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Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

drewdevault.com

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Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#281

Post by mintplant »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #141
ash wrote: post #69

Some open source self-hosted alternatives to Slack: * Rocket.Chat ( https://rocket.chat/ ) * Zulip ( https://zulip.org/ ) * Mattermost ( http://www.mattermost.org/ ) * Let's Chat ( http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ ) Oh, and by the way, you could have your own Rocket.Chat instance running in Sandstorm in about 30 seconds: https://sandstorm.io/apps Update. And I would love to see a modern federated chat protocol…

Let's chat: no mobile, no push notifications. Very fancy and not so useful UI (imho). Don't know others yet, thanks for the list.

Rocket.chat has web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux clients, with push notifications.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#282

Post by itengelhardt »

rhizome wrote: post #278
spdustin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, I disagree. In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. I'm a smart guy, have managed (and continue to manage) many, many UNIX-based services, and have run several IRC daemons in my life. I still use Slack for internal use, and for our students. What makes Slack (and its ilk, though the title of the post makes a bias against Slack clear) so great is that it's s…

I'm thinking a huge part of the difference between Slack and IRC audiences has to do with the $340MM Slack has raised. If someone gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, the differences might not be so obvious.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't companies usually get a quarter billion dollars AFTER they have shown traction?

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#283

Post by Arathorn »

scrollaway wrote: post #277
ZenoArrow wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But the only thing that can be done is work on an actual protocol that will solve these problems." What about the Matrix protocol (referenced in other comments made in this discussion)?

I am following it from afar. I don't see how it'll gain traction, ever, though. The marketing problem is one devs don't like to solve, but it has to be solved.

The plan for marketing it is:

* Ensure there are glossy Matrix-native clients out there with a Slack-equivalent level of good UI and UX (e.g. http://vector.im/beta)

* Build bridges to federate together as many different protocols as possible. This includes IRC, Slack, XMPP, SIP, Lync, Verto, Respoke etc. We're trying to make this as easy as possible by providing some high level building blocks like http://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge. This hopefully will make it easy for others to bridge themselves into Matrix once we have critical mass.

* Release a stable version of actual Matrix standard itself, keeping it as simple but capable as possible. (Right now it's not frozen, and it's still in beta)

* Provide a really capable reference server implementation. (The current one, synapse, is a good starting point and works well for experimenting with Matrix, but we still have work to do on performance and scalability).

* Run around the world encourage existing projects/networks/solutions/developers to get involved and defragment their comms - a bit like the early internet guys had to do with defragmenting email.

It's obviously hugely ambitious, but we actually have some good traction already (despite still being in beta). Hopefully the trend will continue!

[Disclaimer: i work on it]

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#284

Post by scrollaway »

Arathorn wrote: post #283
scrollaway wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am following it from afar. I don't see how it'll gain traction, ever, though. The marketing problem is one devs don't like to solve, but it has to be solved.

The plan for marketing it is: * Ensure there are glossy Matrix-native clients out there with a Slack-equivalent level of good UI and UX (e.g. http://vector.im/beta ) * Build bridges to federate together as many different protocols as possible. This includes IRC, Slack, XMPP, SIP, Lync, Verto, Respoke etc. We're trying to make this as easy as possible by providing some high level building blocks like http://github.com…

Best of luck! I'll do my best to support you.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#285

Post by astazangasta »

res0nat0r wrote: post #152
astazangasta wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless you run a private IRC server IRC has a long, tortured history of design-based security difficulties. So run a private IRC server? This is a weird caveat, like complaining that angelfire is an insufficient web platform and you have to run your own http server to do well. There are a billion IRC clients, libraries, and bots out there. There are IRC servers in most distros. There are JS servers in NPM. Why not u…

Companies are using Slack because they explicitly don't want to have to deal with this and would rather someone else take care of their chat infrastructure, and with more features.

I highly doubt that slack has more features than IRC, which has thirty years of history in dozens of code bases. I agree that taking a canned solution is easier, and easier is often best. But I think this is the main reason slack is popular; its less to think about. There are many dimensions in which it will be worse.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#286

Post by skewp »

tptacek wrote: post #256
bitL wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack is basically IRC with "subjectively nicer" design and helpful integrations, e.g. your builds, deployment, compilation progress can show up on separate channels, you can see if somebody mentioned you on twitter etc. You get the idea. Principally it's just extended IRC, maybe they even use slightly modified IRC protocol underneath for anything chat-wise.

Slack's benefits over IRC are largely not subjective: * The ability to directly send files and images to channels is an objective benefit Slack has over IRC, which has even less ability to do that than MIME email (at least MIME lets you post the base64'd file contents of your image, rather than just a clickable link). * The ability to send long messages or whole source files is an objective benefit Slack has over IRC…

You've been able to directly send files over DCC via IRC clients since like 1995.

Interpreting and displaying those DCC'ed files or cutting longer messages into sub messages and recombining them is something that you could implement via the IRC client just as easily as it was implemented in Slack (not to say that it would be easy, it'd be a lot of work, but it likely would not be much more work than what took to make that function in slack).

If you're modifying IRC anyway, you can modify the server to record logs and make those available to clients.

Same goes for editing.

IRC is not as bad as you think it is, and it wouldn't be an insurmountable effort to make it as good as slack, but open sourced rather than proprietary, which was the entire point of the original article.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#287

Post by rhizome »

itengelhardt wrote: post #282
rhizome wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking a huge part of the difference between Slack and IRC audiences has to do with the $340MM Slack has raised. If someone gave "IRC" a quarter of a billion dollars, the differences might not be so obvious.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't companies usually get a quarter billion dollars AFTER they have shown traction?

They got $17.5MM in the four years prior to even launching.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#288

Post by oceanstone »

emergentcypher wrote: post #26

Please for the love of god just don't use Slack. We have learned absolutely nothing. Let's all jump on the bandwagon of another closed-source, proprietary, walled-garden service and hand over all of our private intra-company communications to a private third-party in another country. GREAT IDEA.

> Let's all jump on the bandwagon of another closed-source, proprietary, walled-garden service and hand over all of our private intra-company communications to a private third-party in another country. GREAT IDEA.

Well said, I chuckled. Let me just add something...

If you want a paper trail of anything, use an email you own.

I have a friend who was locked out of a startup's Slack right before he was due to be paid for three months of work. He had been discussing business inside of Slack, and instantly lost access to all of those messages.

Could this have happened if the startup used a private email server, or a private IRC server? Of course. But if they were using more open protocols, he would have at least been able to back up the messages. Slack provides an easy tool for backups to admins, but not for normal team members. Slack provides an API for all users, but team admins can disable the API. Slack also allows team members to connect over IRC and XMPP, if team admins turn on that feature (https://slack.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connec...).

Slack is great, I love using it. Just remember who owns the data. Always use your own personal email if you want to create a papertrail, as my friend found out.

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