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Introducing Partner Matrix.org

Matrix.org MatrixMatrix.org is an ambitious nonprofit open source project complementing and supporting the Telecom Application Developers ecosystem by providing a new open standard for interoperable decentralised VoIP and Instant Messaging.

We believe users want to use their preferred apps and services to communicate rather than being forced into the myriad different services their contacts happen to have selected. We want VoIP and IM to be as ubiquitous, flexible and open as e-mail. Matrix provides the necessary building blocks: the Matrix standard itself, defining pragmatic simple HTTP APIs for distributed messaging within the open federated Matrix ecosystem, and providing open source reference implementations to showcase and bootstrap the new standard. Our focus is on simplicity, security, and supporting a full baseline feature set.

Matrix.org acts as the neutral custodian for the standard and reference implementations. Its initial inspiration and goal is to fix the problem of fragmented IP communications, but Matrix’s real potential and ultimate mission is to be a generic messaging and data synchronisation system for the web – allowing people, services and devices to easily communicate with each other securely through open federation whilst maintaining full distributed conversation history.

Matrix’s team has been building custom VoIP and Messaging solutions for mobile network operators since 2006 with extensive experience in SIP and XMPP, and created Matrix to provide a simpler web-friendly alternative to the wider world which can act as the missing signalling layer for WebRTC.

Matrix’s success depends on the wider community’s feedback and uptake: please come to Matrix.org and take a look at the Matrix spec, or come and talk to us at #matrix:matrix.org, or check out the code and run your own Matrix server!

Matrix in Summary

  • An open federated ecosystem
  • A pragmatic open standard
  • Open HTTP client-server and server-server APIs (and shortly, server <-> application-server APIs)
  • Apache-Licensed reference implementations of the server and clients (web, iOS, Android, Python, Perl…)

Key Characteristics

  • Entirely open: open standard; open source; open project; open federation.
  • Message History as first-class citizen
  • Group communication as first-class citizen
  • Fully distributed room state (cryptographically signed) – no SPOFs or SPOCs.
  • Strong cryptographic identity to prevent spoofing
  • Identity agnostic: not “yet another ID”
  • End-to-end encryption (coming soon)

Get Involved!