Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/28/shutting-down-bridge-to-libera-chat/

by feanaro • 3 years ago

132 156 3 years ago

matrix.org

colesantiago• 3 years ago

Huh?

Wasn't anybody using the Matrix bridge to Libera Chat IRC?

Seems like IRC is really dead and only used by a very tiny small minority of people.

PostOnce• 3 years ago

Wizards use IRC, and their apprentices use discord.

Some of the most deeply technical people in the world use IRC.

Being able to talk to them is a superpower.

shadowgovt• 3 years ago

IRC's biggest weakness is the protocol didn't transition cleanly to a mobile world.

But apart from that, it's still as good as it always was.

mortallywounded• 3 years ago

puts on wizard hat

Syonyk8• 3 years ago

Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana.

Discord is awful. It's most of the downsides of IRC, with all the downsides of a centralized company running it, with a very resource heavy client. You can run IRC on just about nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a 16MHz 68030 with 8MB RAM just fine), and I know quite a few quiet little backwaters servers doing exactly that.

blueflow• 3 years ago

10-15k Users were using it, its quite a big thing. You can see the user count drop around 4th August: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php

koito17• 3 years ago

I pretty much only used Matrix as a glorified IRC bouncer that worked across my devices. When the libera.chat bridges went away, I just stopped using Matrix altogether.

Yeah, I am sure it is possible to set up my own appservice, but ERC has been convenient enough for my use case.

jeltz4• 3 years ago

I instead stopped using IRC since the Matrix bridge was the by far best bouncer I have used to date. The other bouncers I have used have just been annoying.

brabel• 3 years ago

I use it, from emacs, sometimes :D when you connect it actually tells you exactly how many users are on it, which seems to be quite a few:

** There are 73 users and 33193 invisible on 28 servers

** 39 operator(s) online

** 75 unknown connection(s)

** 22136 channels formed

** I have 1884 clients and 1 servers

** Current local users 1884, max 2958

** Current global users 33266, max 34731

** Highest connection count: 2959 (2958 clients) (25302 connections received) ** - platinum.libera.chat Message of the Day -

** - This server provided by NORDUnet/SUNET

** - Welcome to Libera Chat, the IRC network for

** - free & open-source software and peer directed projects.

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

I was using it, but I kept getting kicked out of channels for idling too long. It wasn't a good experience, and I went back to just using IRC for IRC and Matrix for Matrix.

mickael-kerjean• 3 years ago

IRC is far from dead. My relatively unknown oss work has a channel on libera which is seeing ~100 message per month

Also Slack made the same move a couple years ago, first trying to appeal to IRC users at the beginning and then shut it all off when they had everyone else

tazjin2• 3 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if by the time Matrix is cold as ice, IRC will still see activity. Sufficiently simple protocols have some aura of immortality to them, and Matrix is the opposite of that.

mort964• 3 years ago

IRC is the best place to go to find developers of a whole host of open source projects. If you work with open source software, not using IRC really limits what you can do and who you can reach.

Klonoar3• 3 years ago

This is entirely dependent on what OSS you're working with, and not in any way representative of OSS as a whole.

dngray6• 3 years ago

Not really, just use Matrix and a bridge like Heisenbridge. The experience to me feels native as if the IRC users are using Matrix.

NewJazz2• 3 years ago

Matrix has a long way to go to compete with IRC and XMPP... Godspeed.

Syonyk8• 3 years ago

It's not really the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. I use both Matrix and IRC, very extensively.

Matrix is, for me, a replacement (or a slightly less annoying way) to handle "person to person and local group" communications. And the bridges beat having to run a bunch of other clients for Google Chat, Signal, etc. However, my goal there is to move people onto Matrix, and I've done a decent job of it so far in my circles.

IRC is "professional technical chatter during work hours," and I use it as such - as I've used it for the bulk of three decades at this point. There's some social stuff there, but it's mostly "deeply technical conversations in the sort of chat rooms filled with people there for the same reasons." It's very much been a bit of a superpower - build relationships in the right IRC servers and you have a massive "external brain" of relationships you can query for weird questions. I worked at a small IT shop for a while, and people eventually figured out the correlation between "An absolutely off the walls question" and "the clattery keyboard," when I started discussing the problem in IRC.

I don't want IRC to be Matrix, any more than I want to bridge "professional chat rooms" into my evening hours (which more and more are simply hard analog, offline, etc).

