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European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams
- butvacuum 8mo agoIf they can't pass chat control- Simply adopt something full of holes but seems reasonable.
- robtherobber 8mo agoI think the intention was never to get their communication audited (potentially via poor security), but ours. You know, to protect the children and all that.
- sunbum 8mo agoWhat?
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoHelp me here Why can’t a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app? There’s are EU companies that make teams alternatives: https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams Even if those don’t work SAP, Dassault, etc… make massively complex software and services across multiple verticals and could trivially ship a competitor
- arielcostas 8mo agoWhy reinvent the wheel when there are already open standards like Matrix or XMPP that can be adapted to your use case?
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoMatrix isn’t a 1:1 replacement for teams
- NewJazz 8mo agoExplain
- input_sh 8mo ago...thank god?
- arielcostas 8mo agoDepends on what features of teams you use, since it kind-of became an "everything" app
- steve1977 8mo agoTeams minus the bloat and bugs?
- pyrale 8mo ago> Why can’t a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app? What makes you think they can't? Microsoft's corporate edge isn't merely the product, it's also an army of sales, entrenched corporate markets/clients, lock-in, etc. You could have a better version of their product and still get eaten alive.
- m4rtink 8mo agoAnd don't forget Copilot! ;-)
- repelsteeltje 8mo agoIn the Netherlands, a lot of government systems aren't procured from the Microsofts of this world. There are a lot of middle men (consultancy agencies) involved that over the years have helped build a strong ecosystem with lots of expertise around Microsoft and related suppliers. So indeed, it's not like you can just replace a software product (or service) by some EU or open alternative. And there are huge vested interests.
- kuerbel 8mo agoSame in Germany. I think in any European country.
- saubeidl 8mo agoThe french government recently did: https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- blitzar 8mo agoJitsi Formerly - skype Matrix
- cardanome 8mo agoI mean German police is using Palantir. There is nothing magic about Palantir, especially not about the subset of Palantir that the German police uses as we have stricter data privacy laws. You might think that would be a strategic risk not worth taking especially with the US getting more hostile towards Europe but here we are. Why? Honestly I don't have a good answer other than well the whole system is rotten, corruption, lobbyism, take your pick.
- badc0ffee 8mo agoThe idea of the likes of SAP spinning up a new product quickly and painlessly seems like a joke.
- hooverd 8mo agoIn defense of SAP, their product really is built to be configurable for every use case under the sun.
- Arathorn 8mo agoElement’s topco may be UK based for now, but the vast majority of our business and footprint is in the EU - https://element.io/en/about https://element.io/en/about. All but one of our mobile app team is in the EU for instance (and when we started, the UK was too :|)
- iso1631 8mo agoZoom came along with a securre video/voice chat, sure it's American, but it was by far the world leader Microsoft then used its monopoly in office tools to push Teams to everyone You can't compete with a trillion dollar company offering your product as a bundle your clients already pay for, even if your product is better. Even VC money runs out eventually
- steve1977 8mo agoTo be fair, Microsoft already had Skype (for Business) and NetMeeting before that. It's not like they were new to that market. NetMeeting existed for more than a decade before Zoom even came into existence. Zoom had COVID-19 play in it's favor, that's about it.
- FuriouslyAdrift 8mo agoSkype for Business is the VoIP component for Teams, now. Sharepoint is the file service for Teams, too. Basically, Teams is a front end for a bunch of old Mircosoft cloud services... plus chat. Actually more than one chat as teams channels chat is a separate tech stack from private chat. It used to be much more monlothic and then the Sharepoint people got their hooks into it.
