matrix-registration VS Synapse

This does exactly that https://github.com/ZerataX/matrix-registration

You don't even need to create usernames/passwords in advance - you can just send your friends custom one-time URLs, which will allow them to enter their own desired usernames and passwords.

https://zeratax.github.io/matrix-registration/

On another note, yesterday I set up my own matrix-synapse [0] homeserver along with a token-based registration page [1] with nginx+lets encrypt as a reverse proxy. I spent ~1 hour setting it up on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 VM.

I then on-boarded my wife, brother, father and mother without issue. I just sent them a text with screenshots and detailed instructions on what to do. Everyone's in, and we have E2EE group chats going. Within ~20 minutes of sending instructions everyone was participating in chat.

All clients are Element [2] right now, though I plan on trying Weechat [3] this week.

Honestly, I didn't expect it to be this easy to do after seeing all the complaints on HN. I subscribed on Patreon yesterday and wish you all the best of luck!

[0] https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse

[1] https://github.com/ZerataX/matrix-registration

[2] https://element.io

[3] https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix

What are you thinking of here? Synapse has supported purging room history since 2016: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/911, and configurable data retention since 2019: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/5815.

Meanwhile, Matrix has never needed the full room history to be synchronised - when a server joins a room, it typically only grabs the last 20 messages. (It does needs to grab all the key-value state about the room, although these days that happens gradually in the background).

If you're wondering why Matrix implementations are often greedy on disk space, it's because they typically cache the key-value state aggressively (storing a snapshot of it for the room on a regular basis). However, that's just an implementation quirk; folks could absolutely come up with fancier datastructures to store it more efficiently; it's just not got to the top of anyone's todo list yet - things like performance and UX are considered much more important than disk usage right now.

some context re the Matrix isses, long history apparently: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481#issuecomm...

Why not Matrix? Here's one reason: it has incredibly hard-to-debug edge cases, and plenty of bugs. One of my favourites is the one where people are kicked out of your room at random, which was reported a year ago[0]. It wasn't fixed, however, because the head of the Matrix foundation (Matthew) presumably didn't like the issue being posted on Twitter.

This is honestly really disappointing behaviour from a platform owner.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481

> That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community.

How is the community suffering here? Let's say Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their versions over the next few months and then closes the source. Can't the community just fork the last AGPL version? You might say, "well then no one can take the AGPL fork and make their own closed-source business", but do you want them to? Even if you do, they still can with the existing Apache-licensed version, just like Element is doing right now.

You're arguing that Element will lose a lot of contributions, but TFA points out that despite being super open, the vast majority of contributions are still made by Element employees (which seems to be true [0]). It's not the case that Element is looking to monetize the (small) contributions of others, it is the case that others are looking to monetize the (huge) contributions of Element.

And besides, aren't the MSCs the core of Matrix? It's already super possible to build your own compliant client and server.

The situation is that Element needs money to keep developing the ecosystem. It would be cool if there were a big network of donors and contributions, but there isn't. You're essentially saying, "that's fine, go out of business then, and the community will keep developing the ecosystem", but that's not happening now, and it can still happen anyway with the Apache-licensed versions, which again people can still contribute to.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/graphs/contributors