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Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

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Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#151

Post by sigstoat »

cornholio wrote: post #68
jbob2000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most accessible users use JAWS on windows. I focus on accessibility a lot for my job. In fact, we have an entire department dedicated to accessibility design, implementation, and testing. The reason why accessible users use JAWS is that it works across the entire OS and all the programs you have installed; start menu, PowerPoint, web browser, control panel, Google, etc. etc. The problem with the native accessibility…

I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. What is their moat, what exactly does it offer that it's impossible to replicate using existing libraries and APIs?

> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard.

my recollection from speaking to a blind acquaintance is that it is subsidized by some government agency for personal use, and businesses buying it for blind employees are just stuck with it as an ADA thing.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#152

Post by hillna »

cyphar wrote: post #70
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

Is there a weechat plugin for Matrix that currently supports e2e encryption? Last I checked, it was using an older version of the encryption that was not compatible with recent Matrix servers.

I would love to use weechat for Matrix, as I'm not a big fan of the Riot client.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#153

Post by omeid2 »

s_dev wrote: post #36
pc2g4d wrote: post #8

Of course they do. This is exactly the path Google took. Once you achieve enough power in the market, you can throw open protocols overboard. It's a symptom of the centralized world the internet has become.

My understanding was Google supported XMPP until a few companies including Microsoft only allowed their integrations one way and then abandoned it as they felt they were opening themselves up to being exploited rather than pushing an open standard.

They could have made two-way integrations mandatory and block organizations who did not comply.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#154

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

dennisdamenace wrote: post #105
aw3c2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did everyone expect? Slack is a proprietary protocol created to make money on its proprietary service. I am glad they are making it more closed as then maybe more people realise that centralising your communications on top a VC funded, for-profit company is not a good idea.

Why is it a bad idea? And I doubt _any_ business has centralized their communications with Slack. I’m sure they are still using phones, and email and face to face communication.

Unfortunately, a lot of startups - including successful ones - do use slack to mitigate the need for email, phone, and in-person communication. It baffles the mind but I think it speaks to the relative naivete and inexperience many managers at startups have when it comes to communication in the workplace.

Every time I have seen Slack as the primary communication vessel, I have seen a company that fails to ship on time and has a hard time with knowledge sharing. The medium is the message!

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#155

Post by jhasse »

nopacience wrote: post #93
nopacience wrote: post #32

Slack was fine, now it is time to move back to IRC. Some people like slack or telegram because they provide an API for BOTs. Something IRC has been open to since the begining. Non power users might have trouble using IRC with the usual clients (mIRC/irssi/bitchx). Today a family member, not technical and 60+yrs asked about "that tool" that is like whatsapp however it allows users that just joined a group to read old…

Besides that, if slack had IRC enabled and e2e you would be able to connect via IRC and actually verify that e2e is doing its job (ie. connect via irc and see scrambled texts). One problem with all these closed client apps slack (with this update)/whatsapp/telegram is that there is no way to verify/audit it is actually doing proper e2e. Users must trust the X company that they are really doing proper e2e. These apps…

Telegram's client is open-source.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#156

Post by j45 »

I remember mIRC at this moment. It let an entirely new internet generation connect easier, compared to the chat clients of its' day.

Slack still strikes me as a modernized IRC client at heart. Today's IRC client. Discovered by a new internet generation with today's integration trimmings.

Let's look at IRC rooted technologies as waves of improvement for a moment. Platforms are guaranteed to come and go, no matter how big. Protocols seem to survive.

The need to chat will remain. Protocols like XMPP are important for this reason. Developing XMPP quickly as private protocol builds should be a worthwhile undertaking. XMPP innovation is something I should go learn about more, though.

No one platform can be the entire ecosystem. They all try. Maybe it's vanity, or a little insulting to create digital wells of content that the odds say will shut down one day.

A step like disconnecting is a challenge for that reason. It will invite lots of people to look elsewhere, trying to find how it should be.

It's not unreasonable to provide a limited subset of messaging features with via IRC/XMPP. It doesn't seem unreasonable to improve XMPP itself either.

I'm perfectly comfortable with a business strategy argument and wonder if Slack isn't looking long enough. Taking a 50-year vision might actually be better if something like XMPP interoperability and evolution remained to outlast everyone. Leaving the garden nicer than you found it, when possible, isn't always a bad thing.

Due to this walling of gardens, my phone has no less than 8 or 10 chat apps silo's I can't avoid. (Skype, Hangouts, WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, Messenger, etc.). To all chat visionaries, none of you are that important. I would replace you all in a heartbeat with something that had a longer shelf life.

The tech that keeps integration and interoperability are the ones that I care about most.

Tools like Pidgin or Trillian connected the worlds of MSN Messenger, ICQ, aim and IRC. Connection and connectedness is blissful for a reason - including across platforms.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#157

Post by cyphar »

dfabulich wrote: post #126
cyphar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are open protocols like Matrix which are superior to Slack in that they are decentralised, have support for full e2e encryption, entirely self-hostable, don't store your data outside of the home-servers used for communication, etc. Riot is a perfectly fine client (looks just like every other chat application), and there are weechat plugins as well as native applications as well. Open protocols exist, and people…

Slack initially integrated with IRC and XMPP because they were more popular than Slack. Now that Slack is much bigger than all IRC and XMPP traffic combined, the integration is no longer worth its weight in code. If Matrix were overwhelmingly more popular than Slack, they would integrate with Matrix. But Matrix isn't more popular than Slack. (Matrix isn't even as popular as IRC, despite being a better product than IR…

Matrix has Slack bridges, so "integration with Slack" isn't a problem from the Matrix side. But more importantly, I wasn't suggesting that Slack should integrate with Matrix, it was that open protocols do exist and some are better than Slack in specific ways.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#159

Post by anglebracket »

dangom wrote: post #148
zeveb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just use emacs-slack[0]; my entire emacs usage is currently a fraction of yours. On X, this means emacs-slack displays images, emoji &c. just like the web or pseudo-native clients do. [0] https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack

I guess this is about to break because of the current announcement?

I don't believe so. emacs-slack uses their official OAuth2 + Websocket integration https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack#how-to-get-token-the-...
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