[HN Gopher] European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams
___________________________________________________________________
European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams
Author : Arathorn
Score : 302 points
Date : 2026-02-05 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euractiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euractiv.com)
| butvacuum wrote:
| If they can't pass chat control- Simply adopt something full of
| holes but seems reasonable.
| sunbum wrote:
| What?
| robtherobber wrote:
| I think the intention was never to get _their_ communication
| audited (potentially via poor security), but ours. You know, to
| protect the children and all that.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Help me here
|
| Why can't a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app?
|
| There's are EU companies that make teams alternatives:
|
| https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams
|
| Even if those don't work SAP, Dassault, etc... make massively
| complex software and services across multiple verticals and could
| trivially ship a competitor
| arielcostas wrote:
| Why reinvent the wheel when there are already open standards
| like Matrix or XMPP that can be adapted to your use case?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Matrix isn't a 1:1 replacement for teams
| NewJazz wrote:
| Explain
| input_sh wrote:
| ...thank god?
| arielcostas wrote:
| Depends on what features of teams you use, since it kind-of
| became an "everything" app
| steve1977 wrote:
| Teams minus the bloat and bugs?
| pyrale wrote:
| > Why can't a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat
| app?
|
| What makes you think they can't?
|
| Microsoft's corporate edge isn't merely the product, it's also
| an army of sales, entrenched corporate markets/clients, lock-
| in, etc.
|
| You could have a better version of their product and still get
| eaten alive.
| m4rtink wrote:
| And don't forget Copilot! ;-)
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| In the Netherlands, a lot of government systems aren't
| procured from the Microsofts of this world. There are a lot
| of middle men (consultancy agencies) involved that over the
| years have helped build a strong ecosystem with lots of
| expertise around Microsoft and related suppliers.
|
| So indeed, it's not like you can just replace a software
| product (or service) by some EU or open alternative. And
| there are huge vested interests.
| kuerbel wrote:
| Same in Germany. I think in any European country.
| saubeidl wrote:
| The french government recently did:
| https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet
| blitzar wrote:
| Jitsi
|
| Formerly - skype
|
| Matrix
| cardanome wrote:
| I mean German police is using Palantir.
|
| There is nothing magic about Palantir, especially not about the
| subset of Palantir that the German police uses as we have
| stricter data privacy laws.
|
| You might think that would be a strategic risk not worth taking
| especially with the US getting more hostile towards Europe but
| here we are.
|
| Why? Honestly I don't have a good answer other than well the
| whole system is rotten, corruption, lobbyism, take your pick.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| The idea of the likes of SAP spinning up a new product quickly
| and painlessly seems like a joke.
| hooverd wrote:
| In defense of SAP, their product really is built to be
| configurable for every use case under the sun.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Element's topco may be UK based for now, but the vast majority
| of our business and footprint is in the EU -
| https://element.io/en/about. All but one of our mobile app team
| is in the EU for instance (and when we started, the UK was too
| :|)
| iso1631 wrote:
| Zoom came along with a securre video/voice chat, sure it's
| American, but it was by far the world leader
|
| Microsoft then used its monopoly in office tools to push Teams
| to everyone
|
| You can't compete with a trillion dollar company offering your
| product as a bundle your clients already pay for, even if your
| product is better. Even VC money runs out eventually
| steve1977 wrote:
| To be fair, Microsoft already had Skype (for Business) and
| NetMeeting before that. It's not like they were new to that
| market. NetMeeting existed for more than a decade before Zoom
| even came into existence.
|
| Zoom had COVID-19 play in it's favor, that's about it.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Skype for Business is the VoIP component for Teams, now.
| Sharepoint is the file service for Teams, too.
|
| Basically, Teams is a front end for a bunch of old
| Mircosoft cloud services... plus chat. Actually more than
| one chat as teams channels chat is a separate tech stack
| from private chat. It used to be much more monlothic and
| then the Sharepoint people got their hooks into it.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Zoom has long been the most unsecure video/voice application.
|
| Remember how they installed an open web server on people's
| computers which could be accessed by anyone through the web?
|
| https://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-
| webcams-...
|
| Apple had to step in and patch it for them:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-
| zoom-a...
|
| Or when they sent your chat data to Facebook?
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-ios-app-sends-data-
| to-f...
|
| How it was discussed on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703000
|
| Or when Zoom was leaking private information?
