Matrix Live

Dept of elections 🗳️

Josh Simmons (away, back May 9th) announces

Voting has started for the Governing Board elections and runs till May 31 – but don't delay, vote today! 🗳 Huge thanks to all of the nominees who have thrown their hat in the ring.

All eligible voters should have received an email from the election system. All of the results will be published on the blog on June 3. Read our announcement post or visit our election center for more info.

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) says

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

• MSC4145: Simple verified accounts

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• MSC3967: Do not require UIA when first uploading cross signing keys (merge)

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC4132: Deprecate Linking to an Event Against a Room Alias
• MSC3939: Account locking

Closed MSCs:

• MSC1951: Custom sticker packs and emoji (mk II)
  • Superseded by MSC2545
• MSC2461: Proposal for Authenticated Content Repository API
  • Superseded by MSC3916

Spec Updates

As an early heads up, Trust & Safety at the Foundation is working on an important update to Matrix, MSC3916 - Authenticated Media. This change will mean that all clients (and servers) will need to present a valid access token in their Authentication header to access media - which is critical to ensure that URLs are only visible to the correct users, and prevents abuse of Matrix for hosting binaries. More details will be published as we work to get everything released - we wanted to get the information out there as early as possible in the meantime. Let us know if you have any questions.

Matrix.org plans to freeze unauthenticated media endpoints within a couple of months after the spec release, which is expected in the next few weeks. "Freezing" means that media uploaded or cached before the freeze will remain accessible via unauthenticated endpoints indefinitely, but any media cached or uploaded after the freeze will require authentication. The unauthenticated endpoints will be deprecated but will still serve old media on matrix.org.

To ensure a smooth transition, we encourage you to start testing against the unstable endpoints and unreleased server builds. The changes for Synapse are being developed here, and for MMR here. Both are expected to release their changes soon. Once MSC3916 passes FCP, stable endpoints will become available. While releasing unstable support to users isn't required, having patches ready will help speed up the rollout.

We know this is a quicker rollout than usual, but with your help, we can improve user safety and security across the ecosystem. Most clients should find this update straightforward, but if issues are encountered, please reach out in #matrix-client-developers:matrix.org or on the MSC discussion. The team is monitoring the room to help clients adopt the change.

Web browser clients might face the most challenges, given the need to specify an Authentication HTTP header on media requests, so reviewing this pull request and its dependencies could provide useful implementation insights.

Thank you for your support. If you have any questions, let us know. We look forward to a smooth transition with minimal user-visible impact 🙂

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Voting has started for the Governing Board elections and runs till May 31! This is our first election and we are very excited. All of the results will be published here on the blog on June 3.

You can learn about all of the candidates on our 2024 election page. All eligible voters should have received an email from OpaVote, the election system we have chosen for this year’s elections.

If you believe you are eligible to participate but have not heard from us, first check the inbox and spam folders of the email address you have on file with us (such as through Donorbox or Patreon). Please email us if you have any questions.

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Matrix Live

Dept of elections 🗳️

Neil announces

Hi all, I am also standing for the Matrix Governing Board as the Element representative in the Platinum Member constituency. I wrote a short blog post explaining who I am and what I hope to achieve. Others have pointed at it already, but please do check out the Governing Board nominees campaigning bonfire

Gwmngilfen announces

I'm standing for the Matrix Foundation Governing Board elections in the Individual Members category! You can find my platform statement in the list of nominees but I've also written some more words on my thoughts & priorities. I'm always happy to debate further - please join us in #governing-board-nominee-campaigning-bonfire:matrix.org where some excellent discussion has already happened, but more is very welcome 🙂

Salt says

I'm standing for the Matrix Foundation Governing Board elections in the Individual Members category. I think my campaign statement in the list of nominees covers things pretty well but happy to answer any additional questions in #gbnc-individual:matrix.org . tl;dr: I have a ton of community board experience and want to bring the human-communication-facilitation skills I've developed to set this new governing board on an effective path.

Sumner Evans says

I am running as an Individual Member for the Matrix Governing Board and I do not feel like my positions were fully expressed in the soundbite-length platform statement allowed in the form submission. I've expanded on my position in a blog post: My Matrix Governing Board Platform. It includes details of my community involvement including many footones, a better-formatted platform, and a set of specific policies which I hope to advocate for.

In addition, I would like to endorse two Ecosystem Member candidates (see my endorsements blog post).

andybalaam announces

I'm standing for the Matrix Governing Board as an Individual Member. If you'd like to hear about my priorities, check out my blog post! Thank you to all the nominees for their great platform statements and discussion in the campaigning room, which you are welcome to join.

