Discord would have made a better name for a decentralized network and Matrix would have been better for a private company.

FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 168 points –
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For all practical purposes Matrix is run by a private for profit and venture-capital funded company called Element / New Vector.

If the company went under you could continue to selfhost, right?

Yes, but there are IMHO better options like XMPP or IRC that are truely community driven and have stood the test of time.

I would argue that IRC hasn't managed to evolve with the needs and wants of modernity and that's why the likes of Discord and Matrix have become so big.

IRCv3 the "next gen" version of IRC is woefully inadequate compared to Matrix. The IRC working group is only worried about the IRC client protocol and the effort seems to have largely stalled. That's like defining the protocol for Lemmy servers and clients without the Lemmy server to server communication.

https://ircv3.net/wg

XMPP is a potentially more compelling option/a good option. I don't know enough about the low level details to really debate whether XMPP is "better or worse."

I don't think either of these protocols being older qualifies them for superiority on the merits of "standing the test of time."

It's a natural result of this "design by comittee" approach. In the effort to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

Oh okay, good good. I apologize for my mistake in the title.

I found a related thread to this on Hacker News. It was interesting to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968

It has improved a bit since then (2019), but mainly because of the detoriating funding situation forcing Element to push the Matrix foundation to try and survive on their own.

The Element server is so much more stable than synapse