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Chatto is now open source

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Re: Chatto is now open source

#111

Post by JoshTriplett »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #76
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.

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

Real-time chat is, in fact, useful, and a separate product from email. The fact that you don't want to use it does not change the fact that others do.

I use Zulip and Signal extensively, and I use email occasionally, and none of them fully replace the use cases of the others.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#112

Post by raaron773 »

Chatto aims to be the group chat application that you actually enjoy using. You’re probably familiar with the one that rhymes with “knack”, or the one that rhymes with “beams”, or the one that rhymes with “this gourd”.

Lol I like this

Re: Chatto is now open source

#113

Post by IshKebab »

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…

I don't think network effects affect the vast majority of Slack usage. Slack and Teams are mostly used as internal company communication and that is dictated from above. If a company wants to switch to Chatto their IT department will just tell all employees to do that, and job done.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#116

Post by sneak »

zetanor wrote: post #109
sneak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Nobody is prohibiting you from using modified AGPL software to run your business.

That’s simply not true, and you know it. Violating my privacy with a EULA is the issue there. It’s ok to put a EULA on software, but to pretend it’s still free software is the dishonest part.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#117

Post by overfeed »

sneak wrote: post #103
goodroot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backend under AGPL prevents someone hosting it as a service. AGPL specifies that hosting _is_ distribution. Therefore, anyone hosting it must do so with public code. This provides a soft form of exclusivity to run their own Cloud. A frontend, permitting customizability, white-labeling, and so on, makes more sense to be more permissive. Grafana is a solid example to illustrate why. Moved from Apache to AGPLv3 in 2021…

[flagged]

> Prohibiting a user of your software from modifying it and using it to run their business goes against both freedoms 0 and 1.

It does not prohibit modifications - it just demands that those who exercise the freedoms share their modifications under the same license, and most businesses balk at that.

> The anti-commerce bent of a subset of the free software zealots hate business so much...

The root of the problem is actually the anti-free-software bent that business zealots have, because they want to be able take code for free and make money off of it without giving any of their changes back under the same terms; open-source contributors are not suckers to be exploited. Things would be so much better if the moochers weren't trying to capture all of the value downstream of other people's work, but just some or even most of it.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#118

Post by sneak »

ineptech wrote: post #108
sneak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Prohibiting a user of your software from modifying it and using it to run their business I don't think it does that, it prohibits them from modifying it and then using that mod to fork users away from the original software, aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Running a SaaS does not “fork users away”. You can’t fork a SaaS because services are not software and software are not services.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#119

Post by goodroot »

sneak wrote: post #116
zetanor wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is prohibiting you from using modified AGPL software to run your business.

That’s simply not true, and you know it. Violating my privacy with a EULA is the issue there. It’s ok to put a EULA on software, but to pretend it’s still free software is the dishonest part.

Something missing is you can absolutely host your own private instance.

The trigger happens when someone interacts with your code over a network, such as in the context of a SaaS product.

The line is when you try to profit off of someone else's work that it becomes "not free".

Also, not free simply means it needs to be in public.

This is so that any additive features that you construct can be taken back by the original maintainers. Thus, you have no competitive advantage.

If you wanted to, through marketing or similar, compete with them, you are more than welcome, but it would be with feature parity.

I'm not so sure this very fair compromise warrants your rhetoric.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#120

Post by ori_b »

urbandw311er wrote: post #110
ori_b wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well that’s just snarky and not very nice. The guy has 30 years experience as a dev according to a sibling comment so it’s not as though it’s some vibe coded junk. Why do you believe a good dev can’t use AI to assist in writing great code?

I'm not interested supporting in anyone who is willing to build on stolen property just so that we can accelerate enshittification and damage the environment. When the AI companies pay artists for their training material, stop building gas pipelines directly to data centers, and work on putting UBI in place before they try to replace all white collar labour, it may be worth revisiting.

There's a reason that believing AI is bringing a better world is a more fringe position than believing in telekinesis. The AI companies are strip-mining the commons, and leaving the world worse off for it.

Edit: it's interesting watching the votes on this bounce up and down between the people inside and outside of the pro-ai fringe react.

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