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-leaking-email-
| addresses...
|
| Or do you remember how those geniuses rolled their own
| crypto?
|
| https://citizenlab.ca/research/move-fast-roll-your-own-
| crypt...
|
| Or maybe you remember that Zoom has the ability to listen in
| in real-time on meetings held on their platform?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55372493
| mmooss wrote:
| One major issue is system management:
|
| Installing another app, such as Signal, on your personal
| computer is one thing. On 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 computers,
| installing it, configuring it, changing settings, updating it,
| backing it up, locking down settings from user changes (such as
| retention) - all that requires special tools to do it
| efficiently at scale. Without the management tools, no way that
| bit of IT can be used.
|
| The most common tool by far is Microsoft's Active Directory and
| Group Policy, which has the best compatibility with Windows and
| with Microsoft applications, including Office. If AD/GP is
| already deployed, imagine the burden of deploying a second tool
| to your 1K/10K/100K computers, setting up the server, learning
| to use it ... you're not doing that for one application unless
| it's very valuable. The exception is a tool bundled with the
| application for its own management, but that's going to have to
| be efficient to deploy, learn, and use to be worthwhile.
|
| Therefore, for many organizations, any application must be
| effectively managed by AD/GP, which requires the application's
| developer to create AD/GP management components.
|
| Do Matrix, Signal, or any other application have system
| management tools?
| b-mmxx wrote:
| There is Wire with HQ in Berlin, Germany.
|
| https://wire.com/en/
| simianwords wrote:
| I don't know how Teams even got the approval to be released. It
| must be so embarrassing to be Satya and be forced to use this
| shitty piece of software.
|
| I can't believe that software of this quality is used so widely.
| Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing
| unfortunately.
| soperj wrote:
| I felt the same way when I was forced to use Word over
| Wordperfect, and Powerpoint over Harvard Graphics
| librasteve wrote:
| errr market monopoly forces are doing their thing ... the point
| is that only a govt can force eg an OS + APP anticompetitive
| monopoly provider to split up into multiple companies
| kuerbel wrote:
| It's because of the licenses mostly. If you buy e.g. business
| standard or business premium or whatever you want to make the
| most of it. Hey, there is a free chat app included, and it
| integrates so well with the rest of m365!
|
| (Also most people don't know that you can still use a KMS
| with/for office 2024. You don't need M365.)
| Macha wrote:
| Slack costs new money. You're already paying for teams if you
| use office/ms365/etc.
|
| That's all many companies need to see in their purchasing
| decisions. It's not just "is slack better" but "is it enough
| better to pay out"
| neom wrote:
| I'm surprised Mattermost doesn't get more love generally, it's
| fully oss isn't it? https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost
| trueismywork wrote:
| No. It's not fully OSS.
| Arathorn wrote:
| it's also not decentralised (unless you bridge it to Matrix),
| nor end-to-end-encrypted. or standards based.
| ronsor wrote:
| To be fair, why would you care if your internal
| organization or company chat is decentralized?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The article said secure communication with other EU
| bodies was a use case.
| Arathorn wrote:
| If you work with lots of other entities who want full
| control over their own comms (e.g. other governments,
| other departments, other EU entities like European
| Parliament and Council, the UN, NATO, etc) then
| decentralisation or federation is a big deal.
|
| In the public sector it's basically a requirement: it's
| bananas if your country's critical infrastructure ends up
| dependent on some a product effectively controlled by
| another country (e.g. Teams) - and you obviously want to
| be able to communicate with other govt entities rather
| than being stuck in an island.
|
| Then it's a natural extension to the private sector -
| although for now, it feels more folks are on the "nobody
| got sacked for using Teams" train.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Mattermost's license statements are confusing and
| contradictory.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861331
| cloud-oak wrote:
| I think Mattermost lost a lot of instance admins' trust when
| they recently decided to update the server to limit access to
| old messages without good reason. On self-hosted instances!
|
| https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/issues/34271
| neom wrote:
| That's a shame, I interviewed there once, decided not to take
| it but it was one of the few places I could have seen myself
| working at, they seemed like decent folks trying to build
| something worthwhile.
| layer8 wrote:
| Anything "sovereign" should decouple the protocol from the
| client software IMO, which isn't possible with Mattermost.
| pm3003 wrote:
| Well there's always Matterbridge. If you don't have
| complicated workflows to replicate (and even then) you can
| just replicate to XMPP, Nextcloud or whatever.
| mhitza wrote:
| Can someone that uses Matrix compare it to Zulip? Which would
| have been my "obvious" choice.
|
| Is it functionally comparable, discussion threads and all? Or is
| it much closer to something like Discord?
| Arathorn wrote:
| Matrix is a decentralised encrypted chat protocol on which you
| could build something like Zulip, except decentralised and end-
| to-end encrypted.
|
| Element is the actual app being trialled here, which feels more
| like Slack and/or Signal than Zulip. The point is that you get
| something you can selfhost while also interoperating with other
| deployments... while also encrypting the data end-to-end with
| Signal protocol.
| tamimio wrote:
| Yeah I would love to see a new professional application based
| on Matrix, Element is buggy, other apps lacking too.
| blitzar wrote:
| > Element is buggy
|
| Someone should tell the CEO/CTO of Element
| edoceo wrote:
| Arathorn is the CEO. I bet you knew that. At the time I
| write this your comment is grey. Maybe context was
| missing; or they think you're snark.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Speaking as the CEO/CTO of Element... the classic Element
| apps on mobile _were_ buggy, thanks to being a ~10 year
| old codebase with no shared code between platforms and
| effectively the 1st generation Matrix client. Which is
| why we replaced them over the last few years with Element
| X, with all the heavy lifting shared between iOS &
| Android via matrix-rust-sdk (effectively a 3rd gen Matrix
| SDK).
