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Is Matrix cooked?

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  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    While I understand the need for them to maintain a steady income, all I can think of is Discord’s Nitro when I think of this upcoming Premium account offering.

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    deleted by creator

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    Honestly the reply sort of burys the leade, the most damning part (as an outsider) was:

    but wasn’t going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code…

    OSS getting sacrificed first sign of financial instability isn't something I can condone.

    edit: see reply chain.

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder's positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he's also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I've lost receipts to that

    Unrelated to the main points I kind of always thought SimpleX seemed sketchy...

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    Matrix has always been way too bulky for being a simple messenger. Imo their architecture was cooked from the start.

  • Honestly the reply sort of burys the leade, the most damning part (as an outsider) was:

    but wasn’t going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code…

    OSS getting sacrificed first sign of financial instability isn't something I can condone.

    edit: see reply chain.

    AGPL is a full-on FOSS licence with strong copyleft requirements, not a measly open-source licence like Apache, which could be pivoted to proprietary at a moment's notice. We're communicating through an AGPL-licensed system right now as it's what Lemmy's licensed as. If they were going for a corporate-friendly licence, AGPL is the last thing they'd choose as it forces you to share source code with even more people than the regular GPL does.

  • AGPL is a full-on FOSS licence with strong copyleft requirements, not a measly open-source licence like Apache, which could be pivoted to proprietary at a moment's notice. We're communicating through an AGPL-licensed system right now as it's what Lemmy's licensed as. If they were going for a corporate-friendly licence, AGPL is the last thing they'd choose as it forces you to share source code with even more people than the regular GPL does.

    When I first read the article this was a WTF moment for me. I was reading it twice to find out how that fits in the whole picture, but it is just mentioned once... no further explanation. So I called the whole thing BS...

  • Matrix has always been way too bulky for being a simple messenger. Imo their architecture was cooked from the start.

    it's ... not ... a simple messenger, if that helps?

  • Honestly the reply sort of burys the leade, the most damning part (as an outsider) was:

    but wasn’t going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code…

    OSS getting sacrificed first sign of financial instability isn't something I can condone.

    edit: see reply chain.

    I didn't understand the original post. It seemed like someone whining about a switch to AGPL. But that switch certainly sounds like a good thing to me. I didn't know the old license was Apache but it still seems like a good switch. Redis (with a misstep in between) did something similar.

  • AGPL is a full-on FOSS licence with strong copyleft requirements, not a measly open-source licence like Apache, which could be pivoted to proprietary at a moment's notice. We're communicating through an AGPL-licensed system right now as it's what Lemmy's licensed as. If they were going for a corporate-friendly licence, AGPL is the last thing they'd choose as it forces you to share source code with even more people than the regular GPL does.

    My bad, I thought they were moving from Apache to something more restrictive / less open (the way so many have recently, to effectively "source available"), especially by their wording — which conveys to me they're frustrated they aren't "capturing" the "value" of their code.

    AGPL is not my favorite license but it has its purposes I suppose.

  • Matrix has always been way too bulky for being a simple messenger. Imo their architecture was cooked from the start.

    This. I know a lot of folks in the fediverse like Matrix, but the user experience feels like yet another platform that started with the platform architecture, and not the end user’s experience.

    Then it gets adopted by a bunch of people who enjoy installing Hannah Montana Linux distros for fun, and no one else.

  • SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder's positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he's also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I've lost receipts to that

    Unrelated to the main points I kind of always thought SimpleX seemed sketchy...

    It's just software...

  • My bad, I thought they were moving from Apache to something more restrictive / less open (the way so many have recently, to effectively "source available"), especially by their wording — which conveys to me they're frustrated they aren't "capturing" the "value" of their code.

    AGPL is not my favorite license but it has its purposes I suppose.

    redacting with strikethrough is fine, and that way we all can learn

  • It's just software...

    with (write) access to everything on your computer, but even just your chats on the phone

  • with (write) access to everything on your computer, but even just your chats on the phone

    Uhhhh no?

  • Uhhhh no?

    what no? why and how am I wrong?

  • redacting with strikethrough is fine, and that way we all can learn

    Omg thanks for linking that thread. The amount of removed and deleted content on Lemmy is so frustrating. I hate the fact that removed or deleted posts also completely nuke all the comments on it.

    Reddit's approach is so much better in this respect. A removed post removed the OP's text, but if it's a link post the link remains, and all the comments remain.

  • what no? why and how am I wrong?

    Why would you think a chat app has full write access to your disk?

  • In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

    The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

    https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

    Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

    fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

    Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

    nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

    Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

    Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

    At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

    No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

    Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

    No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

    Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

    wow.

    the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

    so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

    this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

    In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

    Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

    somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

    I self host matrix. Should anyone who’s not on the foundation’s home server care? Do these changes affect anyone else?

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    swelter_spark@reddthat.comS
    No problem. If that doesn't work for you, ComfyUI is also a popular option, but it's more complicated.
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    Pretty cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
  • Your TV Is Spying On You

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    Still gonna need a large screen somehow unless you watch all your stuff at the desk or through a laptop.
  • Here's your first look at the rebooted Digg | TechCrunch

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    M
    Digg has been basically dead for 15 years.
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    Copyright law is messy. Thank you for the elaboration.
  • WhatsApp is working on video and voice calls on the web

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    Worked well for me. Although all the people I care about had already Signal, Element or Threema installed, so I am not a great pull factor. And those everyday moms from child care or from wherever can reach me via SMS, for the two messages/year.
  • OpenAI plans massive UAE data center project

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    V
    TD Cowen (which is basically the US arm of one of the largest Canadian investment banks) did an extensive report on the state of AI investment. What they found was that despite all their big claims about the future of AI, Microsoft were quietly allowing letters of intent for billions of dollars worth of new compute capacity to expire. Basically, scrapping future plans for expansion, but in a way that's not showy and doesn't require any kind of big announcement. The equivalent of promising to be at the party and then just not showing up. Not long after this reporting came out, it got confirmed by Microsoft, and not long after it came out that Amazon was doing the same thing. Ed Zitron has a really good write up on it; https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/ Amazon isn't the big surprise, they've always been the most cautious of the big players on the whole AI thing. Microsoft on the other hand are very much trying to play things both ways. They know AI is fucked, which is why they're scaling back, but they've also invested a lot of money into their OpenAI partnership so now they have to justify that expenditure which means convincing investors that consumers absolutely love their AI products and are desparate for more. As always, follow the money. Stuff like the three mile island thing is mostly just applying for permits and so on at this point. Relatively small investments. As soon as it comes to big money hitting the table, they're pulling back. That's how you know how they really feel.
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    ulrich@feddit.orgU
    If you want a narrative, look at all the full-price $250k Roadster pre-orders they've been holding onto for like 8 years now with zero signs of production and complete silence for the last...5 years?