It's already here - Bitrix24. Light years ahead of Slack. Free for unlimited users without silly restrictions on search and other crap. And GASP it comes with actual work tools beyond IM.
Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
21–30 of 397 posts
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#22It's good to see a bit of a variety – we all know that monoculture ends up being a bad thing, and there are obvious downsides to applications hosted by third parties (though of course in some cases it's not a problem!). Of course, there's no real network effect with applications like this either (beyond integrations support) so there's a relatively low bar to switching when compared to something like Facebook. I do h…
Mattermost claims to have "Native Applications". ( http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/#native ) Turns out they mean "electron is a native application, and our app is a webpage inside of electron, so our webpage is a native application." Bummer. I use both Slack and Hipchat for different groups, and I'm not happy with the wrapped webapp for either of them.
What's wrong with that? VSCode is also such a thing, high performance and beautiful apps are obviously possible.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slack is IRC, it just is a really nice interface that makes it easy to automate and makes it easy to share files/code/etc.
That's Slack's main feature. Well that and gifs. IRC on the other hand is James has left the channel. Bill has left the channel. Samantha has joined the channel. Samantha has left the channel. filled with worthless status updates Martha has gone idle that make it Bill has joined the channel. terribly easy to Bill has changed the channel topic to "ZOMG! Ponies!" miss things Martha has become active Martha has left the…
Messages just like that show up in Slack whenever someone joins or parts the channel, changes the topic, etc. Not sure this is a valid complaint.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#24matrix.org with the vector.im and android client have been pretty great so far.
Matrix has solved the right engineering problem first which is the persistence of the chats across all of your clients.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#25If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves... Oh wait, IRC.
You mean the same IRC that doesn't include basic features like the ability to receive messages if you aren't currently connected? The same IRC that has horrible scaling issues once you try to really use it? The same IRC that is a miserable experience to setup, administer, search, and even use?
Stop touting IRC as the "perfect" chat system. It's far from it.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#26IRC comes to mind.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#27If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves... Oh wait, IRC.
This comes up every time, and as usual you have totally missed the point . IRC is difficult to configure, difficult to host, difficult to use, and does not offer the same feature set as Slack. There is an obvious use case for something like Slack (obviously, because otherwise it would not have millions of users!) and covering one's ears while yelling "IRC! IRC! IRC!" is sort of wilfully ignoring that if it were a sui…
Doesn't matter, article should mention IRC given the breadth of the introduction, especially when talking about chat from an open source perspective.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#28If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves... Oh wait, IRC.
This comes up every time, and as usual you have totally missed the point . IRC is difficult to configure, difficult to host, difficult to use, and does not offer the same feature set as Slack. There is an obvious use case for something like Slack (obviously, because otherwise it would not have millions of users!) and covering one's ears while yelling "IRC! IRC! IRC!" is sort of wilfully ignoring that if it were a sui…
Maybe slack gets enough momentum to overtake IRC. Right now it looks a lot like Google Wave to me.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slack is IRC, it just is a really nice interface that makes it easy to automate and makes it easy to share files/code/etc.
Oh, TIL. So I can point my run-off-the-mill IRC client to a slack server and partake in cat pictures exchanging and almost-NSFW-but-not-quite with my fellow coworkers, yes? Otherwise whatever it uses inside its walled garden is completely irrelevant I'm afraid.
They have an IRC bridge you can connect your IRC client to. It probably can't do all the things (because IRC has no way of expressing them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't spend too much effort on it), but it works.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#30This is one of those applications that is always being rewritten somewhere. JWZ's law may even be relevant here: "Every program expands until it reads mail". It seems there is always a large group people out there working on messengers. The question really is what made Slack special. Why is it the Slack revolution and not the HipChat revolution? What about the veneer has allowed it to become a pervasive trend, expand…
Revolution? Drinking the kool aid much? My team has it. We've had it for a month or two now. There has only been a handful of posts and most of them are "TGIF" posts.