Matrix.org

This Week in Matrix 2025-01-03

2025-01-03 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

The 2024 Matrix Holiday Special: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-special-2024/

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗SchildiChat (website)

SchildiChat is a fork of Element for Android and Desktop, that used to focus on UI changes such as message bubbles and a unified chat list, but now also provides some additional tweaks and community-driven features that may not be on the roadmap for the upstream clients.

SpiritCroc says

Over the holidays, I added two new (old) features to SchildiChat Next (our Element X Android fork) that I've been missing since switching to the new codebase.

First, inline images and custom emotes are now rendered again, so you don't miss out when users on other clients or certain bridges send these. If you prefer not having images rendered in text message, you can also disable them via a setting, in order to render the fallback text instead - rather than not rendering anything at all as done previously.

Second, I added back the functionality to fetch and render previews for links found in text messages, so you have a better idea what to expect before clicking them. For now, this is an experimental setting, so remember to enable it first if you want to try it out once it lands in the next release.

This Week in Matrix 2024-12-20

2024-12-20 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗Community Year In Review 2024

Nico announces

So, how was your year? NO! DON'T TELL ME NOW! But read on!

Some might remember the year in review for 2023 or 2022, well, this year is still 2024 and I decided to do another one!

If you don't remember, here is the gist of it: It is a room, where you can post about what you did, experienced or otherwise found interesting in 2024. You can also give some predictions for 2025, if you are so bold! Then, on the 31st, I will compose those into a blog post and you can read what others had to say! Now, the exact dates are a bit muddy, last time I was late and there is no guarantee I won't be late this time, but you have until the 30st to compose something you want to share.

There are no exact restrictions on what projects can participate or that what you share has to be a project, but we try to ring out the year with positive vibes from the community in general. Please also try to look at the overall year, if you just want to report on the week, well, there is something called "This Week in Matrix" for that!

Now, you probably are asking the important question, where is that room? Well, you can guess it from last years alias, but for everyone else:

Join #year-in-2024:neko.dev!

Have a good one, merry christmas and see you next year!

Part time reporter, Nico

PS: If you want examples, check out https://blog.neko.dev/posts/matrix-year-in-review-2022.html or https://blog.neko.dev/posts/matrix-year-in-review-2023.html

This Week in Matrix 2024-12-13

2024-12-13 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matthew reports

Last week US Senators Wyden (D) and Schmitt (R) wrote an open letter to the US Department of Defense encouraging them to adopt Matrix more widely, rather than wasting money on unencrypted, centralised or closed systems. The letter also reveals a whole bunch of info at the end about the US Navy's Matrix deployments. This feels like a huge step change forwards - not only is the FBI encouraging citizens to use end-to-end-encryption in the wake of realisations that the public telephone network is insecure, but US Senate is pushing for Matrix adoption (without any lobbying from us, I hasten to add). You can read more about it at the Element blog (Element provides the deployments for the US Navy).

P.S. it really is bleakly amusing that we've been constantly pointing out that legislation like EU's ChatControl and the UK's Online Safety Act are catastrophically flawed because the surveillance backdoors they propose will be exploited and abused by attackers. And here we are, with the lawful intercept backdoors in the US public phone system being compromised by attackers, causing the FBI to recommend non-backdoored E2EE instead. We live in a very strange timeline.

An unrelated cybercriminal network named MATRIX was taken down

2024-12-03 — General — Thib

The Matrix.org Foundation has been made aware that an international investigative operation took down a service called MATRIX which was used by a cybercriminal network, which has no relationship with the Matrix.org Foundation or the Matrix protocol itself.

The takedown site has a Matrix-the-movie branding, which is a probable source of confusion. The app showcased doesn’t look like any of the Matrix clients we’re aware of.

In a statement to the Matrix.org Foundation, Europol confirmed that the MATRIX cybercriminal network and the Matrix protocol are entirely unrelated. Europol states:

The Matrix protocol (matrix.org) is by no means connected to the Matrix secured communication service that was targeted in OTF Continental.

A statement from the Dutch police confirms that this is unrelated: "Matrix is also the name of a company and communications protocol of the same name, which has nothing to do with the crypto communications service Matrix."

This Week in Matrix 2024-11-29

2024-11-29 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Thib (m.org) says

Don't forget that Matrix will be in full force @ FOSDEM:

The CfP for the Matrix Devroom closes on Sunday, December 1

We already have quite a few volunteers to help us with the booth, but we're always looking for more hands! People who sign up before December 15 are entitled to a limited edition t-shirt :)

Two organizations have already shown their commitment to the community by offering to sponsor the Fringe Event right before FOSDEM. Pizzas and drinks will be covered, but if other organizations want to sponsor too we can work on more opportunities together!

This Week in Matrix 2024-11-22

2024-11-22 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Thib (m.org) announces

We want to know everything about the bugs you squashed, the features you developed, and the docs you wrote. And even better, not only do we want to know about it, we want you to tell the Matrix community about it during our FOSDEM Fringe event, or even to tell the world about it in our FOSDEM Devroom!

Our Call for Proposals is still open for the DevRoom until December 1, so don't miss your chance to advertise your project!

But we're not limiting our presence to a DevRoom, we will also organize a fringe event before FOSDEM and have a booth during the wole event. Want to grab a limited edition T-shirt? Now's your chance to sign-up and help us staff the booth. All details are in our blog post.

Matrix in full force at FOSDEM

2024-11-19 — Events, FOSDEM — Thib

The Matrix.org Foundation and community are very happy to announce that this year, they will be in full force at FOSDEM, with a community event right before the conference, a booth to welcome everyone during the conference, and a dev room to explore topics in depth!

This Week in Matrix 2024-11-08

2024-11-08 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗Matrix at FOSDEM 2025

Thib (m.org) says

We're happy to announce that this year again we will have a DevRoom at FOSDEM!

We have half a day to talk about all the great projects we have been working on as a community. Our devroom should be on Sunday afternoon, even if it's not completely set in stone for now.

You can submit a talk following one of the two formats:

20 min talk + 10 min Q&A, for topics that can be covered briefly

50 min talk + 10 min Q&A, for more complex subjects which need more focus

Be quick, the Call for Proposals ends on December 1st and we can't extend it. FOSDEM organizers will close all DevRooms CfPs, and we can't bypass it!

Find all the dates & details on our Call for Proposals

Call for Participation to the FOSDEM 2025 Matrix Devroom

2024-11-05 — Events, FOSDEM — Thib

Hello everyone,

The Matrix.org Foundation is excited to host a Matrix.org Foundation and Community devroom in person next year again at FOSDEM! Half a day of talks, demos and workshops around Matrix itself and projects built on top of Matrix.

We encourage people working on the Matrix protocol or building on it in an open source project to submit a proposal! Note that companies are welcome to talk about the Matrix details of their open source projects, but marketing talks are not welcome.

This Week in Matrix 2024-10-25

2024-10-25 — This Week in Matrix — Thib

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

🔗MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSC4220: Local call rejection (m.call.reject_locally)

MSC4218: Improving performance of profile changes

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

MSC2409: Proposal to send EDUs to appservices (merge)

Accepted MSCs:

No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

🔗Spec Updates

Steady progress across a range of MSCs this week. I'm particularly excited to see MSC2409 to reach FCP given its widespread use. Perhaps MSC4203: Sending to-device events to appservices is next?