AndroidKitKat• 3 years ago

When you move people onto Matrix, what homeserver do you have them use? I've set up a Matrix server for my immediate family and adoption rate has been good so far. I've set up both my parents, and one of my sisters and one of my brothers have signed up, one sibling is being a bit resistant since "I already use a gazillion other chat apps." But, not everyone has a me to set up and maintain a Matrix server, and I'm weary to tell people to just hop onto the main "matrix.org" server since I don't know what kind of experiences there are for people who don't know what they're doing (e.g. Should they put in PII or remain anonymous?)

NewJazz2• 3 years ago

I agree they are very different beasts. Which is probably why IRC has held its ground despite strong headwinds.

I question whether the Matrix team even wants to eclipse IRC. It probably won't earn them many beans.

IRC is "professional technical chatter during work hours," and I use it as such - as I've used it for the bulk of three decades at this point.

Indeed and the clients and servers certainly treat it as such. But remember that Matrix is a federated protocol... What if your employer also used it? Or if you wanted to participate in Nix or Rust or Mozilla discussions?

Certainly you wouldn't want to receive work/business/etc messages while off with your friends and family. Different device, different account on the device, different client on the account... Lots of options to get Matrix working for you in more than one way.

But the clients are so different compared to IRC. And there is no real home server for the FOSS world. Mozilla, Nix each run their own AIUI.

immibis8• 3 years ago

Matrix has one big thing that is missing from IRC - disconnecting and reconnecting without losing chat messages. This is extremely important with mobile clients - so important that idling in IRC with a phone is barely possible.

RadiozRadioz2• 3 years ago

XMPP supports this with XEP-0313

broodbucket2• 3 years ago

I've been using heisenbridge[0] to do my Matrix to IRC bridging and I like it. Not a broader solution to the problem since most people don't want to run their own services, but it works well for me and is no different to a bouncer for IRC servers, noone knows it's actually Matrix on the other side.

[0] https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge

kinduff2• 3 years ago

Same here, I really like it. Really easy to configure and setup.

alwayslikethis2• 3 years ago

I just configured one today. Took me no more than 15min. Highly recommend. If you are starting fresh, I recommend using the Ansible playbook:

https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

shp0ngle• 3 years ago

What were the "issues" that are not named?

mistrial9• 3 years ago

apparently some actors used the Matrix bridge to join private chat rooms in Libera without being detected.. AFAIK

snvzz2• 3 years ago

Sounds serious, from an IRC perspective.

progval3• 3 years ago

https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv...

jmbwell• 3 years ago

This seems like an inevitable progression of the de-portaling in July:

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/

I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here.

Thanks to those involved for the efforts while they could be sustained!

susam3• 3 years ago

I wrote my own IRC + Matrix client to bridge the channels I operate. I've made the source code available under the terms of the MIT license here: https://github.com/susam/nimb

If you find any issues, bugs, etc. in this tool, please let me know. Although this tool works well for my modest requirements, someone else may find issues while using this tool that I have not encountered yet. In such a case, bug reports, pull requests, patches, etc. are very welcome!

progval3• 3 years ago

You need to split on (or sanitize) null bytes here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b... and sanitize NUL/CR/LF from the prefix (well, display_name) here: https://github.com/susam/nimb/blob/b40d87ddf2e1134fed4d7380b...

Otherwise you may have a command injection vulnerability similar to what matrix-appservice-irc used to have: https://pktz.fr/matrix/security/2022-appservice-irc-command-... (though with carriage returns instead of null bytes)

jeltz4• 3 years ago

I wager many like me just stopped using Libera.chat.

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

I suspect many people _did_ find other ways to connect (indeed I fired my IRC Cloud subscription back up...), but that's not what ultimately brought us* to this decision. Really it came down to not having the funds or staff time to maintain and operate it to the level that was needed.

Echoing you, I am likewise really grateful for all the people who worked on it while it was doable!

* Speaking on behalf of the Matrix.org Foundation here as its Managing Director.

dngray6• 3 years ago

I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here.

It certainly, did, I deployed Heisenbridge on my homeserver because I didn't want to go back to having two clients open.

Laaas2• 3 years ago

The explanation seems a bit vague. What were the concrete issues at hand?

stevenicr• 3 years ago

just read - sounds like some complaints from the libera chat side that are too much to fix (?) at the moment..

I'd like to see a post from libera about what they expect someone to do if they take the bridge and take it further to work on other servers..

