[lhoff]

It is not obvious from the title but Element is actually acquiring Gitter. Quote from the article:

> In practice, the way this is happening is that Element (the company founded by the Matrix core team to fund Matrix development) is acquiring Gitter from GitLab, with a combined Gitter and Element dev team focusing on giving Gitter a new life in Matrix!

There is also another blogpost from the elements side https://element.io/blog/gitter-is-joining-element/

[Arathorn]

Well, the main news is that Gitter is going to natively join Matrix. We've been talking about doing this for a few years, but it never got to the top of the todo list on either side - plus frankly we're breaking new ground by making a large existing network natively speak Matrix (complete with incorporating room archives, etc).

Others (e.g. Rocket.Chat) have had a go at natively speaking Matrix but it's hard to be the first to do so unless both sides of the bridge are prioritising it and focusing on making it a success - and an obvious way of getting aligned is if you are on the same team. So when the opportunity came up for Gitter to move from GitLab to Element, it was a no-brainer way to ensure a successful native bridge for Gitter into Matrix. But we'd probably have got around to it anyway... it'd just have had a lower chance of success.

As another datapoint: Gitter was already looking (independently) at using Element to replace their native mobile apps, which otherwise they were having to deprecate (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/issues/2281).

Edit: another relevant link: https://blog.gitter.im/2020/09/30/gitter-element-acquisition...

[justinclift]

> Well, the main news is that Gitter is going to natively join Matrix.

Depends on your point of view. I'd not heard of Matrix before, and don't really care.

To me, it's more interesting that GitLab is selling off Gitter.

[ncmncm]

Meanwhile, I had not heard of Gitter until just this moment. But I have been migrating my presence to Matrix, and the Matrix clients are pretty good, approaching par with Signal, which has been pretty good.

[StavrosK]

Please, please fix the years-old notification bug where you can't turn off email notifications for every single comment without leaving the channel.

"Only email me when I'm mentioned" actually emails you for every message instead.

[MadLittleMods]

If you use the "Announcements" settings, you will see this behavior but is also described in the notification modal as an oddity. This is tracked by https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/issues/1205 which is a huge pain in our notifications that I want to address.

If you use the "Mute" notification setting, you will only get emails for messages the mention you which sounds like you're after.

[StavrosK]

Fantastic, thanks for that! Must be new.

[Arathorn]

On Gitter? Element gets this right at least, so once we move Gitter over to being entirely Matrix backed it should be ok.

[Ericson2314]

I'm really excited about this too, but I'm afraid it does matter.

Gitter of it's own accord federating with matrix would be a watershed moment of a competitor laying down it's arms for the greater good, a détente in capitalism, and a really good sign for the future of all things Federated.

Element acquiring Gitter is normal M&A, normal business. It's still good for Matrix and good for Gitter users, and we're still cheering you on, but it's not quite that same watershed moment.

[the_duke]

I love this move, since I'm trying to move to Matrix as my primary chat where possible. Even more so since some of the mentioned features are sorely needed in Element, like threads.

But Gitlab is a for-profit company.

I don't see this as Gitter laying down arms, but rather as Gitlab not being able to monetize Gitter enough to justify keeping it in the company. They probably sold it for a very reasonable amount.

[jrochkind1]

Right. The point is, if a competitor who was a for-profit company was willing to federate with Element, as a first-party contributor not just reluctantly "I guess you can use our integration API's for that and we won't stop you... yet" -- that would be watershed moment in hopes of federation/integration instead of silos being a thing.

That is indeed not what happened. It's just an acquisition. It does not actually give us hope that there's more momentum towards competitors being willing to play together in federation, that's not what happened.

Not sure why the one who made that point is getting downvoted, I think it's an interesting observation. That the press release arguably kind of intentionally tries to hand wave over a bit.

[Arathorn]

The Matrix.org blog post isn’t really me trying to wave a hand over it - it’s just that the Element, Gitter and GitLab (https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/09/30/gitter-moves-to-ele...) and Changelog stories fixate on it being an acquisition, and I wanted to dwell on the impact for Matrix.

The reality is that bridging a big existing network is a significant undertaking and nobody has done it before (other than possibly Matrix.org and Freenode, but it’s not like Freenode is letting us talk TS6; we come in as clients). So the acquisition is basically a catalyst to break this impasse. We’re hoping that Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, Teams, Slack, Discord will watch what we do and copy it with more confidence to join the network. At least that’s the dream :)

[Ericson2314]

Slack and Discord need their walled gardens to justify their current state, but low-growth things like Mattermost should federate with little to loose.

My most-realistic dream is for Freenode to be Matrix by default with the IRC interface just for clients.

[mxuribe]

> ...We’re hoping that Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, Teams, Slack, Discord will watch what we do and copy it with more confidence to join the network...

Admittedly, I'm a fan of the matrix protocol and the Element client...but i have friends still living on slackland, etc. If what you're hoping for would really would happen, well that would be so awesome!

[jrochkind1]

Fair!

[Ericson2314]

We are in agreement.

[redonkulus]

Talk about burying the lead. That wasn’t mentioned in the matrix blog post at all. Only that Gitter would be using matrix natively. Doesn’t matter either way but weird to not mention it.

[Arathorn]

The lede is that Gitter is going to natively federate with Matrix. The fact Element bought Gitter is there in the matrix blog post:

> In practice, the way this is happening is that Element (the company founded by the Matrix core team to fund Matrix development) is acquiring Gitter from GitLab.