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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

#421

Post by spdustin »

tptacek wrote: post #236
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 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.

Fair enough, and to my credit, I said I was guessing about the popularity of IRC vs Slack. And I wasn't defending IRC; I am a Slack user, and by choice. A quick search showed me that public IRC servers had ~503,000 daily active users last week, while Slack recently had over one million daily active users. I would further guess that the IRC users are more likely to have made that a choice versus the Slack users, who are more likely to have signed in to Slack because that's what their workplace uses, making IRC the more popular "choice" rather than the more popular "service", but that'd be more conjecture on my part, and in any case, my argument remains unchanged: popularity can in fact be a signal that something is better/easier for those that use a device or app or service. Examples to the contrary (BetaMax vs VHS, HD DVD vs Blu Ray, 8-track vs cassette) are interesting from an argumentative point of view (I really wanted HD DVD to win, FWIW), but that's just it: there will always be evidence to the contrary.

It doesn't make it a logical fallacy to say something is popular because it's superior for its audience.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#422

Post by Gracana »

mgkimsal wrote: post #310
geggam wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the meaning of "slightly technical" on hacker news should be a bit more than an enduser skillset. Technology isn't easy. Pretending it should be causes problems.

somewhat agreed, but I sort of think folks here get a bit insulated and have an inflated view of what "trivial" is. I've done a lot of sysadmin stuff for years, and web work for 20. Setting up an IRC server for me would not be 'trivial' either. Earlier this year I was told by several people that setting up an icecast server was 'trivial' too - anything but, ime.

It's the sort of thing that's really easy to do poorly. I can skim ircd docs and get something running, but making sure it's set up correctly and securely is another thing entirely.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#423

Post by cthalupa »

kbuck wrote: post #395
KirinDave wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not doubt you. But that's not what we were told. Another admin from espernet basically had us kill the project because they said the way Eirc was using the system constituted a "significant load" and "would not scale well". We were growing really fast and proxying maybe 3-10 users per bot connection on average. I think your team came to us with the problem right as we were really exploding with users. We basical…

There are many issues that prevent us from easily serving your use-case, unfortunately. I'm not completely sure about the details around this specific case, but historically we've had to restrict connections from similar software that makes N:N connections (or even N:M connections) to our network due to our connection limit rules quickly becoming unmanageable. We've recently implemented new software that should make…

Everything you've said in these past few comments basically boils down to:

"Your use case would basically break EsperNet (but it's because of our implementation! We have a lot of issues with our implementation but they're not because IRC can't handle it!)."

If the protocol's limitations mean that their use case is not viable due to the strain it places on the administrative side, it's still a limitation.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#424

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

__david__ wrote: post #420
mintplant wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I haven't figured out how to get the iOS client to connect to a custom chat server. It seems to only support the main rocket.chat server.

Unless things have changed, you have to recompile the mobile apps with the address of your own server and distribute them yourself.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#425

Post by nhumrich »

I hate irc. I hate it for one main reason, nobody uses it. Now, before you say "over x million users" I mean use, like I actually talk, not just sit there logged on. I have tried to join a lot of open source or product channels on irc (pypi, python, docker, wercker, kubernetes, etc.) And every time without fail, I join the channel and there are over 50 people signed in and I'm like "awesome people actually use this channel", then I proceed to ask the question the prompted me to lognin in the first place. After four hours and no answer or response at all, I usually have to go home, or shut my computer down. I don't have a desktop running 24/7 just so I can irc. So once I log off, I know I'm never getting an answer. I might try again if I have another burning question, but with a couple of tries and no luck, I eventually give up.

Now slack on the other hand I've never had this problem. I don't know what it is, but some of the same communities switched over to slack (i.e. kubernetes) and once they were on slack, I was getting responses and discussions from multiple people within 15 min or less. The beauty is even if the channel wasn't as active it would still be a million times better because I can shut down my laptop, and get notified on my phone when someone replies. I can then continue with the conversation publically or privately, even if the two of us are on other sides of the world, because history is saved and I don't miss anything I'm notified on, even if I'm not logged in anywhere.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#426

Post by jsprogrammer »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #324
KirinDave wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. So if someone doesn't actually make a claim, but then another party begins to rebut said claim as if it were part of a formal argument, that's called a Straw Man Argument or "Burning a straw man" colloquially. That's what you're doing. We should identify it, target it, and destroy it. Actually I don't really think that it should be destroyed. It's human nature. We find any post-facto justifications for our gu…

It should be logically destroyed; the full path of destruction should be visible to all though. You have claimed a Straw Man, but in my 20 second analysis, I do not believe you have identified it. (as in, quote the actual text containing the Straw Man)

Downmods. No quotes. No specifics. As usual.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#427

Post by [deleted] »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #324
KirinDave wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. So if someone doesn't actually make a claim, but then another party begins to rebut said claim as if it were part of a formal argument, that's called a Straw Man Argument or "Burning a straw man" colloquially. That's what you're doing. We should identify it, target it, and destroy it. Actually I don't really think that it should be destroyed. It's human nature. We find any post-facto justifications for our gu…

It should be logically destroyed; the full path of destruction should be visible to all though. You have claimed a Straw Man, but in my 20 second analysis, I do not believe you have identified it. (as in, quote the actual text containing the Straw Man)

[deleted]

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#428

Post by pkinsky »

thegeekpirate wrote: post #383
_xhok wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

> The discussion is about users who use IRC directly and consciously. From the parent post I replied to, "IRC's user base is declining". Every single person watching a Twitch stream is an IRC user, whether they know it or not. How do you determine the popularity of something? How many people use it. Android is extremely popular. Do most of the folks realize they're using an Android phone? Nope. Does it mean Android i…

Android is built on top of Linux, is it reasonable to say that the popularity of Android phones mean that Linux is popular?

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#429

Post by dfc »

KirinDave wrote: post #237
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.

But back before the WWW saw non-trivial deployment, IRC was the #1 use of bandwidth on the internet! Something from the 90's must still be true today!

I was surprised when I read this comment. Do you have any evidence for this? If I had to pick some protocols off the top of my head I would have thought nntp, smtp, ftp, but certainly not irc.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#430

Post by KirinDave »

kbuck wrote: post #395
KirinDave wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not doubt you. But that's not what we were told. Another admin from espernet basically had us kill the project because they said the way Eirc was using the system constituted a "significant load" and "would not scale well". We were growing really fast and proxying maybe 3-10 users per bot connection on average. I think your team came to us with the problem right as we were really exploding with users. We basical…

There are many issues that prevent us from easily serving your use-case, unfortunately. I'm not completely sure about the details around this specific case, but historically we've had to restrict connections from similar software that makes N:N connections (or even N:M connections) to our network due to our connection limit rules quickly becoming unmanageable. We've recently implemented new software that should make…

I am intimately aware of the EiraIRC bugs. I helped diagnose the cause of more than a few that we relayed back to the mod author.

Personally, I think that you're describing a lot of limitations that we nearly crashed into with the specific implementations of EsperNet at the time. I think if a more modern system were brought to bear on the problem, they wouldn't exist. But that's all speculation; I don't know EsperNet's current or previous software well enough to say with certainty.

I don't want to sound ungrateful. What we had, and what we still do have to a lesser extent, was amazing. I wish we could have scaled it, because it was well on its way to being a 40000-user-a-day connected gaming chat network expressed via the in-game chat of Minecraft.

Sadly, that's the nature of prototypes and free software. I was willing to work on EiraIRC, but the author... seemed uncomfortable with the idea when we approached them. It's... a strange corner of the world that Minecraft modders live in.

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