I still dream of a trillium (sp?) manychat kind of thing that can bridge all things... I get that some want to prevent that - and others even if they want interoperability may have debates about how things should be implemented for various reasons.

maybe libera can make a bridge with options and defaults that make most people happy.. but a user of libera myself, but I want an all things work together future - I get that tech stuff can be hard, even without those who want walled gardens and barriers.

- fingers crossed for more options in the future instead of less.

immibis8• 3 years ago

There was such a post from libera months ago.

kuschku2• 3 years ago

Just a theory:

Libera.Chat staff that used to work at Element departed the company due to budget cuts.

In combination with the budget cuts' wider effects on the matrix ecosystem, this meant there was little if any hope the issues with the bridge would get fixed.

pwr22• 3 years ago

There were Libera.Chat staff working at EMS???

xeromal• 3 years ago

Not enough money/asses in seats to support it

INTPenis• 3 years ago

Some channels on libera have been awful, a ton of [m] names, and long repetitive messages converted from matrix.

I know I might be using a dying medium but I enjoy IRC the way it is.

Gigachad• 3 years ago

Not a fan of IRC, but I agree. Bridges and multi protocol clients just suck. They never work flawlessly and result in a ton of annoyance for people on both sides.

Use the client for the group you are in rather than some bodged together bridge.

dngray6• 3 years ago

The exception there is Heisenbridge if you've got your own homeserver, supports certfp, and sasl auth too so it's really just like using znc or anything else.

wkat42429• 3 years ago

The repetitive messages happen when you edit a message in matrix. It resends the whole thing because irc doesn't support that feature.

sitzkrieg2• 3 years ago

thank goodness, endless garbage noise

badrabbit6• 3 years ago

The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this case it looks like yet another libera complaint that is at issue, not really matrix's fault I think.

The only thing I'll say about matrix is they have a lot of cool features but a smooth/fast experience like discord is the only thing they are missing to compete there but aside from philosophy I see no reason to avoid discord unless I want to operare a server instance. To me it's like webmail, I don't care if gmail or proronmail are opensource as much as I care about their security and reliability. I mean, I gotta applaud all the folks that worked on matrix clients, but there is still much left to be desired, I wish I could help in some way.

smlavine• 3 years ago

Well, stable for now. Give Discord another two decades to figure itself out and see what happens. When it hits the fan, there won't be a "Discord 2" right next door that everyone can migrate to by changing a URL.

izzydata3• 3 years ago

I am patiently waiting for Discord to be sold to some corporation such as Microsoft so we can all move on to the next big thing. I wonder what it will be. Probably not Matrix, but definitely something.

Syonyk8• 3 years ago

The centralized mess of Discord is neither stable, nor reliable, nor lightweight to access, and it's going to bite a lot of communities in the rear end, very hard, at some point down the road. The history of "convenient, free to use tech" like Discord is "Someone buys it and tries to turn a profit, and squeezes the life out of it."

IRC is a "fully mature technology" at this point in the internet. It just works. I believe a number of tech companies keep IRC servers around for the "Everything but TCP/IP has gone down" emergency communications technology.

But it's fine. The filter of IRC is part of what makes it worth it these days to use. It's the anti-Reddit.

jeltz4• 3 years ago

I agree with the first part but IRC in no way just works. Maybe after all seers and clients support IRCv3, but right now it does not just work.

badrabbit6• 3 years ago

I don't care about tech philosophy. The software needs to work well. Show me an IRC network operated with the same ease of use and security as discord and I will use it provided others are on it as well.

You people like your lemmy, mastodon, peertube,etc... and it's not like I disagree with the idea but ideals are only good for academic discussions. They need to work well IRL, there is no replacement for that, period!

I will give you a good example: firefox! It's not just ideas, it works just as well as Chrome!

And you know what, back in the day when you could trust or be apathetic to server ops IRC was great. But not having e2ee encryption and server operators being anti-privacy like with libera means we have no modern day options.

You can downvote me all you want but these bullshit dramas have destroyed communities I liked and that is not f*cking ok! Downvote me a million times but I have not had unexpected disruptions on discord or crazy memory/performance issues.

I would love to use ircv3 that is full e2ee with no opportunistic crap or matrix with a decent well maintained lightweight web client and simple/good UX. But don't tell my the problems don't exist because youe ideology is nice and shiny.

Yeah, discord can be bought by some crappy company and they can start banning for bad reasons but guess what? So can matrix.org and it already happened with freenode (and reddit in a related manner). But today, discord is best.

