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

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

#391

Post by e12e »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

> come up with a better open protocol that satisfies all the requirements. [my emphasis]

Yeah, no. The email/xmpp approach of small core + extensions is probably the only viable way.

I've played with both rocket.chat and matrix - and while I don't really like the architecture of the former, it feel a lot more like a finished solution/product - with a sane api.

I hope Matrix will become more relevant, but I think the documentation and implementation suffers under the design ambitions.

In a certain sense smtp, imap and irc all use telnet for transport (and all can be augmented with ssl/tls). That's not a great choice today - but there seems to an odd resistance to combining "the good pieces we have". Maybe just demanding ssh as the (client/server) transport, for example. Use srv records for discovery. Use capnproto for serialization. I don't know, but there seems like there's and odd resistance to reusing great components that are easily tested and developed independently.

In that sense the slack/rocket mission is easier: be compatible with yourself.

(and using https+json for transport / rpc is perfectly valid re-use. But a promise for stable apis and a clear split between client and server (rather than client+server | bots (ie: non-Roman clients) would be nice. Allow people to bring their own server, or client or both.

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

#392

Post by tomsmeding »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #377
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)

No way to edit a message I've already sent. I'll stick with Slack.

You can't do that in IRC at all, so it would be impossible for a UI to offer that feature. ;)

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

#393

Post by uiri »

mwcampbell wrote: post #348
u801e wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You move your cursor in the code and it reads you the line. That's somewhat similar to how ed works. You choose a line number or range and print those lines to the screen.

Since you mentioned ed, I know of a blind programmer who actually likes and uses ed (or did last time I heard from him). In fact, he wrote his own version of ed that also includes a web browser, and called it edbrowse. To be sure, he's in the minority even among blind programmers. But for what it's worth, you can find an article that he wrote about his approach here: http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html

I am not blind but edbrowse is far and away the best non-GUI web browser I've ever used (better than elinks, lynx, etc). I highly recommend that sighted folk crack open the user manual and give it a try.

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

#394

Post by seangrogg »

rocky1138 wrote: post #257
seangrogg wrote: post #168

Mmm, while this wouldn't have impacted my decision in the slightest, I am mostly glad that I have moved over to Discord for everything I used to do in Slack.

Is Discord any better? It's still a centralized service run by one company, is it not?

My choices in communication technology are based on what myself, my friends, and my colleagues find easy, intuitive, and accessible. That it's a centralized service has no bearing on 99.999% of the reality I share with the people close to me.

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

#395

Post by pjmlp »

BukhariH wrote: post #206
snuxoll wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? I am absolutely tired of companies taking a giant dump on the experience of desktop applications. If you're going to make a desktop app make a damned desktop app, stop making everybody accept a terrible electron app because "oh no, I have to do extra work" - give me a break. How many companies still maintain native iOS and Android apps? Lots. Qt even feels (mostly) native on GNOME desktops these days, if you can…

Honestly, I don't think you can point to any actual business reason for a native client. Slack makes majority of their revenue from large organisations buying thousands of seats in one go and a native desktop client is sadly not a huge selling point for the sales team. At the end of the day Slack has to optimize for growth and there's a huge list of features that will bring more ROI than native clients which will req…

The profit from "large organisations buying thousands of seats in one go" can surely pay a couple of devs to write native apps.

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

#396

Post by dullgiulio »

wpietri wrote: post #375
ascorbic wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email does many things, but "works great" isn't one of them. PGP even less.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. I love email and I'm sure I'll be using it in the retirement home. But it is not very popular among the youth: https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/24/email-is-dying-among-mobil... And there's good reason for that. Email is basically the electronic equivalent of postal mail, a first pass at digital communication that aped the old medium. But the first email RFC was 35 years ago.…

E-mail is not preferred by the youth until they use it at work. Then it is a godsend that you can only ignore it and reply when you have time.

We have been chatting since we have had networks. Believe me, e-mail is here to stay.

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

#397

Post by gboudrias »

adrianN wrote: post #361
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

Yes: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/970732100201697282?s=19

I was already against Slack out of principle, but this is pure madness. Their justification boils down to "some people want to".

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

#398

Post by endymi0n »

From a business perspective, this is incredibly stupid, as they‘re basically abandoning their early, nerdy adopters who brought them into companies in the first place. It‘s a big „fuck you, now that we‘re a REAL COMPANY“, we don‘t need you anymore.

It’s also a bad sign on who has taken charge and what the culture is like by now. If they had REALLY wanted, nothing of this would have been impossible. If you can‘t secure a weak or weird protocol, just go down the route Google did with the Cloud SQL proxy and tunnel it. There‘s no big complication connecting to a localhost gateway instead that handles all the authentication and encryption - we‘re talking about a nerdcore audience anyway.

FWIW, I don‘t give much about IRC and love Slack as is, but I still can‘t believe they‘re acting this nearsighted.

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

#399

Post by pjmlp »

shaklee3 wrote: post #364
lokedhs wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the original poster, but assuming you're referring to Skype for Business, the main problem with it is that they don't have a Linux client. The only solution on Linux that implements audio, video and screen sharing is Sky ( http://tel.red/ ), and it's incredibly flaky.

Skype for business on Windows is very bad as well. Lots of scaling issues, incorrect status, freezing, etc.

I use it daily and we never had issues with it.

When something bad happens, usually it is network infrastructure related or some IT experiment going on.

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

#400

Post by ptman »

PeterMikhailov wrote: post #243
ATsch wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's even included in the Riot UI. Note that unlike IRC, where bots or users must be on the same server rooms are completely independent of any single homeserver. There's nothing that says a room belongs to a certain homeserver. So the bridges set up by matrix.org will work with any room, unless you explicitly turn off federation.

I'm dumb, I really don't see it in the UI. I read https://medium.com/@RiotChat/slack-bridge-improvements-44c52... I don't see a way to "add a slack" in Riot.

AFAICT the key is the "manage integrations" -button (nine squares, 3x3) in the UI.
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