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Chatto is now open source

hmans.dev

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Re: Chatto is now open source

#71

Post by well_ackshually »

Quitschquat wrote: post #63
Cyberdog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you read that here? I came back yesterday after a hiatus and I’ve been dismayed how many posts are just “yeah, I just run Claude all day” without a hint of embarrassment or shame.

I run Claude all day, and produced some good shit, but I'll admit to being thoroughly embarrassed that I haven't looked at it all, won't make it public, won't put my name on it, won't pick a license. I'm depressed about the whole thing and might take it up with a therapist. My eyes are still rolling from GP's comment: > he single-handedly developed it by leveraging agentic coding

>he single-handedly developed it by leveraging agentic coding

so, unmaintained in a year because the sole developer got bored/didn't make money from it/burned out ?

Great, I'll run my entire company on it!

Re: Chatto is now open source

#74

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

jacobgold wrote: post #68

The fundamental problem with replacing Slack is network effects. Your coworkers and customers already use Slack. It works well enough. You can choose to switch your company away, maybe, but what do you do when vendors want to connect over Slack? Imagine if email was owned by a company? Edit: W̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶.̶ We really need an open protocol to win…

Matrix seems like a decent enough open protocol for a Slack replacement, with XMPP/IRC/IRCv3 being more useful for bare-bones chat transport.

This Chatto thing unfortunately uses a Protobuf custom API and is explicitly anti-compatibility with other systems. The lack of interoperability may end up killing it, unless the experience is much better than everything else.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#75

Post by nyc_pizzadev »

ricardobeat wrote: post #39
simonw wrote: post #22

What's the rationale for the dual licensing? It looks like the Go backend is AGPL but the TypeScript frontend is Apache 2.0. Why not keep it all AGPL?

AGPL stops others from running a competing cloud service using the Go backend. It does nothing for the frontend except scare off enterprise users.

You can totally run AGPL code as a service. You can run it as a service unmodified or if you modify it, you just need to make the source available.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#76

Post by PaulRobinson »

jacobgold wrote: post #68

The fundamental problem with replacing Slack is network effects. Your coworkers and customers already use Slack. It works well enough. You can choose to switch your company away, maybe, but what do you do when vendors want to connect over Slack? Imagine if email was owned by a company? Edit: W̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶.̶ We really need an open protocol to win…

Like XMPP?

Or, perhaps the asynch chat thing is a distraction and we need something asynchronous that's well proven. Like... email?

Slack should never have been a thing IMHO. I remember first using it at a startup I was CTO of at the behest of the CEO ("everyone is using it"), back in around 2013. Instantly hated it. Just wish we could go back to good old email, TBH.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#77

Post by ori_b »

mertbio wrote: post #9

I’ve known Hendrik for years, and he is one of the most talented developers I’ve ever met. I’m confident this project will become successful very quickly. Beyond the project itself, what fascinates me most is how he single-handedly developed it by leveraging agentic coding.

[flagged]

Re: Chatto is now open source

#78

Post by malwrar »

jacobgold wrote: post #68

The fundamental problem with replacing Slack is network effects. Your coworkers and customers already use Slack. It works well enough. You can choose to switch your company away, maybe, but what do you do when vendors want to connect over Slack? Imagine if email was owned by a company? Edit: W̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶.̶ We really need an open protocol to win…

> We really need an open protocol to build on.

I’d bet making a slack-compatible client or bridge isn’t hard, we all just instinctively know whoever develops it is going to get sued or taken down.

It feels like we quietly gave up on adversarial interoperability awhile ago, and act like we need a whole separate “open walled garden” when what we actually need are legal protections that prevent companies from suing/banning people who call their APIs. Slack, Facebook, etc, are walled gardens only because they can ban/sue people who compete with their client experience.

I figure that will probably never happen in the US (maybe if someone rich starts it), but eventually someone outside of it will make such an adversarial integration and host it from some region that doesn’t care about US laws. Then, when they get away with it, we’ll all praise them as a genius and wonder how Slack could exist at all. The US has many international agreements keeping this illusion alive, but my guess is that even formerly stable markets like Europe could spawn such work if they decide to stop caring about ~1990s-2010s era contempt-of-business-model US laws.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#79

Post by nine_k »

jacobgold wrote: post #68

The fundamental problem with replacing Slack is network effects. Your coworkers and customers already use Slack. It works well enough. You can choose to switch your company away, maybe, but what do you do when vendors want to connect over Slack? Imagine if email was owned by a company? Edit: W̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶.̶ We really need an open protocol to win…

But the point here is that you don't want the network effects. You want a chat server for people you know and explicitly invite, for a specific purpose, under your control. Maybe you want the data to never leave your colocated box and your VPN, and your server to have no public presence at all.

There are things that Slack cannot easily offer.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#80

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Cyberdog wrote: post #40
budsniffer952 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you sure you read that here? I came back yesterday after a hiatus and I’ve been dismayed how many posts are just “yeah, I just run Claude all day” without a hint of embarrassment or shame.

I run Claude when it isn't broken, I run Opencode the rest of the time. I probably haven't written a line of code in months.
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