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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)

#101

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

tom_mellior wrote: post #95
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> you can't innovate features independently That's also the case with open protocols like IRC. Sure you can write an IRC client with reaction emoji support, and it will look great in your client, and anyone using a different client will just see garbage metadata. You can only innovate by getting "everyone" to agree on a new standard, and that's hard.

> That's also the case with open protocols like IRC.

No, it's not.

> Sure you can write an IRC client with reaction emoji support, and it will look great in your client, and anyone using a different client will just see garbage metadata.

Then you are bad at protocol design.

> You can only innovate by getting "everyone" to agree on a new standard, and that's hard.

No, you innovate by being backwards compatible with established standards.

Now, maybe IRC has reached the limits of its flexibility and should be replaced, I dunno, but the idea that it is somehow impossible to evolve protocols incrementally with partial adoption of new features is just bullshit.

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

#102

Post by Bnshsysjab »

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…

Riot seemed reeeeally clunky when I tried it, which is a shame because I’m sure it’d be a decent codebase

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

#104

Post by iserlohnmage »

_sharp wrote: post #18

I've used RocketChat at a previous company, basically a clone of slack. I didn't have to manage it, but it seemed to work great.

We use rocket chat in uni to communicate with team members for project, I think it is good enough for this purpose.

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

#105

Post by heavenlyblue »

IshKebab wrote: post #87
philwelch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For all of the points made towards Slack here, let’s remind everyone here that none of the open source projects actually use Slack.

The only useful software to get any sorts of real-time support from the community is Matrix. Nobody uses Slack in open-source simply because you can’t allow unregistered users to ask questions on public channels.

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

#106

Post by oytis »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #89
charlesdaniels wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ag…

Yeah, but the original point was about FOSS projects. Just don't let managers into your FOSS project.

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

#107

Post by ptman »

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…

Mattermost is open core, please avoid.

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

#108

Post by pbui »

me551ah wrote: post #69
pbui wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife uses thelounge (self-hosted instance) as a progressive web application on her Android phone. It supports push notifications and file uploads. Before this, she used IRC Cloud, which also has a convenient mobile application with those features. As for myself, I use Weechat-Android (for about 6 years now) and am very happy with that on my Android phone. It uses a websocket with SSL, so I get notifications and it…

IRC cloud is paid with a monthly subscription right? Are you using weechat as a relay for the Android client or is it a standalone irc client? Cause to receive notifications a websocket will still have to be always connected.

> IRC cloud is paid with a monthly subscription right?

That is correct, although there is a free tier, which my wife used for a while. The only major downside to the free tier is that IRC Cloud disconnects after two hours of idle activity.

> Are you using weechat as a relay for the Android client or is it a standalone irc client? Cause to receive notifications a websocket will still have to be always connected.

The former. I have a weechat instance (it is a terminal IRC client) on a VPS (the same one also running my wife's instance of thelounge) that I normally use when I'm on my laptop. On my phone, I use Weechat-Android as a relay client to the weechat instance. So the websocket connection on my phone talks to my weechat relay. Fortunately, Weechat-Android handles connecting and disconnecting seemlessly, and I don't have a problem with notifications.

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

#109

Post by ptman »

locusofself wrote: post #62

I do like IRCCloud, and use it often. But it's not Slack. Slack is one of those things that seems sortof dumb and simple but it just isn't. They've built a very compelling set of features that many of us now just take for granted. Mattermost is the closest 'freemium' alternative to Slack I've seen.

Have you looked at matrix.org/riot.im?

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

#110

Post by namibj »

ptman wrote: post #107
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…

Mattermost is open core, please avoid.

Do you have a like for a more detailed/specific reasoning against mattermost in particular? I might want to throw it at some grassroots instance in an attempt to get rid of it/user's acceptance of it.
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