
We’ve decided to rename Riot - anotherevan
https://blog.riot.im/the-world-is-changing/
======
gorgoiler
This is welcomed. Matrix is very cool. However, the lack of _Matrix_ branding
in clients always felt like unnecessary self hobbling.

I get that the environment is heterogeneous. It just felt a bit too lacking in
clear branding compared to something like Signal.

 _“Is that Matrix?”

“Yes! Although technically matrix is the protocol. This is FluffyChat
connected to my local HackerSpace’s Matrix instance.” _

~~~
Arathorn
To be clear: Riot's new name is not going to use the word Matrix - any more
than Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge etc use the word "Web". Riot is just one
client for Matrix, and it'd be completely unfair if it tried to hijack the
name Matrix for its own purposes - and I'd hope that the Matrix.org Foundation
would take steps to stop such a thing from happening.

So I'm afraid the whole "Is that Matrix?", "Yes, I'm using
FluffyChat/Riot/Whatever to connect to Matrix" conversation is still going to
be there. Just like someone might say "ooh, what Web Browser is that?". This
much is a feature, not a bug.

~~~
skrebbel
That seems like a missed opportunity. If you're renaming anyway, why not make
it easier for people to understand what's going on?

I mean I don't think the browser analogy is that great, it seems more the
exception than the rule. Eg most IRC clients have the word IRC in them, or
something very close (eg mIRC, irssi, etc). Most email clients have the word
"mail" in them. Torrent clients, same. Why shouldn't a Matrix client have the
word Matrix in it?

Just call it iMatrix or uMatrix or something like that, and you're removing a
lot of confusion. If mIRC and uTorrent and Gmail can get away with that, so
can you.

~~~
dependenttypes
> Most email clients have the word "mail" in them

Such as thunderbird, icedove, mutt, gnus, mew, outlook, outlook express, etc?

~~~
quicklime
Most of those are very niche products. The big mail clients are: Gmail,
hotmail, yahoo mail, Apple’s “Mail”. Outlook is really the only outlier.

~~~
sudosysgen
Thunderbird is absolutely not niche.

Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail are email services first and foremost. Most native
clients do not have mail in the name.

~~~
DRebd
We could quibble over how we're defining niche, but looking to our less
technical friends that still use a variety of consumer & enterprise tech
products/services daily is quite clarifying. My close friends, whether they
work @ Impossible Foods on supply chain, @ a CA high school teaching history
(now remotely), or @ SMB SAAS company (Hubspot competitor, forgetting name)
HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THUNDERBIRD IS.

~~~
dependenttypes
And they likely think that the computer monitor is the actual computer.

------
throwaway1997
This is welcome news. Some groups in Hong Kong have been considering it as an
alternative to Telegram but the name has been discouraging as in this climate
it could be used as evidence against anyone involved in protesting activity.

Hope the new name is either more abstract or closely aligned to what the
software actually does.

~~~
tweetle_beetle
The name of the mobile app is _Riot.im_. If that in itself is enough to be
used as evidence against an innocent person, then the party doing the accusing
is clearly comfortable with much more underhand techniques and it hardly
matters.

Some lazily searched synonyms for groups of people which would fit the
criteria of being _more closely aligned_ include:

pack, mob, crowd, crew, gathering, rabble, syndicate, family, gang

Most of those have some negative connotations in the right (or should that be
wrong) context. It's depressing to think about a chilling-esque effect on
something as mundane as a chat app name.

~~~
singhrac
It's not about evidence, per se, but about normalization. People from all
walks of life might find a need for it in HK, and it's easier to convince
someone to download an app they haven't heard of if it's called "Messages" or
something than "Riot".

I mean, branding matters. Discord has one of the best voice chat
implementations, but asking my coworkers to use it feels a bit iffy just
because it has gaming-focused branding.

~~~
tweetle_beetle
Branding does matter, but doesn't your example demonstrate the opposite point
- overall brand experience is more important than a name?

Riot.im's potential brand association with the act of rioting stops with the
name. There is no other reference to riots, or rioting, and violence is not a
core part of the brand identity. There is no rioting community that it is
appealing to, or normalising.

Discord actively affiliates itself with the gaming community in all aspects of
its branding. The gaming community happily embraces it despite the
(universally?) negative connotations of the name. You said that you would feel
iffy about recommending the app because of the gaming-focused branding, rather
than the name.