|
| That said, 70% of our users haven't got the memo yet -
| we'll do a hard-upgrade when the remaining missing
| features in Element X (Spaces & Threads) are fully out of
| Labs.
|
| Meanwhile, Element Web is lagging behind Element X - but
| we're now in the middle of an incremental in-place
| upgrade (not a big-bang rewrite, thank goodness) to use
| matrix-rust-sdk - see our talk from FOSDEM last Sunday
| for the details:
| https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/DZJVTS-an-element-
| web...
| markush_ wrote:
| It's very cool and inspiring to see the CEO posting here.
| Keep up the amazing work!
| solarkraft wrote:
| I'm excited to watch the talk. I'm generally critical of
| Matrix, but that's because I want it to succeed. Lately I
| find you've been doing a lot of things right, so I hope
| you keep going!
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| > That said, 70% of our users haven't got the memo yet -
| we'll do a hard-upgrade when the remaining missing
| features in Element X (Spaces & Threads) are fully out of
| Labs.
|
| This isn't users not getting the memo yet, this is users
| being faced with an unfortunate choice between a buggy,
| slow client and a new client that doesn't implement
| important functionality like Spaces and Threads.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| Can i ask why is Element Classic even available on the
| Google Play Store? If you want people to move away from
| this?
|
| I've only started my Matrix journey, in the form of
| writing bots using the matrix Python library. I'm keeping
| my fingers crossed, as the Matrix protocol could be
| really impactful.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| He said Element X missed Spaces & Threads.
| pm3003 wrote:
| Federation can feel like "just a feature" but the E2E
| encryption (also in group chats) is a reason for Matrix to
| exist and a big reason why it's so slow.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| "Slow" in what sense? Development? Because I self host a
| Conduit server and I don't ever notice messages being slow.
| It would be hard to notice anyway, as in a group chat
| people usually take some time to type in their responses.
|
| The sync between large groups used to be slow because of
| amount of data, but Element X and "sliding windows" were
| rolled out to help with it.
|
| AFAIK, the public Matrix server used to be slow because of
| a heavy load (I think), but on my self-hosted instance
| that's not a problem at all.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| The experience of using Matrix involves a lot of
| sluggishness at various points in the client - waiting to
| decrypt messages or properly sync keys, waiting to join a
| room or for room search to load - these are the things
| that have been salient to me using multiple matrix
| clients with a freshly-spun-up server within the past
| month.
| ezst wrote:
| It's so slow because it's so badly designed as a protocol,
| E2E isn't really the problem (the slowness is roughly
| equivalent for non-encrypted rooms)
| solarkraft wrote:
| > on which you could build something like Zulip
|
| I hope that at some point a focus of the Matrix project will
| become why this isn't being done. A better developer
| experience would supercharge the ecosystem, IMO.
|
| Matrix _should_ be the default for anyone building a chat
| app, but for some reason it's not.
| Macha wrote:
| Matrix has threads. So does discord, but discords UI around
| them basically renders them functionally useless.
|
| Anyway, the first goal listed in this project was to move to
| European sovereign solutions so Zulip failed at the first
| hurdle.
|
| Given the (lack of) speed of European bureaucracy, this is
| likely more a reaction to the US sanctioning the ICC than the
| more recent Greenland saber rattling, but you'll probably see
| more of this in the future.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Anyway, the first goal listed in this project was to move
| to European sovereign solutions so Zulip failed at the first
| hurdle.
|
| Element Creations Ltd and The Matrix.org Foundation CIC are
| UK companies.
| Macha wrote:
| The UK is in Europe. Brexit didn't float the country out
| several hundred miles.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty defined
| digital sovereignty as the EU and its Member States'
| ability to act autonomously and to freely choose their
| own solutions, while reaping the benefits of
| collaboration with global partners, when possible. The UK
| is not the EU or a member state.
|
| Part of Russia is in Europe. Do you believe Russian
| products were considered?
| Macha wrote:
| And this comment chain adds what exactly?
|
| It's pretty obvious why the UK is considered more
| European than the US, and equally obvious too why Russia
| is not considered in that tent.
|
| Pretending it's not just so you can disagree with a
| comment adds nothing and is an example of why HN is so
| often a tedious place.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The EU's definition of digital sovereignty included
| collaboration with global partners. It is obvious why UK
| companies could be considered more reliable global
| partners than US or Russian companies. A muddled concept
| of European was not needed to explain it. If where an
| open source solution was developed mattered even.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Element Software SARL and Element Software GmbH however are
| not. In practice I believe it's Element Software GmbH
| providing the European Commission deployment of ESS. (Both
| are owned by the UK topco, but at the current rate we might
| flip one of them to be the topco instead).
