Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#331

Post by vacri » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #292

hueving wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point was that your description was entirely inaccurate. It's not brutally real because I also use IRC extensively every day on freenode and have almost never encountered the issues you are referring to. I think I've seen one netsplit in the last 2 years.

Okay, well I am sorry your experience and mine differ. Fortunately you can continue to use your solution without regard to my criticism. But I think if we asked your IRC network how ma you nets plots they experienced in the last 2 years the number would be >1.

Ah, yes, IRC has netsplits. Slack, on the other hand, has "reconnecting...", which I encounter a dozen times a day on it.

I guess it's down to personal preference whether you prefer being able to talk with a partial group knowing that some people are absent, and not being able to communicate at all.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#332

Post by KirinDave » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #326

KirinDave wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How very lucky of you. I hope you have a repeatable provision, AMI, static IP linked to a tcp loadbalancer and autoscaling group in the event AWS rotates out your instance. And of course, the same goes for your logging and search and file sharing infrastructure. And of course, similar caveats exist for the database said features use.

how very sarcastic of you. This is the realm of systems administrators, if you can't read a 20 line config file then sure, run slack.. but for a biggish company that values security and publishes NDA's like mine, an IRC server is a better solution. however, Project Managers fucking -love- emoji and sending word documents across the planet.

How very decisive of you.

And you'd take on the burden of constellation of comparable services as opposed to a white label hipchat because....?

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#333

Post by tptacek » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

mbrock wrote: post #325

tptacek wrote: post #251

If you don't want to use Slack for open source projects because it's closed-source, fine. That's a reasonable argument. If you don't want to use Slack for open source projects because Slack is in fact pretty bad at those workloads, fine. I agree! I think Slack does a pretty bad job at any group application where most of the people communicating don't already know each other. Where you go off the rails is in suggestin…

"Awful" technologies can still be fulfilling. I mean... Hacker News is pretty "awful." Maybe the things that you claim make IRC "awful" actually have weird benefits in terms of community. Kind of like how HN is kept intentionally awful, to keep out the losers or whatever.

Yes, I think the comparison to HN is especially apt.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#334

Post by pvg » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #257

jarek wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, think that reinventing the wheel is a totally great idea and that we should have more npms and less apts

The ICB people thought the same thing about IRC.

This is more truthy than actually true.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#335

Post by berns » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

Some of the features mentioned here: persistent log, powerful search, comment editing, easy onboarding and invites, code blocks; some even ask for thousand of users in a chat room and moderation tools! Wouldn't this communities be better served by a modern forum, like Discourse instead of a chat?

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#336

Post by vacri » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #171

res0nat0r wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely. My company uses it (among other things) for handling production issues. We'd rather not manage that ourselves. It's just one more thing we can screw up. This is different than the FOSS subject of the article, but it true that convenience is compelling.

If it's just infra management you want, then use Hipchat. It does the same things Slack does, at $2/user/mo instead of $8. Slack is ridiculously expensive.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#337

Post by Sanddancer » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

davexunit wrote: post #232

Completely agree! I see free software projects depend on proprietary tools all the time and it is very frustrating. I often see projects using JIRA or asking companies like JetBrains for gratis licenses to proprietary development tools, and now I'm seeing Slack more frequently. I will not participate in your free software project if you depend on SaaSS or proprietary software to get work done. The company I work for…

SaaSS? Seriously? The FSF's use of that is about as childish as Microsoft with a dollar sign. Is getting your taxes done by another party Accounting as a Calculator Substitute? Is taking your car to a shop Mechanic as a Toolbox Substitute? Slack has a lot of useful parts that go beyond just chat. Having a simple way of sharing snippets, saving history, using shared file repositories, all of which are easier if you don't strip out metadata and just throw a bare link into the channel. Finally, your false equivalency, that making money is always antisocial behavior, is ridiculous. Slack fills a niche that IRC doesn't and can't, and the developers decided that they would rather prefer a way to work on the project full-time without having to beg for donations.

Times do change, and tools do get better. Yes, it means having to change yourself, but stagnant work habits probably mean that you're missing other toolings, other methods, that can make you more productive. Sometimes, you do have to pull yourself out of your comfort zone, even if it means using eeevil software made by people with a salary.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#338

Post by vacri » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:55 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #252

donatj wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company runs our own private IRC server on an EC2 instance and once it was set up I don't believe we've needed to touch it since.

Your company puts private information on a server that has a 6667/tcp sitting out on the Internet? I'm guessing it does not, and setting this server up was considerably more irritating than just spawning off another t1.micro and apt installing IRC onto it.

In AWS t1.micros don't really exist anymore (they do, but you have to use oooolldd images), and except for legacy accounts, a default install puts you into a VPC where the instances are never going to have 6667 open to the internet unless you specifically open it (well, that's more of a Security Group thing) and possibly don't even have a public IP address. :)

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#339

Post by mempko » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #306

mempko wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and…

It seems very unfair to the thousands of people who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span to dismiss it as not having gotten value.

You misunderstood. I am saying IRC would be as easy as slack if the slack team spent the time working on IRC. Their investors would never let them even if they wanted to.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#340

Post by mempko » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #301

mempko wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and…

This is like saying Apple products are popular because Apple has a great marketing team, as opposed to because said products are genuinely easier to use (they "just work") than their alternatives.

Apple products got good because of large amount of investment, not because they were popular. If IRC tech got the investment slack has now, it would only get better.