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Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

dave.cheney.net

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Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#51

Post by joelberger »

caseysoftware wrote: post #30
ntaylor wrote: post #8

It seems to me that Slack could position itself to provide free and open access to certain types of communities like open source projects, charities, etc. Enable the "pro" features so long as the community follows the rules. The value of synchronous communication is very real and it should not be precluded, but the points are totally valid. Slack is a closed-garden and it does not contribute to the global conversatio…

But if your entire infrastructure is centrally managed and can disappear at a company's whim, you're setting your community up for problems.

This is the point that I can't get anyone to see. So what if they provide history? They can take it away at any point too. So what have you accomplished?!

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#53

Post by kuschku »

cortesoft wrote: post #37
exelius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So get a better IRC client? Really not hard to do things like syntax formatting and auto link follow (GUI versions of IRCII had plugins for this in the late 90s, so it's not like it's even a novel idea).

A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history.

Yes it is. This is exactly what Quassel and IRCCloud do.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#54

Post by grey-area »

zellyn wrote: post #41

As I posted on twitter[1], Slack is linkable. Not public, but if you can chat you see them. Gitter: public AND linkable. Async is a good argument; linkability is not. Slack's UI is good. Not perfect, but it's quite usable compared to all the alternatives[2]. People always underestimate the value of good UI. [1] https://twitter.com/zellyn/status/851818007248678912 [2] I've been on IRC on and off since 1993. It's much…

Slack doesn't have public links and an archive of posts, it's a stream behind a login, which might go away at any time on an active project. It's a terrible idea for anything other than ephemeral communications which don't need to be logged or kept. Re the UI, for a chat app it's fine, most conversations around an open-source project should not be held in a chat format however, but in a format that respects participants not being in the same time zone or having the same time pressures (that means an async format, not a linear chat).

If you want to have an open process (for discussions around proposals, bugs etc), you need an open, linkable, archivable format, ideally hosted somewhere you control. That means mailing lists or a public html server, not a private chat service which may or may not be around, which may delete data or change policies at any time. For this reason Github isn't great either, but at least it has public links and you could scrape the data if required.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#55

Post by [deleted] »

exelius wrote: post #33
pmarreck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack chat provides a number of nice features that IRC (at least out of the box... I know there have been attempts) does not. IRCCloud at least lets you see chat history, which IRC doesn't have out of the box but Slack does.

So get a better IRC client? Really not hard to do things like syntax formatting and auto link follow (GUI versions of IRCII had plugins for this in the late 90s, so it's not like it's even a novel idea).

[deleted]

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#56

Post by scrollaway »

caseysoftware wrote: post #30
ntaylor wrote: post #8

It seems to me that Slack could position itself to provide free and open access to certain types of communities like open source projects, charities, etc. Enable the "pro" features so long as the community follows the rules. The value of synchronous communication is very real and it should not be precluded, but the points are totally valid. Slack is a closed-garden and it does not contribute to the global conversatio…

But if your entire infrastructure is centrally managed and can disappear at a company's whim, you're setting your community up for problems.

This applies to Freenode as much as it applies to Slack. If freenode disappears, people using its channels for foss will have similar issues and inconvenience as if Slack/Discord disappear and in both cases, it's recoverable.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#57

Post by kuschku »

VLM wrote: post #50
cortesoft wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better IRC client isn't going to provide chat history.

Just run your IRC client in screen/tmux like we've done for a quarter century. The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work... Also integrations in general are smoother in slack than in IRC. Someone has already written the bot and its a click away to install and it gen…

> The real advantage of slack isn't even client its stuff like massive logging for e-discovery and single sign on integration. Admittedly not terribly appealing for FOSS but once you use it at work...

Which can also be done with IRC clients.

This is a video of a search system I built for the Quassel IRC client: https://dl.kuschku.de/videos/2016-09-16_04-03-36.mp4

Quassel is a distributed system, so you have a bouncer and client which integrate tightly, with clients for Linux, Windows, Mac, Web, Android, iOS, which stores backlog in a database.

This search system is a very simple one, and simply uses postgres’ fulltext word vector search.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#58

Post by 27182818284 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #47

What drives me nuts is that there are so many of these things. I know groups that (for business or pleasure) use Slack, Discord, Skype, Google Hangouts, IRC, etc. All of these clients are a bit more obstrusive than they need to be in terms of pop-up notifications, software updates, cpu, memory, transfer, etc. They all screw up enough that there's always a little apprehension that something will go wrong when you get…

>It is one thing to deal with one of these things, but when you have to install ten to get

The modern office large office is pretty bad in this respect. Really not uncommon to see things like

• Need to have Slack open

• Need to keep an eye on Basecamp/pm software

• Need to have Outlook open / check in on for email and calendar invites

• Need Skype open because not everyone uses Slack

• GitLab is open in another tab

I've started counting the minutes that I use in a day just logging in to things with our SSO, because it has started to actually add up, haha. It has gotten silly.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#59

Post by zimbatm »

caseysoftware wrote: post #30
ntaylor wrote: post #8

It seems to me that Slack could position itself to provide free and open access to certain types of communities like open source projects, charities, etc. Enable the "pro" features so long as the community follows the rules. The value of synchronous communication is very real and it should not be precluded, but the points are totally valid. Slack is a closed-garden and it does not contribute to the global conversatio…

But if your entire infrastructure is centrally managed and can disappear at a company's whim, you're setting your community up for problems.

This is certainly true for github as well.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#60

Post by Pxtl »

coldpie wrote: post #24
spectistcles wrote: post #14

It seems kind of funny that an open source project can't find an open source form of communication.

IRC and mailing lists have worked for 20? 30? years and continue to work today.

Well, then we can all turn off our computers and go home, because something that "works" is obviously good enough and the entire software industry doesn't need to exist anymore. Most things we have today "work" but we're still improving on them because "good enough" isn't good enough.
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