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Matthew says
The Matrix.org Foundation is now registered with Benevity in order to receive corporate donations as part of Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. If your employer supports donations via Benevity please encourage them to route some of their donations to supporting Matrix!
Very interesting news reported today
You find there the document "Cyber Blueprint - Proposal Council Recommendation" for download that contains on page 17 a recommendation to use the matrix call for inter-gov communication on cyber topics.
In the next step, The European Council must discuss and then possibly adopt this proposal.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/cyber-blueprint-draft-council-recommendation
Thib (m.org) reports
The Foundation is at a crossroads. We need to raise an additional $610K to break-even, and more immediately to raise $100K to keep our bridges running.
As a neutral custodian for the specification and much more, the Foundation is key to the success of Matrix. It is time to step up for it.
Gwmngilfen reports
🔗Announcing the Governing Board Working Groups process
The Governing Board has news! If you have been itching to know how to get involved, we are now ready to get you ... on-Board! 🥁 😀
The Working Groups are the beating heart of the GB - they get the work done. So naturally people have been asking "how do we make one?" and "what is expected of a Working Group?"
Jim announces
If you are wondering what the Foundation Safety team get up to, and what we have planned, we have an update for you. Check out the post: Building a Safer Matrix
TravisR announces
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:
- MSC4264: Tokens for Contacting Accounts
- MSC4265: Data Protection Officer contact in /.well-known/matrix/support
- MSC4266: Policies in /.well-known/matrix/support
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
Closed MSCs:
- No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.
🔗Spec Update
Lots of MSC implementation and iteration is happening behind the scenes at the moment, leading to not very exciting Spec Core Team (SCT) updates :) As this implementation work progresses, the Matrix 2.0 MSCs in particular will continue to push forwards towards acceptance.
In the meantime, early versions of Extensible Profiles is up for review and today's blog post "Building a Safer Matrix" hints at some T&S spec changes expected soon.
The next spec release is expected in early March 2025 - if there's MSCs you think should be included there, let the team know in the SCT Office!
Johannes reports
@this-week-in:matrix.org for people interested in informally discussing the Matrix-based TI-Messenger (TI-M) spec, as of today we have a public room: https://matrix.to/#/#tim-spec:matrix.org
If you haven't heard of TI-M before, in a nutshell it's a chat standard for the German healthcare system.
Quentin Gliech reports
This week we released Matrix Authentication Service 0.13.0!
This is a big release, as we haven't done one since September.
It is fixing a lot of small issues, but here are a few of the big highlights:
- The email verification has been completely reworked, meaning that accounts don't require a valid email address on them anymore! They are still required for open password registrations, but MAS won't nag you anymore to add an email to your account.
- No more spurious logouts when consuming a refresh token! That was a recurring annoyance for people using Element X in poor network conditions.
- It now reliably provisions users to Synapse! Sometimes, MAS would just stop provisioning new sessions if, for some reason, it lost connections to Postgres. This is a thing of the past, as now MAS has a reliable job queue.
- New translations! MAS is now available in Czech, Dutch, Estonian, English, French, German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, and Ukrainian. If you'd like to help MAS get translated to your language, head out to our Localazy project
- Better support for non-OIDC upstream OAuth 2.0 providers. Support for 'social login' options like Google or Sign-in with Apple went from 'good' to 'great', with many UI improvements.
Upgrading should be as easy as grabbing the latest Docker image or the pre-built binaries, restarting the service and voilà!
Feel free to stop by #matrix-auth:matrix.org to join in on the discussion and if you encounter a bug make sure to report it here.
Thib (m.org) announces
FOSDEM was a huge success for the Matrix.org Foundation and community this year again!
- 🍕60 pizzas and an uncountable amount of drinks at the Fringe event
- 👕 100 t-shirts sold at the booth on the first day!!
- 🧑🏫 A completely packed devroom
- 🤝 Many great conversations at the booth
Shout out to Workadventure, Nordeck and Famedly who sponsored the Fringe Event and kept us refreshed and fed. And a huge thanks to everybody who showed up at the booth either to staff it or to say a kind word, bring constructive criticism, or have a casual conversation.
A more detailed wrap up post will be published this week. In the meantime, I’m leaving FOSDEM with a sense that we are doing the right thing, going in the right direction, and that people notice. I'm looking forward to meeting you all again, as well as those who couldn't make it to FOSDEM!
This week we tried publishing TWIM on a Monday, but people seem to enjoy reading their Matrix news during the weekend. We will get back to publishing TWIM on Fridays!
Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} 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:
MSCs in Proposed Final Comment Period:
- MSC3765: Rich text in room topics
- MSC3266: Room summary API
- MSC3757: Restricting who can overwrite a state event
- MSC4183: Additional Error Codes for submitToken endpoint
- MSC2965: OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server Metadata discovery
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- MSC4239: Room version 11 as the default room version (merge)
- MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs (merge)
- FCP currently blocked due to an ongoing discussion.