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Subsidiaries mean nothing. Microsoft have EU subsidiaries
| also. And might means might not.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| I wouldn't say Discord threads are useless - I do wish the UI
| made them more obvious, but I'm in many discord chats that
| use threads all the time.
|
| Matrix has threads in a sense, but in this very thread the
| project lead is talking about how the new, ostensibly less
| buggy and more performant flagship client does not yet fully
| support them.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| They are different, and the biggest reason is (I suspect) that
| a Zulip workspace is self-contained while a Matrix server is
| able to federate with other Matrix servers.
|
| Other European institutions are also adopting Matrix, so
| federation may turn out to be an important feature.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| zulip seems to me like it would be a better solution to me (open
| source, self hostible, familiar paradigm, etc), but then again, I
| think _anything_ would be better than teams... so more power to
| them!
| tcfhgj wrote:
| so Matrix doesn't have self hostable open source options?
| Arathorn wrote:
| https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm (aka ESS Community) is
| Element's FOSS distro fwiw.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| France's government uses Matrix. Presumably a nice perk to be
| able to talk to them via federation
| pm3003 wrote:
| Germany (government and armed forces) and NATO also use it.
| cge wrote:
| I'm not sure if it ended up being used this way, but if I
| recall correctly, when that was being initially implemented,
| federation was actually a core feature: different agencies /
| municipalities / etc could have their own servers and control
| their own data and accounts, but inter-agency conversations
| and rooms would be well-supported, along with each agency
| retaining a copy of the rooms on their own servers.
| ValtteriL wrote:
| Dreambroker
| yabones wrote:
| My team started using Matrix/Element after years of frustration
| with Teams and Slack. It's _far_ from perfect, but using a simple
| application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is
| wonderful.
|
| I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the
| bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX
| enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS.
|
| My dream is that Matrix can do for intra-org comms what Signal
| did for SMS.
| Teever wrote:
| The key is the money.
|
| I've used matrix for years, ran my own federated server for a
| while.
|
| I've been critical of the user experience and issues with how
| it's handled by the matrix team before but I acknowledge that
| by and large these problems can be fixed with money.
|
| Big players need to put their big boy pants on and throw a
| couple coins from their farcically large coin purse and they
| can drive a stake through the wretched heart that is Teams.
| troyvit wrote:
| And this is the part I hope Europe gets. They don't have
| nearly as much money to throw at Matrix as Microsoft can
| throw at Teams, but they do have massive resources, and I bet
| that since Matrix doesn't have many of the same shitty KPIs
| as Slack and Teams, those resources can go much further.
| pmontra wrote:
| I guess that the European Commission pays a lot of money to
| Microsoft in licenses. They could pay a fraction of those
| money to Matrix.
| parchley wrote:
| Are you saying that Microsoft is more wealthy than all of
| "Europe"? And surely you must mean the EU.
|
| The money needed to improve matrix is nothing compared to
| what is already being spent on Microsoft products.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Are you saying that Microsoft is more wealthy than all
| of "Europe"?_
|
| "In 2024, the EU spent EUR403 billion on research and
| development" [1]. In 2024, Microsoft spend $29.5bn on R&D
| [2]. So about 20 Microsofts makes up the entire EU's R&D
| expenditure.
|
| Alphabet, meanwhile, spent $49.3bn on R&D in 2024 [3]. It
| earned $350bn that year. So it would be correct to say
| that Microsoft and Alphabet's revenues, alone, rival the
| total amount Europe spends on research and development.
| (Non-EU non-British spending is insignificant.)
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
|
| [2] https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar24/
|
| [3] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/00016
| 5204425...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Microsoft may have money, but it certainly does not seem
| like it is being spent on Teams in an effective way.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The lack of shitty KPIs is the main thing. Hiring 10 full
| time devs to work on Matrix would probably be more
| effective than 500 full time devs on Slack/Teams with most
| of them stuck on weird Product Manager goals and renaming
| things to Copilot 365 Teams with Copilot.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| I don't know much about Matrix. Maybe in this case the key is
| money.
|
| But having worked at various startups and enterprises, it is
| very common for lots of money and resources to thrown at
| projects and for little or no progress to be made.
|
| Money might be a necessary condition but it's definitely not a
| sufficient one. See Microsoft teams.
|
| Again I know nothing about Matrix, but I found your comment
| about UX concerning. UX is a problem that is almost immune to
| money. An extremely clear vision is almost always the
| bottleneck. Money can always help with adding features or
| performance or scaling, but I feel like it doesn't usually fix
| UX. Hope I'm wrong.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sometimes good enough is good enough. Slack, Teams, Matrix,
| whatever, as long as you're meeting most daily driving
| requirements, everything else is maintenance and long tail
| quality of life improvement (imho).
|
| What else are Teams users going to get out of Microsoft
| chasing an ever increasing enterprise valuation and stock
| price target with regards to their user experience? Email
| just works, make teams comms that just works and is mostly
| stable. Get off the treadmill of companies chasing ever more
| returns (which will never be enough) at the expense of their
| customer base. _We have the technology._
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| I think the PowerSync [1] team is missing out on an
| opportunity to showcase their impressive data sync
| technology by building a minimalist Slack clone.
