“As part of our efforts to use more sovereign digital solutions, the European Commission is preparing an internal communication solution based on the Matrix protocol,” the spokesperson told Euractiv.
Matrix is an open source, community-developed messaging protocol shepherded by a non-profit that’s headquartered in London. It’s already widely used for public messengers across Europe, with the French government, German healthcare providers and European armed forces all using tools built on the protocol.
↫ Maximilian Henning at Euractiv
Right now, most government agencies and institutions in Europe are effectively entirely reliant on Microsoft for their digital infrastructure, and that’s not a tenable situation going forward with the Americans being openly hostile towards Europe, up to and including threatening to invade European countries. Europe needs its own digital infrastructure, and opting to build those around open source tools is the obvious way to go.
Of course, this isn’t an easy process, but two platitudes apply here: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and every journey begins with a first step. By opting to use existing open source tools, though, these efforts will have a massive head start, and will hopefully lead to a flurry of increased activity for the open source projects in question. In this particular case it’s Matrix, which can surely need some additional work and eyeballs, if my use of the protocol is any indication.
I set up Dendrite server on a home lab and gave every member of my family Element Classic.
It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for chatting and voice calling. I highly recommend trying it out yourself.