this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2021
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Privacy
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It's worth keeping an eye out for, but as long as the profit or value extraction is just making Matrix a communication tool they can use without licensing fees associated with other team communication tools, that's fine. It's not like the capital behind Linux development has driven Linux in any way towards extracting money or value from end users.
Yes lets see, but VC funding is significantly different from corporate sponsoring as in the case of the Linux Kernel. VC funding basically means the company has to bring in extremely high returns of investment (500% or more) or go bust trying to reach that.
This is true, if it's truly a VC investment rather than simply an investment with an expectation of bringing a technology up to usable standards then it's a little concerning. I admit, I have no idea if that is the case.
AFAIK the current 30 million mostly come from a medium tier investment company that probably itself isn't interested in profit extraction from users yet, but will rather look into making New Vector look pretty for acquisition of a large tech-company like Microsoft or some sort of IPO on the stock market.
Seems like a dubious proposition to me, though I'm far from an expert in that regard. Hopefully they use the money to pay developers to make rapid improvements and the commercial ambitions of the firm don't pan out. ;)
I think it is quite realistic to expect a buy-out from a bigger European tech company (SAP? German Telekom?) that thinks it can siphon off more government contracts and pretend to catch up to the US tech giants in front of their shareholders. And as shitty as that probably sounds, this is likely still among the "best" possible outcomes. The open-source community can only lose in this setup and are fools for cheering about this money injection.