Ancestors

Written by Element on 2025-01-17 at 08:37

🚨Nation-scale Matrix deployments will fail if built on the community version of Synapse.

The community version of Synapse is not designed or intended for use by commercial Matrix hosting providers to serve huge nation-scale deployments. Just as a suspension bridge has a weight limit and will collapse if you exceed it - the same goes for community Synapse.

Deployments supporting millions of users need Synapse Pro.

https://element.io/blog/scaling-to-millions-of-users-requires-synapse-pro/

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Written by Troed Sångberg on 2025-01-17 at 09:28

@element As a tax payer I want my government to use open source. Since Synapse Pro isn't, it's simply not usable for such cases.

Thank you for detailing the need for doing the same development to the open source Synapse as you have already done on Synapse Pro. I hope you do agree, it would be a pity to have to fork.

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Written by Element on 2025-01-17 at 10:27

@troed We'd also like everything to be open source. But the reality is that even with AGPL, we're still stuck in the pattern that enormous deployments use FOSS Synapse without contributing to its dev/maintenance costs.

Every time an opportunity that we're counting on to fund the team turns around and says "oh, FOSS Synapse is good enough, and we can use it for free, bye" we find ourselves needing to provide a very concrete reason not to freeride - hence Synapse Pro.

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Toot

Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2025-01-17 at 10:42

@element Would you be able to name a price if one such "nation-scale deployment" wanted to pay you to switch Synapse Pro to AGPL and maintain it as such for, say, 5 years?

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Descendants

Written by Element on 2025-01-17 at 11:01

@nemobis the funding gap we're try to plug for Synapse and associated Matrix dev is very roughly around $5M/y. So over 5 years, that'd be $25M.

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Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2025-01-17 at 12:03

@element Thanks! A very reasonable price if you ask me. Italy is planning to spend billions to supposedly secure their insecure military messaging at the network layer.

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Written by Element on 2025-01-17 at 12:30

@nemobis yup, and be vendor-locked to SpaceX in doing so: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-05/italy-plans-1-5-billion-spacex-telecom-security-services-deal.

Another solution here could be if governments decided to actually support FOSS by funding its maintenance & dev by subscribing to the paid product, rather than freeriding. ZenDiS in Germany is a great example of this. But unfortunately, they're almost unique in this, hence Synapse Pro.

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Written by Mathijs on 2025-01-19 at 05:57

@element @nemobis oi, you cant do that. Either you complain about vendor lock in, or you can create vendor lock in yourself. You clearly chose to be the type of company that wants their customers locked to their product, so you really can't now complain that your competitors do the same.

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Written by Boud on 2025-01-19 at 20:27

@element @nemobis 5 MEUR/yr for 5 years sounds small on the EU scale. One possibility would be to convince one of the ERICs, arguing that EU-scale-FOSS-Synapse is crucial to EU research infrastructure [1]. Another would be to convince EOSC that EU-scale-FOSS-Synapse satisfies "seamless access" and #FAIR in supporting research and justifies a 25 MEUR/5 yrs budget [2].

[1] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-research-and-innovation/our-digital-future/european-research-infrastructures/eric/eric-landscape_en

[2] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-research-and-innovation/our-digital-future/open-science/european-open-science-cloud-eosc_en

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Written by Element on 2025-01-19 at 22:46

@boud @nemobis Interesting. @matrix tried to pitch for EDIC funding about a year ago, but it went nowhere - it looks EDIC is focused on funnelling money from EU->Govts rather than to projects. Meanwhile €5M/y is too big for NGI. Hadn't come across ERICs; will check. If we'd had baseline funding for Synapse dev we wouldn't be in this position.

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Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2025-01-20 at 07:20

@element You probably need to get help from an existing Matrix user who's involved in Horizon funding, otherwise this is impossibly hard. What about German healthcare?

The website https://gaia-x.eu/ got confusing, might still be worth joining.

Any project needs padding to cover the academic partners' fixed costs. Only GÉANT gets significant money for infrastructure https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101194278; in https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101147319 , https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101129751 the main suppliers get 2-10% of the pie.

@boud

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Written by Boud on 2025-01-21 at 12:56

@element It would make sense to try coordinating with @edri for looking for EU-level or EU-national-member-level financing. The case for supporting matrix software development is strong, but administrative-political coordination is needed. EDRI should have some good ideas and practical knowledge.

@nemobis @ilumium

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Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2025-01-21 at 13:48

@boud Well... https://edri.org/our-work/european-commission-cuts-funding-support-for-free-software-projects/

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Written by Jan Penfrat on 2025-01-21 at 19:09

@boud @element @edri @nemobis At EDRi we indeed advocate for much more EU funding for free and open source software that is part of the digital commons.

Just this week: https://edri.org/our-work/meta-and-x-are-going-rogue-here-is-what-europe-should-do-now/

We would love projects like the #Matrix Foundation to be on the receiving end of this. There is unfortunately heavy political resistance despite all the talk about #DigitalSovereignty.

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Written by prom™️ on 2025-01-22 at 06:46

@ilumium @boud @element @edri @nemobis Performance propriety can only work if it's protected by obscurity. I like neither side of that equation. Open-source with open funding is the way to go.

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Written by Nemo_bis 🌈 on 2025-01-24 at 07:40

@element Virkkunen just (re)announced an "action plan to protect the health sector from cyberattacks".

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-unveils-action-plan-protect-health-sector-cyberattacks

Involves ENISA and Horizon, proposes a new "pan-European Cybersecurity Support Centre" and of course produces a consultation. I hope "cybersecurity maturity assessments" and "procurement guidelines" will cover whether doctors swap patient data in plain text from gmail (I've seen the best hospitals in Milan do it with cancer patients).

@ilumium @boud

[#]EU #HealthCare

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