If you have been following the matrix.org blog for some time, you will know that we’ve never been ones to shy away from complex topics like public policy and its impacts on Matrix. With this blog post series, our aim is to introduce a more regular cadence to our regulatory updates and to be more transparent about where we are focusing our efforts in this area.
Each blog post in the series will focus on a given theme or piece of law, as well as its relevant jurisdiction. We will start this series by taking a deep dive into EU regulation, starting with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Future blog posts in the series will cover the digital services package (DMA and DSA), the incoming CRA and the highly controversial CSAM regulation. These will be followed by a series dedicated to the UK, particularly UK applications of European law such as the GDPR and ePrivacy directive, as well as the Online Safety Act and the IPA amendment bill. Finally, we will conclude the series by looking across the pond and diving into the Cloud Act, as well as KOSA and other existing proposals.
Continue reading…
It is an honor and a pleasure to unveil the election results and introduce the first elected Governing Board for the Matrix.org Foundation!
Congratulations to the winning candidates, we thank you for your willingness to serve the community. We’re also grateful to everyone who threw their hat in the ring, and hope that the candidates who did not get elected consider running again in the future – noting that we have an election of Gold, Silver, Individual, and Associate Members scheduled for next year.
Thanks also to all of the people who cast ballots in the election, and to everyone who asked questions along the way! We learned a lot in this first election process that we look forward to incorporating into the next one.
The level of engagement with the process was a very encouraging sign for the health of the Matrix ecosystem, and we’re proud to have had 100% voter turnout in all but one constituency.
Read on to see who is on the Governing Board, a brief discussion of next steps, and reflections on some of the work that remains to improve representation.
Continue reading…
Voting has started for the Governing Board elections and runs till May 31! This is our first election and we are very excited. All of the results will be published here on the blog on June 3.
You can learn about all of the candidates on our 2024 election page. All eligible voters should have received an email from OpaVote, the election system we have chosen for this year’s elections.
If you believe you are eligible to participate but have not heard from us, first check the inbox and spam folders of the email address you have on file with us (such as through Donorbox or Patreon). Please email us if you have any questions.
Continue reading…
The Matrix.org homeserver suffered from an outage on Monday 22 April, between 08:00 UTC and 10:00 UTC, followed by slowness for the next 2 hours.
The outage occurred during scheduled maintenance with no expected downtime. It included upgrading the base OS of the machines running Matrix.org’s deployment.
Continue reading…
Update: the terms of the board have been updated with the follow changes:
- Allow for filling vacancies by appointment or by-election at the discretion of the Managing Director and the Guardians, in consultation with a Governance Committee. (2.7.1)
- Allow for the Governing Board to adopt voting mechanisms other than simple majority on a case-by-case basis. (5.5)
- Disallow nominees from running for election in more than one constituency at a time. (2.4.1)
- Change UTC to AOE in timeline. (2.3)
Welcome to the first ever Governing Board election season for the Matrix.org Foundation! We start with a one week nomination period that opens on Saturday, April 20th and closes on Friday, April 26th AOE time.
We’ll be doing our best to reach out to every constituent group to let them know they are eligible to nominate candidates for the election. That said, this is our first election and we don’t yet have contact information for everybody who is eligible, so we want your help getting the word out.
If you are interested in nominating someone – or yourself – to be a candidate in this election, read this post in its entirety.
To learn about what the Governing Board is, what it does, and the context it operates in, read this blog post from last December. You are also welcome to read the Governing Board’s current bylaws.
Go here for instructions on submitting a nomination!
Continue reading…
Hi folks,
The events of the last week have been utterly terrifying as we’ve seen a highly sophisticated targeted attack on open source infrastructure play out in public, in the form of the liblzma backdoor. Matrix is not impacted by the attack (none of our code or infrastructure is using liblzma or xz 5.6), but it has been a massive wakeup call in terms of understanding the risks posed by overstretched open source maintainership.
Continue reading…
Matrix self-defines as the go-to protocol for "open, secure, decentralised communications". The Matrix.org Foundation defines "maximising […] the number of online servers in the open federation" as a key objective in its mission. So why is the Matrix.org homeserver, probably the largest homeserver in the whole federation, still in open registration mode?
Let's dive into the technical, and user experience choices behind it.
Continue reading…
Since the Foundation got itself a Managing Director at the end of last summer, it has been working on its independence. With lines more clearly defined between its major supporter Element and itself, the Foundation has been able to clarify its role. The Foundation's major goal, alongside stewarding the specification, is to fill in the gaps where there is no direct organisational interest, to make the Matrix ecosystem grow.
There are two levels where the Foundation can have an impact: at the governance level, in the form of the Governing Board; and at the hands-on level, with working groups and projects.
See below what the coming year holds for us.
Continue reading…
The Matrix.org website is the public face of the Foundation, and the first thing you stumble upon when looking up “matrix chat” on a search engine. It’s a very important step in people’s Matrix journey.
A lot of thought has been put into making a website that talks to the various audiences visiting it, but we still have a lot of room for improvement!
The website is only maintained by community member MTRNord in a volunteer way, and part-time by me, Thib. We could use an extra pair of hands or two, but to make the most of people’s desire to help we need to let them know where they can have the most impact depending on their skill set, and how we can accept their help!
Continue reading…
A new fundraising drive
Today we launch a new fundraising drive, talk about the scope of the Foundation's work, and begin to unpack our emerging roadmap for the future. There is a lot going on and we need your help to keep it going!
At the end of 2022 Matthew and Amandine sounded the alarm: the Foundation needed more support. To deliver that, they launched the Foundation's membership program. They also introduced open governance, and committed to hiring a Managing Director to act as a robust, neutral steward.
You can help: If you are already sold on Matrix, become a member today. To find out how the last year has gone, and how your support helps us to serve the Matrix ecosystem, read on.
Over the last year, there are lots of positive, healthy signs for Matrix. New members like Beeper and gematik — and hundreds of individuals — boosted our annual revenues from £82K to £364K. The open network has grown from 80.3M to 115M addressable users. We've invested in long-term interoperability efforts at the IETF. And we've shifted focus from experiments to polish, usability, and advocacy.
We've supported development of core libraries, and subsidize hosting for FOSS communities like GNOME and KDE. The Foundation runs the Matrix.org homeserver, with over 250K daily active users, and operates several public bots and bridges. And indeed, the Foundation hired a Managing Director 👋.
You'll find a full accounting of our 2023 activity and finances in our first Annual Report, slated to come out around April 2024.
Continue reading…
