Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

At FOSDEM 2026, the world’s largest open source conference, Neil Johnson (Element’s Chief Engineering Officer) explored the critical role of sustainability in open source software - with a focus on decentralised networks like Matrix. Before we begin, most people can see why the sustainability of an open source software project is important. Open source software underpins almost all pieces of critical infrastructure, and we need to find ways to safeguard these projects.

At FOSDEM 2026, members of Element’s VoIP team - Robin Townsend, Timo Kandra and Valère Fédronic - presented a deep dive into the future of real time communication on Matrix. Their talk gave an update on MatrixRTC, Matrix’s framework for bringing voice, video, and other live, interactive experiences directly into rooms.

At FOSDEM 2026, Denise R. S. Almeida (Head of Policy & Compliance at Element and Data Protection Officer for the Matrix.org Foundation) presented a practitioner perspective on the recently proposed Digital Omnibus.

Element’s multi-tenancy implementation of Synapse Pro has secured a Good rating in a penetration test commissioned by gematik, Germany’s national digital health agency. The security analysis rating is an important milestone in the widespread adoption of gematik’s TI-M Pro standard, which creates a sovereign, interoperable and secure messenger for healthcare professionals, by embedding healthcare specific requirements on top of the decentralised Matrix open standard.

Europe has been pursuing a digitally sovereign strategy for many years. The strategy entered the limelight back in 2019 when Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President, called for Europe to “achieve technological sovereignty in some critical technology areas.” With war on the edge of the EU, and an apparent breakdown of the rules-based international order, European governments are seeking full control of their technology with ever more urgency.

At FOSDEM 2026, the world’s largest open source conference, David Baker (Staff Software Engineer and the original author of Element Web) and Florian Duros (Senior Software Engineer) presented an inside look at Element Web - from its early days to the bold plans shaping its future. They shared how the team is modernising the platform to be faster, more reliable and more flexible - all while keeping the experience seamless for the millions of people who rely on it worldwide.

Cloud-based communication platforms like WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Signal or Zoom are widely adopted and generally considered “secure enough” for everyday enterprise collaboration. For defence organisations, and other sensitive areas, that assumption does not hold. Modern SaaS platforms require organisations to entrust their communications to vendor-controlled cloud services, frequently operated under foreign jurisdictions.

In an ideal world, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging apps would work identically to their non-E2EE counterparts (e.g. transport-layer security only), without introducing any additional inconvenience for users.