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Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

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Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#601

Post by ubermonkey »

kuschku wrote: post #556
golergka wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you log on to IRC from your phone and then instantly search through all of your company's chat history through the last couple of years?

Sure, that's exactly what I'm doing all the time. I can search my logs easily https://i.imgur.com/nTpoYs0.png (soon with even better integration, the prototype is a separate web app), and I can just open the web client or app on any device on this planet and instantly have all my logs and channels, and just chat: https://i.k8r.eu/54BPMQ.png Of course, I use self-hosted quassel and quasseldroid. Many other projects su…

"The one single real advantage of Slack is marketing."

Respectfully, NO.

Providing a very useful turnkey set of features out of the box that are technically possible but fiddly and hard to use in IRC is in and of itself a huge advantage. This is why they're successful. This is why people use it. This is why people use it who barely know what a command line IS.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#602

Post by oblio »

kuschku wrote: post #564
orthoxerox wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack and IRC are incomparable. Slack has authentication, message retention and search, multimedia attachments, mobile application with notifications, conversation threads, etc. You could try and cobble together something similar from an IRC server plus ten different programs, but most companie would rather pay Slack a wee amount than maintain a Frankenstein's monster.

Except for message retention and search, IRC already has all that, and even that is possible with bouncers. Mobile applications with notifications, conversation threads with +draft/reply (IRCv3 draft), multimedia attachments (IRCv3 idea), authentication with SASL and standardized account management (IRCv3 draft), etc. Look at what IRCCloud provides, and what IRCv3 is doing.

> Except for ##2 killer features##, IRC already has all that, and even that is possible ##if you implement it yourself##.

That's what normal people see when they read your message.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#603

Post by tom_ »

kuschku wrote: post #564
orthoxerox wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack and IRC are incomparable. Slack has authentication, message retention and search, multimedia attachments, mobile application with notifications, conversation threads, etc. You could try and cobble together something similar from an IRC server plus ten different programs, but most companie would rather pay Slack a wee amount than maintain a Frankenstein's monster.

Except for message retention and search, IRC already has all that, and even that is possible with bouncers. Mobile applications with notifications, conversation threads with +draft/reply (IRCv3 draft), multimedia attachments (IRCv3 idea), authentication with SASL and standardized account management (IRCv3 draft), etc. Look at what IRCCloud provides, and what IRCv3 is doing.

"Except for message retention and search"

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#604

Post by staybythebay »

Myrmornis wrote: post #543
bborud wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong :-). In fact, your second line is completely correct. However, Slack has lowered the standards for desktop software by being a really terrible piece of software. Which means that the professional in me wants to see a decent client before I'm happy. What's more worrying is that we are rapidly moving away from an Internet based on open standards and into walled gardens.

> However, Slack has lowered the standards for desktop software by being a really terrible piece of software. You need to explain a claim like that. On the face of it, the Slack UI works beautifully in Browser, Desktop and iOS clients. I'd quite like it to have code syntax highlighting. But really, what are you talking about?

Maybe people are generally jaded to to the slowness of cross-platform Javascript apps, but if you take a step back you can really see how bad it is.

I had people at my last job who had to quit Slack because of how hot it was making their laptops, and how much memory it was using.

At my current job, Slack is definitely one of my most rate limiting applications for how quickly I can get things done. Scrolling in chat, searching, switching channels- these are all actions that are extremely slow, and sometimes seem like they don’t work at all.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#605

Post by hackerpacker »

granshaw wrote: post #568
Sahhaese wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the protocol. People no longer release protocols, they release products. The open net, the open web has truly died. I wonder sometimes what we're missing because the conditions that let the web grow out of the internet have disappeared. What next leap are we missing?

There’s no money to be made in creating and building on open protocols. Without money to be made there’s no funding. Without funding there’s no way to create great experiences. Without great experiences nobody will use the thing. Pretty straightforward, really

On the other hand, I don't think anyone accused slack, with multi-megabyte webpages and even worse mobile app, of being a great experience. I think I used it once, and said no more.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#606

Post by wildduck »

Sahhaese wrote: post #529
antirez wrote: post #488

Happy for the people that built it, with the idea of improving what the chat was. Sad for the internet, because we were better in the 1980s with an open standard like IRC, and gradually the internet community lost the ability to adapt their old open protocols for the future.

