Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

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wtf is going on is that:

a) p2p matrix works pretty well as a proof of concept - you can try it from https://arewep2pyet.com; it’s not remotely vapourware.

b) funding has been spent on core Matrix dev and making Element kick ass (cf Element X)

c) an awful lot of very large Matrix + Element deployments (eg LuxChat in Luxembourg, Merkury 2.0 in the Polish MOD, many German local authorities) decide to run Matrix deployments without routing a single $ to support development at either the Matrix Foundation or Element, such are the joys of the Apache license.

As a result, we’ve had to pause some of the longer-term R&D. I very much hope that P2P will resume (especially if someone explicitly funds it) and the team is still at Element (but working on sliding sync and account portability). But right now we’re focusing exclusively on fixing the core problems in both Matrix and Element which others in this thread are complaining about. Hence Matrix 2.0, and Element X.

Just poking around matrix.org, it's not clear exactly how one would "route [some] $[s] to support development" other than paying someone else for a hosted server. Our open-source project just switched to using Matrix from IRC; we're not really big enough to warrant hosting our own Matrix server, so most of us are just using matrix.org. We have some industry funding, and try to support other open source projects when we can; but not on the order of $250/mo (which if I'm reading it right, looks like the cheapest product on element.io -- $5/user/mo, min 50 users). If matrix.org accepts donations, it's not at all clear from your website.

Well, we need to fix that then. https://matrix.org/membership/ and https://matrix.org/blog/2023/06/membership-program/ is the way to donate.

I see now that somewhere most of the way down the front page there's a button-type link to "Support Matrix", which leads to a page which points either to membership or to a handful of ways to donate:

https://matrix.org/support/

I'd suggest you make sure there's a link to that page 1) somewhere in the menus 2) somewhere in the footer. I'd also make a link to the membership page from the "About" page, and a link to the "Support Matrix" page from the "Membership" page, so that people who manage to find the Membership page but aren't ready to become members can support via patreon / whatever.

Thanks for all your work on Matrix! Looking forward to seeing the improvements coming down the line!

Its probably the right choice if yo don't have the funds. But it s great that that team is working on account portability. That would be useful in a p2p world anyway.

Really hoping Full Matrix p2p will happen. Its would be such a cool capability.

Governments wasting so much time and money on so much nonsense software but we can't support and open communication tool.

Makes me sad that billions got poured into cryptocurrency-sphere projects but classic p2p barely scrapes by.

(I mean by society not new vector)

money flows to where it can be multiplied, not where it can be sunk into some social good

You probably don't understand the enormous world-corrupting problem with fiat currencies.

Thanks Matthew, I always appreciate your comments.

I also do appreciate the Apache license.

Sorry for the vapourware comment. It's hard to tell these days. Was the Google self-driving car thing vapourware? It never went anywhere.

I know that pinecone worked as a PoC. I ran a node for years, for fun. It's just that it always felt like the progress was crazy slow. The yggdrasil demo was what, 4 years ago? How fucked up will the world be in 4 years? Not that it's your fault.

And I care about matrix. I was the one who suggested arewep2pyet.com, I made 1-2 friends use it (matrix), I made 1-2 coworkers use it.

Also, zulip threads now or I riot.

The best way to get P2P Matrix back on track is to find someone to fund it, and point them at funding@matrix.org. Unfortunately it's as simple as that.

> Was the Google self-driving car thing vapourware? It never went anywhere.

Well, it goes somewhere: people are actually being driven around Pheonix, Arizona [0] using those cars. It's just that it is not named "Google self-driving cars" any more: it was spun into its own company, Waymo [1].

[0]: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-phoenix/

[1]: https://waymo.com/

Zulip threads are killer.

Shame you can't categorise Zulip streams like you can with channels on Discord though (something that's also related to the IRC/Matrix vs. Discord conversation/content discoverability thing mentioned elsewhere here).

>eg LuxChat in Luxembourg, Merkury 2.0 in the Polish MOD, many German local authorities

This is extremely sad. They're large tax-funded organizations and should definitely contribute to priorize the needs they definitely have.

Ironically, there might be voices pushing for a move to a proprietary solution they would actually have to pay to use, and have much less control over.

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