🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗Governing Board (website)

The Governing Board is an advisory board that is made up of elected representatives from all across the Matrix ecosystem.

HarHarLinks says

I'm excited to share some quick news from the governing board today! Over the holidays around the new year, we finished the committee chair elections and congratulate:

• Bram and Sumner, chair and vice chair of the Governance committee,
• Sumner and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Community committee,
• Robin and Kevin, chair and vice chair of the Finance committee,
• J.B. and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Trust & Safety committee!

This paves the way for the committees to start taking up work while at the same time the governing board as a whole also finalises the processes around working groups so we can onboard all of you!

We look forward to sharing another update soon, and Matrix @ FOSDEM is also on the horizon, where attendees will be able to meet a good handful of governing board members face to face! For any questions, feedback, or discussion with/about the governing board, join our #governing-board-office:matrix.org!

Until next time!

🔗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:

• There were no new MSCs this week.

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

• No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

🔗Spec Updates

It may seem quiet from the stats above, but there's actually been a healthy amount of activity across various MSCs this week!

MSC3266: Room summary API had FCP proposed, which moves this long-awaited MSC significantly closer to being accepted. This MSC allows clients to get a quick preview of a room before joining it, which is useful in all sorts of scenarios (see the MSC for a list!). There's still a fair amount of feedback to get through, but much of it is small clarifying comments. Exciting to see this one move forward!

MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs has also been moving forward, with the Synapse implementation in active review by the maintainers, and all concerns on the MSC (currently) having been resolved this week.

There's plenty of activity on other MSCs as authors work to update them. Also a huge thanks again to those working on the spec text itself. Multiple PRs against the matrix-spec repo have been opened following the holidays, all making the spec better for everyone. Thank you!

Continue reading…

The Matrix.org homeserver will see changes related to authentication in Q1 2025. The team will turn off guest account access on Matrix.org on January 16th and roll out Matrix Authentication Service (MAS) to embrace Matrix 2.0 after February 10. Client developers need to ensure their clients support the required changes.

🔗What is MAS

Matrix Authentication Service is Matrix's next-generation authentication stack. It allows for more flexible authentication journeys without requiring client developers to support every one of them.

You can find all the technical details in Quentin's Matrix Conf talk, Harder Better Faster Stronger Authentication with OpenID Connect.

Continue reading…

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matthew reports

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.

Continue reading…

Hi all,

Once again we celebrate the end of another year with the traditional Matrix Holiday Special! (see also 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 just in case you missed them).

This year, it is an incredible relief to be able to sit down and write an update which is overwhelmingly positive - in stark contrast to the rather mixed bags of 2022 and 2023. This is not to say that things are perfect: most notably, The Matrix.org Foundation has not yet hit its funding goals, and urgently needs more organisations who depend on Matrix to join as members in order to be financially sustainable. However, in terms of progress of Matrix towards outperforming the centralised alternatives; growth of the ecosystem; the success of the first ever Matrix Conference; we couldn’t be happier - and hopefully the more Matrix matures, the more folks will want to join the Foundation to help fund it.

So, precisely why are we feeling so happy right now?

Continue reading…

🔗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

Continue reading…

Hi all,

It’s been 6 months since the first ever Matrix Governing Board (GB) was formally elected & announced, and it has recently had its first official meeting. As such, we felt it was time that you, our constituents, had a report on how things are going and what we’ve been doing. We appreciate that the work of the GB is often in the background, and we want to be as transparent as we can.

Continue reading…

Hey all,

Another 9 MSCs have been released today in Matrix 1.13! It’s just over 2 months since Matrix 1.12 went out, and the last scheduled release for 2024 - the next release is planned for around FOSDEM 2025. Today’s release contains more T&S features and a number of clarifications and improvements. The full changelog is at the end of this post, per usual :)

Continue reading…

🔗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.

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live - Social Login with MAS

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗Welcoming Ercom as a Silver Member

Josh Simmons (m.org) says

We'd like to welcome Ercom as the newest Silver Member of the Matrix.org Foundation and are excited to announce a couple other new members before the end of the year 🚀

The Matrix.org Foundation stewards the Matrix protocol specification, facilitates open governance, and convenes the ecosystem. While Matrix continues growing in adoption, the Foundation's funding is not keeping pace. If your organization builds on Matrix and is invested in its future, the time to become a funding member is now.

🔗Matrix.org protocol is not MATRIX

Josh Simmons (m.org) announces

From the department of no-the-other-Matrix: This week saw news of Europol shutting down an encrypted messaging service called MATRIX. All indications are that this has nothing to do with the Matrix protocol, and we are grateful to the agencies and publications that have made an effort to disambiguate. We are, of course, monitoring the situation as more information becomes available.

Continue reading…

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."