I hold on to the hope of a better alternative as I point out the flaws in what exist today. It needs to work well first and foremost.

anthk• 3 years ago

- Discord

- Reliable

Oh, dear fools...

patmorgan23• 3 years ago

No.

IRC is a protocol.

Discord is a platform.

Platforms always die. Protocols can live forever.

immibis8• 3 years ago

Discord does exactly the same, except you still can't use a VPN/Tor once you make an account, and you need a phone number as well as an email address.

xwowsersx2• 3 years ago

What communities are y'all in that are only or primarily on Matrix? I haven't seemed to find myself in any yet, but perhaps I'm missing out

dizhn• 3 years ago

The thing is even though not all communities were fully there, they were using the bridges. As far as I know almost all KDE and openSUSE channels were bridged. Now we ended up with a situation where there are still people in the matrix rooms with no connection to the irc users.

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

There are a number of open source events, projects, and foundations that primarily communicate on Matrix, and no surprise it seems particularly common among projects that build on federated technologies (eg ActivityPub-based projects). That's what got me started on Matrix before I joined to lead the Matrix.org Foundation :)

graphe• 3 years ago

You aren't. If you haven't heard of social media it lacks sociability: it's only feature. If you want information join mailing lists. Discord and IG is what I usually use; because and only because everyone else uses it.

rch• 3 years ago

I mostly use it for the Fedwiki and NixOS community channels.

aendruk• 3 years ago

Seattle social groups, NixOS

nerdponx2• 3 years ago

Neovim, especially now that they no longer maintain their own bridge to Libera.

xwowsersx2• 3 years ago

Oh good to know. That's one I would hang out in. Thanks.

Klonoar3• 3 years ago

RedoxOS uses Matrix for their chats now.

COGlory• 3 years ago

Boiling Steam on Matrix.org for Linux gaming

dngray6• 3 years ago

All of the fedora.im rooms.

Opensuse also has their own matrix server #space.opnensuse.org and archlinux does too #archlinux:archlinux.org

m4rtink• 3 years ago

The bridge drop affected Fedora quite a bit - Fedora traditionally used to have their IRC rooms on freenode, then on libera.chat - including the "official" stuff like Special Interest Group meeting, bug triages, GO/NOGO meeting for release, releng, etc.

While it was decided to migrate to Matrix, still a lot of tooling was built for IRC & many users connected via IRC to the rooms, so the situation with bridges in place was ideal.

But wen the bridge stopped working, it effectively split some of these room in half, with some people being on Matrix and some only on IRC. Worse yet, some meeting still depend on IRC only tooling/bots & happen only on the "IRC side" until the tooling can be ported. Not the best situation. :)

judiisis• 3 years ago

F-droid,All the privacy frontends like invidious, piped, nitter, searxng, libreddit

immibis8• 3 years ago

Mozilla; CCCamp.

diamondfist25• 3 years ago

On the side note, are there anyone whose only using matrix for all the social media apps bridges?

I’ve been mucking away for months trying to integrate all social media apps together, and these bridges are obscure and hard to customize/configure for n00bs.

Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1

Syonyk8• 3 years ago

I run a few bridges. They're certainly a bit arcane to configure, but they mostly work fine once they're up and running. I run my own homeserver, it's not been too much trouble to deal with.

Though I try to move people into the "native Matrix" ecosystem. The bridges are just nice as a transition technology.

alwayslikethis2• 3 years ago

The quickest way to do a lot of bridges is this Ansible playbook: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy. I set up Discord, Telegram, Facebook, Instagtam, Slack, IRC without too much trouble. Though if you need a bridge not directly supported you'd be better off doing it manually'

nvy• 3 years ago

Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1

Sounds like Beeper

broodbucket2• 3 years ago

Beeper contribute to and maintain many of the bridges.

georgyo• 3 years ago

After the deportling, I just stopped communicating with IRC, but there is a lot of lost there. One of my communities was basically split in half. Ah well...

The user drop is quite noticable here: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php

After that you can see Libre.Chat is actually growing in users again and at a very consistent pace.

immibis8• 3 years ago

How many of the users were not permanently AFK?

wkat42429• 3 years ago

Probably not so many because the bridge already pruned puppeted users that were inactive.

superkuh2• 3 years ago

That's an interesting perspective. For another try reading the multiple attempts the libera team made to accommodate the slow progress and security holes on the Matrix side before the decision was made to close the the bridge permanently.

