Matrix continues to be impractical
omg.lol is shutting down their Matrix server.
Matrix is a technically sophisticated federated chat protocol, but, frankly, it’s also a major pain in the ass. While its design is elegant in many ways, in practice it often feels like an unwieldy mess. It can be devastatingly resource-intensive, especially when doing something as simple as trying to join a large chat room somewhere. And it is also notoriously buggy, with experience-breaking glitches that have no clear path to resolution. The server requires constant maintenance and attention, to the point where it has consumed a disproportionate amount of time and resources within the omg.lol ecosystem. It’s not really sustainable.
This fully mirrors my experience maintaining and integrating a Matrix server at the OCF, which is meant to serve a purpose very similar to omg.lol.
It sucks because, theoretically, Matrix is a really cool idea and was the most exiting prospect to replace the likes of IRC, XMPP, Slack, or Discord.
But again and again we see that it is just too complicated for humans to write code that works with the protocol. That means that homeservers and client apps seem destined to become buggy messes.
Perhaps this isn't a fundamental issue with the protocol, just Synapse, the only existing moderately functional homeserver. I'm skeptical.
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