This is a huge win for open chat protocols, and we really need an open protocol for chat communication to become a standard. The fact that most of the popular chat platforms are proprietary is a travesty. It’s especially painful nowadays where a lot of chat apps are implemented using Electron making them rather hefty in terms of resource usage. Having to run both Slack and Discord for example is pretty taxing. This problem wouldn’t exist using open protocols.<p>I'm old enough to remember the days when you could use a single client to communicate over many networks. Proprietary protocols are the reason that's not possible anymore, and I sincerely hope that every single company peddling them goes out of business.
Digital sovereignty is becoming differentiating. Open source, on servers you control, end-to-end encryption by default. This is how European SaaS can win.
For anyone interested in why it was renamed from Riot, znpy posted a comment under a now heavily downvoted comment below[1] that links to an explanation blog post[2].<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23842974" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23842974</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/" rel="nofollow">https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/</a>
Without threads, I can't advocate the use of Element yet to the communities that want to leave Slack (usually they use free Slack, then grow, then get stuck with a chat software with no history because it's too expensive to go premium).<p>Mattermost has no threads either. RocketChat just implemented them in v3.4. Zulip has its own concept of threads, but Zulip frightens non-dev users in my experience.
Element's chat is part of the Matrix ecosytem used also by German federal agencies and Bundeswehr: <a href="https://matrix.org/" rel="nofollow">https://matrix.org/</a>
Hilariously, we have the need for the opposite... SEC requires record keeping of written communication. HIPAA covered industries face a similar plight. There is no great chat solution for this... RocketChat is a mess, it used mongodb as a backend and the server side requires roughly 512mb of RAM per user. Mattermost is not much better, it also uses a terrible database choice and has similar scalability issues, and the license is a minefield. Both have major usability issues. Both crash a lot.<p>I do appreciate E2E encryption for some narrow use cases, but it is not the end-all-be-all.
Slightly o/t but would anyone know an XMPP browser client? The focus here wouldn't be so much E2E encryption/OMEMO but having a persistent chat. Like in a simple traditional chat log (with the option to create new "elements", of course).
does Element/Riot have private rooms/org-level permissions ?<p>if i want to move my company from slack to element - can i have permissions at the company level (all rooms in a company) and on a per room level ?
While we're talking about it what's everybody's favorite Matrix chat rooms to hang out in? Are there any unofficial HN discussion rooms? I run a room here for anyone interested in regional / community run Internet Service projects: #startyourownisp:matrix.org and sometimes hang around in the Riot (now Element) and Matrix chatrooms just to see what's happening there.
Regarding the headline, there isn't "the" German education system, it's 16 different systems, one per state. The German constitution puts education as responsibility of the states. In specific, the contract is for the two bordering German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg.