This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit and only relies on donations to operate. Its core mission is to maintain the Matrix Specification, but it does much more than that.
Non-profit… only relies on donations…
This was taken quite literally at the bottom of that article.
Not trying to be a dick but the Executive Director can take a fucking pay cut.
I found a reddit thread from 4 months ago where he said his salary was $170k/year. I'm not saying he is making obscene money, but if that's nearly 15% of all operating costs he can shave that down to $80k-$100k and still live comfortably if he's willing to accept a more austere standard of living.
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be paid well, but he's getting a damn sight better pay than moderators and community managers who seem to make up 50% of the budget for multiple people: the trust and safety team as well as the other employees at the foundation.
Depends on what that title actually means. Viewing it as a pie chart skews it so you don't realize that $170k in USD is pretty mediocre for a Director of Engineering role. If the project dies without this person, and that's what they need in salary to make it worth it to keep them there, then that's what they get paid.
It's not like they're even making an obscene amount of money ffs. That's a middling engineering salary, and this person is running the whole show. You should see what other "director" jobs at much shittier companies get paid. I think twice this amount would be a weak guess. If this person was a prick, they'd be milking that goat and taking all the free money.
This is an open source project backed by a non-profit foundation, granted, but this person is taking a massive pay cut just by working this job. Think about how that might impact their life to make that choice while trying to have a family.
$170k salary still won't you a fucking house in this country unless you live in the middle of nowhere, and this person is almost certainly in a major tech hub city, so that money means diddly when trying to pay the bills. It's barely above the poverty line in Silicon Valley after taxes for reference.
Everyone in here complaining because they make half this and think it's a lot of money because they live in Bumfuck, Idaho has no idea what it costs to live in the larger tech hubs around the world.
Maybe. But $170K isn’t what it used to be, even 5 years ago. Especially if you have kids.
Does that matter if he is failing to secure enough funding to run the non-profit? If they're risking shutting down major portions of what they do as the guiding foundation for the Matrix protocol, isn't that literally his fault since he's in charge? If the non-profit fails are all the people who donated their fucking money in hopes of it succeeding going to be happy that instead of being willing to take a haircut on pay to save the damn organization he was instead using their donated funds to fund his fucking lifestyle instead of, I don't know, living in a more modest area and doing more of the foundation business remotely?
Maybe someone shouldn't be taking on this kind of major risk and asking people for donations for the project if his kids are so fucking expensive. Nobody forced them to have those kids or live in a high cost of living area. Christ.
Not trying to be rude but they are not meeting their funding goals, which is his job. That's the entire point of the foundation existing, is to meet funding goals so they can continue to develop the protocol. If they aren't making enough money, should he take a paycut, or should they shut the whole thing down? It seems to me like they want to save the project he could take a modest pay cut, but that's just me.
Yeah, it's all grifts for morons by scumbags.
Some idiots were really trying to peddle the lie that infosec.exchange costs $5000/month to host while of course providing no verifiable evidence, just "trust them bro." It's sad watching suckers lap it up without a second thought.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Now 9 wonder if there's a similar report for Mozilla
You can pull the form 990 for any non-profit in the US pretty easily. Here's Mozilla's: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200097189
Wish the homeserver portability would be worked on more. The ability to change homeserver would really allow people to more easily move on from matrix.org.
Myself included ;).
Optimally it would even allow the switch "after the fact", so after your original homeserver is down, assuming your client has a local copy of the server-side secret storage. It would need to be based on some cryptographic identity then, I suppose.
Yes, this would be a great feature - but it's a big issue to implement. It's talked about in this video, worth watching if you're curious about it.
As far as status go, this issue on the matrix spec is what you want to follow.
so ... Matrix Nitro?
We have been communicating on the lack of funds in the Foundation for a while now, the latest being here. And whilst we’ve been working hard to gather new members and are happy to see the number of logos increasing (thank you all for seeing the need for Matrix to stay independent and safe, and the value in supporting it!), none of the big players in the ecosystem have actually committed to one of the higher membership tiers, so we need to find other ways towards sustainability.
🤔
Sounds like that business plan isn't working out like you hoped...
And/Or not enough users care to use your product.
🤷♂️
The plan was to rely on donations, which doesn't usually work for hosted products.
$170k/year for 1 person is no joke.
This is just a grift to take advantage of morons.
Don't be one of them.
A two bedroom, one bathroom house built in the 80s in San Francisco cost $1.1 million a couple years back. I don't suppose cost of living in most big cities went down.
For comparison, Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla, saw her yearly pay rise from $2.4 million in 2018 to 6.9 million in 2022. I think it's perfectly adequate for the CEO of matrix to earn the salary of a moderately successful software engineer.
That's funny, because nothing about his job requires him to be there.
Unlike, you know, people outside of tech.
I have no clue where in the world he resides. I'm just trying and failing to clue you in on how the world works.
No, you're trying to defend the profit's of others without realizing how they're taking advantage of your naivete.
Honestly, trying to explain things to useful idiots really is a fool's errand. The best I can do is make it clear as day for anyone with a brain how much of a sucker the average internet user is now.
Goodbye. I'm going to ignore you. I'm tired of arguing with tools.
For just $19.95 a month you can talk to all your friends!
You can do that for free. But for that low, low price, you can talk to your friends with a Matrix Green checkmark next your name! #worthit
A green check!!!! Wow! Sign me up baby!