I get that this is a bit pedantic, after all the decision has been made and
Vector, Matrix, etc. are all fine by me anyway. I'm all for changing
insensitive, inappropriate names where they refer to specific
cultural/historical events/figures which society feels should no longer be
celebrated. But in my opinion this is much more superficial.

------
GekkePrutser
Good! I always thought it was a stupid name as it was associated with
violence. I would mostly view the term in a negative light. Why use it for an
app you're proud of?

I would object to it being called Matrix though as it's only one of the many
Matrix clients. It's already becoming too major IMO :) This is probably a
result of most Matrix development being done by Modular, but it should remain
a multi-client network as that's one of its strengths.

They already called it Vector before, not sure what was wrong with that. Was a
much better name IMO. Strong link with the name of the Matrix network.

Anyway I wonder what the new name is.

~~~
toyg
_> I would object to it being called Matrix though _

Something like MatrixClient though...?

~~~
myself248
Just call it Rix.

Shares the first two letters with "Riot". Make some funny "crossed out the
"ot" with an "x"" logos for the transition.

~~~
majewsky
The ad campaign for the new easier UI practically writes itself: "Come home to
simple Rix."

~~~
toyg
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland are clued up enough on tech that you might even
get an endorsing short with R&M.

------
mikece
Do they have a new name or was the purpose of this announcement so The
Deciders can review suggestions on Hacker News and decide which is the best
name for the project going forward? :-)

I think this is very good news: it strikes me that the platform is maturing to
the point that it's going to be around for a very, very long time and having a
"good name" is part of that. Along with OBS it seems that the app soon to be
formerly known as Riot/Matrix became a critical tool during the quarantine and
will be even more so if there's an encore quarantine this fall or winter.

~~~
buboard
What is OBS used for?

~~~
sk0g
If it's Open Broadcasting Studio, streaming or desktop recording, mainly.

------
AnonC
> However, we are extremely confident that now is the right time to fix the
> name. We’re in the process of landing gigantic improvements to Riot’s user
> experience and usability which will unrecognisably improve the app. So
> unrecognisably, in fact, that we can shed our skin and celebrate our long-
> awaited transition into being a truly mainstream-usable app.

I can’t wait to see what they come up with on the name and the improvements in
the user experience. I don’t know anyone in my circles using Riot/Matrix, and
I’ve been hesitant to push it aggressively because the UI on mobile isn’t that
great compared to the more popular apps. In some ways, this will be good
riddance to the phone number based centralized platforms.

------
chungy
I didn't know what "certain large games company" prevented a trademark on
Riot. A Wikipedia search seems to suggest this company is large (I haven't
heard of them, tbh):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games)

I'm curious what name they have or will pick. I've been using Riot for around
a year now, it's great!

~~~
thatguy0900
Riot makes league of legends, the biggest esport game in the world for quite a
while now. They're a giant company, getting into a legal battle with them
would not be fun

------
detaro
It'd be funny if they went back to its original name, "vector", which IMHO
wasn't too bad.

~~~
Arathorn
So, we're not going to go back to Vector (although it has a very special place
in our hearts :). It was a great name for a techie-focused comms client (and
I'm not surprised HN likes the name :D), but feedback was pretty unanimous
that it was too techie for a more general-purpose audience.

Also, heads up that we consciously did _not_ optimise for a made-up name like
WhatsApp or similar. Just as Matrix (and Riot, for that matter) has ended up
with high search engine scores, we believe the project is strong enough to
support us borrowing an existing dictionary word. If nothing else, it'd be
consistent with Matrix ;P

So, apologies in advance to anyone who's hoping Riot will end up being called
Sporkle or Vroomio or Flibblr... :)

~~~
mckirk
What about 'Eigen'? There only seems to be a C++ library of that name yet, so
not too much overlap. And I like its nerdy implication of 'yes, we are only
one Matrix client, but we strive to be an important one' ;)

~~~
Arathorn
Eigen is a cool name, but very geeky, and we actually know the folks at
[https://eigentech.com](https://eigentech.com) who might object a little if we
borrowed the name ;)

------
clarry
So it isn't even renamed yet. This is news about upcoming news...

~~~
aloisdg
> The new name will be announced in a few weeks once we’re ready, but we
> wanted to give everyone a heads up so it doesn’t come as a shock.

Feel transparent and understandable. I am fine with a teasing like this.

------
thereyougo
Without a strong and supportive community, renaming a company is hard. Riot is
in a place when they can afford doing it (not money wise... community wise)
Good project, I'm curious to know what the new name will be

------
sandGorgon
Thank you ! This is exactly what I wrote about a year back

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18760179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18760179)

Matrix/riot/modular has the potential to be hugely disruptive. This was much
needed.

------
ekianjo
Probably a good move as the whole Matrix ecosystem has just too many names for
its own good.

