This Week in Matrix

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This Week in Matrix 2023-07-14

14.07.2023 00:00 — This Week in Matrix Hubert Chathi

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

Not a lot to say this week. The Spec Core Team is humming along with review, while we also wait for progress of various MSCs from their authors. The full list of what's in flight can be found in this week's Tuesday ping in the Office of the Spec Core Team room.

IETF and MIMI work is still continuing on in the background. Look out for a TWIM in the near future for an update to progress on that front!

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3192: Batch state endpoint!

This MSC defines an endpoint to send lots of state (max 50 at once) into a room in one go. This sounds useful for all sorts of tasks, and it's a wonder that it hasn't come up before.

If that sounds like an endpoint you'd like to go, give feedback on the MSC linked above!

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-07-07

07.07.2023 19:00 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

Work to use Matrix as the standard for interoperable messaging at the IETF is continuing in full stride. At IETF 117 (July 22nd - 28th, 2023) we'll be talking about the precise requirements of an interoperable protocol, and encouraging Matrix be that protocol. Linearized Matrix is our proposal for the room model, with more updates expected in the coming days ahead of the submission deadline, meanwhile yours truly is working on using MSC1767 Extensible Events for a content format. Watch this space for updates leading up to IETF 117 🙂

We're also well on track to test interoperability of different Linearized Matrix implementations at the Hackathon - get in touch with us via the #sct-office:matrix.org if you're working on such an implementation so we can coordinate details. It's not too late to get started either; Linearized Matrix itself is relatively simple to implement compared to the full capability of Matrix, by design.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3903: X25519 Elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman ephemeral for establishing secure channel between two Matrix clients!

This MSC provides a means of establishing a trusted, secure communications channel across a potentially untrusted network. Subsequent MSCs could then use this channel to transfer details such as login tokens or key backup credentials in the context of setting up a new Matrix device. MSC3906 is one proposal that takes advantage of this.

This is just one piece of work building on the tree of MSCs supporting the shift of authentication in Matrix from home-brewed to OIDC. See https://areweoidcyet.com/ for more details on that effort.

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-30

30.06.2023 00:00 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Thib announces

You might have seen the news already, but the Matrix.org Foundation is pleased to welcome the first public sector organisation as part of its membership: Gematik joined us as a Silver member!

If you're an organisation of the public sector it might not be obvious why spending money on an open source product is important: you will probably be interested in why it makes sense for gematik to contribute, and how it benefits the public sector in general.

Whether you're an individual, a business, a non-profit, a public sector organisation, you can join the Matrix.org Foundation as a member to support us in our mission and help us steer Matrix in the right direction!

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-23

23.06.2023 18:45 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Thib says

Not only have we formally launched the Matrix.org Foundation membership programme… we're happy to already welcome our first member: Beeper!

Wondering why it makes sense for Beeper to support the Foundation? In short: we're mission-aligned, and it's a strategic business choice.

Thanks again to Beeper for all their contributions to the Matrix ecosystem, and we can't wait for more prospective members to show that they really mean to stand for open, decentralised secure communications 🚀

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-16

16.06.2023 00:00 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) [GMT-6] 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

This actually happened last week, but a huge shoutout to Kévin Commaille, aka @zecakeh, for their work on upgrading the OpenAPI schema data for the Matrix Spec to version 3.1. This schema describes all of the requests and responses for all endpoints in the spec, as well as various event types and other bits and pieces. It directly powers the Matrix spec website, the Matrix API Playground and several Client and Homeserver SDKs that generate code from it.

With a diff of +14,997 −12,660, this was a multi-month effort of both implementation and review (thank you @richvdh and @KitsuneRal!). This change will allow us to use all the new features that OpenAPI 3 has to offer, as well as generally keeps us up to date with modern tooling.

Thank you!

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3051: A scalable relation format!

This MSC describes a different way of describing how an event relates to other events. In the current Matrix spec, you can use the m.relates_to property to indicate that this event (say, a reaction) relates to another event (say, a message) in a certain manner. You can specify how it relates using the m.relates_to->rel_type key; a value of "m.annotation" for reactions.

But sometimes you may want to relate to multiple other events. For instance, what if that message you're reacting to is also in a thread? In fact, this MSC has come up recently as one possible way to solve the problem of efficiently discerning whether an event should belong in a thread or not (discussion). This MSC isn't the only option for solving such a problem - MSC4023 would also work, and both have tradeoffs.