- Y-bar 8mo agoZoom has long been the most unsecure video/voice application. Remember how they installed an open web server on people's computers which could be accessed by anyone through the web? https://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5 https://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-... Apple had to step in and patch it for them: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-zoom-app/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-zoom-a... Or when they sent your chat data to Facebook? https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-ios-app-sends-data-to-facebook-even-if-you-dont-have-a-facebook-account/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-ios-app-sends-data-to-f... How it was discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703000 Or when Zoom was leaking private information? https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-leaking-email-addresses-photos/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-leaking-email-addresses... Or do you remember how those geniuses rolled their own crypto? https://citizenlab.ca/research/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/research/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypt... Or maybe you remember that Zoom has the ability to listen in in real-time on meetings held on their platform? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55372493 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55372493
- mmooss 8mo agoOne major issue is system management: Installing another app, such as Signal, on your personal computer is one thing. On 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 computers, installing it, configuring it, changing settings, updating it, backing it up, locking down settings from user changes (such as retention) - all that requires special tools to do it efficiently at scale. Without the management tools, no way that bit of IT can be used. The most common tool by far is Microsoft's Active Directory and Group Policy, which has the best compatibility with Windows and with Microsoft applications, including Office. If AD/GP is already deployed, imagine the burden of deploying a second tool to your 1K/10K/100K computers, setting up the server, learning to use it ... you're not doing that for one application unless it's very valuable. The exception is a tool bundled with the application for its own management, but that's going to have to be efficient to deploy, learn, and use to be worthwhile. Therefore, for many organizations, any application must be effectively managed by AD/GP, which requires the application's developer to create AD/GP management components. Do Matrix, Signal, or any other application have system management tools?
- b-mmxx 8mo agoThere is Wire with HQ in Berlin, Germany. https://wire.com/en/ https://wire.com/en/
- simianwords 8mo agoI don’t know how Teams even got the approval to be released. It must be so embarrassing to be Satya and be forced to use this shitty piece of software. I can’t believe that software of this quality is used so widely. Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing unfortunately.
- soperj 8mo agoI felt the same way when I was forced to use Word over Wordperfect, and Powerpoint over Harvard Graphics
- librasteve 8mo agoerrr market monopoly forces are doing their thing … the point is that only a govt can force eg an OS + APP anticompetitive monopoly provider to split up into multiple companies
- kuerbel 8mo agoIt's because of the licenses mostly. If you buy e.g. business standard or business premium or whatever you want to make the most of it. Hey, there is a free chat app included, and it integrates so well with the rest of m365! (Also most people don't know that you can still use a KMS with/for office 2024. You don't need M365.)
- Macha 8mo agoSlack costs new money. You’re already paying for teams if you use office/ms365/etc. That’s all many companies need to see in their purchasing decisions. It’s not just “is slack better” but “is it enough better to pay out“
- neom 8mo agoI'm surprised Mattermost doesn't get more love generally, it's fully oss isn't it? https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost
- trueismywork 8mo agoNo. It's not fully OSS.
- Arathorn 8mo agoit’s also not decentralised (unless you bridge it to Matrix), nor end-to-end-encrypted. or standards based.
- ronsor 8mo agoTo be fair, why would you care if your internal organization or company chat is decentralized?
- pseudalopex 8mo agoThe article said secure communication with other EU bodies was a use case.
- Arathorn 8mo agoIf you work with lots of other entities who want full control over their own comms (e.g. other governments, other departments, other EU entities like European Parliament and Council, the UN, NATO, etc) then decentralisation or federation is a big deal. In the public sector it's basically a requirement: it's bananas if your country's critical infrastructure ends up dependent on some a product effectively controlled by another country (e.g. Teams) - and you obviously want to be able to communicate with other govt entities rather than being stuck in an island. Then it's a natural extension to the private sector - although for now, it feels more folks are on the "nobody got sacked for using Teams" train.
- pseudalopex 8mo ago
- mhitza 8mo agoCan someone that uses Matrix compare it to Zulip? Which would have been my "obvious" choice. Is it functionally comparable, discussion threads and all? Or is it much closer to something like Discord?
- Arathorn 8mo agoMatrix is a decentralised encrypted chat protocol on which you could build something like Zulip, except decentralised and end-to-end encrypted. Element is the actual app being trialled here, which feels more like Slack and/or Signal than Zulip. The point is that you get something you can selfhost while also interoperating with other deployments… while also encrypting the data end-to-end with Signal protocol.