~~~
jojobas
Think of email - there's Postfix, Sendmail, Exchange, Dovecot, Thunderbird,
Mutt, Pine, Outlook, TheBat and many more, and nobody died over it.

Matrix should aim at becoming the email of IM and video calls, by being
somewhat less obscure than XMPP. Skype and Telegram should die like Microsoft
Mail and Compuserve.

~~~
edwinbalani
That said, "email" — "electronic mail" — pretty clearly conveys in its name
what it's about.

If I hear the word "matrix" out of context I'm probably going to think of
mathematics or material science or something else first. In other words,
"matrix" is already an overloaded term, and its other meanings aren't going to
go away any time soon.

~~~
tracker1
Now "email" is synonymous with "Internet E-mail over SMTP" which was not
always the case by any stretch of the imagination.

It used to be there were many systems/protocols and even self-hosted in
isolation email systems and bulletin boards. Some still operate to this day,
though mostly delivered over the internet, but through different channels than
general SMTP internet email.

\---

That said, email is a better term than matrix, but any other term still
wouldn't be the same meaning... "matrix protocol" vs "smtp" might be more
narrow/accurate.

------
japaget
Suggested new name: Loud. With respect to colors "loud" has the same positive
connotation as "riot" ("loud colors" are rich and vibrant), and it also has
the connotation of making one's voice heard.

------
rglullis
I know nobody asked, I will suggest it anyway: _Factor_

~~~
Arathorn
we considered it, but got dismissed as a bit too techie - similar to Vector.

~~~
tejtm
vector is perfect.

"too techie" is only too techie if you are too techie otherwise it is just an
appropriate name

I am very glad you are moving away from riot. makes it easier to talk about.

------
LibertyBeta
I can only see this as good. MATRIX is awesome, but people don't get the
connection between riot and matrix. I think of it a bit like IRC and mIRC. It
lowers the bar of entry(a 9 year old could have setup mIRC when it was
commonly popular) and lowers the bar of protocol discovery.

------
ZoomZoomZoom
Oh, boy... I understand their reasons, but my relatives already annoyed by me
for asking them to install Riot and then RiotX on their devices. Now I'll need
to explain (which will fail and I'll end up saying "trust me") why they need
to switch again!

~~~
geoah
I would assume renaming the app will be transparent to the user that already
has it install. Is that not the case?

~~~
Arathorn
The plan is...

Riot iOS will be transparently renamed.

Riot Android will be transparently renamed and upgraded to be the app
currently called RiotX.

RiotX will nag users to switch to using the new app (sorry :/)

Riot Desktop will be transparently renamed

Riot Web will continue to work on the existing URLs, but also exist on the new
canonical URLs.

~~~
pwr22
Will RiotX be at feature parity by that point? I think calling is getting
closer to landing these days?

~~~
Arathorn
that's the plan. calling landed yesterday.

------
itronitron
Never heard of riot.im before. And after reading this I still don't know what
it is.

~~~
prezjordan
I mean you could literally go to riot.im and see what it is

------
Biep
I hope the rename will be considered a change of identity, which will allow
the new client to be offered in the Chinese app store again. Please think of
the ocean of actual and potential users there.

------
fmajid
I hope the name they pick is distinctive enough to create confusion when
googled.

------
vladikoff
This is indeed good news! I am excited for a new name and hopefully more
resources put into making the client better and on par or even better than
Slack

------
typingmonkey
Yes this riot matrix naming was really confusing.