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Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Governing Board Elections 2024 - Voting Starts on May 18, 2024

Thomas B says

Only two weeks remain until the first Governing Board Elections.

Who are the nominees?

You can find the names of the nominees on the election page, but who are they, and what are their visions for the future? The nominees' campaigning has been underway since April 27. Members of the ecosystem are already quite active at #ecosystem.forum:matrix.org. Feel free to join and meet the nominees for the ecosystem members group.

Please, other constituencies, also find a place to meet, greet, and chat with members where people can get to know you better.

With Josh Simmons (away, back May 9th)'s permission, I opened the space #governing-board-nominee-campaigning-bonfire:matrix.org with several rooms for the different constituency groups.

Members: Come and join to meet the nominees! Nominees: Come and join to share your ideas with members!

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Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Josh Simmons says

We’re positively glowing as we see all the people who are being nominated for our first ever Governing Board elections! The nomination period closes April 26 end of day (AOE time) and we’ll be posting all the nominees on our new election information center within 24 hours after the period closes.

Further, we’re pleased to welcome our 12th Ecosystem Member this week: Fractal 🎉

Does your project or community use Matrix? Does your business benefit from Matrix? Join the Matrix.org Foundation as a member to make your voice heard and secure the future of Matrix.

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The Matrix.org homeserver suffered from an outage on Monday 22 April, between 08:00 UTC and 10:00 UTC, followed by slowness for the next 2 hours.

The outage occurred during scheduled maintenance with no expected downtime. It included upgrading the base OS of the machines running Matrix.org’s deployment.

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Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Josh Simmons announces

WOW! What a week. Today I am thrilled to introduce not one or two, but eight new organisational members. We are extremely grateful to Futurewei Technologies for joining as our newest Gold Member – more on that soon – and to Verji Tech AS for joining as our newest Silver Member. Their support represents a big step toward financial sustainability for the Matrix.org Foundation.

Further, today we welcome Community Moderation Effort, Matrix Elm SDK, FluffyChat, Matrix Community Events, Polychat, and Rory&::LibMatrix as Ecosystem Members! If you couldn’t tell, there’s a lot going on in the Matrix ecosystem!

Does your community use Matrix? Does your project speak Matrix? Or does your business incorporate Matrix into your work? Show your support and become a member today.

Topping off this week’s excitement, our Governing Board nomination period is just about to start! Learn more about the elections, as well as who can nominate and how in our recent blog post.

Continue reading…

Update: the terms of the board have been updated with the follow changes:

• Allow for filling vacancies by appointment or by-election at the discretion of the Managing Director and the Guardians, in consultation with a Governance Committee. (2.7.1)
• Allow for the Governing Board to adopt voting mechanisms other than simple majority on a case-by-case basis. (5.5)
• Disallow nominees from running for election in more than one constituency at a time. (2.4.1)
• Change UTC to AOE in timeline. (2.3)

Welcome to the first ever Governing Board election season for the Matrix.org Foundation! We start with a one week nomination period that opens on Saturday, April 20th and closes on Friday, April 26th AOE time.

We’ll be doing our best to reach out to every constituent group to let them know they are eligible to nominate candidates for the election. That said, this is our first election and we don’t yet have contact information for everybody who is eligible, so we want your help getting the word out.

If you are interested in nominating someone – or yourself – to be a candidate in this election, read this post in its entirety.

To learn about what the Governing Board is, what it does, and the context it operates in, read this blog post from last December. You are also welcome to read the Governing Board’s current bylaws.

Go here for instructions on submitting a nomination!

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Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Josh Simmons says

Important deadline: next week, the week of April 15th, is the last week to become a member before the Governing Board nomination period! You must be a member, or have your application in and approved, by the end of day on April 19th (AOE time) in order to be eligible to nominate. Stay tuned for a blog post all about that on Monday ✨

This week we’re proud to welcome GNOME and KDE e.V. as our second and third Associate Members, and there are more applications in the pipeline that we’re reviewing!

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Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matthew reports

I wrote some thoughts on why governments should explicitly route taxpayer money into funding maintenance of open source infrastructure such as Matrix (rather than only funding feature dev, or not funding at all): https://matrix.org/blog/2024/04/open-source-publicly-funded-service/

Josh Simmons says

This week we're thrilled to welcome the Eclipse Foundation as our first Associate Member! We couldn't be happier with the response to our expanded membership program and are delighted that we will have greater community representation when we elect our first ever Governing Board in the coming months.

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