- tamimio 8mo agoYeah I would love to see a new professional application based on Matrix, Element is buggy, other apps lacking too.
- blitzar 8mo ago> Element is buggy Someone should tell the CEO/CTO of Element
- edoceo 8mo agoArathorn is the CEO. I bet you knew that. At the time I write this your comment is grey. Maybe context was missing; or they think you're snark.
- xethos 8mo agoI assumed it was because people here are constantly telling Arathorn that Element (not ElementX) is slow and buggy, and that when they last tried the default server (circa 2019 or so) is was buggy and full of rough edges He's (in my mind) always positive, open, and willing to admit the shortcomings of the platform he shephards... but damn does he deal with a lot of undeserved criticism (and deserved criticism, where applicable)
- stock_toaster 8mo agozulip seems to me like it would be a better solution to me (open source, self hostible, familiar paradigm, etc), but then again, I think _anything_ would be better than teams... so more power to them!
- tcfhgj 8mo agoso Matrix doesn't have self hostable open source options?
- Arathorn 8mo agohttps://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm (aka ESS Community) is Element’s FOSS distro fwiw.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoFrance’s government uses Matrix. Presumably a nice perk to be able to talk to them via federation
- pm3003 8mo agoGermany (government and armed forces) and NATO also use it.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoGermany?? I can’t imagine unless they’re using it to send pictures of signed and stamped printed and scanned letters
- panick21_ 8mo agoGermany doesn't universally use it but its used in germany, for example for healthcare.
- cge 8mo agoI'm not sure if it ended up being used this way, but if I recall correctly, when that was being initially implemented, federation was actually a core feature: different agencies / municipalities / etc could have their own servers and control their own data and accounts, but inter-agency conversations and rooms would be well-supported, along with each agency retaining a copy of the rooms on their own servers.
- ValtteriL 8mo agoDreambroker
- yabones 8mo agoMy team started using Matrix/Element after years of frustration with Teams and Slack. It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful. I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS. My dream is that Matrix can do for intra-org comms what Signal did for SMS.
- Teever 8mo agoThe key is the money. I’ve used matrix for years, ran my own federated server for a while. I’ve been critical of the user experience and issues with how it’s handled by the matrix team before but I acknowledge that by and large these problems can be fixed with money. Big players need to put their big boy pants on and throw a couple coins from their farcically large coin purse and they can drive a stake through the wretched heart that is Teams.
- troyvit 8mo agoAnd this is the part I hope Europe gets. They don't have nearly as much money to throw at Matrix as Microsoft can throw at Teams, but they do have massive resources, and I bet that since Matrix doesn't have many of the same shitty KPIs as Slack and Teams, those resources can go much further.
- pmontra 8mo agoI guess that the European Commission pays a lot of money to Microsoft in licenses. They could pay a fraction of those money to Matrix.
- parchley 8mo agoAre you saying that Microsoft is more wealthy than all of “Europe”? And surely you must mean the EU. The money needed to improve matrix is nothing compared to what is already being spent on Microsoft products.
- antirez 8mo agoIt's incredible in the first place that companies want people use those kind of terrible and useless software, and that people accept using it.
- Arathorn 8mo agotalking about Teams, right? O:-)
- uyzstvqs 8mo agoThis does not bode well. Matrix is honestly not good, as someone who has tried to use it. It's slow, janky, often unstable, and poorly standardized. My suggestion: https://threema.com/en/products/work https://threema.com/en/products/work (hosted) or https://zulip.com/ https://zulip.com/ (OSS self-hosted).
- simfree 8mo agoIt works faster & better than Signal Desktop.
- jampekka 8mo agoThat's not a high bar.
- Ylpertnodi 8mo agoGenuinely surprised at this - I've never heard of signal desktop not being fast, or good. Works a1 for me.
