I least expected such a response here on HN. I can understand if this appeared on other communities but here we are.

We all know how open source Software moves forward. It's us who can put up with little inconveniences of an open source app and maybe even improve it by identifying, reporting and implementing fixes. Those polished apps are polished because they have dedicated teams that get paid hefty $$$ to ensure they do not loose existing user base. In matrix case the user base is very little but I think they have achieved something remarkable: a thriving community that is developing client and server Software required for matrix to work.

I wonder if we had this kind of attitude in starting days of Internet, we probably would not have Internet today. By the way, when did you last use any matrix client?

Well, it's not just about polish. In the case of Matrix, a simple look at their "feature matrix" shows that the only client that seems to be making any appreciable effort at all to keep up with the feature sets that are touted as selling points of the protocol (encryption, modern UI, "Discord-like" experience) is the bloated Electron monstrosity, and independently I have heard from multiple sources that the Matrix server software is so heavy that it struggles to support even a three-digit number of clients on commodity hardware.

This tendency to render your project unusable by choosing inappropriate development tools (perhaps for their seeming friendliness towards inexperienced developer - maybe if the same developers were forced to write in C their code would simply crash all the time, whereas as it is it "merely" runs slowly and/or leaks memory) is manifestly not an intrinsic feature of open source. If anything, in the old days, open source projects (such as Linux itself) stood out for being more lightweight and performant than their commercial counterparts. In fact, I think the first time I remember encountering an open source project that was rendered unusable by its bloat was with Diaspora (an early attempt to make a federated Facebook/Google+ replacement, written using Ruby on Rails). Perhaps there is something to the fashionable "fix social media" sector that necessitates making development inclusive to those who are more activists than engineers, even if this comes at the cost of sound engineering decisions.

The parent comment isn't complaining about matrix, but rather telling the plain reality of WHY people use discord instead of matrix.

By not acknowledging the importance of polish, you only push to keep the status quo ... and the status quo is that the masses are not using matrix.

But here is the thing, its highly unlikely that open source app will have polish compared to Startup with all the funding in the world.

There are very few open source application (desktop or mobile) that are as polished as commercial applications.

This is unlikely to change, but I still think it's worth trying to get as many users to use open source apps, because more users an app has - higher chance of more developers - better app. Not to mention no ads or spying and other crap that commercial apps are riddled with (General opinion not just chat apps)

Feel free to keep advertising Matrix. I'm myself a strong supporter of it.

But to get it into the mainstream, it needs to compete with other messaging apps such as Telegram.

For that, it needs polish. Period. There's no way around it. So if the goal is to get it into the mainstream (and personally, I want it to be), then that is what it needs.

There are loads of ways you can contribute to this:

1. Contribute time, code, designs, general help and volunteering

2. Contribute money via personal means or via work

3. Promote the use of Matrix to individuals

4. Promote the use of Matrix to businesses, eg. at work, or as a backing protocol for messaging where it makes sense etc.

5. Purchase products that make use of or contribute to Matrix

etc. But in order for it to become popular on its own, and acquire a network effect (which it needs, because IM apps are a class of their own), friction to get new users needs to be reduced to near-zero. And for that... polish is needed. That's it.

Not the OP, but I last tried every web/Desktop app on this list about a month ago:

https://matrix.org/clients/

I came to the same conclusion I have the past four times I tried. The same one as the person you’re responding to.

I have wanted to like matrix for so many years now but every time I use it, it's unbearably slow and things like gestures seem incredibly clunky compared to telegram.

Sure, apps with lots of paid developers have better gui, and flows than open source.

I still prefer open source. Managed to convince a portion of friends as well.