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Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

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Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#81

Post by briandear »

pnathan wrote: post #20
askafriend wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As patio11 puts it: UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX See more: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931499680657409 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931665275916288 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931949645533184 https://twitter.com/patio11/statu…

A well administered IRC channel has all of those, though typically you farm out to an image hoster for the pasting of images.

How about searching message history? Notifications when you aren't at your computer? Where's the mobile client with push notifications?

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#82

Post by bachmeier »

nodesocket wrote: post #42

Why is this even an issue? Slack has nailed team chat. Slack is easy to use, they have a free plan. If you want the premium features, their pricing is very affordable. Can we stop re-inventing the wheel, just because engineers don't want to pay for software. This is the fundamental difference between founders+engineer/engineer.

> If you want the premium features, their pricing is very affordable.

"very affordable" is up to each person to define. One of those premium features is a history with more than 10,000 messages.

I frequently interact with at least 25 people just to do my job. The cheapest paid plan is $6.67 per user per month. That works out to $2000 a year. And that's only for the people I work with on a regular basis. Sure, I could afford that, but it's certainly not trivial. Email looks like a good alternative at that price.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#83

Post by trjordan »

Albright wrote: post #60
askafriend wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As patio11 puts it: UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX UX See more: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931499680657409 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931665275916288 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/660931949645533184 https://twitter.com/patio11/statu…

Which is kind of a frustrating answer, because Slack's UX sucks. Its desktop app is just a wrapped web page; the fonts and colors match nobody's operating system; the fffffffffffffffffriendly scroll bar; all the cutesy messages and iconography; "Reconnecting…"; etc, etc. Yes, I understand that it's still friendlier to use than IRC, but there's a middle ground between "easy to use" and "still looks and works like a pr…

UX is not design. The fonts, colors, and silly features like emoji are gravy.

UX includes the cold experience. If you sign up with just one user, Slack creates a couple rooms and has a bot talk to you.

UX includes history management. Slack makes everything searchable and is good enough that most people can find what they want.

UX includes ways to level up your proficiency with the tool. Slack doesn't force integrations, defaults to 1-click OAuth integrations, and lets you explore writing code to integrate, without getting in your way before you're ready.

I don't think it's perfect, but having recently switched from Hipchat and hated on IRC-for-companies for years, they've done a lot of things right.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#86

Post by ajross »

akerl_ wrote: post #43
seagreen wrote: post #37

Well there's part of the problem. "Should I use Slack or this long list of open source options, all trickily alike?" The open source team (which I would prefer to win) would do much better if their message was "use this one, canonical, excellent option."

You say that like there's not fragmentation on the closed-source side as well, with Slack, Hipchat, Skype, etc. The reason there's competition is because ~"let's only field one perfect option" sounds great if you think you're the one with the perfect product, or you're a user whose needs are exactly like that product's pitch. In reality, user needs are diverse: there's no singular perfect product.

Realistically Slack's market share of the "IM technologies used by teams" world isn't that high anyway. I'm willing to bet that they remain well behind IRC even in their own market.

All of this is a response mostly to buzz. Slack looks great, and is absolutely popular. So we (the open source community) want something "equivalently buzzworthy" while forgetting that we are, in fact, the entrenched monopoly already.

I'm not losing much sleep, nor will I be retiring my IRC client or pastebin links any time soon.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#87

Post by briandear »

nodamage wrote: post #78
pnathan wrote: post #3

Can someone explain the attraction that nerds have for Slack/Hipchat over a well-tended IRC server?

It's amazing to me that people still don't understand the importance of user experience (and low friction setup processes). Do you remember having to hand write your Xorg.conf files to setup a Linux desktop back in the day? Wasn't that a colossal waste of time? Aren't you glad that's not a thing anymore? Sure, I could try to set up an IRC server and the relevant bots and scripts to attempt to emulate what Slack provi…

Exactly it. I don't have time to manage an IRC server. I don't have time to help people figure out IRC when they first join the team. I also don't want to waste time on something that adds zero value to the products we're building. I use Slack for the same reason I own a dishwasher. I could hand wash dishes and it might even be slightly better, but then I'm spending time washing dishes rather than using the time for higher value activities.

This rubbish about people worrying about Slack having access to your internal communications is just that -- rubbish. It's paranoid nonsense. The last thing anyone at Slack wants to do is read through 80 million lines of emojis and notifications and some private conversation about adding a counter cache to the Products table.

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#88

Post by unixhero »

empath75 wrote: post #31
pnathan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A well administered IRC channel has all of those, though typically you farm out to an image hoster for the pasting of images.

So we're hiring an IRC administrator now?

Hey. They're the only ones who can dish out k-lines!

Re: Five Open-Source Slack Alternatives

#89

Post by woof »

bachmeier wrote: post #82
nodesocket wrote: post #42

Why is this even an issue? Slack has nailed team chat. Slack is easy to use, they have a free plan. If you want the premium features, their pricing is very affordable. Can we stop re-inventing the wheel, just because engineers don't want to pay for software. This is the fundamental difference between founders+engineer/engineer.

> If you want the premium features, their pricing is very affordable. "very affordable" is up to each person to define. One of those premium features is a history with more than 10,000 messages. I frequently interact with at least 25 people just to do my job. The cheapest paid plan is $6.67 per user per month. That works out to $2000 a year. And that's only for the people I work with on a regular basis. Sure, I could…

$6.67/month is less than $0.33/day (~20 workdays/month)!

That's an trivial amount to pay for effective communications in my book.

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