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Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

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Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#411

Post by hyperdimension »

SamWhited wrote: post #395
Karunamon wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A set of RFCs isn't really in the same ballpark of the same planet of the same local galactic group as a mature product that I can go sign up for and be using in under a minute. Maybe in a few years. I say maybe , because XMPP is an IETF RFC, and frankly, it sucks.

What do you not like about the protocol? Like everything, it has its warts, but having worked on a few more-or-less proprietary protocols XMPP is much better designed and thought out than most of them. The community has had a lot of time to address some of its flaws whereas Slack, Stride, et al. tend to reinvent the same problems XMPP solved 20 years ago.

Let me just start by saying that I'm a big fan of XMPP. I run my own server, and talked to my friends exclusively through XMPP until that fateful day that Google turned off federation support for Gmail chat, and I lost contact with a bunch of friends. I still run my own server, though I don't use it nearly as much as I used to.

XMPP is a well-thought-out protocol, and a lot of the XEPs are great features. The problem I always had with XMPP is that XEP support is unequally distributed among clients, and the fragmentation really undermines the amount of cool features XMPP has to offer. As a (made-up) example, Psi+ might support video calls, but not server-side history, and Pidgin only supports server-side history, and Adium is the only one that supports Service Discovery...if I want both, I have to pick a client, and possibly have to use two clients signed in with different resources.

As a possible solution, we could have a "logo program" for XMPP, where a core set of XEPs are required to call yourself an XMPP client (this is the case already IIRC), and you get rights to call yourself "supporting XMPP-Enhanced" if you support these other XEPs, and "supporting XMPP-Full" if you support all of these XEPs. Something like that might work, but you'd have to have a way to actually drive development toward these features.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#412

Post by SamWhited »

travbrack wrote: post #391
Alupis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For on-prem, why not use a free and enterprise-quality XMPP server, like Openfire[1]? It's Java so runs just about anywhere, and with even relatively low resource allocations, you can support a large number of concurrent chats and group sessions. Plus, since XMPP is an Open Standard, you can use any XMPP complaint client of your choosing. Cisco embeds Openfire in a few of their enterprise products already (including…

The client-side story of XMPP is pretty bleak, especially if you're trying to get non-technical people to use it.

This is why we need specific services (like Slack or HipChat) that are XMPP but maintain their own ecosystem, clients, specific feature sets, etc. Then if you want to use third party clients (eg. for better accessibility, or because your platform isn't supported officially, etc.) you can, but if not you can use their clients. HipChat was almost this way (I used Mcabber with it extensively), but had just enough bits of the protocol that ignored the XMPP spec or were only accessible through a second non-XMPP channel that it was a bit annoying.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#413

Post by closeparen »

smt88 wrote: post #208
philwelch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. I'm firmly in the "email should be used for substantive discussions" camp, but ever since we got the bandwidth and CPU necessary for the internet to not be a primarily text-based medium, the illiterates took over and that was the end of that.

Email has a lot of problems, but the dealbreaker for my company is that it isn't secure.

The security model for internal email on a corporate email server is pretty similar to a corporate slack instance.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#414

Post by tabbott »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

Because just about every technical team needs the ability to do some sort of real-time communication, and Slack's UI is obviously better polished than the products that predate it (HipChat/IRC/etc).

If you're looking for a product built by top MIT engineers who spent years thinking about how to make chat actually productive, check out Zulip. I'm one of those MIT engineers, and I agree that Slack is a huge waste of time, for precisely the reasons you describe (here's our attempt at explaining how Slack wastes your time: https://zulipchat.com/why-zulip/, and how Zulip solves those problems; there's more on our homepage).

The fact that Slack is, in most organizations, either very low-traffic or a waste of time is why we don't market Zulip primarily as "open source Slack" -- it really is a different product, designed to be amazing for a large, distributed team doing a lot of communication, without things becoming overwhelming.

If you don't believe me, read this awesome cartoon by one of our users: https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/986444234365521920

(As another reason for Slack's success, I'll also add that a lot of "Slack clone" products are pretty buggy; everyone underestimates how much work a high-quality chat experience is. Check out https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/markdown.h... and https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-sys... if you want to learn about the complexity of a few of the more interesting challenges.)

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#415

Post by SamWhited »

hyperdimension wrote: post #411
SamWhited wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you not like about the protocol? Like everything, it has its warts, but having worked on a few more-or-less proprietary protocols XMPP is much better designed and thought out than most of them. The community has had a lot of time to address some of its flaws whereas Slack, Stride, et al. tend to reinvent the same problems XMPP solved 20 years ago.