Updates on the matrix<>IRC bridge (Jun 7th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates

Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 3rd) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling

Delays in Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 28th) https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay

Temporarily disabling the Matrix Bridge (August 5th) https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-br...

Matrix Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective (August 10th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv...

It was sad to see a few matrix people drop away but most of the activity and users were/are on the IRC side. And of the active matrix users I considered friends most just decided to connect to IRC using a real client. Much like Slack started off with an IRC bridge to bootstrap itself with IRC communities the Riot.im/Element.io corporation no longer feels the need to maintain the bootstrapping and does not allocate resources for it.

carterschonwald• 3 years ago

One thing that Libera and its predecessors have that is impossible with element and discord and slack is: multiple overlapping communities on the same platform.

Maybe matrix/element has that, but I’m not very adept at finding it I guess. Old time original freenode had so many communities.

thedaly• 3 years ago

Isn’t that how it works with discord? I don’t understand what you mean by overlapping communities.

johnny22• 3 years ago

What they mean is you join an irc server with tons of communities all in one place. Discord requires you to join different "servers" where each switch between communities feels like you're at a totally different irc server (even though technically it's not). On irc you just have one name and that's what everybody knows you by. On discord you have one name per "server". There's not really a lot of cross pollination there.

Personally I would like to see a discord interface where there's not a jarring difference between each server. Something more like this hexchat screenshot (although hexchat itself isn't pretty) https://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html but note the server and channel list on the left. I want something more like that.

wkat42429• 3 years ago

Discord is a datamining tracking commercial service. It's just not fair to ask FOSS users to join it IMO.

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

That is definitely a thing that Matrix has, all the more so because it's a decentralized protocol and many deployments federate with each other.

j3s• 3 years ago

soju + senpai is by far the best IRC experience & it’s not even close

khimaros• 3 years ago

i was curious, so i did a bit of digging:

https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/

https://sr.ht/~taiite/senpai/

https://sr.ht/~emersion/gamja/

wkat42429• 3 years ago

For me it's quassel and quasseldroid on mobile.

k8svet2• 3 years ago

I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly.

I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago. With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more.

This current news just gives me more pause about leadership and vision. This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely. It feels like a massive loss for matrix (bad first impressions, negative impact on network effects, etc) and will undoubtedly be something that matrix detractors will point to for years.

I normally keep quiet about this and just huff more copium because I WANT matrix to succeed, but I wish using Element and matrix as it exists didn't make me feel so ... Idk. Normally by now a tech project with this transcripts hits a steady state but man, the protocol is lacking, element web is just passable at the most generous. Element on Android, I won't even speak about, refer to where I want element to succeed.

To balance this out - Element x has been pleasantly satisfying lately. I'm curious if the team is deliberately taking a different strategy. New Element is working on basically the intersection of what I think are going to be foundational future "stuff" but seem almost to eager. Meanwhile element x is missing for feature but is, still after months of using it, "blazingly fast".

immibis8• 3 years ago

Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary. It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element) and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain) is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations. And it doesn't even work that well.

camgunz3• 3 years ago

Sorry I don't think anything you've written here is true:

Matrix, at this point, is effectively proprietary.

Matrix is fully open [0] and fully spec'd by the MSCs [1], and stewarded by the Matrix Foundation [2].

It's fully controlled by one for-profit company (Element).

2/5 people on the board work for Element [2].

and the blockchain protocol (yes, it uses a blockchain)

It does not use a blockchain (there is no proof-of-anything). You might be confusing blockchains with Merkle Trees, but in that case you'd also have to think git is a blockchain.

is complicated enough to prevent independent reimplementations

There are several independent client [3] and server [4] implementations.

And it doesn't even work that well.

Maybe not, but it has pretty good adoption [5]

[0] https://github.com/matrix-org

[1] https://spec.matrix.org/

[2] https://matrix.org/about/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Clients

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Servers

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)#Adoption

jesopo2• 3 years ago

there's a lot of critiques to make of matrix's state synchronisation model but "blockchain!!!" is beyond facile

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

As the Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation it is expected that I conduct myself with some level of decorum.

So, exercising all due restraint, I say this: your statement is unmoored from reality. I thank @camgunz for chiming in and citing sources.

Zetobal4• 3 years ago

Drop it. After all the shit they pulled last year (no oss server code anymore, killing bridges, bugged clients) and hiring a PR person you just know they are going for entshitification. I wonder if they will recognize that their commercial offerings are just not up to spec.

