Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading • Hacker News Board

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#151

Post by degenerate » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #137

skrowl wrote: post #100

I know it's marketed to gamers, but if you're looking for a free Slack alternative check out discordapp.com. It's pretty great. It supports bots, so you can easily integrate your git / trello / etc.

Problem with Discord is that unlike project targeted to corporate customers it's might break APIs hard or change UI without notice or enforce whatever weird rule they desire. Also they burning VC money and don't yet have proven business model so investing time in adopting it for non-gaming seems like strange decision.

Agree, they are throwing piles and piles of money into their cloud costs, and now they have implemented screen sharing too... a much requested feature to put them in a Skype-kill positon. The free money is going to dry up eventually, and how they lock it down and pivot to start making money is still unknown.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#152

Post by zingmars » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

tabbott wrote: post #124

zingmars wrote: post #74

I love Zulip. I really wish other IM clients implemented functionality similar to Zulip's threading. It allows for easily filtering converstations and makes reading history that much easier. That said, what Zulip lacks right now is polish. Server installation for example is a mess. You basically need a dedicated Debian machine to install it. There is a docker image that I'm using, but it's rather unstable (if I will…

Thanks for the feedback! I agree with some of these complaints (e.g. I very much wanted to fix the push notification registration process in this release), but I'd like to clarify a few things: * Needing an SSL certificate should not really be a barrier. We now have an installer option to use Certbot which works great if you're on the public Internet, and if you're not, we have simple instructions for creating a self…

Oh my bad then. I don't know why I though it was a Cordova app. Might have been because our last chat provider had one and I was mixing them up. My problem with search is that it doesn't find URLs. I think it was reported already, but I will check anyway.

Re: Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

#153

Post by zestyping » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

tabbott wrote: post #60

zestyping wrote: post #33

It's really hard to get a sense of how Zulip works without any screenshots or videos anywhere on zulip.org, just general descriptions like "the world's most productive group chat" and "email threading model." The fastest way to find out how it works is to go to https://chat.zulip.org/accounts/login/ and click "Log in with GitHub". They really need to make that path easier to find.

We're definitely planning to provide a slick explanation on zulipchat.com. Using chat.zulip.org is helpful, especially if you visit a day later and read the message history; since you really only experience Zulip's magic properly when catching up on a bunch of unread messages (the `n` hotkey in particular is super great). That said, https://zulipchat.com/features has a screenshot; and https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/…

That screenshot shows nothing about the threading model! If you're going to toot your horn about the fantastic, revolutionary, "world's most productive" threading model all day long, for goodness' sake show us what the threading model is, front and center.

The "world's most productive" phrase is doing you no favours, by the way; it's substance-free marketing hype. It gave a slimy first impression that I had to fight past to try to find out what Zulip was really about. Show, don't tell.