there's a good article about a typical instance of this (in German) at https://www.heise.de/news/Wie-Behoerden-und-ihre-Auftragnehmer-Open-Source-Software-ausbeuten-10274161.html https://www.heise.de/news/Wie-Behoerden-und-ihre-Auftragnehm... (by the way, you seem to spend a a lot of time telling everyone how shit Matrix is; don't you have anything better to do? :)
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  > thanks to governmental Matrix deals often going to system integrators who win contracts with Element's FOSS software and then don't contribute any $ back to Element Are they contributing code? Money (explicitly to a single specific entity, especially) is hardly the only way to support something.
  - Arathorn 1y ago
    France has contributed back some code in lieu of money, but it’s a very mixed blessing given we then have to maintain that code, which costs way more in the long term than writing it in the first place. It also actively damages the braintrust of the team if Element has to let staff go because we can’t pay them, and get code instead (as happened with France).
    - AAAAaccountAAAA 1y ago
      If those contributions are more a liability than an asset, why not reject them?

goku12 1y ago

Pull requests aren't going to solve the current issues with Matrix. I believe that the problem arises from the protocol design itself. And cutting back on the current specification is not viable for an already deployed project. Here are some reasons why I think it's the protocol. Synapse is the only fully functional home server. Both dendrite and conduit are struggling to reach feature parity. This could be either due to the protocol being too complex or it being extended too fast. I have seen signs of both. Meanwhile, practically all web clients like element, cinny and schildi are all based on the same codebase. Native clients like Fractal and Nheko do exist. But it looks like they are also going to need the rust library behind elementx to attain full function. This lack of diversity among the clients are also indicative of the protocol complexity (similar to how nearly every web browser is based on Chrome's blink engine).

Arathorn 1y ago
This is not correct. Matrix is deliberately asymmetrical - it’s easier to write clients than servers (although that balances has shifted somewhat with E2EE). The reason Dendrite has fallen behind is simply because we couldn’t afford to split focus between it and Synapse. Meanwhile the various Conduit projects seem to be keeping up quite well despite being entirely hobby projects. Clientside, there are entirely separate production grade stacks with full featuresets in at least typescript (eg Element Web), rust (EX, Fractal), Dart (FluffyChat), KMP (Trixnity), C++ (Nheko), Go (Beeper) and more. I can guarantee their authors would very heavily push back on the “you need rust-sdk to attain full function”, not least as many of those have more features than rust-sdk. This is not a WebKit situation.