I never understood why they dropped vector as a name. It wasn't a worse name than element. Riot was a terrible name choice however. Sooner or later it would have got caught up being used by people coordinating a protest or something and the press would have had a field day with it.
But your data has never left the matrix network or your own home server if you chose to have one.
But it did go from Vector -> Riot -> Element and various UI and branding changes along the way yes :) Part of this is also that the app was not really "finished" back in the Vector days. It only really came into its own during the Riot age. For example E2E encryption didn't yet exist at the start, and the underlying support in Matrix was missing as well. It's still a protocol and toolset that's evolving rapidly.
However the benefit of Matrix is that you can choose any client you want, there are several for mobiles.
While yes Mozilla could theoretically enforce its trademarks and appoint its own team to start making more direct decisions, we've seen how that goes with various ex-GNU projects like libreboot or ASF projects where they don't have the community like OpenOffice
> If you install Android app X and, due to an acquisition, the app suddenly morphs into app Y which has a different branding, different UI, different features, a different backend and a different development team (but still has your data), isn't this exactly one of the things that the app store rules are supposed to protect against?
On my phone currently, this applies to the following apps:
* Element
* Free Now (European taxi app bought out by BMW/Daimler, formerly mytaxi, formerly hailo)
* Google Hangouts (Was installed as Talk)
* WhatsApp (now Facebook owned)
* A local cinema chain bought out by a UK + Ireland chain
* Pocket Casts (independent -> NPR -> Automattic)