Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

Post by michaelmior » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #21

It might be more useful to speak in general terms than call out Slack in particular. The concerns expressed here aren't limited to Slack (despite the link-baity title), but any form of communication that: (a) Can't be referenced or linked from the Web, and (b) Is a form of synchronous communication The same factors, BTW, apply equally to in-person discussions held at open source conferences. I wonder what the author…

Post by michaelmior » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

cristaloleg wrote: post #29

caseysoftware wrote: post #5

Good points but the bigger problem for me is the lack of an archive. You only have the last 10k (?) messages and that includes public and private messages. If you have a mildly active project, messages may only be available for a month and you lose the history of the project. That makes it an awful support option too.

Well, some of the open communities are using http://slackarchive.io/

Post by vorg » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 7:03 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #35

I was expecting Stallman-style advocacy against closed-source as a principle; pleasantly surprised by the arguments. Synchronous communication, indeed, is bad for the main communication channel. However, as a secondary communication channel, it can serve important needs. When people are looking not to just get a single issue resolved, but to form a community, this community is often based on informal communication an…

Post by frikk » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

mgbmtl wrote: post #116

piquadrat wrote: post #20

Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…

On one large free software project, we adopted Mattermost (an open source / self-hosted equivalent of Slack). We went from ~12 active users and ~50 lesser active users, to ~ 100 active and ~ 500 lesser active users. I agree that more folks should consider moving away from IRC. The sign-up process for Mattermost is easy. It's intuitive, cross-platform, mobile-friendly, etc. While we geeks are used to IRC, onboarding p…

  - Easy to use web push endpoints w/ API keys (great for scripting with curl)

  - Integration with Gitlab / Jenkins

  - Chat Logs (see what happened while you were away)

  - Public listing of channels (no more "oh you have to join #whatever to see that")

  - Mobile Web App (I can't get the Android app to work with our self signed cert, but that's OK).

Post by anonymoushn » Tue, Apr 11, 2017, 7:08 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #27

piquadrat wrote: post #20

Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…

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.