Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by cornholio » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #140

cornholio wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What is their moat Their moat is that the addressable market is too small for investors to bother investing in.

There are 36 million blind people in the world and other tens of millions with severe impairments. It seems more like the market is too small due to lack of investment and development.

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

#172

Post by bwooster » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

It was working great and seriously used and appreciated by our users. This is a tragedy. Many feel the electron clients are extremely clumsy and massive resource hogs. Nobody likes threads. Nobody needs threads.

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

#173

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:20 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #101

MaxLeiter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few projects exist that try to be "modern" UIs for IRC (bias: I contribute to Lounge) TheLounge - https://thelounge.chat (FOSS, self-hosted) IRCCloud - https://irccloud.com (mobile clients OS, hosted)

they don't look "modern"..

Did you actually look at them? The Lounge looks like a less image-heavy Slack. It's definitely following most modern design trends like flat UIs.

At the very least it looks and feels far more modern than, for instance, mIRC.

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

#174

Post by znpy » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:20 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #121

oconnor663 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moxie Marlinspike has a blog post about why protocols like XMPP aren't good enough to support modern messaging apps. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ XMPP is an example of a federated protocol that advertises itself as a “living standard.” Despite its capacity for protocol “extensions,” however, it’s undeniable that XMPP still largely resembles a synchronous protocol with limited support for rich medi…

Extension availability/usage will cluster around the tent-pole implementations. A really popular mobile Jabber client will suddenly have the extensions it supports become popular with everyone else. Conversations looks nice. As for why some set of extensions hasn't been brought up to modernity, that answer's simple: nobody cares about xmpp enough. Maybe just some users, but fuck those guys, they don't build anything.

>> A really popular mobile Jabber client will

> Will

Man, xmpp has been out for twenty years now.

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

#175

Post by panopticon » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:21 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #164

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's a thought: how about you write a native app for each platform? I can guarantee that the hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers working on AppKit and Windows APIs are a lot better at getting this to work than your team. You're joking, right? Have you not noticed any of the pain that anybody trying to make cross-platform app goes through, and hence the huge popularity of cross-platform frameworks?

Just use Qt. It's harder, but not dramatically harder, than a web-based implementation.

The web-based implementation means you only have one codebase for both Slack in the browser and Slack in Electron. So adding Qt in addition to their browser client means they have two disparate clients instead of one client (plus Electron glue code).

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

#176

Post by znpy » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:23 PM UTC

I am unsure why Microsoft Teams isn't used more.

Compared to slack, it has not much less, and it comes for free with each subscription to office 365.

I've seen the whole office 365 in action at my current company and quite frankly, it's well worth its price.

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

#177

Post by SahAssar » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:23 PM UTC

escapecharacter wrote: post #71

Froyoh wrote: post #63

Time to use Discord

I've used Slack as part of a few organizations. If I'm starting my own ad-hoc technical organization, is there any reason not to use Discord? Seems to have all the features I need.

It's also not open source and you can't self-host it if needed. I'd recommend a IRC server and https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge

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

#178

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:26 PM UTC

elektron wrote: post #10

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.

Companies are just using Micro$oft's playbook. Oh, and spoiler alert, Microsoft still is too: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Microsoft/Windows... Embrace / Extend / Expunge

So how exactly do you expect running Debian/other Linuxes on Windows will extinguish them? I don't really see a way for that to happen.

Sure, the Linux subsystem is "Embrace", but a lot of things can be embraced without extended or extinguished.

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

#179

Post by mmagin » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

Grollicus wrote: post #4

Is Slack the Platform where you can have multiple accounts with the same displayname? A bit surprising to hear them talk about security

WAT? How does that go, if I try to message @username, where does it go then?

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

#180

Post by ksk » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

This currently seems to be the only successful business model. Give something for free to get traction. Then slowly erode the free part, and try to get as many people as possible to run on the subscription treadmill. In most situations open source, open protocols and open data formats are an anathema to the cash register going ka-ching. When you start spending other peoples money, they are sure to remind you of this simple fact.