“something running” - do you mean the server binary? Because, yes, if you’re using your own server you do need it to be running. Same for the client, I guess? I guess I don’t really understand what you meant by that.
Some obscure service relied on it as a support channel and last thing I remember is that matrix server stopped working.
That’s an issue with any federated service, yeah. If the server is down, it’s down. But as a bonus, unlike Discord, when a server is down you can just move to another. So, honestly, I see that as a boon.
As far as p2p goes, there was an effort to make that a while back, but it looks like people lost interest.
Though, personally I think federation is good enough. That’s why I’m on Lemmy/the Fediverse, after all.
rdri@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I only mean that the requirements are high enough for someone to stop using it at some point, losing users of that server in the process. It might be different if it didn’t require running a server. Or they could choose to host their rooms on some existing server, I guess.
derin@lemmy.beru.co 4 weeks ago
I mean, that’s sort of the point, right? Don’t host unless you want to.
There are lots of great, long lasting servers with open registration out there. This blog post has some good examples: