1   Proposals for Spec Changes to Matrix

The process for submitting a Matrix Spec Change (MSC) Proposal is as follows:

• Produce a publicly-accessible proposal describing your change:
  • Please use Google Docs, or an equivalent system capable of collaborative editing, with versioned history, suggestions ('track changes'), threaded comments, and good mobile support. Please ensure the document is world-commentable or -editable.
  • We do not use Github issues (or Etherpad) for the design process of the proposal, as the document review/commenting capabilities aren't good enough.
  • We also don't jump straight to PRing against the spec itself, as it's much faster to iterate on a proposal in freeform document form than in the terse and formal structure of the spec.
  • In the proposal, please clearly state the problem being solved, and the possible solutions being proposed for solving it and their respective trade-offs.
  • Proposal documents are intended to be as lightweight and flexible as the author desires; there is no formal template; the intention is to iterate as quickly as possible to get to a good design.
  • A template with suggested headers is available.
• Make a new issue at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues, whose description should list the metadata as per below. Use the github search function to attempt to locate any related github issues, and link any that are found in the body of the new issue.
• Gather feedback as widely as possible from the community and core team on the proposal.
  • The aim is to get maximum consensus on the trade-offs chosen to get an optimal solution.
  • A good place to ask for feedback on a specific proposal is #matrix-spec:matrix.org. However, authors/shepherds are welcome to use an alternative room if they prefer - please advertise it in #matrix-spec:matrix.org though and link to it on the github issue. N.B. that #matrix-dev:matrix.org is for developers using existing Matrix APIs, #matrix:matrix.org is for users trying to run matrix apps (clients & servers); #matrix-architecture:matrix.org is for cross-cutting discussion of Matrix's architectural design.
  • The point of the spec proposal process is to be collaborative rather than competitive, and to try to solve the problem in question with the optimal set of trade-offs. Ideally the author would neutrally gather the various viewpoints and get consensus, but this can sometimes be time-consuming (or the author may be biased), in which case an impartial 'shepherd' can be assigned to help guide the proposal through this process. A shepherd is typically a neutral party from the core team or an experienced member of the community.
• Once the proposal has sufficient consensus and passed review, you must show an implementation to prove that it works well in practice, before a spec PR will be accepted. Iterate on the proposal if needed.
• Finally, please make a new spec PR which includes the changes as implemented against https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/tree/master/specification. This will then be reviewed and hopefully merged! Please sign off the spec PR as per the CONTRIBUTING.rst guidelines.

Final decisions on review are made by the Matrix core team (+matrix:matrix.org), acting on behalf of the whole Matrix community.

Proposals must act to the greater benefit of the entire Matrix ecosystem, rather than benefiting or privileging any single player or subset of players - and must not contain any patent encumbered IP. The Matrix core team pledges to act as a neutral custodian for Matrix on behalf of the whole ecosystem, just as it has since Matrix's inception in May 2014.

For clarity: the Matrix ecosystem is anyone who uses the Matrix protocol. That includes client users, server admins, client developers, bot developers, bridge and AS developers, users and admins who are indirectly using Matrix via 3rd party networks which happen to be bridged, server developers, room moderators and admins, companies/projects building products or services on Matrix, spec contributors, translators, and the core team who created it in the first place.

"Greater benefit" could include maximising:

• the number of end-users reachable on the open Matrix network.
• the number of regular users on the Matrix network (e.g. 30-day retained federated users)
• the number of online servers in the open federation.
• the number of developers building on Matrix.
• the number of independent implementations which use Matrix
• the quality and utility of the Matrix spec.

The guiding principles of the overall project are being worked on as part of the upcoming governance proposal, but could be something like:

• Supporting the whole long-term ecosystem rather than individual stakeholder gain
• Openness rather than proprietariness
• Collaboration rather than competition
• Accessibility rather than elitism
• Transparency rather than stealth
• Empathy rather than contrariness
• Pragmatism rather than perfection
• Proof rather than conjecture

The above directions are intended to be simple and pragmatic rather than exhaustive, and aim to provide guidelines until we have a formal spec governance process in place that covers the whole Matrix community. In order to get Matrix out of beta as quickly as possible, as of May 2018 we are prioritising spec and reference implementation development over writing formal governance, but a formal governance document will follow as rapidly as possible.

The process for handling proposals is described in the following diagram. Note that the lifetime of a proposal is tracked through the corresponding labels for each stage in the matrix-doc issue tracker.

                       +                            +
     Proposals         |          Spec PRs          |   Other States
     +-------+         |          +------+          |   +----------+
                       |                            |
                       |                            |
    +----------+       |         +---------+        |    +---------+
    |          |       |         |         |        |    |         |
    | Proposal |       |  +------> Spec PR |        |    | Blocked |
    |   WIP    |       |  |      | Missing |        |    |         |
    |          |       |  |      |         |        |    +---------+
    +----+-----+       |  |      +----+----+        |
         |             |  |           |             |
         |             |  |           |             |  +-----------+
+--------v----------+  |  |           |             |  |           |
|                   |  |  | +---------v--------+    |  | Abandoned |
|      Proposal     |  |  | |                  |    |  |           |
|  Ready for Review |  |  | |     Spec PR      |    |  +-----------+
|                   |  |  | | Ready for Review |    |
+----------+--------+  |  | |                  |    |  +-----------+
           |           |  | +---------+--------+    |  |           |
           |           |  |           |             |  | Obsolete  |
    +------v----+      |  |           |             |  |           |
    |           |      |  |     +-----v-----+       |  +-----------+
    | Proposal  |      |  |     |           |       |
    | In Review |      |  |     |  Spec PR  |       |
    |           |      |  |     | In Review |       |   +----------+
    +----+------+      |  |     |           |       |   |          |
         |             |  |     +-----+-----+       |   | Rejected |
         |             |  |           |             |   |          |
  +------v--------+    |  |           |             |   +----------+
  |               |    |  |           |             |
  |   Proposal    |    |  |      +----v----+        |
  | Passed Review |    |  |      |         |        |
  |               |    |  |      | Merged! |        |
  +-------+-------+    |  |      |         |        |
          |            |  |      +---------+        |
          |            |  |                         |
          +---------------+                         |
                       |                            |
                       +                            +

2   Lifetime States

3   Proposal Tracking

This is a living document generated from the list of proposals at matrix-doc/issues on GitHub.

We use labels and some metadata in the issues' descriptions to generate this page. Labels are assigned by the core team whilst triaging the issues based on those which exist in the matrix-doc repo already.

Other metadata:

• the MSC (Matrix Spec Change) number is taken from the github issue ID. This is carried for the lifetime of the proposal, including the PR creation phase. N.B. They are not in chronological order!
• Please use the github issue title to set the title.
• Please link to the proposal document by adding a "Documentation: <url>" line in the issue description.
• Please link to the spec PR (if any) by adding a "PRs: #1234" line in the issue description.
• The creation date is taken from the github issue, but can be overriden by adding a "Date: yyyy-mm-dd" line in the issue description.
• Updated Date is taken from github.
• Author is the creator of the github issue, but can be overriden by adding a "Author: @username" line in the body of the issue description. Please make sure @username is a github user (include the @!)
• A shepherd can be assigned by adding a "Shepherd: @username" line in the issue description. Again, make sure this is a real Github user.

4   Tables of Tracked Proposals