88 karma · joined February 18, 2016
in addition, its original stream2own model allows you to automatically spend more on the artists you listen to more and even own (= stop paying for) and download the tracks you listened to at least 9 times. i think that it is a much fairer revenue-distribution model than “the big money pot” model used by spotify (and almost all other music streaming platforms out there) where people listening to the highest amount of tracks decide where other people’s money goes.
in parts of the world where the language diversity is more present, some people prefer choosing a more neutral name. esperanto is sometimes used for this, especially in the free software world. example of projects you may have heard of that use an esperanto name: [krita](https://krita.org/) (means “chalk”), [monero](https://www.getmonero.org/) (means “coin”), [klavaro](https://klavaro.sourceforge.io/) (means “keyboard”). it also increases the chance to find a more unique name.
english pronunciation is a mess, and if you would hear how non-english people pronounce “riot”, you would think twice before going for an english name.
1. it is an open standard based on free software
2. it is based on history synchronization between servers instead of message transmission between clients, so you can send messages seamlessly from any device and have access to your conversation history (think git vs sms)
3. you can use your own server to host your conversations (the conversation history is replicated on the server of each participant)
4. it has end-to-end encryption
5. there is only one type of conversation, so the are no differences between a one-to-one chat and group chat: a one-to-one chat is simply a group chat with only two participants
i have my own personal server (old laptop at home), and the rest of my family uses another dedicated server (other old laptop at my cousin’s home). friends and coworkers use the matrix.org homeserver. the matrix.org homeserver can be slow sometimes (because it hosts many rooms and has many connected users), but messaging between our own servers is instant.
sure, it’s not (yet) as polished as mainstream apps. for example, currently, with end-to-end encryption, one need to verify each device of each other person on each of their own devices, which is not very user friendly (but this is being worked on, so only one verification per person will be needed in the future).
this said, it has nevertheless the most needed features. it has even some features that mainstream apps lack. for example, if you’re a little technical you can start using bridges. this allows to receive and send messages from/to other messaging systems (irc, xmpp, slack, telegram, discord, sms,…) all from within your matrix client.