In his 'Enter the Matrix' talk¹, @mcnesium suggested donating to the Matrix Foundation to address the issue of one company controlling 90% of the ecosystem and spec.
Here's how the foundation spends its money:²
• Administrative overhead
• Operating the matrix.org server
• Director’s salary
• Hosting Matrix Conf
No funds for software development or spec writing.
Hosting the conference (12.5% of budget) is obviously a good investment.
¹: media.ccc.de/v/ds25-506-enter-…
²: github.com/matrix-org/matrix-s…
Financial situation of The Matrix.org Foundation
Is there any place where financial reports of The Matrix.org Foundation are published? Like, summary of income through donations, who is currently employed by The Matrix.org Foundation and how are ...alohapersona (GitHub)
Daniel Gultsch
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Daniel Gultsch
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Wilfried Klaebe
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Bulshytt
Contributors to Anathem Wiki (Fandom, Inc.)Benjamin
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Sadly, I have rarely been wrong with that.
Caleb 🏳️🌈 🇮🇱 🌱
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Daniel Gultsch
in reply to Caleb 🏳️🌈 🇮🇱 🌱 • • •mcnesium
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •There is a long read about the foundation's trust and safety initiative over here:
matrix.org/blog/2025/02/buildi…
Building a Safer Matrix
Jim Mackenzie, VP Trust & Safety — The Matrix.org Foundation (matrix.org)The Matrix.org Foundation
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Trust & Safety does include moderation of Matrix.org, but it also includes research and development of FOSS tools, techniques, and spec changes, and collaboration with contributors and server operators from across the ecosystem, even beyond Matrix.
As conveners for the ecosystem, we're able to leverage the fact that we operate a flagship instance to advance the experience of the open federation for everybody.
That's why Trust & Safety is its own line item.
mcnesium
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •Regarding the more general accusation on #Matrix being just another VC-backed one-company-product, I'd like to refer to another recent post from the foundation, and only quote from its final paragraph:
> … triggered some defensive reaction with other European players in the market. It is a shame that small European players feel the need to fight one another rather than collaborate via open source software against the bigger non-European and proprietary players.
matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispel…
Dispelling myths and misinformation
Robin Riley (matrix.org)Daniel Gultsch
in reply to mcnesium • • •Robert Riemann 🇪🇺
in reply to mcnesium • • •I would not underestimate the value of having a go-to home server free of charge for people new to #matrix. In the end, it is the members of the foundation to decide whether they agree with the use of the budget they contribute. Are you also a member?
Make a difference and sign up at: matrix.org/support/
Support Matrix
matrix.orgDaniel Gultsch
in reply to Robert Riemann 🇪🇺 • • •The Matrix.org Foundation
in reply to Daniel Gultsch • • •The salaries that we pay to our staff cover such things as:
* facilitating open governance,
* volunteer enablement,
* managing spec releases,
* developing Trust & Safety tooling (which inevitably gets open sourced),
* driving spec changes to improve Trust & Safety,
* and coordinating ecosystem wide updates, such as when vulnerabilities are discovered.
So, funds _do_ go to software development and spec writing.
Daniel Gultsch
in reply to The Matrix.org Foundation • • •@matrix Advancing the spec with regards to Trust & Safety sounds great.
Will this be enough to keep the ecosystem alive if/when Element goes bankrupt or turns evil? Only time will tell… (A single actor turning evil was the premise of the talk.)
I would love for the Matrix ecosystem to emancipate itself from Element Inc. For now I don’t really see that happening.