An open network for secure, decentralised communication
From the About page: https://matrix.org/about/
Matrix Manifesto
We believe:
- People should have full control over their own communication.
- People should not be locked into centralised communication silos, but instead be free to pick who they choose to host their communication without limiting who they can reach.
- The ability to converse securely and privately is a basic human right.
- Communication should be available to everyone as a free and open, unencumbered, standard and global network.
Mission
The Matrix.org Foundation exists to act as a neutral custodian for Matrix and to nurture it as efficiently as possible as a single unfragmented standard, for the greater benefit of the whole ecosystem, not benefiting or privileging any single player or subset of players.
For clarity: the Matrix ecosystem is defined as anyone who uses the Matrix protocol. This includes (non-exhaustively):
- End-users of Matrix clients.
- Matrix client developers and testers.
- Spec developers.
- Server admins.
- Matrix packagers & maintainers.
- Companies building products or services on Matrix.
- Bridge developers.
- Bot developers.
- Widget developers.
- Server developers.
- Matrix room and community moderators.
- End-users who are using Matrix indirectly via bridges.
- External systems which are bridged into Matrix.
- Anyone using Matrix for data communications.
"Greater benefit" is defined as maximising:
- the number of Matrix-native end-users reachable on the open Matrix network.
- the number of regular users on the Matrix network (e.g. 30-day retained federated users).
- the number of online servers in the open federation.
- the number of developers building on Matrix.
- the number of independent implementations which use Matrix.
- the number of bridged end-users reachable on the open Matrix network.
- the signal-to-noise ratio of the content on the open Matrix network (i.e. minimising spam).
- the ability for users to discover content on their terms (empowering them to select what to see and what not to see).
- the quality and utility of the Matrix spec (as defined by ease and ability with which a developer can implement spec-compliant clients, servers, bots, bridges, and other integrations without needing to refer to any other external material).
N.B. that we consider success to be the growth of the open federated network rather than closed deployments. For example, if WhatsApp adopted Matrix it wouldn't be a complete win unless they openly federated with the rest of the Matrix network.