Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

dave.cheney.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 536 posts

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#501

Post by Karunamon »

lightedman wrote: post #480
Arathorn wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At no point did I suggest you thought it was garbage because it's FOSS - I was just pointing out that because it's FOSS we're dependent on the wider community to contribute constructive feedback (and ideally code) to improve it. So far the other feedback seems to be "HTTP is overly complex" (which is very subjective), "Matrix is too tied to HTTP" (despite evidence to the contrary), matrix-js-sdk is slow (which we've…

Go re-design your program on a Pentium-II with 128MB of RAM and you'll understand every single complaint anyone could've had - including the sheer bloat of your project.

I get where you're coming from here, but in the days where you can get a Linux computer for $US35 that has a 1.2Ghz quad core and a gig of RAM, it doesn't make much sense to go through the contortions necessary to develop for a toaster. The cost/benefit just isn't there.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#502

Post by ValentineC »

lloydde wrote: post #40
piquadrat wrote: post #20

Is that really happening that open source communities use Slack as their primary communications channel? I haven't seen that happening in the communities I participate in (Python/Django/...). What I do see is that more and more communities switch from IRC to Slack as the primary "sync" channel (while still maintaining mailing lists, bug trackers and the like). And as much as I hate it, the success can't be denied. Es…

If not primary, at what percentage is it a core form of collaboration? WordPress.org seems to fully integrate Slack into its processes. And as a now outsider, intuitively, it seems they've been able to scale their community more and continue their rapid development. The OP does make a fantastic argument on the open/public point, but synchronize communication is also a necessity for collaboration.

> WordPress.org seems to fully integrate Slack into its processes. And as a now outsider, intuitively, it seems they've been able to scale their community more and continue their rapid development.

The WordPress community Slack forced Slack to implement some server-side changes when it hit ~5,000 people though (I don't remember the exact number, but I remember when things started to not work), and I suspect it's the largest resource-consuming instance in my Slack client.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#503

Post by type0 »

mycloud wrote: post #456
newsat13 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Cloud machine look like https://cloudron.io . It's distributed and they have the button you seek. Many github pages have this button already: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat#cloudronio , https://docs.nodebb.org/en/latest/installing/cloud/cloudron.... , https://kanboard.net/documentation/cloudron , https://github.com/wekan/wekan#supported-platforms to name a few.

Using Cloudron since a week now to host Rocket.chat for similar reasons mentioned in the article. Can totally recommend it!

Why did you choose Rocket.Chat and not Mattermost?

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#504

Post by frikk »

Arzh wrote: post #489
aiiane wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oftentimes the 'sync' conversations are either triggered or resolved by commit/build events.

Do you mind expanding on this and showing a full flow? That sounds a little wonky to me but I could be missing something.

Our flow is like this:

1) Person pushes to dev branch

2) Chat log shows the feature pushed

3) Chat log shows Jenkins received push and is downloading

4) Chat log shows whether tests were successful (yay) or not (boo).

^^ that's the basis. It helps keep everyone up to speed on what's going on, especially for testing.

One more example: Notifications when merge requests are made / merged in the chat.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#505

Post by Paul-ish »

joaodlf wrote: post #125

Forums. I don't know why the internet got tired of them, even when they sometimes fit the bill so well. Slack is chat. Mailing lists are far too outdated. Forums are good, and some good people out there are still developing them.

A lot of meaningful discussion for Rust happens on the /r/rust subreddit.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#506

Post by throwaway9475 »

EpicEng wrote: post #229
throwaway9475 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they hold your data hostage because they can. Welcome to capitalism.

yes, I suppose Slack not existing at all is a more preferable option /s

Third choice: Slack exists, but doesn't hold your data hostage until you pay. I mean, on my list of things I care about ideologically, this is lower than my concern for warm gin and my dislike of sweatpants. It's legal and totally within their right, but it's a crappy way to behave.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#507

