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Comment by tetrisgm | Hacker News Reader

I always get so confused by the naming between Matrix and Element. I get that Element is the client, but I honestly thought that the name Matrix for the server (or is it just the standard for the protocol?) was sunset.

Great service though and hope if gets UX improvements too, as Discord and Slack keep getting more clutter.

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As much as I love the fact that I have my choice of server and client I have to say that it does make me wonder if it affects adoption. When the Mastodon growth spikes happened the complaint that I heard most often was from people that couldn't figure out which client to use or which instance to use. Too much choice tends to paralyze people and they default to proprietary services because they don't know what choices to make.

Maybe you are confused because the old client name, Riot, was sunset in favor of Element?

AIUI the protocol was and is called Matrix. There seems to be no intention to depart from that name.

They renamed Riot to Element in the wake of the George Floyd protests in the United States. It's the same code base.

Matrix is a protocol. Synapse is the primary server implementation of Matrix written in Python.

Here's their blog post at a time: https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/?ref=itsfoss.c...

It's worth nothing that the conflict with Riot Games over trademark rights was also a motivating factor.

(We actually renamed Riot to Element because the nice people at Riot Games sent us a cease & desist :)

I still remember when that happened. I was really bummed because Riot is just such a fun name. Didn't help that that particular company was the reason.

I bet you were even more bummed though.

It's interesting seeing a myth build around your reasons for the name change already, with the blog post still up. Makes me wonder though how native speakers would have felt about the name after the protests.

I'm not a native speaker, so I don't feel the connotations of the name.

Element is to matrix what chrome is to http. The most used client for that protocol.

Element is the trading name of a company, of three clients with mostly-independent codebases written by that company (web, android, iOS; not counting the two Element X rewrites), and of a hosting service (EMS).

Yes New Vector Ltd

I just feel like the use of linear algebra terminology pollutes search results. Maybe they should have named it Passta/Meetball or some unique dumb name, and continued the naming scheme after satirical religions (Church of the Subgenius -> Slack, Discordianism -> Discord, Pastafarianism -> Meetball), like name the protocol Passta (maybe figure out a backronym for it), and the client software "Meetball".

The use of math terms is intentional.

Matrix = email. Element = Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.

The Matrix name has never budged since the beginning of the project. One of the Matrix servers is called Synapse. Others include Conduit or Dendrite (see https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/).

So yes, Matrix is the protocol, not the/a server.

Yeah. I still think that the Matrix.org Foundation should have a branded client, simply called “Matrix”, available in all the major app stores.

Lock it to the matrix.org server and offer membership in the foundation as an in-app purchase. Could help with some of their recent funding issues.

The fact that the group in control of the spec, the reference server, the most popular client, & the biggest server is the same entity is problem enough as it is for control/decentralization. Branding it top to bottom as Matrix would be the beginning of the end to me.

Matrix federation is inherently too centralized to my taste. You always rely on a server and a domain name. HN geeks can run their own server but still depend on ICANN down the line.

Username checks out :)

Growth in revenue-free end users might not be fantastic news for the Matrix team. As I understand it they make money from b2b integrations (eg French government) and supporting a horde of WhatsApp transplants is only ever going to be a net negative cost centre for them.

There aren’t exactly many so it’s a bit hard to generalise but free, large scale chat apps are the side projects of tech companies with existing revenue streams.

Do you think email should have a branded client, simply called "email" available in all the major app stores? Or XMPP have a branded client, simply called "XMPP" etc.?

Align on a protocol, experiment and compete with clients is a good way to make progress.

If email was a new thing trying to break into a crowded space, then yes.

Notice how WhatsApp took off while XMPP fragmented.

A matrix is made up of elements :)

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