|
| [1] https://www.powersync.com/
| pembrook wrote:
| Yea, if you have to waste an extra 15 minutes per day due
| to bad UX who cares, it's much better that you get the
| self-satisfied feeling of sticking it to "the man"
| (American big tech).
|
| I mean it only adds up to 90 days of your life wasted over
| a 30 year career. European peoples time has a lower salary
| value anyways. UX doesn't even matter that much, the
| political meme of the day is much more important.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Microsoft Teams already is already terrible UX, we have
| nowhere to go but up. Perhaps you are unaware, and if so,
| you should be thankful you don't have to lose time using
| it. There are objectively better solutions available.
| pembrook wrote:
| I too hate Microsoft teams but it can always get worse,
| you have no idea.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'm in several Slack teams for non profits and
| professional orgs, Teams for a client or two, IRC and
| Matrix servers for digital archiving ops,
| Signal/WhatsApp/GroupMe/Telegram groups, etc. I have been
| in tech for 25+ years, I am familiar with the extremes.
| You are right, things can be bad, that is the point of
| systems engineering: to drive directionally towards
| continual improvement. Success is never assured, but
| throwing our hands up and giving up is not reasonable.
| Make a plan, work the plan. Default to action. Work is
| hard.
|
| I recommend "Thinking in Systems" by Donella H. Meadows
| (ISBN13 9781603580557) on this topic [1]. It's ~$10 on
| Amazon as of this comment, and the PDF is easy to find
| with a quick web search.
|
| [1] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3737036W/Thinking_in_
| systems
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > UX is a problem that is almost immune to money.
|
| Unfortunately this is very well-put.
|
| But on the other hand, I think it's reasonable to hope that
| the "clear vision" for Matrix can largely be cribbed from all
| the other nigh-indistinguishable team chat apps like Slack,
| Discord, Mattermost, et al. In that case money to actually
| make the obvious fixes might be enough.
| legulere wrote:
| > UX is a problem that is almost immune to money
|
| Usability testing seems like something where you can get
| better UX with a lot of money:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/
| Arathorn wrote:
| > It's _far_ from perfect, but using a simple application with
| no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful.
|
| I think there are three main reasons it's not perfect yet:
|
| 1. Building both a decentralised open standard (Matrix) at the
| same time as a flagship implementation (Element) is playing on
| hard mode: everything has to be specified under an open
| governance process (https://spec.matrix.org/proposals) so that
| the broader ecosystem can benefit from it - while in the early
| years we could move fast and JFDI, the ecosystem grew much
| faster than we anticipated and very enthusiastically demanded a
| better spec process. While Matrix is built extensibly with
| protocol agility to let you experiment at basically every level
| of the stack (e.g. right now we're changing the format of user
| IDs in MSC4243, and the shape of room DAGs in MSC4242) in
| practice changes take at least ~10x longer to land than in a
| typical proprietary/centralised product. On the plus side,
| hopefully the end result ends up being more durable than some
| proprietary thing, but it's certainly a fun challenge.
|
| 2. As Matrix project lead, I took the "Element" use case pretty
| much for granted from 2019-2022: it felt like Matrix had
| critical mass and usage was exploding; COVID was highlighting
| the need for secure comms; it almost felt like we'd done most
| of the hard bits and finishing building out the app was a
| given. As a result, I started looking at the N-year horizon
| instead - spending Element's time working on P2P Matrix
| (arewep2pyet.com) as a long-term solution to Matrix's metadata
| footprint and to futureproof Matrix against Chat Control style
| dystopias... or projects like Third Room (https://thirdroom.io)
| to try to ensure that spatial collaboration apps didn't get
| centralised and vendorlocked to Meta, or bluesky on Matrix
| (https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/,
| before Jay & Paul got the gig and did atproto).
|
| I maintain that if things had continued on the 2019-2022
| trajectory then we would have been able to ship a polished
| Element _and_ do the various "scifi" long-term projects too.
| But in practice that didn't happen, and I kinda wish that we'd
| spent the time focusing on polishing the core Element use case
| instead. Still, better late than never, in 2023 we did the
| necessary handbrake turn focusing exclusively on the core
| Element apps (Element X, Web, Call) and Element Server Suite as
| an excellent helm-based distro. Hopefully the results speak for
| themselves now (although Element Web is still being upgraded to
| use the same engine as Element X).
|
| 3. Finally, the thing which went wrong in 2022/2023 was not
| just the impact of the end of ZIPR, but the horrible
| realisation that the more successful Matrix got... the more
| incentive there would be for 3rd parties to commercialise the
| Apache-licensed code that Element had built (e.g. Synapse)
| without routing any funds to us as the upstream project. We
| obviously knew this would happen to some extent - we'd
| deliberately picked Apache to try to get as much uptake as
| possible. However, I hadn't realised that the % of projects
| willing to fund the upstream would _reduce_ as the project got
| more successful - and the larger the available funds (e.g.
