Authors: Nicholas Gates, Thibault Martin
This is the first in a new semi-regular series of interviews with Digital Commons projects from NGI Commons. Stay tuned to our website, newsletter, and social media channels for more updates and future editions!
The Matrix.org Foundation and Element are a pair of sister organisations which help steward the ecosystem for the Matrix protocol. They are paving the way in securing our way forward with encrypted messaging and providing an alternative to other messaging services. Over on Element, one of the popular front-end clients for Matrix built by the same team, we have built an NGI Commons Community Space, known as the ‘Digital Commons Community Platform’, which you can join here.
The Matrix team has also recently become more vocal in the policy space, with CTO Amandine Le Pape joining the European Open Source Academy, an increased engagement with the Digital Commons community, and – quite importantly – frank discussions around issues related to financial sustainability. Given all this, we thought it would be a great idea to sit down with someone from their team and discuss all of these matters.
At Matrix.org Foundation, Thibault Martin is the Director of Program Development. His role involves providing the public and organisations with tools to protect their digital communications’ privacy and sovereignty, and he has expressed views on the evolution of communication tools, advocating for a shift towards richer interaction platforms like Matrix, which can reduce barriers to entry and enhance community engagement.
Hello Thibault, it is nice to speak with you!
We generally think of Digital Commons as three things: (1) the (open) digital resource; (2) the community that supports and contributes to that resource; and (3) governance which enables equitable access, sharing, and use of the resource as a public interest technology. Let’s start with a simple question.
Does Matrix.org think of Matrix itself as a Digital Commons? Which parts of that understanding and which do not? And if so, how has Matrix seeked to position itself as a Digital Commons?
We definitely see Matrix as a Digital Common[s]. It is an open specification. There is a strong and diverse community supporting and contributing to it. And it has an open and fair governance via a Governing Board. Everyone can run for the board, and we took care of keeping a good balance between individual seats and corporate ones. We don’t want Matrix to become a “pay to play” kind of specification.
That’s really interesting. Could you explain the relationship between Matrix.org and Element? Are they both Digital Commons, or do you regard them as part of the same Digital Commons? How are their futures intertwined when it comes to questions like community, governance, funding, and community?
The Matrix.org Foundation is the neutral custodian of the Matrix Specification. Element is a private company making both open source and proprietary Matrix products, including the Synapse server and the Element clients a lot of Matrix users are familiar with.
The Matrix Specification is grounded in reality: before change can be accepted in the specification, someone must build a proof of concept to show that the idea works.
Element is a Matrix-centric company. Most of their products are built around Matrix. For that reason, they have historically been particularly prominent in Matrix development and in supporting the Foundation financially. But they have also been excellent partners to help the Foundation become more independent.
Ultimately, Element owns the roadmap of its products, including the open source ones. Its governance is not as open as the Foundation’s, and that’s entirely fine. We’re all for people being able to make a living with Matrix!
What are the advantages, in your view, about thinking about Matrix and Element as Digital Commons? Does it impact the way you think about how those projects are governed and their role in the society?
I personally see the Matrix protocol as a snapshot of how a group of people decided to answer to problems they collectively, directly or indirectly faced. Since we aim to make Matrix a foundation for products the general public can use, we need to onboard representatives of the civil society as well as representatives of the public and private sectors.
This is what led to the creation of the Governing Board, the organ in charge of guiding the Foundation in its mission. For now our members have a fairly high level of technical knowledge, but we’re hopeful that the various Working Groups we’re establishing will help onboard a more diverse population.
Could you talk a little bit about how the Matrix.org Foundation goes about building and maintaining its community? Do you think what you all do is useful for other projects or is it very specific to the needs of Matrix and Element?
Because the Specification is open, anyone can build products and toys based on Matrix and contribute to the Specification. The Spec Core Team is in charge of reviewing the proposed changes to the specification and ensuring they conform to the Matrix Manifesto and to the guidance of the Governing Board.
But before changes are even written, a lot of talking usually happens. The Matrix Community Space is where a lot of those conversations happen. People participating in these rooms are bound to a Code of Conduct.
Providing a safe place to talk and a fair review process are crucial to building a community that feels like it’s part of the project, rather than adjacent to it.
Who are some of the most prominent partners adopting and contributing to Matrix? How does Matrix balance community contribution with the need for having a single and maintainable core to Matrix?
Matrix is widely adopted in the European public sector, whether it is in governments or universities. They are not all involved at the same level. Some rely on vendors to contribute to Matrix on their behalf, some contribute to the specification directly, and some are just interested in the free products they can adopt.
Having a single, product-oriented, maintainable core to Matrix is actually a superpower when building a community because it keeps everyone honest. If a product wants to display that it “speaks Matrix”, its creators need to actually come and talk with the rest of the ecosystem to ensure the changes they want to bring to the protocol are aligned with the Matrix Manifesto.
But it doesn’t mean that the Foundation is an all seeing eye that controls everything. Product makers can add differentiating features in their products, as long as they don’t conflict with the Matrix Specification!
What would your recommendations be to other Digital Commons projects seeking to build sustainable contribution models and business models?
I don’t think there is a silver bullet. One of the biggest challenges is that the public sector’s procurement departments often can’t support Commons. Partnering up with organizations who commit to sharing an “upstream tax” with the custodian of the Common can be a way to circumvent the problem, but here again this cannot apply to every project.
Finally, you have in the past referred to some challenges Matrix has had in the U.S. market. Digital Commons are of course not European as such, but what do you make of the success of Matrix in Europe? Are you optimistic about the future of Digital Commons in Europe?
Well, Matrix has been adopted in some parts of the public sector in the U.S. too, but the bulk of the adoption is in Europe. Germany in particular has been very keen on creating a favorable market for Matrix with Gematik’s TI-Messenger. We are seeing encouraging steps taken by the EU to create a favorable market for sovereign solutions and to fund the organizations working on it. Doing so makes the Commons more compelling and creates a business ecosystem that can support them, instead of having to solely rely on the public sector to do so.
We see the Commons as a race to the top, where everyone who wants to be a credible vendor or integrator has to meaningfully contribute to the project, instead of a race to the bottom where only a few organizations do the bulk of the R&D and others repackage and sell it without bringing much value.
We are considering a partnership scheme to praise the vendors and integrators who contribute to the Foundation and create an incentive for all the others to do the same. But for that to be successful, we need the public and private sector who benefit from Matrix to really value it as a Common and make it a requirement in their Request for Proposals.
Well, we are very sympathetic to those concerns. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us more about your project, Thibault!
