Introducing premium accounts to fund the matrix.org homeserver
matrix.org
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
  • tiramichu@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    341·
    2 months ago

    Matrix org isn’t obligated to run a public instance at all - they could stick to developing the spec, and let other people run instances.

    And honestly maybe they should, because then we wouldn’t have this huge consolidation problem on matrix.org in the first place.

  • ohshit604@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    22·
    2 months ago

    The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit and only relies on donations to operate. Its core mission is to maintain the Matrix Specification, but it does much more than that.

    Non-profit… only relies on donations…

    This was taken quite literally at the bottom of that article.

    • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
      242·
      2 months ago

      At some point donations become unsustainable. Like literally their options are to start charging or close up shop.

      The smarter thing to do would be to rotate instances on sign-up to decentralize the Matrix-verse but it’s probably too late now.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        31·
        2 months ago

        Ads win out in the end, more lucrative for the business model, and thats usually when enshittification occurs.

    • nroth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      213·
      2 months ago

      The context in the article is important. Similar to what FUTO preaches-- people don’t donate. That’s why corporate solutions usually win. Better to charge a bit of money so we can have nice things.

      • msage@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I used to have $5 on Patreon… but it seemed dead. I wrote a message asking what’s up, but no response.

        The whole org is a shitshow from what little pieces of info I have, still waiting for Dendride, hoping the front-ends will stabilize.

        I’ve been using Matrix selfhosted as my primary communication tool since 2017, not connecting it to matrix.org (tried once, deleted instance afterwards), and I love it, but the org… meh.

        • nroth@lemmy.worldEnglish
          52·
          2 months ago

          People deserve to get paid on their work, and currently the best way to do that and survive in America is to work on completely closest source products that don’t respect their users. Open source is probably the most respectful but doesn’t work well as a business. We need something that works reliably for delivering real products that will achieve mass adoption. I think these source available licenses are that.

          • ZeroOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
            72·
            2 months ago

            You know what else source-available licences do ?

            Put restrictions like you cannot make money from the forks. Forks are the lifeblood of FOSS.

  • LupusBlackfur@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    We have been communicating on the lack of funds in the Foundation for a while now, the latest being here. And whilst we’ve been working hard to gather new members and are happy to see the number of logos increasing (thank you all for seeing the need for Matrix to stay independent and safe, and the value in supporting it!), none of the big players in the ecosystem have actually committed to one of the higher membership tiers, so we need to find other ways towards sustainability.

    🤔

    Sounds like that business plan isn’t working out like you hoped…

    And/Or not enough users care to use your product.

    🤷‍♂️

    • nroth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      2 months ago

      The plan was to rely on donations, which doesn’t usually work for hosted products.

      • LupusBlackfur@lemmy.worldEnglish
        74·
        2 months ago

        😂

        Still need users. And folks who like/want/use the product enough to care to donate.

        If neither is happening, you’re business model is failing. Profit or nonprofit.

        🤷‍♂️

  • flux@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    Wish the homeserver portability would be worked on more. The ability to change homeserver would really allow people to more easily move on from matrix.org.

    Myself included ;).

    Optimally it would even allow the switch “after the fact”, so after your original homeserver is down, assuming your client has a local copy of the server-side secret storage. It would need to be based on some cryptographic identity then, I suppose.

      • flux@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        It’s nice that this exists, but even for this I’d prefer to use an open source tool.

        And it of course helps with migration only if the old HS is still online…

        I think most practically this migration function would be built inside some Matrix client (one that would support more than one server to start with), but I suppose a standalone tool would be a decent solution as well.