- dpc_01234 8mo agoSignal Desktop is having its db corrupted every other time I launch it, and wants me to reconnect to the phone. The UX is OKish.
- evanjrowley 8mo agoRelated, the internall messenger for NATO also uses Matrix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41781762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41781762
- heraldgeezer 8mo agoTeams takes like 4 min to boot on my work laptop. When they launched the "new" one they proudly showed the improved boot time...
- dreamteam1 8mo ago* open source * don’t suck (too much) * no planned rug pulls * not infested by US or Chinese spyware Are there any?
- cue_the_strings 8mo agoOnly Matrix.
- ezst 8mo agoAnd XMPP. Which probably will remain a better Matrix than Matrix ever will be, the venture capital put aside, that is.
- jhgkhl 8mo agoMicrosoft Teams is such a low bar, that anything else is probably an upgrade.
- sam_lowry_ 8mo agoIt's good to start somewhere, but as a reminder, it's the same European Commission that: 1. runs on Microsoft software that it buys from Fujitsu UK that HN crowd knows from the UK Post scandal 2. Has multi-billion euro digital initiatives and a puny single-instance public Gitlab with a handful of shamefully incomplete "projects". 3. Tells everyone that they have their own AI helpers while actually renting LLMs from Azure.
- jacquesm 8mo agoThey also sometimes forget to clean their shoes after walking in from the street. But at least this thing they will hopefully get right and maybe in the longer term they'll be able to break the lock-in on those other things as well.
- dreamteam1 8mo agoDon’t hold your breath.
- jacquesm 8mo agoAgreed. Hope sets you up for disappointment and all that but still, better than nothing at all.
- jackinthehat 8mo agoDefs worth a go, I'd say. Have tried it - still warming to it tbh
- kkfx 8mo agoThe real issue is that there is no easy-to-self-host complete enough solution. We do not have something go install-able, pio-able, without a gazillion of deps web-app who offer: - a direct call UI - a chat UI, with optional group chats - a simple web site to be used as a wiki-like tool to share textual stuff + common media, storage internally managed We have anything to do all of the above, but all very complex, spread across many different projects, fragile, hyper tedious to set up etc.
- pwillia7 8mo agolol good luck
- awesome_dude 8mo agoIf nothing else this puts the spotlight on alternatives to Teams/Slack, which will increase adoption, and should increase pressure to improve (as far as that goes...) I've not liked Slack for FOSS projects (it's not IRC, it has problems with moderation enforcement), and NOBODY likes Teams.
- jimnotgym 8mo agoSo on balance, would we say this is bad for the US?
- beloch 8mo agoThe U.S. government has long looked out for U.S. companies, even to the point of staging coups (e.g. United Fruit Company). The Trump administration has been threatening direct invasions while also levying tariff's and other actions when other countries try to enact taxation or legislation of American tech companies operating in their jurisdictions. U.S. tech execs have applauded and lined up to bend the knee. Now they're finding out that their products are replaceable. The replacements aren't perfect, but an injection of new users and funding could allow them to improve rapidly. Meanwhile, American companies like MS and Google seem determined to enshitify their products and force AI adoption because they're financially entangled with OpenAI. Is this bad for the U.S.? It depends on how fast Americans smarten up. MS needs to start putting their products first again. Meta needs to stop relying on their government links to coerce other jurisdictions into accepting utterly irresponsible products that cause social harm while producing no tax revenue to mitigate that harm. All Americans need to stand up to their government and force it to back down from imperialist aggression. The U.S. and U.S. software have lost international trust and are now losing out to competitors because of it. Those competitors no longer need to be better or cheaper. Just trustworthy. It is possible to mitigate this loss of trust with prompt action, but every delay causes permanent harm. The world is watching.
- JuniperMesos 8mo agoI don't really care if it's good or bad for the US as a whole; I care whether or not it's good for free software communication apps. I'm an American citizen and I own MSFT in my index funds just like lots of other people do; but I'd also rather run a free software chat app than Microsoft Teams.