| governments offering million-dollar deals to deploy Matrix for
| healthcare, education etc) then you were pretty much guaranteed
| the % of upstream funding would go to zero.
|
| So, we addressed this in 2023 by having to switch Element's
| work to AGPL, massively shrinking the company, and then doing
| an open-core distribution in the form of ESS Pro
| (https://element.io/server-suite/pro) which puts scalability
| (but not performance), HA, and enterprise features like
| antivirus, onboarding/offboarding, audit, border gateways etc
| behind the paywall. The rule of thumb is that if a feature
| empowers the end-user it goes FOSS; if it empowers the
| enterprise over the end-user it goes Pro. Thankfully the model
| seems to be working - e.g. EC is using ESS for this deployment.
| There's a lot more gory detail in last year's FOSDEM main-stage
| talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkCKhP1jxdk
|
| Eitherway, the good news is that we think we've figured out how
| to make this work, things are going cautiously well, and these
| days all of Element is laser-focused on making the Element apps
| & servers as good as we possibly can - while also continuing to
| also improve Matrix, both because we believe the world needs
| Matrix more than ever, and because without Matrix Element is
| just another boring silo'd chat app.
|
| The bad news is that it took us a while to figure it all out
| (and there are still some things still to solve - e.g. abuse on
| the public Matrix network, finishing Hydra (see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Keu8aE8t08), finishing the
| Element Web rework, and _cough_ custom emoji). I 'm hopeful
| we'll get here in the end :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Have you considered raising capital?
| Arathorn wrote:
| yes, Element is venture-funded, which is where much of the
| money came to build all this in the first place - see the
| bottom of https://element.io/en/about.
| yabones wrote:
| Best of luck to you and the team! I really, _really_ hope it
| 's successful :)
| vovavili wrote:
| God speed and thank you for your work. We need a professional
| world without the hellish Teams-Slack duopoly.
| thibaut_barrere wrote:
| France is leveraging Matrix in Tchap
| https://element.io/fr/case-studies/tchap (part of La Suite
| Numerique https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/#products recently
| featured on HN).
|
| Presumably there is funding or resources because of that.
| lwarfield wrote:
| I've always thought the really low bandwidth support they
| added a few years ago was to support the french subs. It
| matched all the requirements of VLF/ELF communications.
| Arathorn wrote:
| It wasn't France (and, ironically, it wasn't funded - it
| was mainly us showing off)
| Arathorn wrote:
| France donates to the Matrix Foundation (which helps the
| protocol retain its neutrality and independence, and is very
| much appreciated), but doesn't currently financially support
| Element's dev as their upstream. We're trying to fix that
| though!
| kgwxd wrote:
| I don't know anything about Matrix. What makes it "far from
| perfect"? First priority of every business chat should be to
| move the conversation to something designed for the business
| concern at hand, because a chat app is a terrible place for it
| to live.
| antirez wrote:
| It's incredible in the first place that companies want people use
| those kind of terrible and useless software, and that people
| accept using it.
| Arathorn wrote:
| talking about Teams, right? O:-)
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| This does not bode well. Matrix is honestly not good, as someone
| who has tried to use it. It's slow, janky, often unstable, and
| poorly standardized.
|
| My suggestion: https://threema.com/en/products/work (hosted) or
| https://zulip.com/ (OSS self-hosted).
| simfree wrote:
| It works faster & better than Signal Desktop.
| jampekka wrote:
| That's not a high bar.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Genuinely surprised at this - I've never heard of signal
| desktop not being fast, or good. Works a1 for me.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Signal Desktop is having its db corrupted every other time
| I launch it, and wants me to reconnect to the phone. The UX
| is OKish.
| emeril wrote:
| yeah, it's fine for me - probably as good as an electron
| app can get (def not good as a true native app but it's def
| better than having to use my phone...)
| Arathorn wrote:
| When did you try it? Both Matrix the protocol and
| implementations like Element X have improved immeasurably over
| the last year or so.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| It's been more than a year, and Element X does honestly look
| a lot better. But it's been mobile-only for years. And if I'm
| correct, the desktop/web clients still require you to use
| embedded Jitsi. And what about non-Element clients?
|
| As a user, I just need stuff like this to be standard, and
| work for every participant regardless of what client they
| use.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Element Desktop/Web (and Element X) use Element Call for
| proper encrypted group VoIP/Video these days rather than
| Jitsi - since Sept 2024. Meanwhile we're busy upgrading
| Element Web to use the same rust-sdk engine as Element X
| (although this will take a year or so).
|
| In terms of non-Element clients... I can't really speak for
| them, but I hear really good things about Cinny for folks
| who want a more Discord-like experience on desktop, and we
| livecoded an Element Call integration for it at the Matrix
| Conference in October (hopefully it merged). I think
| FluffyChat also may support the new MatrixRTC calling too.
| eptcyka wrote:
| You will always say that.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Probably, but much like the sitar player's sitar in Moulin
| Rouge, I aim to only speak the truth :)
| chme wrote:
| Element X is in some cases still a downgrade from Element.
| For instance there doesn't seem to be a way to create local
| key backups anymore. Also, that calls between Element and
| Element X are incompatible means both apps need to be
| installed in order to receive calls from all contacts.
|
| Still, I love Matrix and hope that these issues will be
| resolved in time.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Manually importing/exporting keybackups is on the todo list
| (albeit towards the bottom). Supporting legacy calls is not
| (unless someone contributes it); the intention is to
| converge asap on native Matrix group calls.
