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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

#371

Post by vacri »

KirinDave wrote: post #233
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.

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.

If your file sharing infrastructure is limited to what Slack provides, then your file sharing infrastructure sucks. Slack is good for quick "check this outs", but it's not a file sharing system.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#372

Post by ash »

twelvenmonkeys wrote: post #360
ash wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, thank you. But none of them support XMPP federation (only Google supported it the past).

And I would add Facebook to your "until recently" example.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#373

Post by Sanddancer »

ris wrote: post #359
Sanddancer wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At which point I'll reevaluate the use of the application and potentially move elsewhere. FOSS developers pull these kinds of things all the time as well. Look at the cessation of interoperability after Lennart Poettering decided to "deprecate" consolekit in favor of the non-interoperable systemd. Or they'll stop development of software, like RedHat decided to cease development of the Insight Debugger they gained control of after they bought out Cygnus. The FOSS world is chock full of the same kind of silly, shady underhanded behavior of the rest of the software world.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#374

Post by kbenson »

Killswitch wrote: post #370
akshatpradhan wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the problem with IRC. The idea of decentralized IRC networks means that channels are scattered amongst multiple IRC networks. IRC is already not as usable as Slack, and to have multiple networks decreases usability even further. I love IRC, but I see why Slack is full of win.

But decentralized is the best thing ever! I hate that argument. If decentralized was so great, then it'd be more popular, but it's not. More and more centralized stuff is exploding in popularity.

Centralized is generally easier to implement a given feature in, so it's easier to support more features.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#375

Post by thegeekpirate »

_xhok wrote: post #358
thegeekpirate wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean? Every viewer also connects to their IRC chat, hence "using" it. Heck, I personally connect to it using my IRC client.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#376

Post by tw04 »

cillian64 wrote: post #159
jarek wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nothing about IRC is intrinsically difficult . There's some things that are much easier on Slack, like archive search, but how many people actually use that? If you tell people something is hard to use, they'll believe you. If you tell them how to use something, they'll use it...

The really big thing for me is persistence. If you want your client to stay online when you are not, things get very painful. Bouncers are a pain to setup, command-line IRC clients are awful, and I've seen countless people horribly confused by screen and tmux. With slack, persistence comes for free. The only thing I've seen that comes close is irccloud, which is in my opinion an excellent competitor to slack. In the…

Bouncers are a pain to setup? You can literally order pre-setup bouncers with web interfaces... it really doesn't get much easier.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#377

Post by Sanddancer »

yuhong wrote: post #345
Sanddancer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

I don't think they or the FSF are referring to chat apps like Slack. In fact, I think the FSF's definition specifically excludes group chat.

They are. They use that term for any hosted service.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#378

Post by kbenson »

harryh wrote: post #202
Hello71 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Slack is a well-designed interface for allowing teams to communicate via chat. subjective. I consider a bloated web interface taking several tens to hundreds of megabytes of RAM compared to a text-based interface taking less than 100 kB to be poorly designed. > 2. Slack is easy to install is use on Mac, PC, iOS, and Android. It Just Works™. spelled wrong, and IRC clients are harder to configure only because ther…

Up until very recently Slack had spent essentially nothing on marketing. It spread because, in the words of pg, they built something people want.

How recent is "very recently"? I've been hearing ads in the podcasts I listen to for something close to a year. Prior to that, slack was only something I had seen in HN titles, and even then I had never once clicked on one.

I like slack, I think it's a great product. On finally watching their video and installing it, I immediately saw the draw, it's basically IRC with lots of usability enhancements and a lot of easy-to-configure bots available with a click or two. That said, it took me months or ads to finally take a look, but I did because the advertisements let me know that it was a possible solution for the problem I was dealing with.

It may have spread because they built a good product, but I think it's equally important that they actually exposed a lot of people to information about it. Your great product will die if nobody ever sees how great it is.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#379

Post by _xhok »

thegeekpirate wrote: post #375
_xhok wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean? Every viewer also connects to their IRC chat, hence "using" it. Heck, I personally connect to it using my IRC client.

The discussion is about users who use IRC directly and consciously. Many of Twitch's users have no clue what IRC is. Imagine a new social app that used SMTP in its implementation. You wouldn't bring it up in a discussion about the popularity of email.

No one denies IRC's continued popularity as a protocol for broadcasting text over a network. Slack itself uses it. But it's dying out as measured by the number of people who say to their colleagues e.g. "get on IRC, I have something to tell you."

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#380

Post by thegeekpirate »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #364
thegeekpirate wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 =)

I think that's the problem with IRC. The idea of decentralized IRC networks means that channels are scattered amongst multiple IRC networks. IRC is already not as usable as Slack, and to have multiple networks decreases usability even further. I love IRC, but I see why Slack is full of win.

EFnet is a single entity in the exact same way that Slack is. All channels belong to only their service. Introducing yet another chat service only adds another place to the list. https://xkcd.com/927

It's also nice that I don't have to signup anywhere to use most IRC servers.

Don't get me wrong—Slack is the perfect tool for businesses, but not for much else.

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