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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#331

Post by AJ007 »

guappa wrote: post #235
jorvi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than open or closed source programs, let's have interoperability. Then everyone can choose. I believe Facebook was aiming for something like that with Threads, and was playing to have WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger be open to a specific standard as well? I fondly remember the days of Pidgin and Adium..

Proprietary services are interoperable in the beginning and then stop. Both facebook and google supported XMPP but that's no longer the case. Slack supported XMPP and IRC, but that's no longer the case. It's completely pointless to expect proprietary stuff to be interoperable. It requires constant reverse engineering and remember that they have money to throw away to hire developers to make breaking changes to the pr…

One of the highest confidence outcomes I predict from LLM use in software dev is more use of open protocols. It is going to become difficult to maintain a network if you don't use them.

XMPP isn't dead either. Here's an open source project of an XMPP based Slack - https://prose.org/ (I have no association to this, was amazed how much digging it took me looking for Slack/Discord alternatives to find it.)

The most damage to open communications software probably came from the closed mobile app stores. The barrier to maintaining a working app simultaneously on iOS and Android is high. Almost every iOS game I bought 10 years ago is inaccessible and no longer downloadable. Those barriers are in the process of being torn down too, with or without AI's help.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#333

Post by Jarwain »

brulard wrote: post #160
bryanhogan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is no other app in this space on the same quality as Discord. Discord was born out of Skype, Teamspeak and similar being so awful to use. Discord took the complaints from these and made a product which was the best version of them all.

Quality? I see it as extremely bloated, very sluggish and clunky (on M3 macbook pro), search sucks bad and I can not figure out how I should keep track of multiple chained replies (like threads in slack). It's not as bad as teams, but talking about quality seems out of place.

Discord also has threads, if the server has enabled it.

I personally haven't really encountered performance issues running discord

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#334

Post by Y_Y »

hirako2000 wrote: post #290
bee_rider wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is the chat program treadmill. Spend investor money to host a completely commoditized program. Of course it is better than the version that costs money by virtue of being free. Eventually run out of investor money and do something unpopular to raise revenue, leaving the opportunity for the next iteration to come in for free and take your spot. The only thing I don’t really understand is why investors keep fa…

Investors aren't falling for it. Users are falling for it. Leaking millions for years pays off in the end, or even half way through. Some investors would exit at some stage. Taking profit due to valuation going up, despite no revenue/profit. At the end of the tunnel is acquisition by a major player who is basically buying the users. Typical examples: Skype, whatsapp. But also LinkedIn. GitHub. Businesses that offered…

It's shocking really that Microsoft didn't buy Slack and drive that into the ground too.

I'm glad to see WhatsApp is proceeding relatively slowly down the Shit-en-slide, since it's completely entrenched in some countries. I've had companies who just assume that I have WhatsApp and it's cool to message me on it instead of sending a text or email.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#335

Post by thoughtpalette »

9283409232 wrote: post #318
thoughtpalette wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh context was missing. I meant in actual game development discords for game developers, not games that have discords from the developers. My anecdotal data is based on observations from my partner who has boughten several asset packs from itch.io, got on the discord for support, and the artists/game devs have been extremely unwelcoming to the point of just banning users for simple game dev questions and/or mention…

> extremely unwelcoming to the point of just banning users for simple game dev questions and/or mentions of AI. This is understandable when you realize that artist are being accused of using AI for every single imperfection in art now. You messed up on perspective? You must be using AI. Anatomy is slightly off? You must be using AI. At a certain point they just get tired of the accusations and choose to ban people.

I can believe that scenario, but I believe in the cases I've seen regarding game dev, It's more pearl clutching from the artists (rightly so) rather than accusations from the asset users.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#336

Post by smittywerben »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #224
sph wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dream is to be invited into a mildly popular server (more than 15 users), than doesn't have 50 channels, 8 separate roles and T&C to agree to. It hasn't happened yet. An entire generation of bureaucrats and bean counters is learning the ropes on Discord.

I started and mod a server of about 6k users for a community around a niche software used by professionals, students, and hobbyists. We keep it really simple and focused primarily on people getting questions answered. Recently a small but vocal cadre of hobbyists have been demanding more Discord-y features oriented towards socializing with other users of the software, and our reticence to complicate the server and ad…

Are you a partnered server? Are they even still doing those?

I've never been a mod. I'm just an adult who understands Discord's general operations.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#338

Post by foresto »

ksp-atlas wrote: post #271
alwayslikethis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects True. As it also hits a local minimum in terms of user experience (to the point that the average user does not care), I don't think it is possible to make a new centralized (even self-hosted) alternative on technical merits alone, since you necessarily incur a cost in the form of signing up to every server. The only hope is a decentralized alternati…

Cinny exists as a discord-like client, thing is, Matrix is mostly the text chat part, it doesn't implement voice chats or anything. Also, the space/room system works differently to discord server/channel

> Matrix is mostly the text chat part, it doesn't implement voice chats or anything.

It's in progress. Keywords: MatrixRTC, Element Call

https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/#3-nat...

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#339

Post by Aachen »

LorenDB wrote: post #250
Qdulf wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The push for messenger interoperability is a reaction to the EUs Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires certain gatekeeper services to allow interoperability with smaller platforms. Threads is working on implementing ActivityPub for interoperability with other platforms that already use it. ActivityPub is an open standard for implementing the Fediverse, a group of federated social platforms heavily based in the op…

Nope, Matrix has been pushing interop for years (since the late teens).

Not like it's new, though? The Internet is literally interoperating networks, emails hop from server to server until they reach the user-specified destination server, DNS delegates zones to other servers. These are protocols older than I am, and I've had a driver's license for longer than Matrix exists. Their push is amazing but not by any means unique

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#340

Post by alwayslikethis »

ksp-atlas wrote: post #271
alwayslikethis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects True. As it also hits a local minimum in terms of user experience (to the point that the average user does not care), I don't think it is possible to make a new centralized (even self-hosted) alternative on technical merits alone, since you necessarily incur a cost in the form of signing up to every server. The only hope is a decentralized alternati…

Cinny exists as a discord-like client, thing is, Matrix is mostly the text chat part, it doesn't implement voice chats or anything. Also, the space/room system works differently to discord server/channel

I've never used it but Matrix does seem to support conference calls, if not natively then via Jitsi. I'm sure a good app can paper over the differences to get a voice-chanel out of it if this is what people are after, though I've never really used this much on Discord.

The same can be said of space-room vs server-channel. Of course a space has different semantics, the space doesn't own the rooms, etc. But they can be made to be nearly the same for an end user. In general organization of resources is much looser and less opinionated on Matrix. But an opinionated app can also paper over this to force a stricter hierarchy, while offering advanced users the ability to make their own spaces, etc.

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