Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#41

Post by briandear » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #38

t0mbstone wrote: post #13

Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like…

> Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. How the fuck did people come to think of this as a negative? One of the stupidest things about "modern" IT services is that the public interface is a user interface instead of a machine readable iterface, so you can't build a user interface that fits your needs or preferences, yo…

Instead of re-inventing the wheel building your own interface, why not just spend that time working on the FOSS project in question? FOSS dogma seems to frequently get in the way of FOSS development. If you aren’t pure and blessed, somehow you are less worthy.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#42

Post by birdyrooster » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

armitron wrote: post #10

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Discord?

Everything that's wrong with slack, and more. No IRC gateway. Developers are extremely hostile to 3rd party clients. Centralized control. Ownership of your data.

What do you mean by ownership of your data? 1) They own the storage by which the data resides and can dictate how the data is accessed 2) They own your IP

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#43

Post by t0mbstone » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

termau wrote: post #40

t0mbstone wrote: post #13

Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like…

Are you a Mac user?

I use OSX and Linux machines all day at work, and typically use Windows 10 at home (where I do more gaming, but also occasional software development). I'm comfortable on all the major operating systems. Why do you ask?

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#44

Post by briandear » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

navigatr wrote: post #31

PebblesHD wrote: post #14

My only issue with IRC as the alternative to Slack is that its really user hostile. Clients largely look like some 90s programmer’s idea of a chat tool, and as discussed, persistence and sharing files and things are extensions or hacks on top of the protocol. Without addressing these, IRC is going to remain the ‘underground’ tool it is at the moment, with little support from enterprise tools and other integration pro…

There are a dozen of cloud-based web apps that interface with IRC.

There is also Slack.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#45

Post by rumanator » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:12 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #23

t0mbstone wrote: post #13

Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like…

> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly.

> The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly.

After reading the article I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said.

The author lists a number of problems with Slack that in his opinion renders it "not a tool built for open source projects to use for communication with their userbase", and instead Slack is "a tool built for teams".

The author stresses that communicating with a community leads to entirely different usecases, and that "Slack has gone on record as saying that it cannot support this sort of use-case".

Afterwards, the author proposes IRC as a technology that mitigates some of the design problems that render Slack ill-suited for communicating with the userbase of open source projects.

The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#46

Post by termau » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:13 AM UTC

t0mbstone wrote: post #43

termau wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a Mac user?

I use OSX and Linux machines all day at work, and typically use Windows 10 at home (where I do more gaming, but also occasional software development). I'm comfortable on all the major operating systems. Why do you ask?

some of what you're complaining about the lack off do work, znc as a proxy allows playback, emoji's do work on some clients, figured you wouldnt be aware of this if you were on mac.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#47

Post by gizmo385 » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:16 AM UTC

armitron wrote: post #10

philliphaydon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Discord?

Everything that's wrong with slack, and more. No IRC gateway. Developers are extremely hostile to 3rd party clients. Centralized control. Ownership of your data.

> Developers are extremely hostile to 3rd party clients.

Example? As someone who has written a library to facilitate creating 3rd party bots, I've never seen anything to suggest this.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#48

Post by rumanator » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

freefal wrote: post #34

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the free slack plan, you don't get history beyond its 10k message limit (or whatever the number is), unless you start paying per head. Even on small teams, that limit is hit surprisingly quickly. For the medium-to-large sized open source project slacks -- the history is basically completely useless. Free slack is on par with IRC here -- you need someone nerdy enough to run a chat history bot to get a full searchab…

That's not necessarily true. If you're a certified non-profit, you can get free Slack with unlimited message history for up to 250 users ( https://slack.com/help/articles/204368833 ).

> for up to 250 users

The thesis defended in the article is that Slack is not suited to communicate with the userbase of open source projects.

Capping a basic feature such as collecting message history at 250 users is a limitation that supports the author's thesis, as clearly it demonstrate that Slack is unable to handle the communication needs of a moderately popular open source project.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#49

Post by kragen » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

why_only_15 wrote: post #39

I totally disagree with this article. IRC is incredibly user hostile and for even a technical user is intimidating, complex, and nonobvious. Everyone uses Slack or Discord, and everyone knows how they work, and the UI is easy. All the features that ddevault says are bad are things that almost everyone else cares about. I, for one, am thankful that more communities are moving off IRC.

> IRC is incredibly user hostile and for even a technical user is intimidating, complex, and nonobvious.

When I started using IRC in the 1990s it was full of college freshmen flirting. Most of them were not CS majors or otherwise technically adept. I really don't think it's "intimidating, complex, and nonobvious" in a way that makes people not use it. It just doesn't have images or history, that's all.

There are aspects of IRC that are nonobvious, but that's true of any software, including Slack (and, I assume, Discord), and you don't have to know them to start using it.

Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects (2015)

#50

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #45

chrisseaton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly.

> The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly. After reading the article I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said. The author lists a number of problems with Slack that in his opinion renders it "not a tool built for open source projects to use for communication with their userbase", and instead S…

> I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said

There's literally a section called 'Problems with IRC that Slack solves'. And there's no 'but...' at the end of that section. It's just a list of things Slack solves. Maybe that's why people want to use it? It solves their problems?

> The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all.

I think you've misread my comment or the thread. I wasn't providing a critique of their points... I was responding to the idea that they were equating them. They weren't - as you said, they have a list of ways they thinks IRC is better, and a list of ways they think Slack is better. So they weren't equating them.