Everything being encapsulated in HTTPS is the result of waiting so long to be secure by default that the base network abstractions had ossified too much to realistically change.

TLS would have made sense as well but if you're already at that point you might as well bump up yet another abstraction layer because the programming ecosystem is bigger and it frees you from being tied to one security abstraction forever e.g. now you can use QUIC.

Matrix shows how thorough the switch to HTTP has become. Like with DoH, what makes Matrix most attractive is the ability to implement solutions using pre-existing web application stacks, like Node.js. It's a sort of path dependency where the easiest way to implement a simple solution starts with a very complex, mostly superfluous foundation.

The fact that port 80 and 443 are less likely to be blocked is a distant, secondary factor. Frankly, I've never been on a network that blocked other outbound ports. And I've definitely never seen a network where hosted services could only ever receive traffic on port 80 or 443. Rather, I think it's more (if not entirely) a matter of people justifying the use of web stacks to implement services which cry out for simpler solutions.

> Frankly, I've never been on a network that blocked other outbound ports.

That's just down to who you've worked for. I've worked for two companies, both well-known brands, both operating in the consumer space (nothing secret/shady), where most outbound ports were blocked.

In one case it certainly was possible to get them unblocked for access to specific hosts or endpoints but you'd have to go through an approval process that took about a week. I never had a request refused but it certainly could slow progress, although I got into the habit of trying to get all of us to anticipate what we might need and front-load such requests.

At one time in a past life, I was running SSH on port 80, then using a SOCKS proxy to escape the madness of the network I was on.

On anecdata point.

I have several (all government) clients who cannot access port 8080 from their office network. We now have a bunch of aELB rules that forward a specific path prefix to port 8080 internally. I have not yet been accused of intentionally circumventing their firewall. But I live in hope...

You could run IRC server on whichever port you like and many servers do, the biggest benefit of matrix is that it's decentralized and easy for non technical people to engage in, no need for znc bouncers and things like that.

Don't forget that if it works over http(s), it's a lot easier to build a web interface for, and that's a big win for ease of use!

We put our FOSS community on Mattermost - it's awesome!

It lacks administration features - kicking, banning, etc.

Has to self script, it's all packed in a PostgreSQL database - you can do anything you want!!

Near immediate down-vote? Right, forgot that admin of IRC was no cost at all.

Mattermost costs $60/yr in hosting and only a few hours a month in admin work - same as our email group and our old Slack (or whichever solution)

Hipchat is dead so you don't need to worry about that.