~~~
m-p-3
It took a bit of searching to figure out that the selfhosted version of Matrix
is labeled Matrix Synapse but I guess the name kinda make sense when you look
at the idea of a federated system.

~~~
t3chguy
Synapse is just one Server capable of providing a self-hosted Matrix server.
Just like for self-hosted Web servers you have options like Nginx and Apache
and more.

------
masterfooo
Will this change affect the apps on mobile as in a if we have to install new
apps and start all over with key verifications?

------
ponsin
> Firstly, the biggest by far has been from a certain large games company that
> has consistently blocked us from being able to trademark Riot or even
> Riot.im

Using that logic would leave us to believe that they are changing the name
"matrix" as well. After all, more than just "a big game company" will try to
block you from trademarking it

~~~
Arathorn
if there was a big litigious tech company called Matrix threatening everyone
who tried to use the word Matrix in their name, then yes - it might be a
similar situation. luckily there doesn't seem to be one.

------
mesozoic
Oh yeah good idea. I thought this was the game company for half the time i was
reading.

------
akerro
What was the name of the other P2P IM client/net that was renamed every year?

~~~
rrdharan
Are you thinking of Pidgin? It was only renamed once, so maybe you have
something else in mind...
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_\(software\))

------
Markoff
Agreed, Riot is very discouraging name for any adult especially now in this
climate in US, HK and other places.

Considering Telegram and Signal are taken, protocol is Matrix, Neo would sound
quite modern. Neo is using Matrix protocol is quite logical conclusion.

~~~
computerfriend
Why specifically adults?

~~~
Markoff
because teenagers and people in early 20s are in general more impulsive, less
responsible and more prone to solve things by violence than older adults?

------
birracerveza
Matrix Kerfuffle!

~~~
bouncycastle
Chatty McMatrixFace

~~~
djsumdog
YES! Keep Boaty afloat!

------
huguesdk
will the name be in english, or are you considering something more
international-sounding, like an esperanto word?

~~~
Arathorn
ironically the name is a dictionary word in many different languages...
including both english and esperanto :D

~~~
huguesdk
nice, well done!

------
gdm85
> Secondly, we picked the name “Riot” to evoke something disruptive and
> vibrant - like a “riot of colour.”

Really? This reminds me of "newspeak".

~~~
korethr
It is a real usage recognized by various dictionaries (Merriam-Webster,
Oxford, et. al). Doing a search will find said usage in the definition
listings, and "a riot of color" seems to the typical example given by such. If
I had a copy of the Shorter Oxford to hand, I'd be able to say which usage
came first, and if one derived from a figurative use of the other, or if they
both evolved from a common, now obsolete definition. But I don't have a copy
of the Shorter Oxford to hand, so we'll just have to be happy that the
definition itself is attested by various dictionaries.

~~~
WorldMaker
It's not quite the Old Oxford, but Merriam-Webster is easier to search online
and seems to appear that it's a confusing mix of both. "Riot" is a Middle
English borrowing from French, where it meant "public debauchery" (now
considered an obsolete meaning), but even in French at the time had
associations with violent debauchery. The first uses of the word in English
were as a noun and for "debauchery". The first uses of riot as a verb were
figuratively in the "riot of color" sense, but even then implied violence may
have been part of the figurative imagery?

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/riot](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/riot)

------
fortran77
Matrix Matrix Revolution!

------
rixtox
How about Matriot?

------
latrot
glhf refactoring and changing repo name..

------
fourseventy
There is a company called Riot that doesnt make League of Legends?

~~~
ta17711771
No.

Also, that company is owned by China, so...

------
haolez
They could simply call it "Matrix", and leave the ambiguity resolution for
those who care.

~~~
ta17711771
Matrix-app-%platform% and Matrix-server doesn't seem unreasonable....but
yet...

~~~
t3chguy
There are multiple Matrix server implementations, just like there is Apache,
Nginx and more for Web server implementations.

------
fhars
The announcement misses the best reason to change the name: squatting the
namespace of an existing open source project: [http://www.riot-
os.org/](http://www.riot-os.org/)

------
programmarchy
Good move. The name has actually discouraged me from recommending the software
to friends and family. People who want privacy shouldn't have to frame
themselves as dissidents.

------
krick
> The new name will be announced in a few weeks once we’re ready, but we
> wanted to give everyone a heads up so it doesn’t come as a shock.

Uh, thanks for caring so much, but you could've just announced that when you
are ready. "We are going to do something in a couple of weeks, we won't tell
you what now, but we wanted to give everyone a heads up so it doesn’t come as
a shock." is not very informative and sounds more like mockery.

~~~
SaltySolomon
Announcing Annoucements is all the rage right now...