Post by jrochkind1 »

milesrout wrote: post #374
jrochkind1 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Session persistence > No, nobody wants this Are you serious? I think lots of people do. I think it's one of the draws of Slack. > The thing is, most IRC servers don't want to buffer messages indefinitely for everyone that makes an account then never logs in again. Is that what Slack does? Whatever they do, I think it's what people want. Indeed it is not an experience offered by IRC, perhaps because "most IRC server…

>Are you serious? I think lots of people do. I think it's one of the draws of Slack. No it isn't. What it implies is what people want: persistent logs, signing in from their phone logging them into the same session as signing in from their desktop, etc. >Is that what Slack does? Whatever they do, I think it's what people want. Indeed it is not an experience offered by IRC, perhaps because "most IRC servers don't want…

> What it implies is what people want: persistent logs, signing in from their phone logging them into the same session as signing in from their desktop, etc.

Okay, to me that is the same thing as 'persistent sessions', but without belaboring the point... can IRC do those things? Right, it depends on the server and client. What servers and clients can? I think it's pretty rare, if it exists.

If your answer is "well, IRC _could_ do that, if only more reosurces were invested in it to make it so", okay, but so what?

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#508

Post by ricardobeat »

ValentineC wrote: post #500
ricardobeat wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base Synology NAS models fit the bill - everything from blogs to office software is available from the get go. I own one but don't use them and haven't met anyone who does - there is something about hosting this on a box in your living room that feels too fragile.

> The base Synology NAS models fit the bill - everything from blogs to office software is available from the get go. Their package system (for 3rd parties) seems to still be a mess: https://github.com/SynoCommunity/spksrc/issues/2216

To be fair packaging is a bit of a mess everywhere. We're talking about installing and running things, not publishing them, I can say I was positively surprised by how well everything works in their system.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#509

Post by hueving »

scrollaway wrote: post #103
hueving wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If freenode disappears, it's less than a day to pick a new network and connect. Nobody changes clients, tooling, etc. That's the difference between a closed walled garden like slack and an open protocol.

Nobody changes clients if Slack disappears and is replaced by another webapp. It's all in browser. The UI might change, but the UI also changes when you go from a Mac IRC client to a Windows one, which doesn't happen with web apps. I say this as someone who's used IRC a crapton and is a strong advocate for open protocols (and for more than just ideological reasons): Realistically , if Freenode disappears, IRC will mo…

>The UI might change

If the UI changes, the client has effectively changed for the user. Otherwise you might as well argue that clients are all equivalent if they are running on the same OS.

>but the UI also changes when you go from a Mac IRC client to a Windows one

Only if you use clients that don't look the same.

> if Freenode disappears, IRC will most likely die as a protocol as all major projects switch to non-IRC solutions

No supporting evidence that they would drop IRC if this happened. You must have missed the part about a network switch being literally a config change. Compare that to dropping irc which is all of your tooling.

>most clients just use text logs!

There is nothing wrong with a text log. Also, which common format is your browser storing your slack messages in?

Most of your complaints apply just as equally to chat inside of a web browser (other than the security issues).

>Propping up IRC as something it's not doesn't do anyone any favours

Tell me how my comment is incorrect. You literally change a config to change networks, that's it.

Re: Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications

#510

Post by photojosh »

milesrout wrote: post #466
photojosh wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slack has a much higher barrier to entry than IRC and most people using it are private companies. Only if you're a nerd. Took me 5 minutes to get started with Slack for our company and managing it is a piece of cake. Mind you, I haven't used IRC for a decade, maybe it's become a whole lot easier since then...

Also, 'only if you're a nerd' is very silly. We're talking about this in the context of open source software . Everyone that is capable of non-trivially contributing to open source software is more than capable of operating an IRC client. In fact, if you can't work out IRC then you're almost certainly too silly to be a programmer.

Yup, I completely forgot the context while I was writing my comment. You're right there.

I was more thinking about it from the context where Slack provides so many more features over IRC, not just real-time chat.

Post reply on HN