this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Truth is, to get right to the point, the fact that Matrix was accompanied by a for-profit entity, funded by venture capital was the biggest mistake that Matrix as a project has ever made.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago

Today I learned that VC funded companies are not allowed to invest in open source projects. Matrix would be nowhere near its current state if it wasn’t thanks to Element. It’s not the best, but it’s far from “cooked”.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

XMPP chads, we won!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This seems a bit of an odd take. Matrix.org making their server freemium is up to them - charging some users to use the service (not the software) is a way of keeping the lights on. Better that than ads or selling user data. Lots of privacy focused orgs do the same - Proton, Tuta, Mailbox, Mullvad, IVPN. If people also have an issue with Element - don't use Element, use one of the other apps.

If people are this upset, its not impossible (or even that hard) to migrate to a different server - or host your own.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I think the problem is that the Matrix Foundation (non-profit org) is being slowly cannibalized by Element (for-profit, VC-funded) which ends up making their costs and profit expectations a lot higher.

Right now this is only impacting the matrix.org homeserver. However, this could eventually end up impacting protocol-level design choices that harm other instances as well. Sure, you could fork the protocol and clients, but now we're talking about taking up the work that an entire organization had previously been doing. Not impossible if an existing organization like the FSF or Linux Foundation started backing something, but not a great place to be in either.

Edit: grammar

[–] [email protected] 20 points 13 hours ago

I mean I can still self host, what's that got to do with anything? Their server is gonna be freemium so what?

[–] omnioki 27 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Second biggest mistake next to them working for law enforcement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

So if FBI has an internal Lemmy instance we should start boycotting Lemmy?