Let me just start by saying that I'm a big fan of XMPP. I run my own server, and talked to my friends exclusively through XMPP until that fateful day that Google turned off federation support for Gmail chat, and I lost contact with a bunch of friends. I still run my own server, though I don't use it nearly as much as I used to. XMPP is a well-thought-out protocol, and a lot of the XEPs are great features. The problem…

I'm going to be pedantic here, but I think it's important to be precise: this is a problem with the public/federated XMPP network (let's call the network "Jabber", since some people use the term that way), not with XMPP (which is a network protocol that could be used by any number of services). That is to say, XMPP==HTTP, Slack==google.com.

XMPP could be used to build a service like Slack (with its own clients, specific feature set, etc.) that may or may not be federated and it would still have the benefits of using an open protocol (even if it's not federated I can use a more accessible client, a client on a platform they don't support, less work to get up and running because libraries exist, etc.)

I'm hoping the Compliance Suites will become something like you mentioned in the future, but I'm no longer the author so we'll see what the new authors do with it: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0387.html

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#416

Post by hnzix »

ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

I have this same complaint about message boards all moving into Facebook groups. Sure it's convenient but the same content ends up recycled endlessly.

Sure phpbb is a little clunky but at least I can use it as a knowledgebase.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#417

Post by ceruleanscott »

adrianpike wrote: post #362
visualphoenix wrote: post #354

This both sucks and is great. Sucks for me. Hopefully will be great for Mattermost and Matrix. For HIPAA compliant shops Slack is a non-starter. Mattermost will hopefully get a lot of corporate $ now. I wish Matrix's dendrite[0] golang replacement homeserver was finished and in better shape. I'd much prefer to go the Riot/Matrix route, but it doesn't feel ready for prime time yet. HipChat Server was SPOF but could be…

Hey, can you elaborate a touch on the lack of HIPAA compliance with Slack? Some folks on my team seem to think it's compliant - and I'm not finding true hard answers either way (ignoring the BAA side of things)

Slack showcases the HIPAA logo on their security page, but upon closer inspection - https://slack.com/terms-of-service/supplement#healthcare - you'll see that unless you've signed a separate agreement with them, you acknowledge that Slack is not HIPAA compliant and that you are not to send them any PHI. My guess: they are signing BAAs for grid customers only (so the logo isn't a lie) and making them pay handsomely for the pleasure.

As I shamelessly disclosed upthread, we (Trillian) offer a HITRUST certified, BAA-backed solution for healthcare organizations that comes in SaaS and on-prem variants. More: https://trillian.im/uses/hipaa-compliant-texting/

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#418

Post by sumedh »

wuliwong wrote: post #265
karlkatzke wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use HipChat. It’s terrible, and it has been a frequent comment that having Slack would help us build better communication culture, because people avoid using hipchat (and use Skype or other platforms instead).

I don't think I've ever used HipChat. What don't you guys like about it?

> What don't you guys like about it?

You cannot edit comments in Hipchat. I can talk about other issues as well but not editing comments is a deal breaker for me.

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#419

Post by matchbok »

tabbott wrote: post #414
ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

Because just about every technical team needs the ability to do some sort of real-time communication, and Slack's UI is obviously better polished than the products that predate it (HipChat/IRC/etc). If you're looking for a product built by top MIT engineers who spent years thinking about how to make chat actually productive, check out Zulip. I'm one of those MIT engineers, and I agree that Slack is a huge waste of ti…

Someone finally gets it! This is exactly what I've seen as horrible as a Slack user. Zulip looks great!

Re: Slack Is Buying HipChat from Atlassian

#420

Post by darth_mastah »

mmanfrin wrote: post #196
ironjunkie wrote: post #165

When is this overhype for Slack going to stop? It is a chat application with a slightly improved UI like it existed 30 years ago. This is a step in corporate IT that I really cannot fully understand. It seems that every company//startup has to use slack nowadays to pretend to be cool again. Everytime I have a serious conversation about the productivity gains or losses of Slack though, it is pretty clear to me that it…

There are two camps: the we-should-just-use-irc camp, and the we-need-every-feature camp. You fall in to the former, and I would bet that a lot of people here fall in to the former. However, many people fall in to the latter, and Slack handily beats the competition there. There is also an element of having nice and polished features baked in that appeals to many people. Want it on your phone? There's an app. Want to…

I would agree with most of what you said except for the point about Linux and OSX. Yes, it used to be like that some 10+ years ago, but not anymore. However I can still find this myth repeated here and there nowadays. These days Linux works out of the box, with no more tweaking or settings up than what is required for OSX.
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