Today we are sorry to announce that we are not able to bring the Libera Chat bridge back online. We have already begun working through clean up tasks, such as clearing ghosts, and expect to be done by December 22. If you see any bridge artifacts left past that point, please let us know.
We at the Matrix.org Foundation have been working behind the scenes for months with the team at Element who operated the bridge and our peers at Libera Chat. Our hope had been to address the issues that were raised about the bridge to the satisfaction of Libera and to quickly bring it back online, but ultimately the Foundation is only a facilitator in the process and does not have the resources to maintain and operate the bridge itself.
Long term, the Foundation’s hope is to have the resources to service its core programs as well as provide additional community services like bridge maintenance and operations. However, as an open source foundation that is still early in its journey, we must be realistic about our capacity and make hard choices about where we put our scarce resources.
I don’t disagree that it is not a lost cause, the protocol is open, it’s just everything surrounding it is iffy. The Foundation finally got a Managing Director, we will see what that brings.
Personal ties are to some London based law enforcement agencies, I don’t recall specifically which ones anymore. As far as money, it’s whoever wants it. That part is not concerning on its own as they’re selling the service, not access, but the more worrying details you combine, the less trustworthy everything seems.