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

mattermost.org

181–190 of 222 posts

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

#181
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 is non-optimal for open source projects because each project will require you to have yet another Slack account. It also isn't IRC-like. With Gitter, you can be on multiple projects at once in one client UI.

So different use cases mean a different product might be better. Particularly if business concerns limit how one can use existing products.

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

#182
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah whatever happened to all of those?

Whatever happened to Basecamp itself? I used to hear about it all the time...

Last I heard they had 6 million active users (vs 1 million in 2012).

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

#183
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all companies track sprints by the hour. :) Dev times for AAA video games are in years, not months. After working for both web and game companies, I find the development mindset for each to be remarkably incompatible.

Have you noticed any other development differences between web and game companies? This would make a great blog post.

I've noticed one difference. Game companies locally are known as sweatshops. I've literally talked to their recruiters who laugh as they share stories about how some game dev. had his wife calling to ask if he could come home for a few hours because she hadn't seem him in a week.

They have this crazy idea called "crunch time" which seems to be the same thing as "all the time". Also, because so many people go into CS programs because they want to make games, game companies aren't forced to pay very high salaries.

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

#185
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many slack alternatives are coming up because slack is really good. It's that simple.

...and because so few people apparently realise that's Slack's value is in the quality execution, which can be copied by a decent team (but takes a phenomenal team to beat).

I don't find slack to be particularly well executed. It's often obvious that I'm dealing with a (poorly executed, laggy) html UI.

It's segfaulted in JavaScriptCore on my machine. So apparently they've managed to combine the performance of HTML with all the security of C++.

Their success seems to be mostly a matter of not being as enterprisey as hipchat and being less geeky than IRC.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean XMPP federation? Nobody wants to implement that because companies like Slack, Atlassian, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc are interested in lock-in primarily.

Lots of people -- in that list, even -- started with XMPP based systems. They all move away. At first, I also thought this was an open and shut case of interest in lock-in. Now, I'm not going to say that isn't true, but it's also worth considering that XMPP... just isn't that good. Having recently started working on a chat client that was intended to speak first-and-foremost XMPP, I have to admit: XMPP is... it's dec…

One thing I'm curious about regarding matrix.org:

As a federated protocol, is there anything at all in the spec that would discourage someone from piggy-backing on the federation to acquire initial users, goodwill and a head-start on features, and then locking users in once they've gained enough momentum by making proprietary modifications?

You know, the same tactic countless companies have pulled with XMPP?

I've been eyeing matrix.org for quite a while now, but it seems to still lack a "killer" client app. One that can at least match the features, polish, stability, usability and platform ubiquity of existing proprietary messaging apps, an app that can help matrix.org grow user mindshare and keep it.

The open source community just doesn't seem to do a very good job of churning out these kinds of consumer-oriented apps. And if some company ends up building such a "killer" app for matrix.org and gains momentum, they'd have some very sweet incentives to lock in their userbase.

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

#187
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unicorn" is probably the silliest term of the year. But it degrades to meaninglessness if you include Flickr, which sold to Yahoo! in 2005, for $20MM.

Wow, I got reamed out pretty hard for absent-minded use of a trendy term without thinking about it too much. In my mind Flickr is up there with the Instagrams and the Ubers of the world because it was a fucking amazing experience at the time. I never even considered the valuation, but Flickr was definitely unique in the UX it brought to the table. I think people forget what the landscape looked like then. Or maybe th…

Sorry, my comment wasn't meant to be snarky, but I can see how that's not clear.

I was just musing on the fact that (yes, I don't like the term, but also) "unicorn" was originally a label for startups with huge valuations, generally > $1B. It has mutated since then, but the idea that it would apply to Flickr seemed funny.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean XMPP federation? Nobody wants to implement that because companies like Slack, Atlassian, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc are interested in lock-in primarily.

Lots of people -- in that list, even -- started with XMPP based systems. They all move away. At first, I also thought this was an open and shut case of interest in lock-in. Now, I'm not going to say that isn't true, but it's also worth considering that XMPP... just isn't that good. Having recently started working on a chat client that was intended to speak first-and-foremost XMPP, I have to admit: XMPP is... it's dec…

Can't agree more. That's why we started our project with fresh and new protocol for messaging with implementing all required stuff in it's core, not extensions.

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

#189
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it's only being used for their scss files.

Slightly weird that they didn't use node's module for that (which uses the compiled sass), since the front end is a react application, and seems to use node for building.

I believe this is because they are using compass which is a ruby-based scss/sass framework.

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

#190
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…

That's because Slack is slow. There are even more lightweight open source Slack alternatives described here: http://browsingthenet.blogspot.com/2015/05/slack-is-so-slow-...
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