Matrix started out with its early DNA in focusing on the problem of how to create a decentralised e2ee multi-client messenger.
Getting that right took a lot of time and effort, which initially came at the expense of UX.
Elsewhere in the comments, it is clear that there are not many (any?) similar projects out there that solve the same problem, especially to the level of maturity where it is trusted by governments and civil institutions around the world.
So the effort was worth it, and we have the proof points to show that Matrix solves a real problem. Now we need to continue to work hard to create a UX that matches (perhaps exceeds?) the quality of the proprietary, centralised and non e2ee messaging apps that set the UX standards users have come to expect.
This needs to happen both at the protocol level and in the client and server implementations. For me personally, this means Synapse and the Element clients, but we have many quality implementations in the wild.
Matrix 2.0, mentioned above, is part of this initiative, though there is a lot of additional work in progress to both improve existing features (like Spaces and Threads) and add expected features, such as user status.
The post calls out running on Dendrite, which, as a project not under active development, contributes to some of the problems. However, I would not want that to be an excuse, because there is legitimate feedback in the post overall.
If someone reading this is new to the project and wants to host their own server, I'd recommend checking out [ESS Community](https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm) - though other distributions exist.
Thanks everyone for flying Matrix and sharing your experiences (good and bad), we're getting there.
Thank you for your work on Matrix. I believe that the world needs an interoperable messaging standard just like we have E-Mail, which is why I am so interested in Matrix becoming something I can tell people to use with a good conscience.
I am happy that Matrix has found a place in government organizations. For many individual users, Matrix currently solves no problem because they simply can not use it. I hope this will continue to change, I am cheering for you.
When Element X first launched, the goal was for it to cover the personal messenger use case. This worked just fine for some people, but for many, feature parity with the old apps and parity with the web experience was a hard blocker.
Both Spaces and Threads are about to land, and there are other lower-profile features that also need rounding out. We would expect full parity by April this year. At which point migration should be an obvious choice.
The complexity associated with Matrix comes from wanting to build a multivendor ecosystem around an open standard, the decentralisation (and federation) to avoid building islands and then implementing things like multi-device e2ee and VoIP in such a context.
However, it is exactly these properties that make it so appealing to an organisation like the EC as they pursue digital sovereignty.
The goals of Matrix have nothing to do with being a social network. You could theoretically build a social network on top of Matrix (Matrix essentially syncs JSON in real-time), but I'm not aware of a project with traction, and more to the point, those projects are not relevant to this discussion. Yes Matrix is resilient to network partitions (that's a good thing for a messenger!), but that seems entirely orthogonal to your point on social networks.
Finally, I don't think it's fair to draw a comparison between the relationship between Kandra Labs and Zulip vs Element and Matrix. Yes Element is a major player in the Matrix eco-system having originally formed to hire the Matrix founding team, but since then many Matrix vendors have sprung up and if Element were to disappear tomorrow Matrix would continue. In fact, this is the whole purpose of having an independent Foundation, which in turn encourages multiple vendors to operate side by side.
Matrix Con 2024 had a public sector track where various organisations such as NATO, the French Government and the German Healthcare industry outlined the problems they are solving with Matrix.
Though in short, as a large public institution, being able to self-host a secure and decentralised communications network is highly preferable to needing to rely on a centralised service administered by a company in a foreign jurisdiction.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
Signal and WhatsApp only address the personal messaging usecase, whereas the letter is also talking about wider chat services like Teams.
More to the point, even with e2ee, there is still communication metadata that is leaving your network for a third-party service. In a defense context, you would almost certainly prefer that the data does not leave your network unnecessarily.
Matrix started out with its early DNA in focusing on the problem of how to create a decentralised e2ee multi-client messenger.
Getting that right took a lot of time and effort, which initially came at the expense of UX.
Elsewhere in the comments, it is clear that there are not many (any?) similar projects out there that solve the same problem, especially to the level of maturity where it is trusted by governments and civil institutions around the world.
So the effort was worth it, and we have the proof points to show that Matrix solves a real problem. Now we need to continue to work hard to create a UX that matches (perhaps exceeds?) the quality of the proprietary, centralised and non e2ee messaging apps that set the UX standards users have come to expect.
This needs to happen both at the protocol level and in the client and server implementations. For me personally, this means Synapse and the Element clients, but we have many quality implementations in the wild.
Matrix 2.0, mentioned above, is part of this initiative, though there is a lot of additional work in progress to both improve existing features (like Spaces and Threads) and add expected features, such as user status.
The post calls out running on Dendrite, which, as a project not under active development, contributes to some of the problems. However, I would not want that to be an excuse, because there is legitimate feedback in the post overall.
If someone reading this is new to the project and wants to host their own server, I'd recommend checking out [ESS Community](https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm) - though other distributions exist.
Thanks everyone for flying Matrix and sharing your experiences (good and bad), we're getting there.