Hacker News Reader

Comment by Boulth6 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why but comparing Matrix.org Foundation with standardization organizations such as IETF seems just not right. Maybe it would be more correct to compare Matrix.org with XMPP Software Foundation?

View on HN

I'd genuinely be interested to know what the difference is between something like IETF / IEEE / ITU / W3C and a non-profit which was created as a standards body for a specific standard (e.g. Matrix.org Foundation or XSF). Is it just that you're recognised as a peer by the other long-established standards bodies? Or is there a standards-body-for-standards-bodies somewhere?

I mean, yes? The IETF has additional cachet as having created the internet. ITU and IEEE are international orgs relied upon not only by companies, but by governments. The W3C isn't as important as it once was, because people stopped listening to them (WHATWG is the new org). But I would trust the IEEE and IETF like I would the ISO, and Matrix.org as far as I would trust Microsoft.

> But I would trust [...] Matrix.org as far as I would trust Microsoft.

Ouch. Did you read https://matrix.org/foundation or https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc177...?

I'd agree that skepticism was warranted if we hadn't split out the Foundation and the protocol was de facto controlled by Element. But instead we made damn sure to create the Foundation independently and frankly protect it from being sabotaged by Element or any other commercial entity building on Matrix. To suggest otherwise is pretty insulting to the other Guardians/Directors whose only role is literally to oversee and ensure that the protocol isn't sabotaged by commercial entities.

This is very different from Microsoft's model.

I for one do not trust the ISO at all. They are a profit-seeking organization with an opaque standardizing process. That the ISO9660 standard (you might know it as the .iso file format) from 1988 is still locked behind a 140chf payment is a disgrace. And that won't even give you the full standard, because ISO loves doing this thing where a standard will reference 5 others, which themselves reference 5 others, etc...

IETF is one of the best standardizing organizations out there, I'll certainly give you that. They have fairly transparent process, and a really good track record when it comes to creating robust protocols.

Thing is, I don't see why Matrix.org would have any more or less "cachet" than WHATWG, or Khronos Group. In the end, the identity of the standardizing org doesn't really matter too much. What matters is that the incentives of the standardizing org are aligned with those of the community.

XMPP is actually managed by the IETF. The XSF just develops extensions to the protocol (but it's not the official steward of XMPP, confusing as the name is)

While this is true, basically everything useful to an end-user in XMPP is in one of those extensions!

Indeed; that's why I think this model has worked pretty well. You get a nice core protocol and then if you want fancy features that keep up to date with proprietary offerings that can be developed in a lighter weight way. Certainly not perfect, but I'm glad the IETF is in charge of the core spec and not the newer, less experienced, foundation (though at this point the XSF is well established too, but in the beginning it was the close relationship with the IETF that let it build that institutional knowledge).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com