One thing that nobody's mentioned yet is encryption. A Slack alternative that's end-to-end encrypted (at least for private messaging between users) and has encryption for chatrooms would be worth my time.
Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
31–40 of 397 posts
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#32If 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…
It really isn't hard to use. Firefox has a great extension called Chatzilla that makes it wonderfully easy to use. Maybe it's hard to host, but you can just claim a channel on freenode if you need to.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#33Earlier 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.
You actually can use a regular IRC client with Slack. Though obviously anything that isn't supported natively by IRC comes through as a URL or encoded somehow.
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connectin...
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#34It's been built: http://matrix.org/
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#35If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves... Oh wait, IRC.
Doesn't mention IRC, doesn't mention Discord. I'm suspicious that a PR firm pushed this to a journalist.
This and the number of apologists seems a little suspicious indeed.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#36For talking about a race, Wired seems to have neglected a crucial technology: ircv3[1].
I'm not very fond of IRCv2, and have moved away from it where I previously used IRC. But IRC is popular, has a lot of clients, and v3 has a lot of promise. Why didn't the author bother to mention it?
[1]: http://ircv3.net/
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#37One thing that nobody's mentioned yet is encryption. A Slack alternative that's end-to-end encrypted (at least for private messaging between users) and has encryption for chatrooms would be worth my time.
Is a slack alternative that can never support search truly a slack alternative?
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#38It'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.
That landing page has way too much going on to the point that it's hard to focus on what it's trying to tell me.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#39If only there was a well supported, standard, open and interoperable text messaging protocol (with multiple implementations) that companies could host themselves... Oh wait, IRC.
Messaging protocols are largely fungible these days, which makes them irrelevant implementation details. A major reason for the success of Slack is around the end-to-end UX. It's not "perfect", whatever that means, but it has met important needs that the "well, we already have IRC!" portion of the world has apparently never dreamed of.
Re: Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are seriously out of touch if you really believe that.