How the hell are NATO and other large orgs not funding Matrix? Blows my mind.

A particularly amazing real-life example of this came from a certain Ministry of Defence last week, whose procurement department (on being asked to help fund core Matrix development, given their operational dependency on Matrix) said: “You have to understand, we’re responsible for taxpayer money here. We can’t just make a donation to your open source project.” Apparently if we had built the same tech as a proprietary product, paying for it would apparently have been an infinitely better use of taxpayer money.

I... don't know what to say.

Music to my ears. Tax money should go to open source projects.

I can already picture it

"you don't want to open a government backdoor? No more tax money for you"

"your foss project needs to be verified by the government to be selectable for founding, you don't want to? Well, no tax money for you"

"For your foss project to be created we need to verify it now that by law all foss projects receive tax money, you don't want? Delete everything"

And this is how you will own nothing and will be "happy". You can't escape the surveillance by using foss, go live in the woods before it's to late, and don't forget to carry your tin foil hat, be safe.

Element is literally a private, for-profit company. And they're asking for donations and public funding?