Notably, "Code Core Team members must arrange their own funding for their time", which I understand as such that the Foundation does not pay directly the developers (same as other standards organizations like IETF). That said, if it was decided that developers get paid by Matrix.org Foundation for developing Matrix.org clients and servers, I wonder how this process works, given that I highly doubt that developers of Conduit, Fractal or Quaternion received any of the funds of Matrix.org foundation.
Main tasks of Matrix.org Foundation is maintaining the spec, documentation, owning IP, promotion and the matrix.org home server. The home server is "generously hosted" by UpCloud (i.e. is not using New Vector EMS), at least according to the matrix.org website.
Looking again at MSC1779, I noticed it says that one function of The Matrix.org Foundation is "Owns the copyright of the reference implementations of Matrix (i.e. everything in https://github.com/matrix-org). By assigning copyright to the Foundation, itβs protected against New Vector ever being tempted to relicense it." That protection apparently wasn't very effective, but also notably, New Vector and their leadership clearly have shown to not stand behind the goals of the Foundation. As the leadership of New Vector is also part of the leadership of the Foundation, I see some huge potential for COI here.
TL;DR Donations to 501(c)(3)'s managing open source projects might as well be lit on fire because they do not and can not go to software development.
FYI The Matrix foundation is not a 501(c)(3), it's not even registered in the US.
[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
I am interested in the future of Matrix as an open, decentralized protocol. I increasingly see a risk in the behavior of New Vector as the VC-funded effective owner of the Matrix protocol. To me, the Matrix.org Foundation was supposed to be the organization that saves the community from the interests of VCs.
Over recent years I got the feeling the foundation became mostly a fake nonprofit organization to attract donations from the community while the for-profit company attracts VC money. The foundation did not manage to properly include the community in any of its official positions (Board, Spec Team) in 5 years, clearly showing that this is not in its interest.
For Matrix to be a success, we need to design it such that there can be contributions from others than New Vector. This is not happening and because of that, it's very likely that as soon as New Vector is running out of money, Matrix is going to collapse. Having at least a bunch of money in the foundation would reduce that risk, but New Vector seems to even be siphoning off that.
What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions? It seems to me there is plenty of room for community involvement, it is simply a matter of the community doing it (which many have been of course, but there is also always more work to do and free skilled labor is not easy to come by in large quantities).
> Having at least a bunch of money in the foundation would reduce that risk, but New Vector seems to even be siphoning off that.
I'm not following. How does the foundation having money reduce this risk? In particular, how do you think the foundation would help prevent the "collapse" of matrix if they had more funding? If you ask me I'd think that funding developers would be a good way to do that, and as the primary force behind the reference implementations, wouldn't funding Element/New Vector be a good way to do that? Although I was under the impression that resources primarily flowed the opposite way, from Element to the Foundation, but I haven't kept close track so could be wrong...
In any case, I'd echo the original sentiment of this thread - as someone who joined their patreon back when it first started and still haven't left it, I don't really mind if they haven't documented for the public where exactly every penny went as long as it's going towards the people developing matrix. Yeah maybe not ideal, but given that the foundation has very little money to begin with I have a tough time faulting it. It would change things if they were bringing in millions, but when the community patreon is not even bringing in enough to hire a full time minimum wage employee in California, much less a developer, accountant, or lawyer, documenting the expenditure of a few pennies is pretty low on my priority list.
2/5 foundation board members are from New Vector. At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector. 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector. In other words: Nothing at the Matrix Foundation happens without consent from New Vector. If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the standard (making new features of them standards non-compliant) and then block them from using the Matrix brand or claiming to be Matrix compatible. As a company, you'd be stupid to build your business around being a competitor to New Vector if they can easily throw you out.
That was the whole purpose of the foundation: to manage the spec and the brand independent of New Vector, so that others can contribute.
> I'm not following. How does the foundation having money reduce this risk?
It's much easier to do anything with money. If new structures need to be created in the foundation after a collapse of New Vector, it is way easier to do so if you have money.
> It would change things if they were bringing in millions, but when the community patreon is not even bringing in enough to hire a full time minimum wage employee in California, much less a developer, accountant, or lawyer, documenting the expenditure of a few pennies is pretty low on my priority list.
As I wrote in the linked thread, their total assets exceeded a million dollars end of 2021. That should be enough for a full-time hire with competitive compensation for a few years, especially if that hire is not in California (why the hack hire in California when you don't need to?). Also, even small amounts of money can be very attractive to open source contributors, they're already doing it without any compensation, but just giving them a thousand bucks a month will make them more likely to continue contributing in their spare time. You don't need it to be a full time hire to be effective.
Nope. Neither Ross, Jon or Jutta have 'strong personal ties' with NV. We had met Ross twice(?) before asking him to join (based on his qualifications as a decentralisation-focused lawyer and casual Matrix user). Jutta we'd met once (and was asked based on her qualifications as CEO of a decentralisation-focused company which used Matrix). Jon had supervised me on an undergrad project 20 years ago (and not been in contact since), and was asked to join on the basis of his qualifications as an academic expert in decentralisation. We recruited experts to the board who we were familiar with from the industry, and have asked them to put their professional reputation on the line to ensure that Amandine & myself (as founders of Matrix, and later Element) keep the foundation on mission.
> 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector.
This is only because 3 of the 8 were independent when they joined the team, but subsequently ended up working at NV so they could be paid to work on the Matrix core team as their day job. When performing their SCT duties they do so as independent individuals rather than Element employees, and do a great job of separating the two.
> If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the standard (making new features of them standards non-compliant) and then block them from using the Matrix brand or claiming to be Matrix compatible.
If that happened, the Guardians (and in future the Governing Board) would step in to fix the abuse. It's a checks & balances system.
> That should be enough for a full-time hire with competitive compensation for a few years, especially if that hire is not in California (why the hack hire in California when you don't need to?)
I am very glad that the Foundation hired a world-class Managing Director in the form of Josh, precisely to address the issues you've been highlighting, with a pretty much unique history and qualifications for managing non-profit open source foundations. That's why the hack we hired in California :)
That being said, it's completely plausible that this is salary for development time. Being tight-lipped about it is suspicious though.
In terms of funding development, the Foundation's focus has mostly been on building open source trust and safety tooling since that is a gap that others haven't addressed.