MSC3051 could also allows for actions such as editing replies; both the text and the message it was a reply to. Neat!

Do read the MSC and give feedback if relations is something that excites you.

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-09

09.06.2023 20:51 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 09.06.2023 20:48

Matrix Live

We didn't have time for a Matrix Live this week, but don't miss next week's episode!

Dept of Spec 📜

TravisR 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 Final Comment Period:

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Updates

On the Spec Core Team (SCT), we've started converting the list of MSCs we received into a roadmap for the next 8-ish weeks. This is all to prepare for Matrix 1.8, and we're already starting to think a bit about what Matrix 1.9 looks like too. You can see what the team plans to look at here - each column is ordered in relative priority, where the top is more likely to receive attention first. Not everything is actionable at the moment, but that's the point 😄 As we work through the next month or so, the remaining MSCs should be unblocked or near-unblocked enough to allow the SCT to make progress on them.

Most of the MSCs on the roadmap have a target state of acceptance (and merge, if we can make that happen), though some do have a simple task of reviewing the MSC ahead of implementation effort. We're aiming to test this process over the next few releases, where the SCT unblocks progress by providing review ahead of review actually being needed, but to do that we need to know what people plan to work on. If you have something which could do with review (not just acceptance) in the August-November window of time, let us know in the SCT Office.

As always, if you have questions about a particular MSC's state or what this process actually means, let us know in the SCT Office.

Meanwhile, the SCT is continuing its IETF/MIMI adventures by pushing Linearized Matrix towards working group adoption. The current stages involve updating the Internet-Draft (I-D, or MSC in IETF terms) to cover the MIMI-specific bits of the room model and working on multiple implementations of the proposal. We'll be updating the MSC at a later stage to account for the DAG interop components, though how to get a DAG to work with the linear, append-only, MIMI variant is very much top of mind. You can see the current rapidly-changing I-D here.

As mentioned, to further adoption of Linearized Matrix within MIMI we're looking for independent implementations. "Independent" here means not written by the Matrix Core Team and not written by Element given the potential for conflict of interest, though the Matrix team is working on proving the I-D through eigen-server and possibly a dual-stack Synapse (watch this space). We have a line on ~2 completely independent (but undisclosed 😇) Linearized Matrix implementations already, but more is often better for these things: if you work for a messaging service provider and are interested in writing an implementation, get in touch with us so we can coordinate some interop testing. You don't already have to be using Matrix to write an implementation, and in fact it's probably better if you aren't already using Matrix, awkwardly.

Random MSC of the week

The script of fate has decided to put forward MSC3060: Room Labels this week. This is a relatively small MSC, but one which provides a ton of value to discovering rooms. The labels/topics your room covers are listed in a state event and can inform users of what to expect beyond the room name/avatar. For example, if your room has primarily NSFW/18+ content, you can disclose that in the labels.

Leave your thoughts and concerns on the MSC via threads on the diff 🙂

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-06-02

02.06.2023 20:20 — This Week in Matrix Thib

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

Part of the SCT's goals with Matrix 1.8 is to pre-plan the majority of our review attention, which means we need to be told what folks are working on to plan accordingly. We'll still have some room for random/surprise MSC work, but this is expected to be harder to acquire going forward (and so should not be relied upon).

Please let us know if you're working on something which affects the spec! We want to hear about:

  • things that aren't MSCs (yet)
  • things that are MSCs but aren't planned to be merged in 1.8
  • MSCs which are expected to be ready in time for Matrix 1.8 (in ~2 months)

If you aren't sure if your project affects the spec, talk to us about it. We do not want to be the bottleneck in your development cycle, instead preferring to know ahead of time that something will need attention from us.

All we need is for you to mention your project/MSC and timeline in the #sct-office:matrix.org - DMs and private rooms with SCT members are not enough to get something on the roadmap. This is to ensure there is full transparency in why the SCT is looking at something, and to ensure that the MSC moves through the process in an efficient manner. If your project has a sensitive context (commercial or otherwise), then we ask that you reference that here and someone from the team will contact you to get more information, relaying as much (non-sensitive) detail as possible back to the room here.

Our expected outcome for this system is to not only be a more effective team, but also to give you a faster/more reasonable turnaround on MSC review (at all stages), more rapid deployment of stable features (dropping unstable prefixes), and overall fewer review iterations as the SCT can think about problems ahead of you actually needing a review. We seriously do not want to be a blocker, but we need to know what we could end up blocking by accident.

