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Comment by cvwright | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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 :)

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.

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