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Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#41

Post by Dunedan »

Well, another day of being disappointed by Slack.

Aside from missing native clients mentioned in other comments my biggest pain point is their awful implementation of threads. Every time I think: They must be kidding, they can't be serious, that's just a bad dream. A few examples:

- The only place where you get noticed about responses to threads is the "New Threads" view, which makes it easy to miss responses, when you have responses to multiple threads waiting to be read.

- While having the "New Threads" view open, new messages aren't shown automatically and you have to click a link to show them.

- "Threads" for snippets and files are displayed directly in the channel the snippet/file got posted in.

- You can't post snippets and files in Threads.

- You can't use "/me" in Threads.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#42

Post by williamscales »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #14
saagarjha wrote: post #11

I'm very disappointed to see that Slack has decided to go the way of every other messaging service and move away from decentralized and standardized protocols towards those that are walled and proprietary. > We are focused on making Slack accessible to all people. Over the past year, we've made great progress in improving both the keyboard and screen reading experiences in Slack. We know many users have been relying…

I run Slack in a browser tab . Their native apps are basically electron tabs. I wonder how many people used xmpp and irc gateways in relation to all of their active users ?

I sure was using it. And it was actually nice because all of these so-called "features" that Slack has been adding are incredibly annoying and counter-productive. Not to mention that I could use my laptop without keeping the fan on maximum all the time.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#43

Post by 52-6F-62 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #27
cortesoft wrote: post #5

I wonder how hard it would be to write a custom bridge with the real time api, to make your own IRC gateway?

Pretty easy, I reckon. I started writing a native Mac client using the API, and it was pretty straightforward. I don’t see there being a huge barrier to implementing a gateway.

I've been starting to toy around with it and Qt for a quick and dirty native app. Nothing worth sharing yet.

What route did you go?

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#44

Post by jhgg »

This sucks, but it makes sense. I'm willing to be <1% of their users use these gateways, and it's becoming an engineer burden to maintain as they try and ship new features. I don't think this will translate to any significant loss of users anyways, as their main money-making users use it in a business setting where you kinda /have/ to use it.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#45

Post by dijit »

ztoben wrote: post #28
castis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not basically electron apps. they _are_ electron apps. And it's completely absurd that mine is currently using 1514MB of memory. If I weren't required to use Slack on a day-to-day basis, I absolutely wouldn't solely on principle.

That's absurd. How is it so high? Mine uses around 700MB pretty consistently.

Animated custom emojis seem to be a common thread, animated images in general cause my CPU and memory to spike when using slack. Our network engineer loves this dancing parrot emoji but it basically pins a core on my machine and adds 20-30% of memory to slacks process.

I've switched over to using mattermost, it can be (and is) self hosted so I'm not as worried about slack getting hacked (again) and leaking our info/taking control of our systems with chatops.

The downside is; mattermost is not a strong replacement. I wrote a bot to basically do a large part of my job for me, and coding against mattermosts websocket protocol and dealing with authentication has been messy to say the least.

Slack is a joy to code against and use from a UI perspective when compared. (sadly, as I don't like it for ideological reasons)

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#46

Post by FooBarWidget »

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view.

Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client implements desired extensions), etc.

Why not accept that there are legit technical reasons why existing open protocols are unacceptable?

We should not be blaming Slack so much. If we want to make a difference we must come up with a better open protocol that satisfies all the requirements. And it does not end there: there must also be an open client that normal people actually want to use, and there must be tons of marketing to promote it.

Stop complaining about companies not adopting open protocols and do something. Dominate the world using open protocols, then the walled garden companies will follow. It is not easy, it may even feel wrong, but it is the only way.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#47

Post by aw3c2 »

saagarjha wrote: post #11

I'm very disappointed to see that Slack has decided to go the way of every other messaging service and move away from decentralized and standardized protocols towards those that are walled and proprietary. > We are focused on making Slack accessible to all people. Over the past year, we've made great progress in improving both the keyboard and screen reading experiences in Slack. We know many users have been relying…

What did everyone expect?

Slack is a proprietary protocol created to make money on its proprietary service.

I am glad they are making it more closed as then maybe more people realise that centralising your communications on top a VC funded, for-profit company is not a good idea.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#48

Post by DanCarvajal »

castis wrote: post #21
zitterbewegung wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Slack in a browser tab . Their native apps are basically electron tabs. I wonder how many people used xmpp and irc gateways in relation to all of their active users ?

They're not basically electron apps. they _are_ electron apps. And it's completely absurd that mine is currently using 1514MB of memory. If I weren't required to use Slack on a day-to-day basis, I absolutely wouldn't solely on principle.

Weird, my slack app on windows is currently using 54MB.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#49

Post by [deleted] »

aw3c2 wrote: post #47
saagarjha wrote: post #11

I'm very disappointed to see that Slack has decided to go the way of every other messaging service and move away from decentralized and standardized protocols towards those that are walled and proprietary. > We are focused on making Slack accessible to all people. Over the past year, we've made great progress in improving both the keyboard and screen reading experiences in Slack. We know many users have been relying…

What did everyone expect? Slack is a proprietary protocol created to make money on its proprietary service. I am glad they are making it more closed as then maybe more people realise that centralising your communications on top a VC funded, for-profit company is not a good idea.

[deleted]
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