Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 624 posts

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

#121

Post by lallysingh »

oconnor663 wrote: post #77
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…

Moxie Marlinspike has a blog post about why protocols like XMPP aren't good enough to support modern messaging apps. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ XMPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a “living standard.” Despite its capacity for protocol “extensions,” however, it’s undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich medi…

Extension availability/usage will cluster around the tent-pole implementations.

A really popular mobile Jabber client will suddenly have the extensions it supports become popular with everyone else. Conversations looks nice.

As for why some set of extensions hasn't been brought up to modernity, that answer's simple: nobody cares about xmpp enough. Maybe just some users, but fuck those guys, they don't build anything.

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

#122

Post by MayeulC »

adrianmonk wrote: post #74
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

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 impleme…

In addition to sucking in technical ways, the current set of open protocols probably could stand to leave more room for innovation. Chat is a really hot area in the industry right now, and people are trying all kinds of different things with it. Team-oriented stuff, smart threading, different forms of addressing (find people by mobile phone number instead of account name), and plenty more I'm not even aware of. An op…

I don't think it matters that much. Open protocols are typically in for the long run, and will end up replicating the feature set of the most popular proprietary ones. And the best thing is that they are generally free to pick the best ideas from various places.

One issue is adoption, but this is something that can be dealt with eventually.

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

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 impleme…

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by saagarjha »

cornholio wrote: post #68
jbob2000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most accessible users use JAWS on windows. I focus on accessibility a lot for my job. In fact, we have an entire department dedicated to accessibility design, implementation, and testing. The reason why accessible users use JAWS is that it works across the entire OS and all the programs you have installed; start menu, PowerPoint, web browser, control panel, Google, etc. etc. The problem with the native accessibility…

I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. What is their moat, what exactly does it offer that it's impossible to replicate using existing libraries and APIs?

> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard.

Of course, there's always software that costs absurd amounts of money for seemingly simple things; IDA comes to mind. I'm not excusing it, but that isn't to say that it doesn't exist.

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

#125

Post by saagarjha »

epberry wrote: post #79
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

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 impleme…

Agreed. I have never had as good of an experience with IRC or XMPP as I have with slack. Open protocols are still great for open communities, internet discussion boards, etc. but when you're a multi-billion dollar messaging platform and companies are using you for critical communication I don't see any reason to continue supporting them. They've actually gone a step further and put the accessibility features in slack…

> I have never had as good of an experience with IRC or XMPP as I have with slack.

Interestingly, I've felt the opposite way. Slack will often lose connection, fail to send messages, or fail to refresh and fetch new messages (ones I know exist, because I was sent a notification for them). IRC and XMPP don't seem to do this.

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

#126

Post by dfabulich »

cyphar wrote: post #70
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

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 impleme…

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

Slack initially integrated with IRC and XMPP because they were more popular than Slack. Now that Slack is much bigger than all IRC and XMPP traffic combined, the integration is no longer worth its weight in code.

If Matrix were overwhelmingly more popular than Slack, they would integrate with Matrix. But Matrix isn't more popular than Slack. (Matrix isn't even as popular as IRC, despite being a better product than IRC, as far as I can see.)

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

#127

Post by jakebasile »

escapecharacter wrote: post #71
Froyoh wrote: post #63

Time to use Discord

I've used Slack as part of a few organizations. If I'm starting my own ad-hoc technical organization, is there any reason not to use Discord? Seems to have all the features I need.

I've used Discord extensively and it's high quality software.

The only reasons I could see someone choosing not to use it are:

- Doesn't have the same plethora of plugins that Slack does, although it does have a fairly complete API.

- It is a gaming product and it shows, which might make some more straight-laced people balk at its perceived unprofessionalism.

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

#128

Post by zeveb »

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.

I just use emacs-slack[0]; my entire emacs usage is currently a fraction of yours.

On X, this means emacs-slack displays images, emoji &c. just like the web or pseudo-native clients do.

[0] https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

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

#129

Post by amiga-workbench »

merb wrote: post #101
MaxLeiter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few projects exist that try to be "modern" UIs for IRC (bias: I contribute to Lounge) TheLounge - https://thelounge.chat (FOSS, self-hosted) IRCCloud - https://irccloud.com (mobile clients OS, hosted)

they don't look "modern"..

Yeah, there isn't enough low contrast text and excessive white space.

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

#130

Post by evv »

cyphar wrote: post #70
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

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 impleme…

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

> When you are Slack Inc and the only differentiator you have is that you are in control of how chat works, why on earth would you switch to a protocol that you don't have full control over?

The GP is calling for a slack competitor to launch and gain popularity with the help of an open protocol. Once the pendulum swings back towards openness, Slack would be forced to adopt it to stay relevant.

If you value your freedom, use the open source RocketChat, instead of Slack.

Post reply on HN