Starting approximately August 1st, we will be starting to plan out what Matrix 1.9's release cycle will look like. A similar call to action will be raised at that point. Note that Matrix 1.8 is set to be released in late August, meaning we're aiming to have Matrix 1.9 thought out before Matrix 1.8 is released, which is a deliberately accelerated timeline than the current Matrix 1.8 release cycle planning.

As always, if you have any questions about this, please let us know in #sct-office:matrix.org.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3869: Read event relations with the Widget API!

This MSC would allow Matrix Widgets, knowing an event ID, to request any and all other events that relate to it. Thus, if you had a m.room.message event, you could ask the client whether any edits have been made to that event, via asking for m.room.message events with m.replace relations.

This would be useful for Widgets to traverse any data structure that used relations to tie together events - which could model all sorts of use cases!

As always, leave your feedback on the MSC if this is something you're interested in or want to push forwards :)

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-05-26

26.05.2023 20:49 — This Week in Matrix Hubert Chathi
Last update: 26.05.2023 20:24

Matrix Spec (website)

uhoreg 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

We released version 1.7 of the Matrix Spec on Thursday. This release features media repository improvements and reactions. Thank you to all who contributed to this release, whether through writing or reviewing MSCs, writing spec PRs, or finding spec bugs. And congratulations to those who had their first MSC make it to the release. Read the blog post for the full details.

We're in the process of working out what Matrix 1.8 looks like and need to hear what people are working on. If you have an MSC or idea you're planning on looking at in the next 2 months, let us know in #sct-office:matrix.org so we can prioritize it accordingly.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3184: Challenges Messages! This feature allows participants in a room to make decisions randomly by playing rock, paper, scissors; flipping a coin; or drawing straws.

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-05-19

19.05.2023 00:00 — This Week in Matrix Andrew Morgan

Matrix Live

No Matrix Live this week as Thib's away. Tune in next week though - maybe he'll do two!

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) 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:

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

Matrix v1.7 has been given a release date of May 25th, right before the next TWIM! Expect a matrix.org blog post with all the details on the day.

Leading up to the release we've seen a number of great spec PRs appearing and being merged! Thank you to everyone for writing them (saving the SCT some time!) and to other reviewing on commenting. It's a huge help and the spec feels like it's chugging along at a blistering pace!

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC2213: Rejoinability of private/invite-only rooms!

This MSC adds the ability for users who have previously joined a room to rejoin again. Typically this isn't desired in a public room setting, but it does specifically make sense in the case of a DM that you've left and want to return to without the other user needing to invite you. This case has specific implications for cases where there could be only ever one room between two users. Being able to rejoin it if the other user has disappeared is key!

Outside of the DM use case, this functionality can mostly already be achieved by using restricted rooms, where users of a given space/another room can always join your room. However, it would be nice to have the flexibility of allowing certain users to rejoin a room without needing another room to serve as proof of membership.

Is this something you're interested in? Do you have additional use cases? Feel free to check out the MSC and comment with your thoughts!

Continue reading…

This Week in Matrix 2023-05-12

12.05.2023 20:47 — This Week in Matrix Thib
Last update: 12.05.2023 20:45

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) 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:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

Closed MSCs:

Spec Updates

A regular reminder that every Tuesday, the Spec Core Team (SCT) publishes their approximate priorities in the public Office of the Spec Core Team room - check it out to see what the SCT is working on. Similarly, if you’d like the SCT to engage with your MSC, mention so in that room.

The release of Matrix 1.7 is expected in the next 1-2 weeks! Keep an eye out for announcement blog post specifically for it. We'll call it out in the following TWIM as well of course :)

Matrix 1.8 is currently scheduled for around August 2023.

Random MSC of the Week

The random MSC of the week is... MSC3914: Matrix native group call push rule!

This MSC adds a new push rule that causes your Matrix client to emit a notification if a group call (as defined by MSC3401 is started in a Matrix room. This MSC (obviously) depends on MSC3041, so that MSC will need to be accepted before this one can be.

There is currently a client-side implementation for this MSC, but it is missing a homeserver side one (for adding the push rule).

Check out the MSC if you're interested, or perhaps take a look at adding that server-side implementation?

Continue reading…