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Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

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Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#481

Post by Antrikshy »

eachro wrote: post #60

At this point I have no idea which Google chat client is which. A few years ago I remember having Google Talk on my android phone. Then after some random update the application disappeared from my phone and was replaced with hangouts. Now is Google Talk the same as GChat? Was Hangouts anything more than just a new branding for Google Talk? I have no idea. And what's up with this Google Allo thing? Again, it seems lik…

I feel like Google has a bunch of teams working independently on things like this and somehow don't have to check with some central assurance party before releasing their competing products.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#482

Post by scrollaway »

it33 wrote: post #478
scrollaway wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mattermost is an existing OSS alternative to slack. It's terrible. Gitter is more likely to be good but to be completely honest, it will take a lot of work to not be mediocre. Freenode is part of the IRCv3 working group and I believe uses it internally somehow. IRCCloud is the largest IRCv3 implementation, they are fully IRCv3 compatible afaik.

Hi @scrollaway, Thanks for your feedback on Mattermost. Could you share more on what you'd like to see changed? For folks who haven't seen Mattermost, here's a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKqHWqrAgpk&t=1s Also, I noticed from your HN profile links you're a UX designer. We're actually working on our new generation of mobile apps in React Native ( https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile ). If yo…

Hi Ian, good to see you here. I really shouldn't have been so harsh :) Mattermost isn't terrible as a product. The issue is that it's not going to replace Slack because, although it's FOSS, it's not an alternative to Slack. Let me elaborate:

Very few people know about Mattermost right now unless they use or used Gitlab. Whenever I hear Mattermost brought up, it's associated with Gitlab, which has a reputation of being "the slower, less-good GitHub" (and I love gitlab, don't get me wrong, but I agree with that reputation). Therefore, Mattermost, at least in my circles, has a reputation of being "the less good Slack".

And the main issue (unless I'm misunderstanding, but I did go through your pricing page again to double check) is that you do not offer SaaS except to enterprises. Which is super backwards. You're not going to be able to gather mindshare if you require people to set up your product themselves to even just try them out. Nearly none of your potential users have the expertise to do that, and those that do aren't going to want to do it unless they know what they're getting into beforehand. The only remaining ones that already do are Gitlab users, because they've had it set up for them.

Github, Travis, Slack, Discord, Sentry, half of the integrations you find on GH, what do they have in common? They're hosted and free to try. Make a free hosted version, make it very limited if you have to and promote upgrades/self-hosting, and then you have a shot at getting solid mindshare.

On a lesser note, since you asked for feedback, here's a couple more pieces of advice:

- The demo video you linked me is great. I see Mattermost has changed quite a bit since I last tried it, for the better. So I visited mattermost.com to try and get another look and it's super barebones on screenshots, I found no videos, there's no demo. After browsing the site, I have no feel for what mattermost looks like. And you don't link to your community server anywhere I could find, not even on your contact page! - Consider making public Mattermost instances optionally readable without an account - read only, and enable that for your community server!. This would differenciate you from Slack and Discord and would improve the situation above. I realize it's a lot of work. - On pricing again, it's irresponsible to put 2FA behind Enterprise only. Please don't do that. Push notifications could also stand to be in the free version, imho.

Cheers, hope that helps. My email is on my profile if you want to talk about this further.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#483

Post by MaxLeiter »

tnone wrote: post #461
MaxLeiter wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many popular ircd's support different IRCv3 specs. Freenode, Rizon, etc all support different specs/capabilities. You can see a list here: http://ircv3.net/support/networks.html (Warning: bias/plug; I contribute to Lounge) In terms of OSS alternative to slack, I recommend you check out Lounge, a self-hosted JavaScript web client (think: selfhosted IRC version of Slack, minus/plus a few features) https://github.com/th…

Slack, minus the ability to gracefully run in any sort of long term roaming context without babysitting. There's no decent reconnecting logic on either client or server, you just have to notice it's gone quiet, and then figure out the undocumented way to restore it without nuking your settings. Only figured out by accident "/connect" without parameters is valid. I tried to fix it, but the client is a pile of terrible…

Well, if you get disconnected and don't get reconnected, the server tab mentions to try `/connect`.

Additionally, if you want to rewrite the client, you're welcome to start and open a PR - it's a community-run project. I've had Lounge running for months now without issue. Contributions are always welcome.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#484

Post by shmerl »

zigzigzag wrote: post #463
shmerl wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly not nobody. Secondly, how can you grow it if instead of moving it forward, they roll it back? That's the opposite of progress. > Ultimately most users just don't care about federation. Them's the facts. Not really. Everyone is annoyed by this issue. But there isn't much they can do. People need to register on N different services and use N different clients to communicate with users of those networks when the…

You're assuming here that federation = progress. That's the source of the disagreement.

Federation is clearly progress. Balkanized non interoperaiblility is not.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#485

Post by shmerl »

st3v3r wrote: post #346
shmerl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, closed ones are a betrayal. If someone doesn't upgrade, you can easily exclude them from communication and even build such logic in the protocol itself. It will pressure them to be up to date. I don't see an issue here.

You can't do that if the ones that refuse to upgrade are some of the bigger providers on the network.