The death of the protocol. People no longer release protocols, they release products. The open net, the open web has truly died. I wonder sometimes what we're missing because the conditions that let the web grow out of the internet have disappeared. What next leap are we missing?

IMHO there need to be balance between open source and revenue, protocol and products. Just because everyone is going one way, doesn't mean it is correct. I have a friend from banking use to make fun of Richard Stallman 15 years ago. However, looking at it not what he said is quite prophetic. What I’m most concern about is cynicism.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#607

Post by tallanvor »

mcv wrote: post #524
pmontra wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have a point with Slack but Jira is really terrible. I used it for a customer years ago and I'm so happy any other customer is using something simpler. Jira could be OK if operated by a specialized team paid to do project management and to shield developers from the complications of the tool. It's not only the design, it's the sheer amount of functionality. We don't need all of that. I'd go with Github simp…

Every single one of my clients uses Jira, and nobody I've ever met had a problem with it. It works, it's flexible, it's pretty easy to use. It's the industry standard, and for good reason, as far as I can tell.

I've never heard anyone call Jira the industry standard. There's way too much fragmentation in that market for anyone to be able to make that claim.

Jira can work well or it can work very poorly. It really depends on what you're trying to do with it and what resources you're willing to pour into it. That's why some people love it while others hate it.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#608

Post by wildduck »

CondensedBrain wrote: post #584
Sahhaese wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the protocol. People no longer release protocols, they release products. The open net, the open web has truly died. I wonder sometimes what we're missing because the conditions that let the web grow out of the internet have disappeared. What next leap are we missing?

ActivityPub shows a lot of promise.

Also look at dat:// take a look. Beaker browser.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#609

Post by Sahhaese »

bpicolo wrote: post #596
SamuelAdams wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC was created in 1988. There have been several chat protocols created since then [1]. A few notable protocols that tick a lot of "modern" boxes: - Jami - Matrix - Signal Protocol - XMPP The better question: why aren't new and existing technology companies embracing these protocols and making them ubiquitous? Personally I think it's because companies have a vested interest in creating walled gardens. The more users…

> why aren't new and existing technology companies embracing these protocols and making them ubiquitous? Because they don't want to be at the behest of protocol maintainers to improve their product? Their goals and the goals of maintainers would never align. Open source is great, but open source moves at slow pace compared to what a revenue-driven company can. There's a reason that most of the big open source project…

Open source moves at a slow pace now, but look at HTML between 1994 and 1998, that was a fast-moving and exciting time.

Re: Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation

#610

Post by it33 »

lostjohnny wrote: post #445
piva00 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when I have to keep sorting my mailing lists into its own "label/category/folder/whatever your e-mail client calls it" on a sidebar so I can keep track of activity happening in which mailing list. In Slack or any IRC-like chat I can keep track of the channels that interest me, I keep track of live operations, my team's public channel to see if there are stakeholders having issues with our systems, our private cha…

> Not when I have to keep sorting my mailing lists into its own There's a field on emails called subject. Linux kernel is still developed using mailing list, I can imagine only a few things harder than that, still the kernel team manages to work on it just fine, without being in the same physical space. Channels are just another way of labeling stuff... > (even more when I'm working from home) emails have been distri…

Mattermost CEO here,

We're working on getting more awareness around Mattermost as an open source Slack-alternative.

We just raised another $50M to invest in our product, on top of $20M we announced 4 months ago. Compared to the $1.2B Slack's raised, it's not that much--but we think dollars in open source can do more.

Our market is enterprise, particularly enterprise DevOps, so there's not as much brand marketing going on.

If Slack were Nike, I think Mattermost would be like the manufacturer of business-style shoes people wear into banks, governmental agencies, manufacturing companies, etc. where sneakers don't typically go.

We want to be just as comfortable and functional as Nikes, but our priority is to make our users and customers look good, and make them successful and build their brand, not promote our brand.

Our brand is to serve.

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