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Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

mattermost.org

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Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#11

Post by mijoharas »

vishaldpatel wrote: post #4

Will there be plugin support so teams can share their add-ons?

Agreed, without a list of the features, or something to show what useability is like (does it support markdown? code highlighting? e.t.c.) it's tough to evaluate it.

Kudos to them for open sourcing it. It does look nice in the small pictures they have of it.

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#12

Post by Dowwie »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #7

> Teams who can’t use SaaS rely on cryptic, decades-old technologies. As an example, the US Army uses myIRC to order missile strikes "myIRC" doesn't exist. The name of the protocol is IRC. The name of a popular Windows client is mIRC. WikiLeaks called their leak "mIRC logs," which is where this trope came from. The United States military (not just the Army) uses Internet Relay Chat for a whole lot of C2. It runs on a…

How many open source slack alternatives before someone writes one that actually utilizes the IRC protocol?

Is there a defensible argument against using IRC?

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#13

Post by jsmthrowaway »

volent wrote: post #5

I don't really get why there is so many Slack alternatives coming up these days. On every post like this there is tons of comment linking to other Slack alternatives, it's not like this is gonna be _the_ Slack-alternative. Here is a non exhaustive list : RocketChat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624737 Let's Chat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040841 Friends : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94…

Slack's success inspires derivatives and, in this case, a direct copy. Review the screenshots.

Before you get excited about Mattermost as the hosted Slack you've been waiting for, think hard about the AGPL licensing.

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#14

Post by vidarh »

Dowwie wrote: post #12
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #7

> Teams who can’t use SaaS rely on cryptic, decades-old technologies. As an example, the US Army uses myIRC to order missile strikes "myIRC" doesn't exist. The name of the protocol is IRC. The name of a popular Windows client is mIRC. WikiLeaks called their leak "mIRC logs," which is where this trope came from. The United States military (not just the Army) uses Internet Relay Chat for a whole lot of C2. It runs on a…

How many open source slack alternatives before someone writes one that actually utilizes the IRC protocol? Is there a defensible argument against using IRC?

The IRC protocol isn't pretty, and there are plenty of incompatible server implementations, but if you're controlling both the server end and the client end it's certainly where I'd start. My first thought when I saw Slack was "someone did a pretty web irc client finally, cool" (I have no idea if they use irc internally? but it seemed such a direct match)

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#15

Post by TeMPOraL »

Dowwie wrote: post #12
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #7

> Teams who can’t use SaaS rely on cryptic, decades-old technologies. As an example, the US Army uses myIRC to order missile strikes "myIRC" doesn't exist. The name of the protocol is IRC. The name of a popular Windows client is mIRC. WikiLeaks called their leak "mIRC logs," which is where this trope came from. The United States military (not just the Army) uses Internet Relay Chat for a whole lot of C2. It runs on a…

How many open source slack alternatives before someone writes one that actually utilizes the IRC protocol? Is there a defensible argument against using IRC?

This is my biggest problem with Slack. It's a cool product that could have been built over IRC. But no, they had to create their own walled garden.

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#17

Post by tracker1 »

One thing I really like and appreciate is that there's a dockerfile right in the root of the project, which makes spinning up a container a relatively nice experience... haven't run it or looked into the code though... that just struck out at me...

Looking at the dockerfile, it seems pretty big, and it also strikes me slightly that they have dependencies on node, ruby and go, along with mysql and redis. The UI appears to be react based.. not sure what's running in ruby.

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#18

Post by nzseth »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #13
volent wrote: post #5

I don't really get why there is so many Slack alternatives coming up these days. On every post like this there is tons of comment linking to other Slack alternatives, it's not like this is gonna be _the_ Slack-alternative. Here is a non exhaustive list : RocketChat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624737 Let's Chat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040841 Friends : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94…

Slack's success inspires derivatives and, in this case, a direct copy. Review the screenshots. Before you get excited about Mattermost as the hosted Slack you've been waiting for, think hard about the AGPL licensing.

Why would that be a problem?

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#19

Post by robmccoll »

volent wrote: post #5

I don't really get why there is so many Slack alternatives coming up these days. On every post like this there is tons of comment linking to other Slack alternatives, it's not like this is gonna be _the_ Slack-alternative. Here is a non exhaustive list : RocketChat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624737 Let's Chat : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040841 Friends : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94…

Does anyone know if these or any others have native desktop and/or mobile clients?

Re: Mattermost: Open-source, on-premises, Slack alternative

#20

Post by jsmthrowaway »

nzseth wrote: post #18
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack's success inspires derivatives and, in this case, a direct copy. Review the screenshots. Before you get excited about Mattermost as the hosted Slack you've been waiting for, think hard about the AGPL licensing.

Why would that be a problem?

I haven't worked for a company in four years that permits the installation of AGPL software because the ramifications are still unclear and largely untested. MongoDB asserts, for example, that just using MongoDB doesn't require you to do anything, even though the license text is in clear contradiction to the assertion. I do not think MongoDB understands its own license.

Chris DiBona has spoken in public about Google's reasons, but he was kind. I cannot discuss other experience I have publicly, so I'd simply suggest doing some research on the large unknowns in deployment of AGPL software underneath a proprietary Web service somewhere, and then think about all the integrations you'd wire up to something like a Slack derivative.

I am not a lawyer and would strongly suggest consulting one before using AGPL software anywhere in your infrastructure, at all.

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