We're really excited to release the biggest update yet to Synapse (the python/twisted reference Matrix homeserver implementation) - version 0.5.0 is out!

This effectively concludes our alpha testing phase - Synapse's security model is now feature complete and we are now cautiously encouraging people to run their own Synapse installation on the 'net; federate up; and help us squash all and any bugs as we get beta testing.

Synapse 0.5.0 has huge database schema changes from previous versions as we have landed both the event-signing and federation-authorisation branches and so added full cryptographic signing of all matrix events and unified the client-server and server-server model of events/PDUs.  As a result, migrating history is Hard - we recommend a clean start if possible; if not, come talk to us in #matrix:matrix.org.  UPGRADE.rst has the details.

The full changelog is as per below - please upgrade your homeserver or install a new one if you're new here and join Matrix and help us create a robust open distributed messaging fabric for the web!

Changes in synapse 0.5.0 (2014-11-19)
=====================================
This release includes changes to the federation protocol and client-server API
that is not backwards compatible.

This release also changes the internal database schemas and so requires servers to
drop their current history. See UPGRADES.rst for details.

Homeserver:
 * Add authentication and authorization to the federation protocol. Events are
   now signed by their originating homeservers.
 * Implement the new authorization model for rooms.
 * Split out web client into a separate repository: matrix-angular-sdk.
 * Change the structure of PDUs.
 * Fix bug where user could not join rooms via an alias containing 4-byte
   UTF-8 characters.
 * Merge concept of PDUs and Events internally.
 * Improve logging by adding request ids to log lines.
 * Implement a very basic room initial sync API.
 * Implement the new invite/join federation APIs.

Webclient:
 * The webclient has been moved to a separate repository.

Hi all,

There's been loads of work going on in various branches on Synapse (federation_authorization and event_signing) as we land the final features needed for Synapse to be used in production as a Matrix reference server.  Meanwhile the iOS demo client and SDK has been coming on leaps and bounds too over at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk.

However, stuff has also been happening on the main Synapse development branch too, and we've just released 0.4.2 onto master for lots of various goodies - see release notes below.

Please upgrade your homeservers and play with the new client - the new JSON viewing/editing features are particularly useful and interesting for powerusers and developers!

Matthew

Changes in synapse 0.4.2 (2014-10-31)
=====================================

Homeserver:

 * Fix bugs where we did not notify users of correct presence updates.
 * Fix bug where we did not handle sub second event stream timeouts.

Webclient:

 * Add ability to click on messages to see JSON.
 * Add ability to redact messages.
 * Add ability to view and edit all room state JSON.
 * Handle incoming redactions.
 * Improve feedback on errors.
 * Fix bugs in mobile CSS.
 * Fix bugs with desktop notifications.

It's been an incredibly busy few weeks in Matrixland - we've had our heads down rushing to get new stuff ready for today's TechCrunch Disrupt London hackathon.

The big news is that we have our first alpha releases of native Mobile SDKs available today for Matrix for iOS & Android! These are entirely new projects - you can check out the SDKs and demo apps (which implement a basic Matrix chatroom client similar to the webclient demo at:

• http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk
• http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk

We still have a lot of polishing and lipstick to apply to these, but it should be a good starting point for folks who'd like to hack on mobile apps for Matrix! We haven't had a chance to generate appledoc/javadoc for these yet, but we'll post them on matrix.org shortly.

There's also been some work going into restructuring our documentation and finalising the spec - all Matrix generic documentation now lives in a new git project at http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc. We're still working on wrapping all the details of the spec into a single canonical document, but it's getting there and should be locked down shortly.

Meanwhile, we're also pleased to announce the new Synapse 0.4 release series of the reference Matrix homeserver. Our focus on Synapse over the last few weeks has been on implementing the remaining pieces of the Matrix security model and getting the server to the point where folks can deploy it properly in production environments.

Synapse 0.4 deliberately breaks backwards compatibility on the server-server federation protocol, as we now cryptographically sign all federation traffic at the HTTP layer (using Authorization headers) in order to have a strong assertion to the identity of the servers which exchange traffic. We can't really use SSL client/server certificates for this as it's incompatible with Synapse deployments which are hosted behind generic SSL loadbalancers.

Meanwhile we have two other major development branches on Synapse which will land shortly - one of which cryptographically signs all events, thus preventing tampering with room history, and the other of which performs strict authorization on all traffic received through federation to avoid malicious events being injected and breaking the consistency of the distributed room. These should be landing shortly - at which point the full security model of Matrix will be implemented in Synapse and we can finally remove the "don't use this in production!" warnings!

