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Comment by jasonzemos | Hacker News Reader

This is really good news. I have only one question for Mozilla: why choose a solution whose hallmark is decentralization and the libre model- only to become a customer of a centralized host (modular.im). Why can't Mozilla actually federate? That's a step backward from your IRCd in my opinion.

I hope Mozilla gets onboard with everyone else running their own Synapse, hacks on it, and pay their dues with patches, rather than with their cash.

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They are using a hosted provider, run by the makers of Matrix themselves. This lets them get the benefits of federation while making the hosting someone else's problem.

Of course, we all want to see Mozilla bootstrap their own Matrix instance, but maybe the cost/benefit equation worked out differently for them than we would have expected. I can imagine this lets them replace IRC with a better solution faster while still supporting the development of an open standard by becoming a client of the company that's developing it.

Does this forebode something more sinister? I hope not...

Is Mozilla an example for the next major adopter of Matrix or are they not? If they are, and everyone else signs up for modular.im as well: at what point does this ship of Theseus called Federation only exist inside a bottle?

Probably at the same point email federation only exists inside a bottle, in terms of server topography.

Which is why it's worth actively resisting centralization.

WordPress exists as as OSS even though WordPress.com exists. And there's a clear migration path from being hosted by WordPress.com to running your own private WordPress.org instance (or vice-versa), that can be taken at any time if someone's needs change. I don't see what's so different here.

If it were me, I would want to a) support the existing players in the ecosystem and b) do the migration piecemeal if possible.

Working with a third party lets them start standing up rooms immediately, and get their people using the new standard without being blocked on a long process of setting up their own infra. It’s federated. They can easily migrate onto their own hardware at a later date.

It also injects money into the community they are trying to support. Even if they did start running all of their own instances, I would hope they keep a support contract with Modular for that reason.

Paying Modular + using Matrix widely immediately + beginning work on their own infrastructure is a strictly bigger shot in the arm for Matrix than just putting a couple devs on pre-planning and prototyping infra would be.

If Mozilla will use their own domain name they will be free to move their federated Matrix instance wherever they want. Modular.im will only provide the hosting expertise. I expect that in the future self-hosting your own Matrix server instance will become much easier.

It can be a bit onerous, half the convo in our matrix room is about updating matrix.

I don’t have experience with running Synapse but it looks like a beast. Dendrite and Ruma look very promising though; can’t wait to have a lightweight home-server ready for prime-time.

Mozilla will no doubt use their own domain name, and would have the option to go self hosted if they wish to.

Moving synapse databases around isn't too difficult, and certainly Modular.im would be able to provide the data on request.

Assuming the purpose of the messaging system selected is to help Mozilla's community work together on Mozilla projects, what benefit of 'decentralization' do you think would improve their ability to work together effectively?

Work together to what end? If the goal is a vibrant internet where large players are not in control, supporting decentralization is important.

I encourage reading the earlier posts on HN from exple.tive.org about this over the past year, as I think they may speak more to the reasoning you’re interested in discussing.

What benefits would Mozilla get from running their own server and federation (that they have with ircd today)?

Good publicity for decentralization. If they can get it to work, it shows that it’s possible to run a large instance from a non-central host.

Well, sure it's possible. They don't need to prove it.

But I don't think Mozilla has such a large userbase that it would make any difference.

I like the publicity angle but maybe that's for the future. If Mozilla validates the transition and wants to get more involved with Matrix.org then it'd make sense to own and manage their own stuff.

I like that they are being cautious and not jumping with both feet in.

At a technical level, the Mozilla homeserver will be as decentralised as any other server in Matrix: i.e. entirely independent, and federating with the rest of the Matrix as normal.

At a legal level, it's true that the server will be admined by New Vector via Modular.im - but this is basically Mozilla just outsourcing their sysadmin to Modular, while also helping fund Matrix development (given that Modular subscriptions are used to fund development on Synapse and Matrix in general).

That sounds like a benefit for Matrix, but it's not obvious why Mozilla would want to spend time and money on that?

It also keeps their failures untethered to that of a centralized network.

Federation and decentralization are two different properties with different tradeoffs.

Matrix servers are kinda a pain in the ass to get up-and-running and to manage versus, say, XMPP or IRC. Especially if you can't get away with just running someone else's pre-built docker images for it, or whatever.

I've administered both XMPP and Matrix servers and I must say I don't see either as much of a hassle. Synapse had some growing pains but is pretty painless for me these days.

Not true in my experience. Synapse is just as easy to stand up as Prosody, and in fact requires making less choices since you don't have to pick which modules to enable and stuff.

Can you tell me more about the modular.im behaviour/policy towards federation? Is it explicitly turned off?

Also, IRC has federation too by having multiple servers in a network. IIRC Mozilla hadn't allowed you to do this for moznet did they? So how is this different?

To be clear: the server will be publicly federated. All modular.im servers federate by default unless you explicitly turn it off.

Let's hope they do both: Cash + Development.

Might as well ask, right?

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