You can if you care about security. That's exactly how the very same Google Talk was cut off from the rest of the XMPP universe, even before they decided to shut it down (they refused to support server to server encryption).

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#486

Post by nickpsecurity »

icebraining wrote: post #445
nickpsecurity wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah. They'll probably try that. That will either be defeated with tons of sweat as it largely was in products like OpenOffice or the legal recommendation modified to attempt to deal with it. It might also be handled in the courts if the law includes language that specifically instructs to attempt simple, readable protocols to "facilitate interoperability." Obfuscations could be argued as the opposite of that in c…

That will either be defeated with tons of sweat as it largely was in products like OpenOffice Then why do you need open standards? Every major proprietary IM protocol has been re-implemented by open source software, including Hangouts: https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts It might also be handled in the courts if the law includes language that specifically instructs to attempt simple, readable protocols to…

"Then why do you need open standards?"

"This is to prevent or reduce lockin, walled gardens, etc."

What I said. I'll add that it's hard to copyright API's to sue over compatibility when the API's and their implementation are released as open-source software.

"If genuinely open protocols often end up like this"

What are you talking about? There's all kinds of results from protocol design. You chose one of the worst ones. I was a PSYC fan over that if I had to choose an IRC replacement or open chat standard. A test for new ones might be trying to run it through LANGSEC's Nail, Cap n Proto or ZeroMQ to see if they handle it easily. Anyway, it's easier to do compatible implementations if you have source and can't be sued/imprisoned for imitating it.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#487

Post by sliken »

ungzd wrote: post #58
scrollaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ever there was a software example of killing the goose with the golden eggs. Imagine if they thought like that about email?

Google Wave was supposed to replace email. But actually they replaced email with gmail. Now you can't send email from your own server because it will be blacklisted on gmail by default and noone on gmail will receive these emails. So you have to use "cloud email providers". On Android they changed "Email" client to "Gmail" client.

I run my own domain and mail server, no problems emailing major providers, including gmail.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#488

Post by it33 »

scrollaway wrote: post #482
it33 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi @scrollaway, Thanks for your feedback on Mattermost. Could you share more on what you'd like to see changed? For folks who haven't seen Mattermost, here's a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKqHWqrAgpk&t=1s Also, I noticed from your HN profile links you're a UX designer. We're actually working on our new generation of mobile apps in React Native ( https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile ). If yo…

Hi Ian, good to see you here. I really shouldn't have been so harsh :) Mattermost isn't terrible as a product. The issue is that it's not going to replace Slack because, although it's FOSS, it's not an alternative to Slack. Let me elaborate: Very few people know about Mattermost right now unless they use or used Gitlab. Whenever I hear Mattermost brought up, it's associated with Gitlab, which has a reputation of bein…

Hi Jerome, highly appreciate your feedback. I can see where you're coming from.

You're 100% correct on website, we need an upgrade. We have someone starting soon to help and we'll show them this thread.

A couple of notes:

1. Push notifications are free. Paid is if you want to use Mattermost key for encryption (we choose not to encrypt things for people we don't know, but we document how they can do it themselves): https://docs.mattermost.com/overview/faq.html#are-push-notif...

2. Our intended users are organizations that need to deploy communication behind their firewalls (no 2fa from us needed) and can't use SaaS, e.g. manufacturing, banking, healthcare, public sector, security companies, companies with very strict non-disclosure agreements, etc.

Logos on our website are examples: https://about.mattermost.com/

PS: I read about HearthSim, you're running a really cool company. If you're ever in San Francisco for GDC, perhaps we could meet in person.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#489

Post by scrollaway »

it33 wrote: post #488
scrollaway wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Ian, good to see you here. I really shouldn't have been so harsh :) Mattermost isn't terrible as a product. The issue is that it's not going to replace Slack because, although it's FOSS, it's not an alternative to Slack. Let me elaborate: Very few people know about Mattermost right now unless they use or used Gitlab. Whenever I hear Mattermost brought up, it's associated with Gitlab, which has a reputation of bein…

Hi Jerome, highly appreciate your feedback. I can see where you're coming from. You're 100% correct on website, we need an upgrade. We have someone starting soon to help and we'll show them this thread. A couple of notes: 1. Push notifications are free. Paid is if you want to use Mattermost key for encryption (we choose not to encrypt things for people we don't know, but we document how they can do it themselves): ht…

> Push notifications are free.

Might want to clarify that on your pricing page then; I thought the free version simply didn't have push notifications since they weren't in there.

> If you're ever in San Francisco for GDC, perhaps we could meet in person.

You bet. I'm usually in Anaheim for BlizzCon which is a safer bet, I don't normally do GDC. Feel free to shoot me an email if you're around :)

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#490

Post by sneak »

kethinov wrote: post #411
sneak wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People care about convenience, not federation. Google Talk and Facebook Messenger both supported it for multiple years and the number of people who used it rounds to zero. This is where we ended up. There was time for it, just no demand.

Launch a terrific, convenient new email service that doesn't federate and watch how quickly users will choose federation over convenience.

They did, it's called Facebook.

Slack if you don't like that example.

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