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Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

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Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#91

Post by tptacek »

Albright wrote: post #72
brenschluss wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your comments about Slack's UX are actually about UX; they're about the UI.

Fair enough. How's this: If the UI of a desktop application does not match the standard appearance and interface of the rest of the operating system, a bad UX is almost a certainty, in my experience.

If I want to share a diagram with Patrick on our internal Slack --- which we set up in under 10 minutes --- I select the diagram on my desktop and drag it into the window for the Slack channel. Everyone on that channel sees the diagram immediately.

I do not give a shit what Slack's buttons look like. I can't do that with IRC. Even if we're all standardized on a modern OSX IRC client, we're still going to end up "sharing" URLs.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#92

Post by gregmac »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #74
pnathan wrote: post #3

Can someone explain the attraction that nerds have for Slack/Hipchat over a well-tended IRC server?

Ad hominems aside, personally I like the multi-line block code pastes, the inline markdown, and the ability to post images from the clipboard. I haven't frequented IRC much since the mid to late 90's so perhaps it has those features now.

So surprising more people don't mention multi-line messages (whether code blocks or not). IRC doesn't have this because the protocol itself simply doesn't support it.

The standard answer is "pastebin" but that raises the barrier to entry, so to speak. We use Hipchat at work but I assume Slack has feature parity here: If I want to paste a code block to discuss, I literally press paste (ctrl+v) and send (enter). The first few lines show up for everybody, with an "expand" button so they can see the whole thing.

No one has to have a specific client, no one has to visit a separate website (including me). It. Just. Works.

Same goes for images, by the way: I can post a URL ending in jpg/png/gif and it shows up for everybody, inline (and intelligently: resized, and animated gifs are hidden by default). I can also screenshot an image and paste it into chat, and it automatically converts to an uploaded file: take screenshot, press ctrl+v, enter, image is there.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#93

Post by lmm »

heavenlyhash wrote: post #30
hellbanner wrote: post #7

I'm seeing "No e2e encrypted DMs" as one of the cons for most of these.. anyone have a solution?

The matrix[1] team is working on an axolotl implementation meant to be used pluggably: https://matrix.org/git/olm/ --- [1] https://matrix.org/

I searched for axolotl and got some cute pictures but not much information. Why this thing rather than OTR?

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#94

Post by lmm »

seliopou wrote: post #26
JoshMnem wrote: post #16

I wish that someone would build an easy-to-use layer on top of an open protocol like IRC or XMPP. The tool could manage setup, configuration, archiving, and notifications. Instead of building a walled garden that is merely accessible via an open protocol, it would be more interesting to build a thin layer on top of an XMPP server that could even be removed or replaced later, if desired.

Pretty sure I heard somewhere that Slack uses a modified IRC bouncer (e.g., ZNC[0]) to implement accounts. Could be wrong about that, but if that is in fact the case, this whole Slack vs. IRC debate would take on a whole new level of absurdity. [0]: http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC

Slack has never been about the underlying tech (which may well be IRC), it's all about the polish. A lot of comments I see here about Slack remind me of the infamous "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 ).

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#95

Post by kibibu »

chetanahuja wrote: post #56
vvpan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap.

"But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap" If this comment is serious (and I have my doubts), I'm left speechless... Don't even know where to start. I'll just leave it here http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625062/facebook-2g-tuesd...

You just linked to a 3.5 MB web page. That's more than the complete Shareware DOOM

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#96

Post by Arathorn »

zanny wrote: post #66
Arathorn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have - e.g. http://vector.im/beta on top of the Matrix.org protocol. [disclaimer, I work on Matrix]

Any reason not to have openid or persona signup? Its just annoying nowadays to encounter a site where it still wants only plain old username / password.

Matrix as a protocol supports arbitrary login mechanisms; Vector + Synapse can hook into CAS, SAML2, LDAP and OAuth flows already. Patches more than welcome to hook it into OpenID or Persona :)

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#97

Post by gkoberger »

JoshMnem wrote: post #16

I wish that someone would build an easy-to-use layer on top of an open protocol like IRC or XMPP. The tool could manage setup, configuration, archiving, and notifications. Instead of building a walled garden that is merely accessible via an open protocol, it would be more interesting to build a thin layer on top of an XMPP server that could even be removed or replaced later, if desired.

Slack already has the ability to do the opposite: https://slack.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connec...

There's some startups like https://grove.io/ that do it.

I think the biggest problem is the people who use IRC aren't the type of people to pay. Additionally, walled gardens are pretty nice when it comes to making a cohesive experience. As soon as you build on top of something else, you're beholden to its limitations.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#98

Post by Arathorn »

lmm wrote: post #93
heavenlyhash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matrix[1] team is working on an axolotl implementation meant to be used pluggably: https://matrix.org/git/olm/ --- [1] https://matrix.org/

I searched for axolotl and got some cute pictures but not much information. Why this thing rather than OTR?

OTR has some major shortcomings - in the classic implementation, it doesn't do group chat and it requires both parties to be online at the same time to synchronise the cryptographic ratchet. The best explanation of why Axolotl is better is https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting - or if you prefer a more comprehensive spec, we've published one at https://matrix.org/docs/spec/olm.html.

Anyone wanting to know more about Olm & Matrix's Axolotl support might be interested to flip to the end of https://matrix.org/~matthew/2015-06-26%20Matrix%20Jardin%20E...

(p.s. hi!)

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#99

Post by urda »

dataker wrote: post #9
askafriend wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As patio11 puts it: UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX See more: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931499680657409 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931665275916288 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931949645533184 https://twitter.com/patio11/statu…

UXUXUX... is also a feature of many open source alternatives.

This is the part where you offer a few links to alternatives and demonstrate why said "open source alternative" meets that requirement.

Otherwise, you have a noisy and unhelpful comment.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#100

Post by bachmeier »

woof wrote: post #89
bachmeier wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want the premium features, their pricing is very affordable. "very affordable" is up to each person to define. One of those premium features is a history with more than 10,000 messages. I frequently interact with at least 25 people just to do my job. The cheapest paid plan is $6.67 per user per month. That works out to $2000 a year. And that's only for the people I work with on a regular basis. Sure, I could…

$6.67/month is less than $0.33/day (~20 workdays/month)! That's an trivial amount to pay for effective communications in my book.

You pay that for every Slack user, no matter how many or few messages you exchange with them. I don't think someone else is going to pay $6.67 to replace ten email messages.
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