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| This cannot be overstated. It used to be a pile of trash, now
| it's quite decent (but with lots of room for improvement).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I've been running a Matrix homeserver for a couple of years now
| and I've never had any issues with it. Not saying Matrix is
| perfect, but it is not as bad as you are making it out to be
| either.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Have you never run into any issues with encrypted chats not
| syncing properly between different clients, or messages not
| getting transferred correctly between users on different
| homeservers because of federation issues? Or matrix clients
| attempting to do some action, spinning for a bit, and then
| failing with an error message with no details? Or searching
| for rooms not working correctly and the UI not being able to
| clearly tell you what is actually going on with the search? I
| set up a Matrix server relatively recently and these were all
| issues that came up pretty much immediately.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Threema: proprietary, outside EU
|
| Zulip: lacks encryption, interoperability
| 837263292029 wrote:
| Why would they need encryption? Does the european commision
| have anything to hide?
|
| Chat control for thee but not for me?
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Threema is Swiss, which is a regional EFTA member. It's end-
| to-end encrypted and the clients are open-source.
|
| Zulip has client-server encryption, which is fine if you
| control the server.
| chme wrote:
| Threema is still vendor lock-in.
| moepstar wrote:
| Wasn't Threema sold this week or something?
|
| https://comitiscapital.com/news/comitis-capital-
| announces-th...
|
| Not sure what / if that changes anything, but presumably
| it will... sometime...
| Matl wrote:
| While I don't doubt your experience, I've been running
| Conduit[0] for a while now to great success (a lot simpler to
| configure than Synapse).
|
| I don't think it's a _fact_ that Matrix is not good. For MS
| Teams? It 's pretty close to a fact.
|
| 0 - https://conduit.rs
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Mobile notifications for organizations with up to 10 users
|
| Why does the self-hosted edition have this restriction? If the
| software is truly OSS, the limit could be trivially patched.
| But this kind of restriction just does not inspire much
| confidence in the project to be honest.
| lstodd wrote:
| Because mobile notifications require integration with
| operators and cost money.
|
| This is not about the ones that are pushed over IP, this is
| about mobile push.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| It doesn't require operator involvement, you can just
| integrate with FCM and APN?
| odo1242 wrote:
| FCM and APN are the operators
| xethos wrote:
| Mobile notifications do not require outside operators.
| UnifiedPush / ntfy is FLOSS, and allows for a single
| background connection for multiple apps / notification
| channels. It can also be self-hosted (and I do!)
|
| This puts the operational costs (number of devices and
| notifications) on whomever is running the server - and
| because of how valuable metadata is, I expect them to be
| run in-house by governments
| foresto wrote:
| Can you be more specific about your criticisms? I have gripes
| about Matrix, but your assessment doesn't match my experience.
| diggyhole wrote:
| Sounds like something Europe would love.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Personally I've found Matrix significantly more user friendly
| than Threema work. Zulip I haven't used in anger so I can't
| comment on that but I've seen a few places that even open
| source they charge per user for things like notifications. Not
| ideal IMHO. There should be an option to replace notifications
| with a separate service.
|
| It's hard to find a decent service that ticks all the boxes but
| I do sincerely hope that the EU can support Matrix to bring it
| up to the standard that we all deserve.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Related, the internall messenger for NATO also uses Matrix.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41781762
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Teams takes like 4 min to boot on my work laptop.
|
| When they launched the "new" one they proudly showed the improved
| boot time...
| dreamteam1 wrote:
| * open source
|
| * don't suck (too much)
|
| * no planned rug pulls
|
| * not infested by US or Chinese spyware
|
| Are there any?
