After a formal 1-month trial of 4 different platforms, we are very excited that Mozilla have announced their decision to move their communications from IRC to Matrix, choosing Modular and Riot as their new home!
We’ve always been big fans of Mozilla, few have done more for the open web, open standards and open-source generally so it is particularly gratifying to see them choose Modular.
In addition to offering open, secure, decentralised instant messaging, Mike Hoye, who ran the project, highlights two specific good reasons for choosing Modular and Riot in his announcement: first Riot’s robust support for accessibility, which has been a direct result of our collaboration with Mozilla’s accessibility team during the trial. It was amazing to have expert support (and direct contributions!) from them on making our improvements to the app, and we’re very happy to say that we’re keeping the momentum going: following these efforts we’re looking forward to making Riot one of the most accessible collaboration app out there. Openness should not only be for the code!
The second reason Mike cites is community safety. With Matrix being such a big and open network, we’ve had no choice but indeed put a lot of effort in developing tools to make sure it also is a safe place for everyone to participate. By choosing Modular, our Matrix hosting platform, to power their homeserver Mozilla will also be able to use ready-hosted integrations including the latest moderation tooling.
But in the end the Mozilla homeserver will be a regular instance as available to any other Modular subscriber, so it’s up to anyone to sign up for a Modular server and instantly get it under a custom domain and custom Riot theming.
The Mozilla instance will also federate with the rest of the Matrix network, so expect Mozillian Matrix users starting to pop up in various rooms in January :)
In short, this is super exciting news for the overall open web world, and we would like to thank again everyone who participated in the trial, enabling open project to collaborate and prop each other up! We’re very aware of the responsibility we now have on our shoulders and will make sure we are up to it!
Note that we are still hiring several roles to be able to take Modular and Riot even further along, so make sure you have a look at our career page, especially if you are a designer or a mobile developer!