API developers: be aware that this release also fixes the confusion over timestamps in the client-server (and server-server) API. Events now have only one well-defined timestamp - event.origin_server_ts; the localtime on the homeserver which first receives a message. This replaces the previous confusing event.ts and event.content.hsob_ts timestamps. This should be a trivial change to implement.

Finally, we've also had a detour into robotics to build our new mascot (Sentinel)... pictures forthcoming shortly!

Thanks for supporting Matrix - please let us know how you get on with the new releases at #matrix:matrix.org!

Changes in synapse 0.4.1 (2014-10-17) ===================================== Webclient:

• Fix bug with display of timestamps.

Changes in synpase 0.4.0 (2014-10-17)

This release includes changes to the federation protocol and client-server API that is not backwards compatible.

The Matrix specification has been moved to a separate git repository: http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc

You will also need an updated syutil and config. See UPGRADES.rst.

Homeserver:

• Sign federation transactions to assert strong identity over federation.
• Rename timestamp keys in PDUs and events from 'ts' and 'hsob_ts' to 'origin_server_ts'.

Hi all,

Synapse 0.3.4 is out! The main changes here are a huge fleet of bugfixes to the webclient, and the addition of TURN support for VoIP relaying. This makes VoIP/Video call setup much more reliable (although the UI still needs some love).

Meanwhile, we set an IRC bridge (https://github.com/tm604/Matrix-IRCBridge) running linking #matrix:matrix.org and #matrix-dev:matrix.org to their Freenode counterparts (#matrix & #matrix-dev respectively) - much fun to see innocent IRC users assimilated up into Matrix, and for us to now be using Matrix for /all/ our development chat and interaction (whether it's through a Matrix client or an IRC client).

To upgrade to the latest homeserver, just git pull && ./synctl restart. If you want to start playing with VoIP in earnest on your own homeserver, you'll need to install a TURN server - see docs/turn-howto.rst for details on how to set one up.

http://matrix.org/alpha has already been upgraded to 0.3.4, so feel free to play with all the new stuff there.

thanks,

Matthew

Changes in synapse 0.3.4 (2014-09-25)

This version adds support for using a TURN server. See docs/turn-howto.rst on how to set one up.

Homeserver:

• Add support for redaction of messages.
• Fix bug where inviting a user on a remote home server could take up to 20-30s.
• Implement a get current room state API.
• Add support specifying and retrieving turn server configuration.

Webclient:

• Add button to send messages to users from the home page.
• Add support for using TURN for VoIP calls.
• Show display name change messages.
• Fix bug where the client didn't get the state of a newly joined room until after it has been refreshed.
• Fix bugs with tab complete.
• Fix bug where holding down the down arrow caused chrome to chew 100% CPU.
• Fix bug where desktop notifications occasionally used "Undefined" as the display name.
• Fix more places where we sometimes saw rooms as IDs rather than aliases.
• Fix bug which caused lag when entering text in the text box.

Hello world,

Synapse 0.3.3 was released today, concentrating on both feature & stability improvements on the webclient. The big news is that 1:1 video calling via WebRTC is implemented (although we're still working on some stability issues, and Synapse doesn't support TURN yet. This will be coming in the next few days however!).

Play with the demo server at http://matrix.org/alpha, or update your own homeserver with a git pull && ./synctl restart or by cloning a new checkout with git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.git

--Matthew

Changes in synapse 0.3.3 (2014-09-22)

Homeserver:

• Fix bug where you continued to get events for rooms you had left.

Webclient:

• Add support for video calls with basic UI.
• Fix bug where one to one chats were named after your display name rather than the other person's.
• Fix bug which caused lag when typing in the textarea.
• Refuse to run on browsers we know won't work.
• Trigger pagination when joining new rooms.
• Fix bug where we sometimes didn't display invitations in recents.
• Automatically join room when accepting a VoIP call.
• Disable outgoing and reject incoming calls on browsers we don't support VoIP in.
• Don't display desktop notifications for messages in the room you are non-idle and speaking in.

We just pushed out a major new release (0.3.0) of Synapse: the current reference Matrix homeserver, swiftly followed by some hotfixes (0.3.1, 0.3.2).

The big changes are:

• Change the VoIP setup API to be more efficient (bundling together media stream candidates into a single setup object). API breaking change!
• Change the Registration API to be more consistent. API breaking change!
• Lots of nice usability refinements to webclient - e.g. per-message notifications; cursor-key history navigation; faster room loading
• More bugfixes and stability fixes on the homeserver

Please reload the page if you're lurking on http://matrix.org/alpha to pull in the new webclient.

If you're running a homeserver - please upgrade with a quick git pull && ./synctl restart.