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| Only Matrix.
| jhgkhl wrote:
| Microsoft Teams is such a low bar, that anything else is probably
| an upgrade.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| It's good to start somewhere, but as a reminder, it's the same
| European Commission that:
|
| 1. runs on Microsoft software that it buys from Fujitsu UK that
| HN crowd knows from the UK Post scandal
|
| 2. Has multi-billion euro digital initiatives and a puny single-
| instance public Gitlab with a handful of shamefully incomplete
| "projects".
|
| 3. Tells everyone that they have their own AI helpers while
| actually renting LLMs from Azure.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They also sometimes forget to clean their shoes after walking
| in from the street.
|
| But at least this thing they will hopefully get right and maybe
| in the longer term they'll be able to break the lock-in on
| those other things as well.
| jackinthehat wrote:
| Defs worth a go, I'd say. Have tried it - still warming to it tbh
| kkfx wrote:
| The real issue is that there is no easy-to-self-host complete
| enough solution. We do not have something go install-able, pio-
| able, without a gazillion of deps web-app who offer:
|
| - a direct call UI
|
| - a chat UI, with optional group chats
|
| - a simple web site to be used as a wiki-like tool to share
| textual stuff + common media, storage internally managed
|
| We have anything to do all of the above, but all very complex,
| spread across many different projects, fragile, hyper tedious to
| set up etc.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| lol good luck
| awesome_dude wrote:
| If nothing else this puts the spotlight on alternatives to
| Teams/Slack, which will increase adoption, and should increase
| pressure to improve (as far as that goes...)
|
| I've not liked Slack for FOSS projects (it's not IRC, it has
| problems with moderation enforcement), and NOBODY likes Teams.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| So on balance, would we say this is bad for the US?
| beloch wrote:
| The U.S. government has long looked out for U.S. companies,
| even to the point of staging coups (e.g. United Fruit Company).
| The Trump administration has been threatening _direct
| invasions_ while also levying tariff 's and other actions when
| other countries try to enact taxation or legislation of
| American tech companies operating in their jurisdictions. U.S.
| tech execs have applauded and lined up to bend the knee. Now
| they're finding out that their products are replaceable.
|
| The replacements aren't perfect, but an injection of new users
| and funding could allow them to improve rapidly. Meanwhile,
| American companies like MS and Google seem determined to
| enshitify their products and force AI adoption because they're
| financially entangled with OpenAI.
|
| Is this bad for the U.S.? It depends on how fast Americans
| smarten up. MS needs to start putting their products first
| again. Meta needs to stop relying on their government links to
| coerce other jurisdictions into accepting utterly irresponsible
| products that cause social harm while producing no tax revenue
| to mitigate that harm. All Americans need to stand up to their
| government and force it to back down from imperialist
| aggression.
|
| The U.S. and U.S. software have lost international trust and
| are now losing out to competitors because of it. Those
| competitors no longer need to be better or cheaper. Just
| trustworthy. It is possible to mitigate this loss of trust with
| prompt action, but every delay causes permanent harm. The world
| is watching.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| I don't really care if it's good or bad for the US as a whole;
| I care whether or not it's good for free software communication
| apps. I'm an American citizen and I own MSFT in my index funds
| just like lots of other people do; but I'd also rather run a
| free software chat app than Microsoft Teams.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| an open-source app built on an open protocol would be great for
| everyone, not just the EU (assuming the app doesn't suck, of
| course).
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Someone once said to me, be very careful about negotiating with
| leverage... when you twist someone's arm, they'll say, "I'll
| remember that. You may have won this one, but I'm gonna win the
| next one."
|
| Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves... all this arm twisting
| and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
|
| It's not clear that patchwork EU government back offices
| migrating off Teams will hurt US tech, but long term, in
| aggregate, this is going to be a headache for American tech.
|
| EU can't out innovate US tech, but they can make it harder to
| dominate their markets.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves... all this arm
| twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
|
| No it's not. This is theater to give the impression that they
| are "getting the orange buffoon". They'll be back in short
| order, and even if they aren't, it'll just be an insignificant
| blip on a financial chart somewhere, not even big enough to
| warrant someone's attention. They did similar things in Trump's
| first term, and came back groveling.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Maybe, and you might be right. These might be one-off
| posturing things from the EU.
|
| Sure, a few back office shifts to OpenOffice aren't a big
| deal today, but I'm worried about where we are in 10, 20
| years. There is no EU tech competition to us today, but who
| knows... tomorrow is a new day.
| codethief wrote:
| I hope you're right! I mean, at the level of personal
| relationships I fully agree[0]. However, institutions tend to
| be forgetful.
|
| [0]: Someone once said to me something very similar to what you
| quoted: "Be nice to people. People will remember you. And they
| will gossip if they don't like you and you have wronged them.
| It's much easier to ruin your reputation with a single action
| done to a single person than to build up a good one."
| kisamoto wrote:
| > EU can't out innovate US tech
|
| why not?
|
| Okay not today but China was known as the cheap copier and is
| now the innovator.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Do you really believe that?
|
| If so, I think the onus would be on you to prove it, not me.
|
| Or, more importantly, if you really think the EU will be a
| tech powerhouse, shouldn't you be writing checks to their
| startups left and right?
|
| Because I think that would be the revealed preference here.
| I'm guessing you're not heavily invested in EU tech
| companies, right? Because that would say a lot about your
| true beliefs.
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| As I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source
| solution for in-company communication.
|
| Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too
| risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by
| moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other
| shenanigans afforded by the open core model.
|
| Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright
| terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot
| better now.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| XMPP has been around for way longer, has proven that it
| actually works, and has a reliable community behind it, with no
| VC-funded hype.
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