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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

#61

Post by kuschku »

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…

> [2] I've been on IRC on and off since 1993. It's much worse.

So? There are services offering that, too. Linkability is easy to add to IRC as soon as you are using logging systems and modern bouncers such as IRCCloud or Quassel.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#62

Post by vertex-four »

Pxtl wrote: post #52

It's frustrating that the choice seems to be between modern closed tools like Slack and Hangouts and antiquated open tools like IRC and mailing lists.

Orrr there's "modern" open tools like Matrix+Riot, too, which would fit most open-source communities wonderfully.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#63

Post by kuschku »

Pxtl wrote: post #60
coldpie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly, that’s why we evolve them (see ircv3.net), or try to reinvent them (see matrix.org), and don’t try to make a proprietary clone and sell it.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#64

Post by branchly2 »

tetrep wrote: post #18
fiatjaf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people seem to thing that chats will solve all the problems. Chatting is having to write the same thing a million times.

> Chatting is having to write the same thing a million times. If you find yourself repeating the same thing a lot in chat, it would be a good idea to document it somewhere and just paste a link. With a link to the relevant documentation, a lot of people will just do the rest of the legwork on their own, and will now be able to quickly reference it going forward, and hopefully bug you less in chat (you can always be e…

The problem is though, that some people like to be the local expert on IRC/Slack with all the answers. They don't want to document it elsewhere.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#66

Post by treve »

27182818284 wrote: post #58
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…

> 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.

If you need to log in more than once, can you really call it SSO? =)

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#68

Post by _jal »

Pxtl wrote: post #52

It's frustrating that the choice seems to be between modern closed tools like Slack and Hangouts and antiquated open tools like IRC and mailing lists.

Question for you:

I hear this a lot, in terms of older tools being considered obsolete.

Other than the natural human tendency towards novelty and the network effects, what, exactly, is obsolete about mailing lists or IRC?

What features are missing in IRC that Slack has for synchronous discussion? (I'll start: animated dancing pigs out of the box and the need to write/plug in your own archiver.)

What limitations do mailing lists impose on open source development that are not present in other tools?

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#69

Post by lindner »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #9

I feel like more and more people are coming around to seeing the relevancy of distributed federated chat and breaking out of the walled gardens. My person money is on Matrix[0] taking off but I think the general theme of people pulling away from interesting their communication to corporations is a positive. [0] matrix.org

Everyone should be using Matrix. Not just open source developers.

It's near feature parity with Slack and it's also one of the best IRC clients around. I used to run ERC in a tmux session just so I could stay connected and not lose messages. No more.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#70

Post by philh »

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.

A few people have replied, saying how to get chat history with IRC, but as far as I can tell, none of them work like Slack. With Slack, you can see history from before the first time you connect. It looks like none of the IRC solutions enable that; the IRC protocol doesn't make it possible, without the server (or a channel member) keeping logs.

(I haven't used either very much, so please correct me if I'm wrong.)

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