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Chatto is now open source

hmans.dev

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Re: Chatto is now open source

#131

Post by beart »

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…

There is an audience for this, and it's me and my friends.

I have a small group of close friends. We are on discord just about every day, but we really don't bother with anyone outside our group, other than the very occasional invitation to another friend/coworker to join for some games.

We don't care about network effect, social media features, engagement, etc. We just want a well made application for private text, voice, and video that we never have to actually think about.

And no, matrix is not that.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#132

Post by sfink »

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.

Then it's good that it allows both modification and using it to run a business?

> This “users are obligated ‘give back’ the moment they make money with the gift they were given” is nonsense

But they are under no such obligation! They can make all the money they want and give nothing back. They can even modify the software to better serve their business. The only restriction is that if they do so, they have to make their modifications available. Which means they're way ahead of where they were before being given the initial software; why do you feel a software developer who decides to give the world a gift should be restricted in what gift they're giving? "Thanks for the chocolate, but the bar was too small so I didn't have enough left over for my kid to try some. Why do you hate my kid?"

> A business making money using free software doesn’t take anything away from the releasing organization.

First, that is false. They could damage the market for the original software. (And if they don't modify the software, then there's no problem in the first place.)

Second, why are you so hung up on the "making money" part, when that is explicitly allowed by the AGPL? It's just kind of bizarre -- it's a license that says over and over that you can charge for everything related to it, and you're complaining about it being hostile to people who want to charge money for things.

Thinking about it, I'm wondering if this is genuine confusion and you don't know what the AGPL is? If so, maybe start by searching for "charge" in https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html . It has nothing against "using it to run [a] business". There is no "moment they make money with the gift" that changes anything: you are explicitly allowed to charge for anything you like -- distribution, usage of the service, support, whatever.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#134

Post by tadfisher »

czottmann wrote: post #81
OhSoHumble wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is super cool. More options is always good. Something that is confusing about the docs though... is there a desktop application? The screenshot implies there is but I couldn't find the docs to download THAT.

It's a first-class PWA currently but no native desktop apps yet.

Sounds like something I could finally build with Kotlin Multiplatform...

Re: Chatto is now open source

#135

Post by zetanor »

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.

AGPL gives you the same FSF freedoms as GPL or as any other free license, but it does come with an additional responsibility to the end users, not from the end users. AGPL is not in any way uniquely qualifiable as "a EULA". Every single software license, of course, requires you to agree to the license, hence the name. If you put nothing private in the code, AGPL will not impact your privacy. If anything, AGPL helps assure end users that their privacy is being respected.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#136

Post by beart »

What would be really awesome is some sort of feature where, once self hosted, I can generate a package or link that will download + install + pre-configure the login. Basically a bespoke installer/setup script. that can be linked to a particular person. The goal being to make onboarding as frictionless as possible. This could have some security implications maybe (the link is shared by mistake), but for a small self-hosted instance, that seems like something that could be mitigated fairly easily. Maybe only works with local accounts or something.

That would really make it easy to send a friend a link, "hey come chat with me", without having to worry about a response such as, "I'm already on discord, I don't want to set up all that stuff".

Re: Chatto is now open source

#137

Post by nine_k »

jacobgold wrote: post #100
nine_k wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You want the open protocol to have network effects, not a proprietary company's product. Email worked out pretty well, while IRC failed for reasons that are probably correctable.

Open protocols are great. The software in question is OSS.

But this software is not for expanding the audience, it's for limiting it, and their exposure. Much like Tailscale is not for extending your network with more nodes that can freely join, but for limiting it to a private subset you trust.

Re: Chatto is now open source

#138

Post by fatty_patty89 »

well_ackshually wrote: post #128
fatty_patty89 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you ok? what do you need constant updates for on a self hosted chat server/client? it already looks like it has most of the features

"why would you need features on the thing on which the vast majority of your company's interactions and unofficial note keeping and knowledge building is happening" is a fun question to ask, when the project in question doesn't have bot actions or webhooks.

just implement them yourself if you need that, takes a few tokens

Re: Chatto is now open source

#139

Post by veverkap »

czottmann wrote: post #86
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.

I second that. I've personally known him for almost 30 years by now, and he's still one of the smartest, most experienced, and most curious devs I've ever met. All around good guy, would work with him again any day of the week.

I've never met Hendrik but the code looks cool :)

Re: Chatto is now open source

#140

Post by anonym29 »

duttish wrote: post #127

A thought if you want to sell to companies, "with per-user keys that get shredded when a user decides to delete their account." You'll need soft delete, work messages belong to the employer and not the user.

Employers may not be the target audience.
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