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

Check your facts. Matrix remains an open protocol, under open source license, with open governance, stewarded by a nonprofit. And there remain multiple open source server implementations and clients.

As useful as Cory Doctorow's concept of enshittification is, it has absolutely no utility in describing what is happening here.

Nobody is being locked in, the user experience is incrementally improving as the spec and the implementations evolve, and we're sure as hell not collecting ever more data and using recommendation algorithms to shove advertising down people's throats.

There are plenty of valid critiques. But what you're saying here is just patently absurd.

joshsimmons6• 3 years ago

I really appreciate you sharing your concerns, and for all the hope and energy you've put into Matrix to date. Very much to your point, we're not yet in a state where I recommend Matrix to friends and family. Right now I only use it with people in FOSS and other circles where folks are a little more patient with the tech.

Only time will tell, and of course I'm biased as the Matrix.org Foundation's Managing Director, but I think there's good reason to remain hopeful:

The spec continues to evolve with major improvements expected in feature set and performance in the next year as we get to the 2.0 spec release, the Foundation is staffing up and beginning to fundraise, we're on the cusp of holding our first ever community elections to seat a Governing Board, and adoption has continued doubling on an annual basis.

I invite you and anyone else who is invested and/or concerned to join us in the Foundation's new office room – it's a way to get a view into ongoing activities, ask questions, provide direct feedback, and celebrate all the little wins on our way to collective success: https://matrix.to/#/#foundation-office:matrix.org

Arathorn6• 3 years ago

with the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more.

Synapse is very stable these days, and relatively resource efficient. Matrix.org (both the server, website, spec and foundation) is in a good place too, as is (from my biased pov as project lead) the project in general.

This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely

We simply don't have the people to do a good job of maintaining the Libera bridge. We tried to jump forwards on it with persistent connections to improve the experience on the Libera side; this caused a tonne of instability; we couldn't move back (given it would have also been seen as a backwards step); we didn't have the manpower to fix it rapidly either; so this is not remotely our preferred outcome. We ran the bridge for almost 8 years; it wasn't perfect; it wasn't a total disaster either; but in the end we overstretched ourselves and Libera pulled the plug.

It feels like a massive loss for matrix (bad first impressions, negative impact on network effects, etc) and will undoubtedly be something that matrix detractors will point to for years.

Matrix has around 5M native active users based on the phonehome stats, of which ~22k were using the libera bridge. I agree that it's awful for early adopter geeks who love IRC, and I despair that it has happened. But I don't think the sky is falling either.

Element X has been pleasantly satisfying lately. I'm curious if the team is deliberately taking a different strategy.

Yes, it's a very different strategy. Element isn't working on the legacy mobile apps at all any more (other than for security updates), and rather than being spread too thin over too many projects and codebases (Element Web, Element iOS & Element Android all had zero code in common other than libolm) instead the intention is for Element to focus on one primary codebase (matrix-rust-sdk + Element X and Element Web 'R') and nail it. Meanwhile we don't have the manpower to do a good job of other projects (e.g. Libera bridge, P2P Matrix, Third Room etc.) and so they are on hold for now.

I agree that with 20:20 hindsight this hasn't been the most efficient route to get to where we are today.

Laaas2• 3 years ago

Did you solve the funding issues after that Christmas (?) post about not having enough funds? I assume probably not fully given you don't have enough manpower?

RadiozRadioz2• 3 years ago

Synapse is [...] relatively resource efficient

Yeah, no. I run both a Matrix server (Synapse) and an XMPP server (Prosody). It is completely obvious when Synapse is running on my server. I don't need ps or systemctl status, I can tell if Synapse is running just by looking at the bars at the top of htop.

Meanwhile my XMPP stuff is as invisible as any other system service.

k8svet2• 3 years ago

I appreciate the reply. I just want to repeat, since I feel I was so negative, I like what I know of the matrix folks and I've always appreciated your willingness to dive into these threads. I'll be rooting for y'all until it's clear once again that Matrix is the likely long term future of interoperable chat. If only the world cared to invest in y'all like well, lots of other things.

Re-reading my posts, I guess I could be more specific. Y'all seem like you have great technical vision but are having a hard time with success, growth, and revenue. While I can appreciate some technical bits of Matrix, I would never dare to think I could do better than anyone at those real challenges. It hurts to read about y'all struggling for dev funds, in spite of success. And I feel like that probably weighs on you, it would weigh on me. Godspeed, good luck, I look forward to tomorrow's TWIM :).

Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

Related Stories