If you're not running a homeserver... why not? ;D

--Matthew

Changes in synapse 0.3.2 (2014-09-18)

Webclient:

• Fix regression where an empty "bing words" list in old accounts didn't send notifications when it should have done.

Changes in synapse 0.3.1 (2014-09-18)

This is a release to hotfix v0.3.0 to fix two regressions.

Webclient:

• Fix a regression where we sometimes displayed duplicate events.
• Fix a regression where we didn't immediately remove rooms you were banned in from the recents list.

Changes in synapse 0.3.0 (2014-09-18)

See UPGRADE for information about changes to the client server API, including breaking backwards compatibility with VoIP calls and registration API.

Homeserver:

• When a user changes their displayname or avatar the server will now update all their join states to reflect this.
• The server now adds "age" key to events to indicate how old they are. This is clock independent, so at no point does any server or webclient have to assume their clock is in sync with everyone else.
• Fix bug where we didn't correctly pull in missing PDUs.
• Fix bug where prev_content key wasn't always returned.
• Add support for password resets.

Webclient:

• Improve page content loading.
• Join/parts now trigger desktop notifications.
• Always show room aliases in the UI if one is present.
• No longer show user-count in the recents side panel.
• Add up & down arrow support to the text box for message sending to step through your sent history.
• Don't display notifications for our own messages.
• Emotes are now formatted correctly in desktop notifications.
• The recents list now differentiates between public & private rooms.
• Fix bug where when switching between rooms the pagination flickered before the view jumped to the bottom of the screen.
• Add support for password resets.
• Add bing word support.
• Update VoIP implementation to use new API

Registration API:

• The registration API has been overhauled to function like the login API. In practice, this means registration requests must now include the following: 'type':'m.login.password'. See UPGRADE for more information on this.
• The 'user_id' key has been renamed to 'user' to better match the login API.
• There is an additional login type: 'm.login.email.identity'.
• The command client and web client have been updated to reflect these changes.

We're back home from TechCrunch where we had a great time arguing the pros and cons of Matrix versus XMPP with anyone and everyone - thanks to all who came to talk to us!

Meanwhile, Synapse v0.2.3 was released yesterday: the emphasis this week has been on improving stability issues on the server, and lots of cosmetic and functionality fixes on the webclient.

If you're running a homeserver, please upgrade asap - upgrading has never been easier - assuming you've checked out the master branch, simply:

git pull
./synctl restart

...and you will be up and running on 0.2.3. We keep the master branch tracking the latest release.  http://matrix.org/alpha is already on the latest release should you wish to experiment first!

Alternatively, if you're installing from scratch, try:

git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse.git
python setup.py develop --user
./synctl start # to generate a default config
./synctl start # to actually set it running

and then head over to http://localhost:8008 to play with your very own Matrix homeserver!

Changes in synapse 0.2.3 (2014-09-12)

Homeserver:

• Fix bug where we stopped sending events to remote home servers if a user from that home server left, even if there were some still in the room.
• Fix bugs in the state conflict resolution where it was incorrectly rejecting events.
• Many stability fixes

Webclient:

• Display room names and topics.
• Allow setting/editing of room names and topics.
• Display information about rooms on the main page.
• Handle ban and kick events in real time.
• VoIP UI and reliability improvements.
• Add glare support for VoIP.
• Improvements to initial startup speed.
• Don't display duplicate join events.
• Show message sent/sending state via opacity
• Multiline message sending support
• Many other bug & stability fixes

The Matrix team is at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 this week - we had a great time at the hackathon on Saturday/Sunday where we were really excited to see several teams building their hacks on Matrix APIs - we stayed the night to support whilst building out our own hack (experimenting with sending collaborative 3D animations over Matrix as JSON)!  Huge thanks to everyone who built on top of Matrix - hope you had as much fun as we did :)

Please come talk to us in person in Startup Alley (next to the Brazilian Pavilion) if you're attending Disrupt and find out all about Matrix first hand!

(Photo shows us somehow surviving in the 6am slot.  Mental note to never try to do raycasting vector maths after being up for 24 hours again...)

Hi all,

We just pushed our first major update since matrix.org launched for Synapse, the reference Matrix homeserver:

Changes in synapse 0.2.2 (2014-09-06)

Webclient:

• Fix desktop notifications
• Add support for captchas on registration
• Handle m.room.aliases events.
• Implement local echo when sending message
• Inform the UI when a message failed to send.
• Only autoscroll on receiving a new message if the user was already at the bottom of the screen.
• Add support for ban/kick reasons.
• Add /join support for IRC acolytes
• Make IRC-style commands a little more forgiving

Homeserver:

• Validate m.room.power_level events.
• When the server returns state events it now also includes the previous content if any to aid pagination
• Add support for inviting people when creating a new room.
• Make the homeserver inform the room via m.room.aliases when a new alias is added for a room.

