Sorry, but that’s a bit of a rude conclusion to come to considering you know nothing about me or the fact that I’ve been writing software for over 20 years.
Anyway, I think we’ve both said our piece and I’m happy to just disagree. You seem like a cool person and I’d rather not have us get upset over semantics.
Take care! :)
So is the Linux kernel not open because code has to go through review and may be rejected?
Is Gnu software not open because you have to sign over copyright or may have code rejected for ideological reasons?
Guido van Rossum was BDFL of Python until recently and had pretty much final say on anything that went into the langauge. So I guess Python isn’t open?
Hopefully the XMPP Standards Foundation doesn’t just blindly merge in every pull request that comes their way! I’m sure there have been plenty of people that had to beg and still had their proposal rejected.
You may not agree with the decisions being made about Matrix, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an open protocol or an open process. In fact it’s extremely transparent as another commenter linked to their proposal pull requests on GitHub.
There’s plenty to criticize about Matrix. It may be overly complicated and over-engineered. If there is significant VC involvement, then the threat of enshittification is very real. Element is also quite slow in larger rooms and the search is pretty terrible at the moment.
But, it’s dishonest to say it’s not open. I just don’t want other readers to think it’s somehow closed, when it isn’t. Discord is closed. Slack is closed. Matrix is not.
Also, while being open is a good thing, it’s not a virtue unto itself. Visual Studio Code is an open editor but I stay away from it because I don’t trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Likewise Chromium is open but I stay away from it because I trust Google even less.
Sorry, but nothing you mentioned has anything to do with Matrix not being an open protocol. I don’t know what you mean by “truly open”. It sounds like a “no true Scotsman” argument.
The spec is absolutely open, and you can see it in what I linked. There are also several servers and several clients if you don’t like one written by the Matrix or Element folks. Heck, there’s even a client for emacs! Now there are compatibility issues since not every server and client implements the entire protocol yet, but that’s not an issue of openness. I used to run into problems all the time with XMPP way back when for similar reasons. I even recall something about Google breaking the XMPP protocol in some ways and causing problems.
I’m not even sure your claim of VC funding is true, since the faq mentions several non VC sources of funding. I couldn’t find anything about VC at element.io, so maybe it’s hidden there, or something has changed a matrix.org?
Still, discussion about not liking their business model is orthogonal to whether the protocol is open or not. Maybe we run the risk of them pulling a HashiCorp and changing some licensing down the road, which would be terrible. But I think it’s dishonest to say it’s not open.
Can you elaborate on what you mean that Matrix is a closed protocol? The spec is open and there are several server and clients to choose from.
I just can’t take anything seriously that puts such an emphasis on “free speech”.
The blog has a post about “Web 3”, so that’s a bit of a red flag as well.
I love how the top of the page mentions to ditch Facebook and twitter, but then there are links to them at the bottom. I get wanting to spread the word, but it just looks bad.
Also, no source code?
This whole thing just feels sketchy.