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Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

blog.okturtles.com

31–40 of 176 posts

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As patio11 puts it: UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX See more: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931499680657409 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931665275916288 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931949645533184 https://twitter.com/patio11/statu…

A well administered IRC channel has all of those, though typically you farm out to an image hoster for the pasting of images.

So we're hiring an IRC administrator now?

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC simply lacks important desirable features, making it poor for community building (given the existence of better alternatives). The two biggest missing features are persistence and search. Other important missing features are ease of use in terms of creation of topic-focused channels, private channels, and high quality mobile and desktop clients.

> making it poor for community building eh... slack has consistently said that large communities shouldn't use its services. - http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-... Go talk to the hundreds of FOSS communities that use IRC. they have all fixed the persistence / search problem, and there is quite a few high quality mobile and desktop clients for IRC.

> slack has consistently said that large communities shouldn't use its services

Apart from the tech problems with 1000+ sized teams, it's insane even considering the free tier with a 10'000 message limitation for 8000+ users.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#33
post #29

Why not just use e-mail mailing lists instead? You get great apps for all devices (e-mail clients), notifications, encrypted direct messages, ability to send images/binaries/whatever, threaded communication, search, censorship resistance, filters, etc.

In 2015, it's trendy to use things that aren't email.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#34
post #29

Why not just use e-mail mailing lists instead? You get great apps for all devices (e-mail clients), notifications, encrypted direct messages, ability to send images/binaries/whatever, threaded communication, search, censorship resistance, filters, etc.

I imagine most people use both [a combination of chat and email].

Real time chat channels are much better for fast moving ephemeral discussions and neither would I want that sort of thing in my inbox.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#35
post #33
post #29

Why not just use e-mail mailing lists instead? You get great apps for all devices (e-mail clients), notifications, encrypted direct messages, ability to send images/binaries/whatever, threaded communication, search, censorship resistance, filters, etc.

In 2015, it's trendy to use things that aren't email.

That hardly started happening just now in 2015. I absolutely loathe using email, but I don't speak for everyone.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#36
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IRC simply lacks important desirable features, making it poor for community building (given the existence of better alternatives). The two biggest missing features are persistence and search. A channel stays a channel until nobody's in it. It's trivial to make a bot that sits in a channel and logs it. And it's trivial to hook up a search engine to that bot. > Other important missing features are ease of use in term…

> It's trivial to make a bot that sits in a channel and logs it. And it's trivial to hook up a search engine to that bot. I have actually done that, and I know it's not trivial. Few want to spend time tinkering with bots and hooking together archiving services. They want a nice Slack-type experience.

Well. Words are cheap. I do appreciate CDRdude speaking up for me.

Here you go. http://webchat.freenode.net room #hntesting

Files end up on Dropbox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ukffgmwntypfg4m/ircchatlog.txt?dl=...

Searching wouldn't be too difficult. That's just loading the data up in a Hadoop and then regurgitating it. The only 'doop cluster I have now is a semi-production one. Working on getting a 150 node set up at the hackerspace.

__________________________

Edit: Added time date stamps, and indication/handling for private messages to the bot.

Privs now allow me to extend the functionality of the bot to do all sorts of things, like upload to MongoDB, email all logs, kick users, save to BOX, or manipulate the neopixel strip in my room.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#37
Well there's part of the problem. "Should I use Slack or this long list of open source options, all trickily alike?"

The open source team (which I would prefer to win) would do much better if their message was "use this one, canonical, excellent option."

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC simply lacks important desirable features, making it poor for community building (given the existence of better alternatives). The two biggest missing features are persistence and search. Other important missing features are ease of use in terms of creation of topic-focused channels, private channels, and high quality mobile and desktop clients.

> The two biggest missing features are persistence and search. A well-tended IRC server has those via bots. Other important missing features are ease of use in terms of creation of > topic-focused channels wut? This is totally easy in IRC: /join #topic-channel makes the channel > private channels I'm tempted to say that a bot can provide that... but sure. > and high quality mobile and desktop clients. Not buying that…

Does your mobile IRC client notify you (push message) when you're mentioned or receive a private message, but only when you're idle or offline on your desktop client?

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#39
post #29

Why not just use e-mail mailing lists instead? You get great apps for all devices (e-mail clients), notifications, encrypted direct messages, ability to send images/binaries/whatever, threaded communication, search, censorship resistance, filters, etc.

Even in the late 90s when we had IRC, ICQ, and AIM for realtime chats.
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