- b00ty4breakfast 8mo agoan open-source app built on an open protocol would be great for everyone, not just the EU (assuming the app doesn't suck, of course).
- Esophagus4 8mo agoSomeone once said to me, be very careful about negotiating with leverage… when you twist someone’s arm, they’ll say, “I’ll remember that. You may have won this one, but I’m gonna win the next one.” Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost. It’s not clear that patchwork EU government back offices migrating off Teams will hurt US tech, but long term, in aggregate, this is going to be a headache for American tech. EU can’t out innovate US tech, but they can make it harder to dominate their markets.
- stronglikedan 8mo ago> Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost. No it's not. This is theater to give the impression that they are "getting the orange buffoon". They'll be back in short order, and even if they aren't, it'll just be an insignificant blip on a financial chart somewhere, not even big enough to warrant someone's attention. They did similar things in Trump's first term, and came back groveling.
- Esophagus4 8mo agoMaybe, and you might be right. These might be one-off posturing things from the EU. Sure, a few back office shifts to OpenOffice aren’t a big deal today, but I’m worried about where we are in 10, 20 years. There is no EU tech competition to us today, but who knows… tomorrow is a new day.
- codethief 8mo agoI hope you're right! I mean, at the level of personal relationships I fully agree[0]. However, institutions tend to be forgetful. [0]: Someone once said to me something very similar to what you quoted: "Be nice to people. People will remember you. And they will gossip if they don't like you and you have wronged them. It's much easier to ruin your reputation with a single action done to a single person than to build up a good one."
- kisamoto 8mo ago> EU can’t out innovate US tech why not? Okay not today but China was known as the cheap copier and is now the innovator.
- cue_the_strings 8mo agoAs I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source solution for in-company communication. Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model. Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.
- WhyNotHugo 8mo agoXMPP has been around for way longer, has proven that it actually works, and has a reliable community behind it, with no VC-funded hype.
- tabbott 8mo agoCorrection: Zulip is 100% open-source software, and has been for a decade now. (I lead the Zulip project). Zulip's protocol, which is used for client/server communication by all major clients, has extensive documentation including the complete change history for the last several years on https://zulip.com/api/ https://zulip.com/api/ and https://zulip.com/api/changelog https://zulip.com/api/changelog. As far as I know, there is no mechanism through which Zulip could bait-and-switch a customer that Element could not also do. And I think that as a practical matter, it would be a lot easier for a new team to pick up developing Zulip if the Kandra Labs team were to disappear than the similar question for Matrix/Element. The core reason is that Matrix is far less simple and self-contained than Zulip. I've talked to multiple groups who tried to build apps on top of Matrix and found it too difficult. https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/giving-up-on-element-and-matrixorg/ https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/giving-up-on-element-and-matrixorg... may be a useful third-party reference. This isn't to say Matrix is bad. It's just targeting a different niche. Matrix was designed around the requirements of a global social network, where you want to be able to keep writing in channels even in event of a network partition. As a result, Matrix is far more complex and less self-contained than a Zulip server is. If you are doing internal communications with some external guests, you are far safer from technical risk with a robust self-contained system like Zulip than something like Matrix that is also a social network. Zulip's goal is to be the best way to do complex work, focused on replacing tools like Slack, Teams, and Discord, without the ambition to support a social network, and that changes a lot about the architecture and what we can do in terms of performance and focus on the human experience.
- MrCurryCasino 8mo ago[flagged]
- daft_pink 8mo agoGood luck. The only reason I use teams is because it’s free.
- err931 8mo agoHoping this succeeds. If it does, it could inspire similar moves in Japan too.
- palata 8mo agoMatrix is in an interesting position right now because it's honestly not great, but it does exist. And having control over something that is not great sounds a lot better than having no control at all (in this case over something else that is not great either, i.e. Teams). Governments don't change easily. It took a threat of military invasion for some of them to start considering moving away from Teams. Whoever gets to replace Teams will probably stay for a while even if it is frustrating (again, just like Teams is).