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

drewdevault.com

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

#81

Post by c-cube »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #12
cnst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't IRC support the registration of usernames?

No. Individual IRC server implementations might, but each implementation seems to be unique in how they handle it (maybe through a website, maybe through NickServ, maybe through AuthServ, maybe through yet another bot name, and login may or may not use the PASS command, etc.), and those implementations frequently have you jumping through brittle hoops to auth that break when you attempt to automate them due to timing…

https://ircv3.net/ solves that nicely.

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

#82

Post by unicornporn »

edoceo wrote: post #75
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…

It's built, it's called Mattermost and it's awesome, super flexible, full API, full control and very easy maintenance/upgrade path.

I much prefer https://about.riot.im/

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

#83

Post by lifthrasiir »

CameronNemo wrote: post #77
ddevault wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emojis, reaction gifs, ugh. https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IR...

Code fences, sane identity management.

The linked post explicitly mentions that code fences are downgraded to a "long message" link. Note that I've used a word "downgrade", because I don't think it is a good solution. Anything unable to tie additional data for a message to the message itself is not good, in my opinion.

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

#84

Post by unicornporn »

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.

+1. But the solution is not to succumb to Slack. Matrix and https://about.riot.im/ is what we should be looking at.

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

#85

Post by lifthrasiir »

c-cube wrote: post #79
trothamel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that it does. For a week or two about a year ago, freenode had a problem where accounts would join channel, spam links to sites accusing prominent people of child porn, and be kicked a moment later. If there's a channel mode that can stop that, while still keeping the channel useful for people who need support, I couldn't find it.

in my experience, even just setting +s to enforce TLS connections was enough to remove all spam.

In my experience of operating an IRC network, some channels hate to set +s because it hampers the channel's discoverability. Unlike +n, +s shouldn't be a norm.

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

#86

Post by lifthrasiir »

ddevault wrote: post #3

Funny to see this reposted today, as just today I encountered an open source project which primarily uses Discord for chat - a terrible idea for all the same reasons. I had planned on writing a similar follow-up article reminding people that Discord is a bad communication medium for open source projects, too. I think that this is something the community ought to be occasionally reminded of, lest we lapse.

I think this is a bit radical claim, but I would avoid any synchronous chatting platform for F/OSS development including IRC, it is simply not worth its cost.

IRC is commonly quoted to support the asynchronous mode of chatting but it is somewhat misleading: asynchronocity is embedded to the IRC community and not the protocol. If IRC the protocol were actually asynchronous we would have, for example, a better story for mobile clients by now. Probably Zulip is better at the asynchronous mode, I'm yet to try out.

Now it is another story when you consider your clueless end users, who see proprietary platforms as a norm and actively seek the synchronocity ("anybody out there?"). I think you should be in (some of) those platforms in that case, because it is practically more important to help your users. Or maybe not, if you know your users don't like synchronous chat or proprietary platforms anyway. Throughout my history of using IRC, it was most useful as a synchronous Q&A channel and an asynchronous community bookkeeper, both irrelevant to the IRC protocol itself. I don't see why we should pursue IRC further. (Now it is funny that I still operate my own IRC network!)

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

#87

Post by IshKebab »

philwelch wrote: post #76
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…

That makes IRC sound like a good tool for open source projects though. None of the negatives seem to apply to this scenario.

The lack of threading and image support is a pretty big issue to open source projects though. The lack of threading has always been annoying in IRC, and posting screenshots is very convenient and useful in Slack.

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

#88

Post by ahartmetz »

edoceo wrote: post #75
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…

It's built, it's called Mattermost and it's awesome, super flexible, full API, full control and very easy maintenance/upgrade path.

Mattermost is "open core".

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

#89

Post by chipperyman573 »

charlesdaniels wrote: post #66
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…

> 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. There are many solutions available to do this. Many channels publish chat logs publicly, which can be downloaded and searched using grep or your tool of choice. And there are web clients that can do this. > Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out ther…

All of the things you listed are true, and you and I and most other people on HN can respect why (at least to us) these reasons stand out from slack. But a middle manager who doesn't even know what IRC stands for isn't going to want to learn the syntax for grep. They're not even going to know why they have to write \" instead of ". They want something where you can scroll up, and then your messages from two months ago are there. And that's what slack is.

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

#90

Post by api_dolla »

charlesdaniels wrote: post #66
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…

> 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. There are many solutions available to do this. Many channels publish chat logs publicly, which can be downloaded and searched using grep or your tool of choice. And there are web clients that can do this. > Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out ther…

This reminds me so much of the ‘Show HN: Dropbox’ post
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