In 2017, KDE announced it was working on including support for the protocol in its IRC client Konversation. The Librem 5 was intended to be a Matrix native phone, where the default pre-installed messaging and caller app should use Matrix for audio and video calls and instant messaging. In the early weeks after its creation, the Matrix team and the company Purism published plans to collaborate in the creation of the Librem 5 phone. The company was created with the goal of offering consultancy services for Matrix and paid hosting of Matrix servers (as a platform called modular.im, which was later renamed to Element matrix services ) to generate income. This was expanded by a weekly blog format, called "This Week in Matrix", where interested community members could read, or submit their own, Matrix-related news. Patreon and Liberapay crowdfunding accounts were created, and the core team started a video podcast, called Matrix "Live" to keep the contributors up to speed with ongoing developments. During this time period, there were multiple calls for support to the community and companies that build on Matrix, to help pay for the wages of at least part of the core team. In July 2017, the funding by Amdocs was announced to be cut and in the following weeks the core team created their own UK-based company, "New Vector Limited", which was mainly built to support the development of Matrix and Riot, which was later renamed to Element. In 2015, a subsidiary of Amdocs was created, named "Vector Creations Limited", and the Matrix staff was moved there. Some were unclear if there was enough demand among users for services which interoperate among providers. XMPP and IRCv3-and have highlighted the challenges involved, both technological and political. Reviewers noted that other attempts at defining an open instant messaging or multimedia signalling protocol of this type had difficulties becoming widely adopted-e.g. The protocol received praise mixed with some cautionary notes after it launched in 2014. Matrix was the winner of the Innovation award at WebRTC 2014 Conference & Expo, and of the "Best in Show" award at WebRTC World in 2015. Amdocs then funded most of the development work from 2014 to October 2017. The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications", by Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape.
It can integrate with standard web services via WebRTC, facilitating browser-to-browser applications. It provides HTTP APIs and open source reference implementations for securely distributing and persisting messages in JSON format over an open federation of servers. It therefore serves a similar purpose to protocols like XMPP, but is not based on any existing communication protocol.įrom a technical perspective, it is an application layer communication protocol for federated real-time communication. It aims to make real-time communication work seamlessly between different service providers, in the way that standard Simple Mail Transfer Protocol email currently does for store-and-forward email service, by allowing users with accounts at one communications service provider to communicate with users of a different service provider via online chat, voice over IP, and videotelephony. Matrix (sometimes stylized as ) is an open standard and communication protocol for real-time communication. ( February 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)įederated messaging and data synchronization Please help improve it by removing references to unreliable sources where they are used inappropriately. This article may contain excessive or inappropriate references to self-published sources.