My team started using Matrix/Element after years of frustration with Teams and Slack. It's far from perfect, but using a simple application with no built-in ads, AI, bloat, crap, etc is wonderful.
I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS.
My dream is that Matrix can do for intra-org comms what Signal did for SMS.
Someone once said to me, be very careful about negotiating with leverage… when you twist someone’s arm, they’ll say, “I’ll remember that. You may have won this one, but I’m gonna win the next one.”
Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
It’s not clear that patchwork EU government back offices migrating off Teams will hurt US tech, but long term, in aggregate, this is going to be a headache for American tech.
EU can’t out innovate US tech, but they can make it harder to dominate their markets.
zulip seems to me like it would be a better solution to me (open source, self hostible, familiar paradigm, etc), but then again, I think _anything_ would be better than teams... so more power to them!
I don’t know how Teams even got the approval to be released. It must be so embarrassing to be Satya and be forced to use this shitty piece of software.
I can’t believe that software of this quality is used so widely. Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing unfortunately.
As I've said before, Matrix really is the only viable open source solution for in-company communication.
Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model.
Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.
The real issue is that there is no easy-to-self-host complete enough solution. We do not have something go install-able, pio-able, without a gazillion of deps web-app who offer:
- a direct call UI
- a chat UI, with optional group chats
- a simple web site to be used as a wiki-like tool to share textual stuff + common media, storage internally managed
We have anything to do all of the above, but all very complex, spread across many different projects, fragile, hyper tedious to set up etc.
Even if those don’t work SAP, Dassault, etc… make massively complex software and services across multiple verticals and could trivially ship a competitor
If nothing else this puts the spotlight on alternatives to Teams/Slack, which will increase adoption, and should increase pressure to improve (as far as that goes...)
I've not liked Slack for FOSS projects (it's not IRC, it has problems with moderation enforcement), and NOBODY likes Teams.
European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams
(euractiv.com)350 points by Arathorn 5 February 2026 | 183 comments
Comments
I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS.
My dream is that Matrix can do for intra-org comms what Signal did for SMS.
My suggestion: https://threema.com/en/products/work (hosted) or https://zulip.com/ (OSS self-hosted).
Sadly, the US has done this to ourselves… all this arm twisting and strong-manning is coming home to roost.
It’s not clear that patchwork EU government back offices migrating off Teams will hurt US tech, but long term, in aggregate, this is going to be a headache for American tech.
EU can’t out innovate US tech, but they can make it harder to dominate their markets.
I can’t believe that software of this quality is used so widely. Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing unfortunately.
* don’t suck (too much)
* no planned rug pulls
* not infested by US or Chinese spyware
Are there any?
Every other solution (Zulip / Mattermost / whatever) is too risky, they could easily bait-and-switch you like Gitlab did, by moving important features to different tiers, or engage in other shenanigans afforded by the open core model.
Matrix has a bad reputation because it used to be downright terrible (first time I tried it, in like 2018-2019), but is a lot better now.
Is it functionally comparable, discussion threads and all? Or is it much closer to something like Discord?
When they launched the "new" one they proudly showed the improved boot time...
1. runs on Microsoft software that it buys from Fujitsu UK that HN crowd knows from the UK Post scandal
2. Has multi-billion euro digital initiatives and a puny single-instance public Gitlab with a handful of shamefully incomplete "projects".
3. Tells everyone that they have their own AI helpers while actually renting LLMs from Azure.
- a direct call UI
- a chat UI, with optional group chats
- a simple web site to be used as a wiki-like tool to share textual stuff + common media, storage internally managed
We have anything to do all of the above, but all very complex, spread across many different projects, fragile, hyper tedious to set up etc.
Why can’t a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app?
There’s are EU companies that make teams alternatives:
https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams
Even if those don’t work SAP, Dassault, etc… make massively complex software and services across multiple verticals and could trivially ship a competitor
I've not liked Slack for FOSS projects (it's not IRC, it has problems with moderation enforcement), and NOBODY likes Teams.