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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

#431

Post by chei0aiV »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #113
sdegutis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is just a well-established and battle-tested server/client protocol. I'm eager for the day when a competing open source server/client protocol emerges and takes over. I imagine all it would take is a really good reference implementation server and client that everyone can just start using, right?

I certainly think having an open source reference implementation for a 21st century (and by that I mean having features like Slack or Yammer or other popular closed source packages) implementation of a successor to IRC would be the minimum starting point.

There is also RobustIRC which does away with netsplits:

https://robustirc.net/

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#432

Post by egypturnash »

thegeekpirate wrote: post #394
_xhok wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they're all IRC users inadvertently. That doesn't add to IRC's popularity. If Twitch disabled IRC and switched its chatrooms to some ghetto socket.io app, most of its users wouldn't know. > Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up…

Again, your definition of popularity is different than mine, but either way my post still refutes his point about the declining userbase. > No, what I meant was, people no longer think of IRC as the tool to use to talk about projects and communities. They used to. That was its primary use case. That use case is shrinking, so IRC is becoming less popular. There's plenty of other avenues to use these days, so the numbe…

Try "IRC's mindshare is declining". rather than "IRC's popularity is declining".

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#433

Post by jsprogrammer »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #426
jsprogrammer wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can do this until I'm rate limited.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#434

Post by MaulingMonkey »

ebiester wrote: post #393
eertami wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want that? At my company I don't think anybody has IRC logs enabled, and it is highly suggested that you don't do so - chat, much like real life conversations, is inherently ephemeral.

I can't tell you how many times I've went back and searched for a solution to a similar issue we had six months ago and solved it through collaboration in slack. Should this end up in a separate wiki? Maybe. Will it? Not always.

I wrote a bot to serve log history search requests in my local IRC channel, because I got tired of fishing through my logs on behalf of other people, who wanted my history for basically the same reason.

At which point I got tired of whitelisting people instead, after abuse issues compelled me to disable anonymous access...

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#435

Post by mikeokner »

kbenson wrote: post #413
vacri wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, you add the google docs integration, or the dropbox integration, or the box integration, or use the Zapier integration to tie things together. Slack isn't a file sharing platform, it's a communication platform. As such, they try to make communicating about, discovery and grouping of files in dedicated file sharing platforms easier.

That's a terrible solution for anyone handling data that has to remain on-prem, which is the case for a lot of large corporations that deal with financial data, personal id data, etc.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#436

Post by quadrangle »

lmm wrote: post #305
mbillie1 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Sitting here pretending everyone just doesn't know about a 20+ year old technology is comical. I'd just like to point out that this argument ("if were so great, everyone would already use/do ") is just a slightly different form of the ancient appeal to popularity argument and is entirely fallacious.

In a free market with well-informed participants, argument from popularity is entirely legitimate.

only to a minor extent (in that what is most popular still does not necessarily correlate to what is actually best, only to what people favor). Also, network effects still happen in free markets.

Anyway, it's all hypothetical. We don't have a free market with all participants being well-informed.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#437

Post by meric »

_xhok wrote: post #387
thegeekpirate wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Of course they're all IRC users inadvertently. That doesn't add to IRC's popularity. If Twitch disabled IRC and switched its chatrooms to some ghetto socket.io app, most of its users wouldn't know. > Of course they wouldn't, you're already speaking with them. Slack is fine for trusted networks of peers (businesses), but not much else. I won't start chatting with any my friends using it, nor would I bother to sign up…

>> Of course they're all IRC users inadvertently. That doesn't add to IRC's popularity. If Twitch disabled IRC and switched its chatrooms to some ghetto socket.io app, most of its users wouldn't know.

Saying if Twitch disabled IRC is like saying if Slack changed to an IRC core..., which is not meaningful when discussing how many users Slack and IRC have. Twitch has several millions of users of influence. If they didn't use IRC, IRC would have millions fewer users, yet, Twitch chose IRC. Some of Twitch is IRC, and some of IRC is now Twitch, and millions of people use Twitch consciously. Twitch is the IRC client.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#438

Post by TeMPOraL »

pkinsky wrote: post #428
thegeekpirate wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't know if it is reasonable, but that's what is always said. The primary argument for Linux popularity is always "Android!".

Also, in this context I think it's pretty relevant. My personal opinion is that if Slack was just an IRC client instead of having its own propertiary backend, it would have been a better product.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#439

Post by TeMPOraL »

pyre wrote: post #406
kbenson wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's also harder to base a business atop decentralized network, and when building a new network there is less of a business case in spending the extra time, stress and expertise to make it decentralized (vs. centralized).

Let's state explicitly why it's harder to base a business atop a decentralized network - because a business makes money by creating friction in the service, and in a decentralized model a friction too strong will be routed around.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

#440

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

It is not an obscure fact that investing shitton of money in marketing will yield better adoption than investing the same money in the product. People "who have donated time, money, and services to IRC over its life span" generally focused on the technical side.
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