mxhsd

As the author of mxhsd [1] and Gridepo [2], I can sadly confirm Jason's claims that it is STILL necessary to reverse engineer to talk to the existing federation. Synapse doesn't follow the spec, which is a fact I'm experiencing every day. But more to that, there is no desire from its developers to ever comply with the spec, rather than changing the spec on a whim. And that are the reasons why making a HS is not possible: endless moving target. [1]: https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhsd [2]: https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo

As the author of one frozen homeserver [1] and an hybrid implementation [2], with various work made all across the spec, I'm not shy to say synapse is the only homeserver because it talks its own dialect of the spec, not because there wasn't attempts to build something else. [1]: https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhsd [2]: https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo

I am the author of the now-frozen mxhsd project [1] and its resurected version, Gridepo [2]. I have contributed several times to the specification, reported issues for the past two years and still, to this day, I can confirm that it is not possible to implement a Matrix server with the current specification that can talk to the reference implementation. Most fundamental problem: synapse doesn't sign the events like the spec tell us to do it, making every event invalid. Whatever you sent that is spec compliant will be refused by synapse. So talking "synapse" is possible. Talking Matrix and be able to federate with the ecosystem is not. I wish people would not blindly believe what a for-profit is saying, especially one that is in full control of the said protocol, and start checking for themselves. [1]: https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhs

It seems like a few folks have been burned by the failure to put the spec before the implementation. Another example: Kamax provides mxisd[1], the only federated identity server (the official identity server is/was controlled by vector, and doesnt openly federate). They had to give up on mxhsd[2], their home server implementation due to spec inadequacies, and ended up forking the spec into Grid[3] [1] https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxisd [2] https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxhsd [3] https://gitlab.com/kamax-io/grid/gridepo