I was ready to grab my pitchfork after that first comment, but farther down:

>>Some time ago you federated with CyanogenMod. What has changed since then?

>What changed was going through that experience. It seriously degraded the UX for our users and held us back in the development process at many times. I'd estimate that all told, we lost about 6 months to a year of progress. It's something we'll probably never do again, and has fully convinced me that federated protocols are a thing of the past in this world of ours.

That's a pretty reasonable take: we tried it and it hurt velocity too much.

Ah yes, velocity. I want my secure and encrypted messaging app to have development velocity so they can add sketchy cryptocurrencies, stories and giphy integrations instead of making a stable and polished app that can send messages and pictures.

There's a time for high velocity, and a time for stability. Federation, at least officially-supported federation is difficult when it's time for high velocity. Having used Signal in 2016 when that thread was written, it makes sense to me that Moxie felt it was a time for high velocity.

I'm not convinced that's still the case in 2022. There are a couple issues I'd like to see polished in the Android client, but I have not noticed bugs or missing features that seem likely to require breaking changes.

Thanks, this was illuminating.

Ironically, from his website:

> In general, I hope to contribute to a world where we value skills and relationships over careers and money, where we know better than to trust cops or politicians, and where we're passionate about building and creating things in a self-motivated and self-directed way.

Curious what all you had to do to switch from Signal to Matrix.