[ensignavenger]

I love the concept behind the Matrix protocol, but I have zero faith in the Matrix Foundations ability to execute. Folks have been asking for financial tranparency for years now (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco...). And all that we get are posts like this complainging about not having enough money and threatening to shut things down, repeatedly.

Maybe if they were more open and transparent, folks could help get them on the right track, either by making recomendations to improve, volunteering to help with things, or contributeing financially.

I really want them to succeed, but this has been going on for years now.

[thibaultamartin]

Per https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$xga3TYyV...

> T&S staffing alone is about $360k/yr, and server and SRE costs about $240k/yr

And per https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$pupglsTX...

> There's a rough cost breakdown available to the Governing Board right now in Discourse, which we'll be polishing and publishing after our first Finance and Fundraising Committee meeting

So the financial report is finally coming together.

We have quite a handful of volunteers and a strong community that is helping us a lot already. But some things cannot be offloaded to volunteers (typically T&S and the SRE team running the matrix.org homeserver).

Can you expand on your doubts for the ability to execute? The Foundation has a narrow set of programs on purpose, and it's not implementing any server or client for example. Most of the budget is going to matrix.org and keeping it safe (which is a lot of invisible and thankless work).

[ensignavenger]

Thank you for sharing that information. It seems like the foundation has been slowly moving in the right direction. I may have written a bit too harshly in my previous comment. I have been checking in on the development of Matrix, the Foundation, and monitoring that Github issue for quite some time.

Questions:

What is the narrow set of programs Matrix.org maintains? Is Trust and Safety referring to moderating the Matrix.org homeserver?

Are there strategies that could offload some of the homeserver hosting/moderation burden to community home server operators?

Are there strategies that could make the Matrix Conf closer to break even or perhaps even revenue positive?

Most importantly, how is the foundation protected and independent of its commercial sponsors? Currently 1/2 of the foundation's "Guardians", its top governance board, are from a single commercial entity. (I am profoundly grateful to Element for their past and continued support of Matrix and its operations, but as we have witnessed in other open source communities, having a single commercial interest having too much control can be disastrous over the long term).

I really, really hope Matrix succeeds in the long term. I am absolutely rooting for it.

[thibaultamartin]

> What is the narrow set of programs Matrix.org maintains? Is Trust and Safety referring to moderating the Matrix.org homeserver?

Yes, the Foundation is currently:

- Running the matrix.org homeserver from a technical perspective (servers & services costs + SRE) - Keeping the matrix.org homeserver free of spam. That's a notoriously difficult task on a tight budget but we're writing tools and working with contractors to get more efficient. - Maintaining and running several bridges (to Slack, XMPP and several IRC networks) - Maintaining the matrix.org website - Working with the community to promote the most active/interesting projects in our weekly post This Week in Matrix and our YouTube show Matrix Live - Organizing The Matrix Conference, FOSDEM, and contributing to several conferences

The Foundation is not developing server or client software. There is a SDK under the matrix-org/ umbrella for historical reasons but the Foundation doesn't contribute to it.

> Are there strategies that could offload some of the homeserver hosting/moderation burden to community home server operators?

There is already a community effort to help with moderation, and third party tooling funded by NLNet (https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir).

We have a post dedicated to our approach to T&S at: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix

> Are there strategies that could make the Matrix Conf closer to break even or perhaps even revenue positive?

There are two things we can do:

- Either get more sponsors to keep an event of this scale - Or do some cost compression by doing a smaller scale event, being hosted in a university or some sponsors' offices for free, reducing the catering, etc.

It's probably going to be an act of balance. Make the event too modest, and you miss out on potential businesses, make the event too extravagant and you go bankrupt.

> how is the foundation protected and independent of its commercial sponsors?

Can you be more specific of the threats you're envisioning here?

> Currently 1/2 of the foundation's "Guardians", its top governance board, are from a single commercial entity.

Yes, there used to be 5 Guardians before one stepped down. The Guardians are looking for another 5th peer to replace her.

> I really, really hope Matrix succeeds in the long term. I am absolutely rooting for it.

Thank you for your support, and thanks for holding us accountable :)

[ensignavenger]

>Can you be more specific of the threats you're envisioning here?

One open source founder who had complete control over the projects foundation appears to have used access to foundation resources against a commercial competitor- the case is currently in court, but the drama has already had a substantial negative impact on that community.

Some years ago, another open source founder who had great influence over the projects nonprofit removed a long time contributor from the project over commercial perception concerns, not due to a violation of the projects code of conduct- then repeatedly lied about the reason to the community (editing their own posts multiple times to try to cover it up), causing substantial harm to the project and community.

People aren't perfect, they will make mistakes, even without commercial interests. But the foundation, seeking to support all interests equally, can build confidence and security by spreading authority across interests (the Matrix Governing Board is a great step in that direction, but legally it seems like its role is advisory and subordinate to the Guardians, as it is not part of the governing documents of the organization).

[tredre3]

> Can you expand on your doubts for the ability to execute?

I have faith that the foundation manages its finance properly. I believe the Matrix protocol (and ecosystem) is full of good, needed, ideas.

But the software produced by the foundation is simply bad. From the clients to the servers. In every single matrix threads, complaints about the UX or performance abound. Usually followed by people from the foundation saying it's fixed in X or 2.0. Or by fanboys saying it's not a real problem and wasting resources on UX is dumb.

That's been going on for almost a decade now. That's a clear demonstration of a lack of ability to execute on a good idea.

[Arathorn]

> But the software produced by the foundation is simply bad.

The foundation produces things like the spec and the e2ee libs. The last time the foundation produced a client was in 2015, and servers in 2023 - in both instances the wider community builds the implementations, just as W3C doesn’t make web browsers any more.

> Usually followed by people from the foundation saying it's fixed in X or 2.0.

Could this be because… it’s fixed in Element X or Matrix 2.0, perhaps?

[ajdude]

A breakdown was actually just posted on that thread an hour ago:

    And in terms of numbers, out of the $1.2M annual costs we mention there, here's the rough breakdown:
    * $360K/yr – Trust & Safety
    * $250K/yr – Other folks, covering program management, legal, compliance, finance, IT, security, dev
    * $240K/yr – Server and SRE
    * $170K/yr – My salary, covering fundraising, open governance, community relations, biz ops, and people mgmt
    * $150K/yr – Matrix Conf + other events
    * $30K/yr – Assorted expenses like travel, lodging, productivity infra

[neiljohnson]

The intention is very much to offer greater financial transparency, in fact doing so is a prerequisite for multiple funding sources.

The Matrix Foundation Governing Board now has a dedicated finance committee, I don't have concrete timelines for publishing, though I would expect this to happen within a small number of months.

https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report...

[dvdkon]

I've never run a non-profit, but what's stopping the Foundation from releasing a raw dump of expenses?

Where I live, all government contracts/invoices need to be published before they come into effect. This obviously required some setup, but presumably you already have similar data as a source for the planned report, why not release it?

[bluesomewhere]

Because a raw dump of expenses obscures many important details, and sets people up for misunderstanding things and reporting them out of context.

I'd love to get to a point of radical and automatic transparency as you describe, but that takes a great deal of effort to do well – and the Matrix.org Foundation is still in its infancy. Gotta learn to walk before we can run!