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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

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Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#201

Post by ParadisoShlee »

This is a good watershed moment for FOSS as a whole and I hope Mozilla decide to fork Mattermost or something similar and expand it to suit their needs over using Slack if that's the direction they head.

Something federated and encrypted like Matrix/Riot would be fun. Having something that's federated would be lovely to see other members of the FOSS community start to come together over time.

but there is a lot of problems with those rich text/react/Electron thick apps can be "painful" tho

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#202

Post by TheSwordsman »

solipsism wrote: post #199
TheSwordsman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned, in our community we have some deal with Slack so that we are paid (up to a point) and have full message history retention. Search can also go through all of those messages too. This is extremely valuable, and is a selling point for Slack if you can somehow get on to a paid plan without breaking the bank. But in my experience, many don't use the search anyhow. :P I'll admit, I don't know the full detai…

If people aren't using search, then message history retention isn't that important for you it seems. I would suggest that maybe your people are using email in situations where they'd like more permanence. This is common, and Slack is treated more like a hallway conversation. Hallway conversations are enormously valuable, but if you want a record of something or if you want to make sure it reaches everyone, you use em…

It is to me personally, as I use it to find answers to questions I don't know the answer to. At a minimum, I can point them to someone who had a similar problem in case they solved it.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#203

Post by progval »

mirkules wrote: post #146
norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

Once all the chat systems without persistence have disappeared, some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature. But seriously, I don’t understand why persistence is such a huge deal to people. Chat is for transient chat - it is meant to be non-persistent just like verbal communication. There are so many mechanisms for persistent messaging (forums, text message…

> some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature.

That's exactly Snapchat

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#204

Post by Frondo »

nickjj wrote: post #124
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, slack has seen exponential growth, while IRC was always available but rarely used. We have seen this before and we will see it again. If OSS wants to be widely used, it needs to take UI seriously, and not dismiss it as frivolous “eye-candy”. It’s ok so say ‘no, we are fine within our niche’. But then you don’t get to arrogantly explain to them how they are “taking one step forward, two back” by not embarking…

> while IRC was always available but rarely used. Freenode has about 85,000 people logged in right now and there's over 50,000 channels. I'm in a bunch of tech related channels and there's hundreds (or 1,000+) people in most of them. It's still active and has been for 15+ years. Freenode is just 1 IRC network of many too but it's where a lot of tech channels are set up. IRC is awesome. You can use it from a terminal…

IRC is rarely used compared to Slack, with its 10 million users.

I used it daily for decades, but let's not forget netsplits, nick collisions, zero log history (without a bouncer, and then you need a place to run a bouncer!), no file-sharing in a NAT world (dcc stopped working a loooong time ago), and no integration with any other apps, and on and on.

Don't get me wrong, I wish there was an open-source project that built a big group chat system that worked as well as slack and discord do, but it's a joke to say that irc is better than slack.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#205

Post by _m7bj »

hanniabu wrote: post #191
TheSwordsman wrote: post #33

As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn't a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren't able to get them to provide support around moderation of users. There is no mechanism…

Have you tried Discord? I seems like it would meet all these desires. We switched to it a year ago and it's been great.

Discord has aggressive security measures. I can't use it, because it won't let me access it from my desktop unless I give it a phone number. I guess it's decided I look like a headless browser or something.

Certainly I'd say discord is a poor fit for an organization allegedly dedicated to web freedoms, such as mozilla.

I'd suggest rocketchat or mattermost, personally. Well, to be honest I'd suggest IRC, but if that must be abandoned, rocketchat is pretty good.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#206

Post by TheSwordsman »

hanniabu wrote: post #188
TheSwordsman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Discord all the time; it's a mess. Its permissions model is complex and hard to reason about, obvious UX decisions in Slack that make for a good experience aren't present in Discord. Like being able to click on someone's name and go to the dedicated DM view for them. Discord is the one thing I dislike more than Slack, even if their backend tech is fucking stellar.

While their permission system takes some getting used to, once you understand how it works it's very easy and you really only need to setup up once. I also don't see it an issue not being able to click a user to go to DM. Not much more work right-clicking and selecting message, or any of the other options.

Seeing that the context menu that comes up has about 20 items, I can't personally agree.

Overall I hate using Discord and wish it was more like Slack in some ways. Better yet, take me back to the days of TeamSpeak when my Voice Chats had a Text Chat implicitly alongside it.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#207

Post by TheSwordsman »

hanniabu wrote: post #191
TheSwordsman wrote: post #33

As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn't a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren't able to get them to provide support around moderation of users. There is no mechanism…

Have you tried Discord? I seems like it would meet all these desires. We switched to it a year ago and it's been great.

I have another thread I commented on where I discuss Discord very briefly. Most times I used Discord I'm hella annoyed, Slack just has me slightly frustrated sometimes. To each their own, but the Discord UX doesn't do it for me.

That said, watching them migrate voice servers seamlessly between regions is fucking impressive, though. Kudos to them on that.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#208

Post by Frondo »

dTal wrote: post #109
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

Its worst problem is the inability to request scrollback from the server. I don't understand why that extension wasn't written, like, 20 years ago. You also need a "de facto official" client that includes a small list of default servers, and big friendly buttons for /JOIN and /PART - in fact the user should not be required to type a /COMMAND at any point.

Why even call it "part"? The word everyone's familiar with is "leave". "part" is already an irc jargon.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#209

Post by Frondo »

cf498 wrote: post #108
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, slack has seen exponential growth, while IRC was always available but rarely used. We have seen this before and we will see it again. If OSS wants to be widely used, it needs to take UI seriously, and not dismiss it as frivolous “eye-candy”. It’s ok so say ‘no, we are fine within our niche’. But then you don’t get to arrogantly explain to them how they are “taking one step forward, two back” by not embarking…

To be fair, it is "frivolous eye-candy”. But that doesnt change the fact that you are not going to reach the people which rank eye candy higher then functionality.

Much of the eye candy is functional, not frivolous anyway.

This is the false dichotomy.

Being able to apply slight styling to text is better than wrapping words in asterisks or underlines. Adding reactions and emojis is better than using punctuation to simulate it.

It's really common to confuse "what I'm used to" with "what's better" and I think that's especially happening here.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#210

Post by j_koreth »

neilv wrote: post #39

Freenode works for other open source projects. Mozilla might even be able to direct a little resources and governance influence their way. (If Freenode didn't work out, it was worth a try, and an easy move from irc.mozilla.org.)

Mozilla has some channels on freenode
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