[heybrendan]

Arathorn, should this message reach you, I want to voice my support of you and your team.

Notwithstanding the naysayers that surface with peculiar predictability any time Matrix is discussed here, know there are people like me that are happy Synapse users (and operators, nearly 5 years now!) that are in your corner, rooting for you [and Matrix]. Keep fighting the good fight.

[vaylian]

Agreed. Open source is an ecosystem. And ecosystems need to be healthy to grow. Matrix is not a hobby project that a couple of hackers implement in their free time but a large project that requires full-time developers. But if these developers don't get paid, then we (the community) won't get improvements for matrix software.

Synapse Pro is a compromise to keep the ship afloat. This is not a matter of greed, but a matter of keeping the lights on.

[Arathorn]

Thank you - and to the sibling comments too; the support is enormously appreciated.

For what it’s worth, we have been frantically trying to keep all Synapse dev FOSS for the last 10 years - and the FOSS version will always be the primary project, where everything new happens (other than mega-scalability work). At least for as long as we’re able to work on it.

My hope is that Synapse Pro will be net positive for the ecosystem, as it will hopefully fund us to be able to work more on FOSS Synapse. It could also inspire more alternative homeserver work, which is no bad thing for Matrix as a whole.

[sneak]

The good fight does not involve proprietary software.

[mgrandl]

Jup same here. There is always so much negativity on Hackernews. I have been running synapse without issue for years and it has been a joy!