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

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#351

Post by nodamage » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:26 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.

Sadly, a lot of people (generally die-hard nerd types) genuinely believe that marketing was the sole reason for the iPhone's meteoric rise in 2007. They don't place any importance on user experience and therefore can't tell the difference between the iPhone and the early-gen smartphone predecessors (Palm/Nokia/etc).

These are the same people that are now confused as to why Slack has risen in popularity despite the existence of IRC, which (in their eyes) is technically superior.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#352

Post by oceanstone » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

nfd wrote: post #314

smtddr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how "proprietary" or "walled-garden" it is, but I can connect to slack using open-source "irssi" on linux. http://www.tricksofthetrades.net/2015/09/10/slack-irssi-conn... I feel like that has to diminish the walled-garden, proprietary weight at least a little bit if slack & irssi can communicate. And it works over SSL too. Once I started doing that, I didn't mind using slack. You have to "/ignore" certai…

Slack may have a working IRC bridge, but it still has a closed-source server. You're still trusting a third-party with all your data.

Also the IRC/XMPP bridge has to be specifically enabled by a team admin. After this, the bridge can be disabled at any time by team admins.

https://slack.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connec...

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#353

Post by takee » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

ekimekim wrote: post #109

brazzledazzle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been meaning to give Zulip a try. How many users can it handle? Less importantly: What would you say its biggest missing feature is vs Slack? And conversely what does it bring to the table that Slack can't touch yet?

I'll field the latter. I've used both Zulip and Slack in small team (5-20 people) settings and I much prefer Zulip. In particular I like how the zulip UI is single-stream by default. Messages from different channels are interleaved, so you can read all new messages at a glance, but still well separated by visual elements including color - I don't find it confusing. And I can focus down to any particular channel , or…

I especially like the concept of topics in zulip. It helps maintain different subjects in a given channel, which is way more readable imo. I'm a big fan.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#354

Post by mianos » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:38 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.

We have all our instances in a VPC so nothing is available without a VPN. (Openvpn, on phone, laptop, built into the wifi router for everyone else). Once any service for our firm onlt is set up it is effectively private it we manage our keys. Private IRC is a one line apt get on a server. Close to zero cost from there.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#355

Post by ris » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:40 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.

> (they "just work")

Please don't say that Apple products "just work". We've got an office full of them.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#356

Post by ris » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

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.

So use grove.io

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#357

Post by ash » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:43 PM UTC

zeckalpha wrote: post #279

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…

> Update. And I would love to see a modern federated chat protocol to take off. Something like http://matrix.org/ . XMPP?

Unfortunately XMPP didn't take off. Notice how it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as email and web standards. Also notice how nearly all modern chat services don't support XMPP. I'd argue there are technical reasons for this situation. Try searching for "XMPP" in this thread for details.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#358

Post by _xhok » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:43 PM UTC

thegeekpirate wrote: post #307

tptacek wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're going to find evidence for the argument that IRC is more popular than Slack. IRC's user base is declining, Slack's is growing, and the numbers we have now suggest that Slack is already much more popular.

Slack has 1.1 million users _total_ ( http://www.fastcompany.com/3047819/with-over-1-million-users... ), meanwhile Twitch uses IRC, and has ~3.3 million per day alone ( http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/29/twitchs-viewers-reach... ), using stats taken eleven months ago while more than doubling its monthly viewer numbers every year. Freenode isn't the only network out there =)

Being powered by IRC is not the same as using it, in the sense meant here.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#359

Post by ris » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

Sanddancer wrote: post #239

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.

Not only is there IRC, which many people have talked about, there is also chat over XMPP, which is how I prefer to use slack. The alternatives are worse in connectability, because they restrict you to one narrow range of clients and protocols, instead of letting you choose the right client for the job at hand. People use services like slack because they don't want to have to give a shit about communications, they jus…

And you used to be able to get an RSS feed from twitter. Things in walled gardens tend to have a habit of disappearing when interoperability no longer seems to be in the proprietor's interest.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#360

Post by twelvenmonkeys » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

ash wrote: post #357

zeckalpha wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Update. And I would love to see a modern federated chat protocol to take off. Something like http://matrix.org/ . XMPP?

Unfortunately XMPP didn't take off. Notice how it's nowhere near as ubiquitous as email and web standards. Also notice how nearly all modern chat services don't support XMPP. I'd argue there are technical reasons for this situation. Try searching for "XMPP" in this thread for details.

Except WhatsApp and until recently, Google Chat / Hangouts.