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Honestly, federated FOSS makes so much sense for government communication, as it insulates them from reliance on corporate entities.
I just wish Matrix’s E2EE worked better. Even if you have all your keys managed probably, it’s still really unreliable.
When was the last time you used it? They've been working hard on fixing the encryption bugs, and it shows. I haven't seen a glitch in... maybe half a year now?
I use matrix weekly with about 3 different (all verified) clients and every single one of my encrypted group chats has had this issue.
Perhaps it has gotten better, but every once in a while some messages simply won’t decrypt, and it’s hard to determine why.
I checked just now and I can’t see one user’s messages sent in the last 48hrs (other users can, and I used to see them too). I haven’t signed out of any sessions and AFAIK they are verified.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Matrix. I host my own server. I think it has the most potential to become an industry standard, but it’s still a rough ecosystem for the non-technical.
Out of curiosity, which client and OS sent the messages in question, and which client and OS says it can't decrypt them?
I've seen that behavior in the past, but like I said, it has been more than a few months. It's possible that at least one end of your conversation is using a client that hasn't received the recent-ish fixes. It might be helpful if we could identify it.
I just wish Matrix’s E2EE worked better.
For "real-time communication" for individuals who don't want to maintain their own communication infrastructure, the information around https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/ is surely at least somewhat useful. The recommendations might not be suitable for "government communication" or for people who are capable of setting up and maintaining a lot of infrastructure since I wouldn't describe the infrastructure required as being easy to host independently: it doesn't seem to be easy to set up 3 servers and make it possible to use them to communicate even if something bad happens to the communication network maintained by the original creators of the software. However, the Matrix protocol might be unsuitable for this too, since it is considered to be "social networking software" now, and it is no longer considered to be "great for securing your sensitive communications": https://www.privacyguides.org/en/social-networks/#element
It's worrying to see that it's Matrix that's gaining ground in IT, when IT people more than anyone else should know that XMPP is the better alternative, Matrix is a bloated nu-protocol in comparison.
XMPP is not better than Matrix. My major gripes with it are OMEMO and the clients that implement different subsets of the extensions.
OMEMO still is an extension instead of the core. It should be extremely easy to upgrade a chat to an encrypted one but if the client doesn't have a plugin installed to support it, you're stuck with unencrypted traffic.
And the clients I've tested have all been visually unappealing and lacking in features. Reacting to messages, quoting messages, using threads, encryption, and finding rooms has been difficult or impossible with them.
Matrix has a major advantage over XMPP in that it has an official, reference client which implements just about everything. It works better than most any XMPP client I've tried and, this is my feeling, every MSC accepted by the foundation has actually been implemented, instead of just being suggested and"left as an exercise to the developer".
Matrix didn't come out of nowhere and didn't supplant XMPP for no reason. XMPP simply doesn't have the ecosystem that makes it attractive to users and debs alike.
hope this leads to money going towards Element open source development. it works but it's not great right now