this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025

116 points (80.5% liked)

Technology

71502 readers

4735 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

116

Matrix is cooked (blog.cyrneko.eu)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

top 17 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (2 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] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah they have the rights to do it, doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, doesn't mean it won't negatively impact the future of the project.

Redis had the rights to change the license of redis, look at where that led them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 17 hours ago

Hard to see how them choosing to charge money to access their server will affect the future of the project, even them choosing to not run a free for anyone server any more wouldn't necessarily affect the future of the project because the project is not to provide a free for all server but to develop software. Either way, them trying to find a way to keep the server operating certainly doesn't mean 'Matrix is cooked'.

As far as Redis goes, as I understand it, they moved their software away from an open source license. There's zero indication Matrix are going to do the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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] 9 points 1 day 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] 22 points 1 day 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 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Second biggest mistake next to them working for law enforcement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] omnioki 1 points 18 hours ago

As far as I know Lemmy didn’t profit off of making their instance, nor do they have contracts with law enforcement to implement it for them. The same cannot be said for Matrix Foundation.

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

XMPP chads, we won!

[+] [email protected] -21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Dude...y'all are dumb as hell. If this isn't written by AI, I'll eat my hat.

This dumbshit posted an article about something that confused a searchable VC firm called "Matrix". This has zero to do with the Matrix.org that I think(?) it is intended to talk about.

Simple proof: the word "venture" is mentioned just once in the entire post, and it can't dig deeper into any other claims it makes.

This is simply a post confusing "Matrix Partners", and using readily available information about that company, and trying to transpose it on Matrix.org which is not the same thing.

AI has truly killed the internet.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The article shortens venture capital to VC. It also didn't confuse the Matrix Foundation with a VC firm of the same name, it's talking about Element (formerly Riot). Like, the article says this in pretty simple English, I'm genuinely confused how you could've missed it:

In roughly the beginning, there was two organizations that came out of the project: The Matrix Foundation and New Vector Ltd / Riot / Element. The idea was for New Vector Ltd to carry out the necessary work and bring in the necessary funding for the Matrix Foundation to thrive. Or well, so I've been told.

They had multiple funding rounds lead by the likes of status.im, Automattic, the AI and Web3 company protocol labs and others; You get the gist, lots of VC and similar funding also a questionable amount of “Web3” and ~~bullshit generation~~ AI. Element was then tasked with using that to build the software that would power Matrix.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It seems in line with everything mentioned here:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/10/new-vector-scores-8-5m-to-plug-more-users-into-its-open-decentralized-messaging-matrix/

This being the sad outcome, 5 years later.

Hopefully you're wearing a cinnabon on your head.