Matrix is totally open sourced. Server side and the official client (Riot) can be deployed anywhere under your own control.
Also, deploying a bridge you can connect Matrix and IRC rooms, creating a hybrid channel mixing Matrix and IRC clients in the same room. It's pretty cool.
I'm connected to Discord, Slack, and irc chats from Matrix/riot.im. It's working great for me after about a year of use.
I also invited some friends to join my Matrix server directly, but there wasn't much pickup yet. But that doesn't matter since I'm already connected to the places where people are via Matrix.
Matrix (the protocol riot uses) includes voice and video, and riot.im supports both. I run a matrix server for some friends and we like it a lot, though some of us still prefer IRC.
That sounds great, thanks. Unfortunately I just tried to use Riot.im on the default server to talk to a friend (also on the default server), and my messages aren't getting to him or his to me, so it looks like Matrix still has some way to go.
Right now, in practice, Matrix is "a better IRC". It provides bouncer-like functionality by default, federation across the whole network so you only have one identity vs having to register with each server on which there's a community you want to talk to, file sharing, voice/video chat, proper message formatting, and more.
Encryption currently works on Riot Web, iOS and Android, certain bugs excluded - but it's missing a lot of UX work. (Among other things, you have to manually verify each and every device the people you talk to use, there's no way for them to say "these are all my devices, if you trust me, you trust them" yet. You also lose chat history at present if you switch devices or log out.) If you're able to work around the UX, the underlying protocol is fine and has been audited, with certain tradeoffs discussed in the report.
Are Riot and Matrix compatible with irc clients? If so, wouldn't that mostly solve the problem? You have a way to phase out legacy clients and time to work the kinks out of an open solution.
I've been fairly content with Matrix, the ecosystem has improved massively in the last couple months, reducing resource usage on the server I use and adding additional e2e encrypted clients besides Riot.
Bridges are also super handy for integrating with IRC, Slack and similar.
I also hope Matrix takes off. I have been using riot.im for some time to check if it could replace the many chat applications one is forced to use these days (FBMessenger, Slack, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc).
It does have its quirks but I'm finding the ability of having e2e-encrypted chat with multiple parties in a way I can move across devices quite useful. It also does support some more modern features like sharing pictures, files, and emojis without major issues.
Matrix is a federated chat protocol. It is like IRC or XMPP but synchronizes history and uses HTTP-based protocol. There are bridges to IRC, XMPP, and Gitter.
I can only see this as good. MATRIX is awesome, but people don't get the connection between riot and matrix. I think of it a bit like IRC and mIRC. It lowers the bar of entry(a 9 year old could have setup mIRC when it was commonly popular) and lowers the bar of protocol discovery.
To me it's simpler and works better than Signal while being decentralized and federated. It has excellent clients for all platforms (and these keep measages in sync with each other) and does not require a phone number.
Riot is most comparable to Slack or Discord. It has chat rooms. It supports voice, image posts, file transfer, etc. It stores conversation history. You can private message people.
Matrix is a generalized protocol for decentralized and federated communications; it's agnostic to the application layer provided by Riot. Something Matrix doesn't have, but is on the issue backlog, is support for email-esque thread contexts. [0]
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