đź“° "Temporal Paraxial Optics under Adiabatic Modulations"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20485 #Physics.Optics #Dynamics #Matrix
Good question! They actually just stepped up significantly:
France became the first country to join the Matrix.org Foundation as a Silver member (October 2025), providing financial support.
Beyond money, DINUM's technical teams actively contribute to the protocol:
- Developing improvements to "Sliding Sync" for better performance
- Building a "border gateway" for secure cross-organization communications
- Contributing their code to community repositories (except branding elements)
There was a period where they'd stopped upstream funding (budget cuts), but the new Foundation membership fixed that. They're presenting their work at FOSDEM 2026 and Open Source Experience.
So they're finally walking the walk, not just taking.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/30/france_matrix/
When I try to send a message to an encrypted #matrix room, it fails, since some recipients have unverified signatures. It makes sense that we wouldn't send encrypted data to some random unverified signature, but there are 102 contacts in this room.
Is the only practical solution to just blindly make all these signatures as verified?
In the world of rising authoritarianism, we dwell over end-to-end encryption for our message contents, and that is a well intentioned focus. However, we must also be careful about remaining dangerously complacent about metadata.
The adversary doesn't need to read your message to know who you are. Knowing who I talk to, when, and how often builds a far more accurate graph of my life than the text itself ever could. Centralized encrypted messengers might (doubtful) hide the payload, but they still sell the social graph.
True privacy is more than hiding the conversation, it is also part obscuring the connection.
If you work in a sensitive area or simply land on the other side of an arbitrary acceptable line for the current administration, should you simply stop talking?
This is why I still root for federated protocols (Matrix/XMPP) despite the friction and want it to be mainstream.
Borrowing this idea wholesale from a conversation with a friend who works at GCHQ. Convenience should not be the enemy of anonymity.
#metadata #encryption #matrix #decentralization #communication #linux #programming #sysadmin #windows #reading #art #adhd #uspol #eupol #auspol
@i47i
"The Tchap code is publicly available and is based on the Matrix protocol. The development of the application thus benefits from advances in the Matrix community, in terms of functional improvement and security."
But how do they *give back* to the @matrix #Matrix Foundation and Community?
Yes. That's where local organisations we trust can setup ones like the one I'm using. #Matrix
@Tutanota Element is just one of many Matrix clients. Matrix should be at 6%.
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HOW EASY IS IT TO MOVE FROM MICROSOFT?
TECHNICALLY: Very feasible. Strong FOSS alternatives exist for everything:
Windows → Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora)
Office → OnlyOffice, LibreOffice
Exchange/Teams → Matrix/Element, Nextcloud
SQL Server → PostgreSQL, MariaDB
Benefits: No per-seat licenses, data sovereignty, transparent security, longer hardware life, no forced obsolescence.
THE REAL CHALLENGE: Organizational, not technical
Legacy Windows-only apps & VBA macros (need rewriting or VMs)
User retraining & change management (people lose muscle memory)
Political will & leadership commitment (critical!)
External partner expectations (.docx, Outlook, Teams)
SUCCESS FACTORS (proven by Lyon & Gendarmerie):
• Strong political backing at highest levels
• Adequate budget & realistic timeline
• Comprehensive training programs
• Willingness to maintain hybrid systems during transition
• Local/regional procurement (Lyon: 100% French contractors)
CURRENT MOMENTUM:
Denmark, Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), Netherlands, Italy, and Slovenia are all pursuing similar digital sovereignty initiatives through FOSS
Bottom line: #France proves that digital sovereignty through open source works at massive scale (103K+ workstations). They're not reinventing wheels—they're making smart use of mature, proven technology with European hosting and governance.
Lyon Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/26/lyon_leaving_microsoft/
#OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #Linux #FOSS #France #Lyon #PublicSector #Ubuntu #Matrix #GendBuntu #Europe #Microsoft
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2/3
THE PROVEN TRACK RECORD:
France isn't experimenting—they've been doing this successfully for 20 years. The French Gendarmerie (national police, 100,000+ employees) pioneered this approach:
TIMELINE:
• 2005: Migrated from MS Office to OpenOffice
• 2008: Started Ubuntu desktop deployment (GendBuntu)
• 2014: Majority migration complete
• 2024: 97% of workstations running Linux (103,164 computers!)
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
• €2 million/year in licensing cost savings
• Additional savings from eliminating 4,500 servers
• Total 2004-2008: ~€50 million saved
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT:
In October 2025, France became the FIRST national government to officially partner with the Matrix Foundation—not just using it, but funding its development and participating in strategic decisions. This ensures the protocol evolves to meet European government needs.
So when we say France is "building bundles," they're really packaging, hardening, and supporting mature upstream FOSS (Linux, PostgreSQL, Matrix, etc.) with French hosting, governance, and integration—not reinventing everything from scratch.
GendBuntu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
Gendarmerie case study: https://canonical.com/blog/la-gendarmerie-nationale-upgrades-85000-pcs-to-ubuntu-desktop-edition
#Matrix
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Gib Matrix noch eine Chance
https://friendica.a-zwenkau.de/display/fdacc1ed-1069-79fc-d29b-866007172943
> Zulip, Matrix, Mattermost?
I would go for #Matrix.
I, for one, welcome our new globally distributed single point of failure to our globally distributed network without a single point of failure.
https://matrix.org/blog/2026/01/28/matrix-on-cloudflare-workers/