The matrix.org homeserver & webclient has already been updated to the latest version - if you're running your own homeserver, please update. v0.2.2 retains backwards compatibility with previous homeserver releases.

Get the code from http://github.com/matrix-org/synapse!

I'm Matthew, and I'm responsible for the techie side of what we're up to with Matrix.

Matrix is the result of a lot of work my team's done over the last 10 years or so (first at MX Telecom, then OpenMarket, and then Amdocs) in developing next-generation IP communication solutions.  First we started with an Asterisk-based platform running basic PSTN IVR services, and then shifted to an in-house IAX-based IVR platform built in Java, and then added circuit-switched (3G-324M) video calling, then switched to SIP/RTP, C++ and a massively-distributed softswitch architecture affectionately called 'The Next Generation'.  Then the iPhone and Android came along, and we realised we didn't have to be constrained by built-in phone capabilities and ported our whole C++ SIP/RTP VoIP stack over to iOS/Android and got writing Video/VoIP calling apps.  This evolved to developing full-blown unified communication apps (e.g. Blah), using XMPP at first for messaging before switching to our own HTTP-based messaging APIs.

Somewhere along the way it became painfully obvious that VoIP and IM hasn't really evolved as well as the rest of the internet.  Back when SIP/RTP first emerged, it simply wasn't mature enough to work on the open internet as well as HTTP or SMTP or even FTP - it needed STUN, ICE, TURN, Opus and many other refinements to be really usable in the wild.  And similarly XMPP hasn't taken over the world quite as much as we once hoped.  Meanwhile, many folks went and built their own proprietary walled-garden solutions (be it Skype, FaceTime, Viber, WhatsApp, or even our own efforts) and we've ended up in the current horrible situation where our online communication is fragmented across hundreds of isolated apps and websites.  It's like a world where email was never unified, and half the world is still stuck on Compuserve.  And it's counter to the whole ethos of the internet as an open platform for collaboration and communication.

We decided that we want to fix this and so we have built and published a new open standard, together with open source (ASLv2) reference server (Python/Twisted) and client (JS/Angular, Python, Perl) codebases, and so provide new building blocks that can be used to build truly interoperable federated IM and VoIP functionality. We consider this effectively an investment in the industry: by creating a strictly non-profit initiative like Matrix, we both make the world a better place for end users - as well as creating new business opportunities (both opensource and commercial) for the telecoms industry as a whole.

The standard and code are all brand new and very much still in creation at this point, but we're releasing it early to get as much feedback and input from the community as early on as we possibly can. Right now our focus is on fully decentralised federated group messaging, but VoIP and identity management is coming together well too.  You can think of it as "making VoIP/IM as interoperable and flexible as email", or perhaps "the missing signalling layer for WebRTC", "XMPP for an HTTP world", or “what would happen if IRC, XMPP, SIP, SMTP, IMAP and NNTP had kids?” Here are some reasons we think that you should use Matrix:

• Simple pragmatic RESTful HTTP/JSON APIs.  No more XMPP or SIP stacks and wrestling XML streams or torture-testing SIP parsers.
• No single points of control for channels of communication (unless you really want it for moderation or similar). Room state for a room is synchronised with eventual consistency over all participating Matrix servers - no single server controls the room.
• No more netsplits - history re-heals itself if the matrix fractures
• All communication is group by default: 1:1 chat is just a subset of group chat.
• Multi-device aware: all state is stored and synchronised in realtime across all devices, and away-state and notifications are aware of multiple devices.
• Uses arbitrary 3rd party identifiers - doesn't rely on JIDs or SIP URIs for identity.
• Share the same simple HTTP signalling channel for messaging and VoIP
• Support more efficient transports if you want (e.g. low-bandwidth/low-roundtrip sync on mobile)
• Built for mobile - e.g. support push notification and low-bandwidth/low-latency client-server transports if needed (in progress)
• TLS (HTTPS) by default, either with self-signed certs with published public keys or proper SSL CA signed certs (in progress)
• End-to-end PKI encryption (in progress)
• Trusted federation of public identity servers available for publishing your PKI public keys and tracking your validated 3rd party IDs

If this sounds good to you, then please take a look at the spec, or our tutorials, or jump straight into playing with the APIs, or try running your own Matrix homeserver, or sign up to our mailing lists - and whatever else, come swing by #matrix:matrix.org and say hi!