Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

Are there any plans to support multiple teams / multiple servers from the native client? This is a particularly acute pain point on mobile; I'm reluctant to promote any tool that requires me to be logged in to only one project's instance of the tool at a time, because if it works well, it gets adopted for other projects, and then I'm having to juggle clients. I am unfortunately on two projects that use HipChat, and even there it's a huge pain that I can't be logged in to both simultaneously on my phone. (Some of their desktop apps finally support multiteam which is a huge help, but I still have to pick just one to participate in on mobile..)

Slack isn't perfect, but at least all the native clients will let me be logged in to 5 teams at the same time. (And no, opening multiple browser tabs is not an appropriate solution - it doesn't work at all on iOS, for example.) And obviously, this is something IRC does a great job of as well.

That anyone find it hard to use is flabbergasting to me as it is a matter of opening a client, entering a nick and selecting server. With the web IRC clients it's even easier I guess.

I still hang out in several of the channels from my early days :)

He reported they saw about a 10x increase in users moving to Slack (100 -> 1,000). (https://twitter.com/HypertextRanch/status/627122747664113664)

I get the arguments about not using it, but my priority is providing the best tools to the community to enable them to work together productively, as well as providing the most effective forum to encourage more people to get involved. How can I ignore that sort of order of magnitude increase in the number of people who can engage in real-time with the project?

Main reason being: Slack is a company and as such they can change their policy at any time. There isn't any specific right granting FOSS projects any status. Slack can ban the users they want, can deny access to accounts they want, they can be sold to other companies and can be bankrupted, bring it all crashing down.

Slack isn't a tool, it's a service. It's not in any way whatsoever like a debugger or IDE, even if those may be closed source. A tool is something you have and can use. You might not own its manufacturing but you own its potential use. Like a hammer you didn't make but is yours to do anything with. You can use it a million times if you want.

Slack is someone else's hammer that you pay to use. That's a service. The fact that they allowed you to use it for free for some undefined period of time doesn't mean you own it or dictate any rule of its use. It's still their hammer. They can stop you from using it at any point in time.

FOSS projects are supposed to be inclusive, open, transparent and fully decided by an owner or a community. Giving away control to a third party with no contract whatsoever is a terrible idea and a good way to break many of those premises.

Slack is being used for FOSS because of the failings of IRC noted by others in this thread, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Certainly not when the audience for Open Source is already very accustomed to IRC.

Slack is great for the turnkey solution it is, it offloads that IRC configuration you'd have to do, and it's easier to introduce non-technical people to. It's good for paying customers that have a clear contract with the company and as such gain certain rights. It's not, in any way, ideal for other cases. It might fit them, but it's not a great idea.

The "IRC Features" section bugs me, too. Unless you run a private IRC server IRC has a long, tortured history of design-based security difficulties. Gone are the days of netsplits permanently owning channels, but the so called "distributed" design of IRC makes it very brittle and easy to deny service.

Oh, and did you know that with modest, low volume channels (>200 Slack also offers a logging service that, for what it's worth, is configured correctly and secured by default. For organizations with 1-3 technical staff, maintaining and securing a reasonable approximation of Slack's feature is probably time better spent working on your product.

IRC is a classic example of the "it's broke but we don't fix it because it's familiar" mentality of old school services. While it may be a good choice for running low-volume (But if you're genuinely concerned about security, HipChat will sell you a whitelabel product you can host and monitor and its setup is quite good for what it is.