Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat [LWN.net]

Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat

Posted Feb 12, 2015 9:18 UTC (Thu) by ptman (subscriber, #57271)
Parent article: Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat

What about SILC, or Secure Internet Live Conferencing?

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Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat

Posted Feb 12, 2015 13:00 UTC (Thu) by Arathorn (guest, #101018) [Link]

I've never played with SILC and don't know much about it, but I think the main differences are:
* SILC doesn't seem to persist message history (which is Matrix's main defining feature)
* SILC doesn't do open federation (the networks are closed)
* SILC uses a custom binary line protocol rather than generic HTTP/JSON API
* Matrix uses TLS for encryption; history is not encrypted on the server (but E2E crypto is coming soon). SILC's encryption seems much more advanced.