Fact: IRC doen't persist chat messages on the server, so to view old messages you need to install a bot that provides you with the last n messages... and you have to manually query the bot for them. No thanks. Have you people heard of this thing called "mobile"? Spotty connections are the new normal. Having the last N messages autoloaded when I view a channel is a necessity.
Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
411–420 of 499 posts
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet they spend less on marketing then most major tech companies. One could just argue they spend their marketing budget well, but you have to wonder.
Less as a percentage of gross income, or less in total dollars?
Both. Apple is infamous for its anemic marketing budgets; e.g.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/apples-advertising-budget...
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
How very lucky of you. I hope you have a repeatable provision, AMI, static IP linked to a tcp loadbalancer and autoscaling group in the event AWS rotates out your instance. And of course, the same goes for your logging and search and file sharing infrastructure. And of course, similar caveats exist for the database said features use.
If your file sharing infrastructure is limited to what Slack provides, then your file sharing infrastructure sucks. Slack is good for quick "check this outs", but it's not a file sharing system.
Well, you add the google docs integration, or the dropbox integration, or the box integration, or use the Zapier integration to tie things together.
Slack isn't a file sharing platform, it's a communication platform. As such, they try to make communicating about, discovery and grouping of files in dedicated file sharing platforms easier.
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does IRC Cloud allow new employees to get the entire history of the channel? I can't see how it would from looking at its page.
Why do people talk like this is some impossible feat for IRC? 1. Have a bot that's in the channel from the start 2. cd into the bot's log directory and type python -m SimpleHTTPServer 3. put the url into the channel topic How do some developers fail to rise up to this level of problem solving? I am amazed.
> How do some developers fail to rise up to this level of problem solving?
It does seem to solve the problem of how to set up a channel log in IRC but I sort of find this quite a narrow redefinition of the problem. The problem could also be:
* What is the best technology to use for collaboration?
* What kind of software and tooling is in line with our project philosophy.
I don't find either this comment, nor the one it is in reply to something that can be applied more generally. This is, at best, solving a problem that is a component of a much more expansive problem.
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#415Please for the love of god just don't use Slack. We have learned absolutely nothing. Let's all jump on the bandwagon of another closed-source, proprietary, walled-garden service and hand over all of our private intra-company communications to a private third-party in another country. GREAT IDEA.
What, exactly, is going to go wrong with this? I really don't get this, 99% of the stuff you use everyday is closed-source and proprietary. Most often the tradeoff in something bad happening (which has yet to be with Slack) versus having a functional and productive system is more than worth it. Or do you also build your own computer from raw silicon and communicate with pirated radio signals?
As usual, I'm (not) surprised by the downvotes but no real exposition here. What's the collective freakout over what Slack is going to do? So the features and user experience aren't worth it? Why isn't everyone on IRC then?
If some basic programming chat about an open source project isn't safe then we should all throw away our phones and turn off the internet immediately, but I don't see that happening. This is basically bikeshedding on how to run open source projects.
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#416Apparently Slack has become the new BitKeeper!
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Oh, and did you know that with modest, low volume channels (>200 source? or at least names of networks/IRCds? freenode at least has 19 channels with more than 1000 users currently, and one with just barely more than 2000. ##linux 2072 :It's official! We're now Linux.Chat! | Channel website: http://linux.chat | Pastebin: http://paste.linux.chat | Spammers or trolls? use !ops ". | For op assistance, join ##linux-ops…
Considering World of Warcraft guild channels have a configurable "message of the day", I kind of assumed all WoW chat was IRC. I'm sure they break 1000 users in a channel without problems.
Not to snark, but my Linux systems also have a configurable message of the day that gets displayed when you SSH in or log in on the console. :)
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. Slack is a well-designed interface for allowing teams to communicate via chat. subjective. I consider a bloated web interface taking several tens to hundreds of megabytes of RAM compared to a text-based interface taking less than 100 kB to be poorly designed. > 2. Slack is easy to install is use on Mac, PC, iOS, and Android. It Just Works™. spelled wrong, and IRC clients are harder to configure only because ther…
This whole response reads like it was written in the 90's. Most people don't care if something takes up 10's of MB's of RAM when new PC's are shipping with 16-32GB standard. Your comparison of what amounts to ASCII art versus Slack's rich-media embedding reads like it is straight out of a Fortran developer's "I'm still relevant" handbook. You even offer up AOL and ICQ as counter examples! If we're going there, I gues…
> Most people don't care if something takes up 10's of MB's of RAM when new PC's are shipping with 16-32GB standard.
ISTR a -now undoubtedly outdated- answer to a question that was very much like "Why will there not be a real Photoshop clone for mobile devices in the near future?". One of the striking things to come out of the analysis was that -absolute best case- you got something like ~300MB of RAM (and -common case- ~100MB) to work with before you got unceremoniously killed.
I would hope that now you can reliably consume ~500MB of RAM per app, but... that's still a far cry from what you can use on a "real" PC.
Unfortunately, memory usage still matters. :(
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough? Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more. Everyone I know working in academia or on a startup that uses any kind of instant chat uses Slack. None of them previously used IRC for the same purpose. And it's just _obvious_ why, once you've us…
> it's just _obvious_ why Uh, nope. Most people use communication platforms due to network effects: because they were invited to use it, because their friends/coleagues use it. Slack is no different.
Considering Slack is a per-organization service with minimal cross talk between organizations, your premise seems flawed.
I mean, Slack appeared on scene after many other technologies existed. People recommend it for their friends because it works well. There is no global network effect at play.
Re: Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's chat: no mobile, no push notifications. Very fancy and not so useful UI (imho). Don't know others yet, thanks for the list.
Rocket.chat has web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux clients, with push notifications.
I haven't figured out how to get the iOS client to connect to a custom chat server. It seems to only support the main rocket.chat server.