Accepted MSCs:
Closed MSCs:
- MSC3975: rel_type for Replies
- Closed by the MSC author.
🔗Spec Updates
Quite a flurry of activity in spec-land this week, as you can see from the above! MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs moved into final comment period. While it still has one outstanding concern as of today, hopefully that can be worked out in the near future.
We also had a newly accepted MSC; MSC4213: Remove server_name parameter from
joinandknockendpoints. A small change, but a nice clean up to the spec.Once again, thanks to everyone who's involved, and those that are only just getting started! The more the merrier.
As a reminder Matrix will again be present at FOSDEM this year!
As always, FOSDEM is free to attend and will happen at the 1. and 2. of February. Additionally we will have a fringe event on the 31st of January. You can find more information in the "Matrix in full force at FOSDEM" blog post.
Additionally please be aware that the Health and Safety Policy for the fringe event will be the same as the one of the Matrix Conference. Extremely briefly: You need to wear a mask while indoors, except while eating and drinking.
Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} reports
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:
- MSC4253: Modifying or rejecting accepted MSCs
- MSC4252: Extensible Events modification: State event handling
- MSC4250: Authenticated media v2 (Cookie authentication for Client-Server API)
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
MSCs in Proposed Final Comment Period:
- MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs
- MSC3765: Rich text in room topics
- MSC3266: Room summary API
- MSC4239: Room version 11 as the default room version
- MSC3757: Restricting who can overwrite a state event
- MSC4183: Additional Error Codes for submitToken endpoint
Closed MSCs:
- MSC3575: Sliding Sync (aka Sync v3)
- Superseded by MSC4186: Simplified Sliding Sync
- [WIP] MSC4097: Interactions between media redirection and authentication
- Replaced by spec-independent approaches.
🔗Spec Updates
As suggested from folks in the TWIM room, the above status now contains MSCs that are currently in proposed Final Comment Period. The hope is that this directs attention to MSCs that are close to being either merged/closed.
Let me know what you think!
The Governing Board is an advisory board that is made up of elected representatives from all across the Matrix ecosystem.
HarHarLinks says
I'm excited to share some quick news from the governing board today! Over the holidays around the new year, we finished the committee chair elections and congratulate:
- Bram and Sumner, chair and vice chair of the Governance committee,
- Sumner and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Community committee,
- Robin and Kevin, chair and vice chair of the Finance committee,
- J.B. and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Trust & Safety committee!
This paves the way for the committees to start taking up work while at the same time the governing board as a whole also finalises the processes around working groups so we can onboard all of you!
We look forward to sharing another update soon, and Matrix @ FOSDEM is also on the horizon, where attendees will be able to meet a good handful of governing board members face to face! For any questions, feedback, or discussion with/about the governing board, join our #governing-board-office:matrix.org!
Until next time!
Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} 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:
- There were no new MSCs this week.
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
Closed MSCs:
- No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.
🔗Spec Updates
It may seem quiet from the stats above, but there's actually been a healthy amount of activity across various MSCs this week!
MSC3266: Room summary API had FCP proposed, which moves this long-awaited MSC significantly closer to being accepted. This MSC allows clients to get a quick preview of a room before joining it, which is useful in all sorts of scenarios (see the MSC for a list!). There's still a fair amount of feedback to get through, but much of it is small clarifying comments. Exciting to see this one move forward!
MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs has also been moving forward, with the Synapse implementation in active review by the maintainers, and all concerns on the MSC (currently) having been resolved this week.
There's plenty of activity on other MSCs as authors work to update them. Also a huge thanks again to those working on the spec text itself. Multiple PRs against the matrix-spec repo have been opened following the holidays, all making the spec better for everyone. Thank you!
Matthew reports
The 2024 Matrix Holiday Special: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-special-2024/
SchildiChat is a fork of Element for Android and Desktop, that used to focus on UI changes such as message bubbles and a unified chat list, but now also provides some additional tweaks and community-driven features that may not be on the roadmap for the upstream clients.
SpiritCroc says
Over the holidays, I added two new (old) features to SchildiChat Next (our Element X Android fork) that I've been missing since switching to the new codebase.
First, inline images and custom emotes are now rendered again, so you don't miss out when users on other clients or certain bridges send these. If you prefer not having images rendered in text message, you can also disable them via a setting, in order to render the fallback text instead - rather than not rendering anything at all as done previously.
Second, I added back the functionality to fetch and render previews for links found in text messages, so you have a better idea what to expect before clicking them. For now, this is an experimental setting, so remember to enable it first if you want to try it out once it lands in the next release.
