45 ms·

Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects

612 points by ipozgaj 11y ago

halis 11y ago
IRC sucks.
pnathan 11y ago
The basic problem with Slack is that it's not libre. It's a fine product in many other ways. I won't defend the ethics of libre: I'll leave that up to rms, who has done a more-than-adequate job. But libre is a more ethical choice than proprietary.
jkot 11y ago
Also free service has limit, so older messages will be eventually lost.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  IRC out of the box has an even lower limit (0).
tptacek 11y ago
Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541
- baldfat 11y ago
  Still worth repeating USE IRC :)
  - underwater 11y ago
    IRC's time has passed. There's a reason that these alternatives are winning.
    - jrcii 11y ago
      > IRC's time has passed. I wouldn't go that far. Freenode is bustling.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      I don't know if the time has passed as much as people can't get through the barrier of entry technically?
    - jlgaddis 11y ago
      I still use it every day, just as I've done for the last 20 years.
    - jeena 11y ago
      I don't agree. Literarly all FOSS projects I am part of are on IRC, and those are quite many. I literarly never have thought: "I wonder if there is a slack chanel for that FOSS project", per default I look for the IRC server and chanel name. When I read articles like the OP I always wonder which FOSS projects they are using. Here is a list with the projects of the top of my head with which I'm in contact via IRC (quite often): Firefox (+OS, +sync), Qt (+Cpp, +QML, +QtCreator), Sailfish OS, IndieWebCamp, foss-gbg, golang, SELFHTML, Thunderbird, Clementine, Gnome (+calendar, +addressbook, etc.), Gimp, SyncThing, VLC, ArchLinux, ruby, Emacs, node.
    - _cudgel 11y ago
      > There's a reason that these alternatives are winning. Yes, and that reason is that the current crop of up-and-coming developers have the same problem as past generations: They'd prefer to implement their own solutions vs. looking to the past. Slack just happens to be the current darling in group communication. At some point, someone will make something that will change the fad-diet to The Next Big Thing.
      - baldfat 11y ago
        And IRC will still be there :)
    - uxcn 11y ago
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    Why? What if I value those things that Slack brings to the table?
- TheGRS 11y ago
  I thought I just jumped in a time machine. This exact article and pretty much the same discussions popping up.
smt88 11y ago
Why not Mattermost? http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/
j45 11y ago
Ideally, Slack can consider: - doubling as an IRC client - providing open source projects pro level services similar to github.
- thebouv 11y ago
  I doubt that's something they want to do: “these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business.” Though I do think they realize that getting these communities on there spreads the word about Slack and that is a good thing. As a reverse on your first point, and something I didn't know, it looks like those folks who don't want to get rid of their IRC clients can connect to Slack: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connecting-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connectin...
  - j45 11y ago
    Having used irc for many years (haven't in a long time), my first impression of Slack was it was an updated irc client. What kind? A well organized, approachable irc client with an updated feature set to help share the things we do today. Slack has made channel based chat relevant again to a new, much wider audience. But it's not all new. There was a time, however, where IRC made chat available to a much wider audience when it was much harder to connect. Slack has done a nice job of positioning themselves near creating beginners and deserve the success from doing so. I'm not sure how much more overhead open source communities would be over the free plans that already exist. Interesting to see that you can use an irc client to connect to slack.. just not sure why I couldn't use slack to do even more of my communicating in one place to be an irc client.
ultramancool 11y ago
An additional option which is now available is to host your own Mattermost server. GitLab has integration for it even. IRC is still my preference, but it takes a fairly technical person to appreciate it and host their own server. If you're catering to more general people, having 1 technical person spin up Mattermost in docker might be a good solution.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Does Mattermost solve the last problem with Slack listed in the article? This seems to be the single most important complaint. Anything that can be described "hey, it's just like Slack, except it's FOSS" is still going to have that problem. Namely, is it still intended primarily for intra-team collaboration, or can it handle communication with the public as well?
- drivers99 11y ago
  > GitLab has integration for it even. It actually is included with the gitlab omnibus installation package now, and then it uses gitlab's LDAP for logins. I just had to set a few options in gitlab.rb because I wanted to use SSL and to set the external hostname.
publicfig 11y ago
It's really difficult for me to take this point seriously if the only proposed alternative is IRC. I understand the benefits of IRC for FOSS and have used it many times in the past, but there's a reason why projects are adopting Slack over IRC. It's easier to use, it deals with on/offline states a lot more gracefully, it allows joining and inviting to rooms much easier, it has a clean and easy to use design and it's available pretty much anywhere using the same interface without having to install a client through their web interface (which is the exact same as their app interface). Along side that, there are hundreds of other minor to major features (File Sharing! Ticketing/build integration! Link Previews! Editing a message after it's sent!!!) that make it much more useful for many use cases than IRC. I think there is definitely room for competition with Slack for FOSS projects, but trying to pretend like IRC is that ultimate solution will ignore the problem completely.
- ipozgaj 11y ago
  IRC is constantly evolving as a protocol, and v3.3 is currently work in progress, so improvements are being made. See http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    Except not really, and it hasn't changed in any significant way in over 20 years. Having a standard and a committee usually means that something has stagnated, not that it is alive and improving.
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      While standards and committees might be slow to implement changes, their existence certainly does not mean some language/technology has stagnated. By your logic, the web has stagnated. Most experienced engineers are glad about the existence of a standard/committee. This is what lets people build stuff that can inter-operate. Without such specifications written somewhere, people are going to build random shit that doesn't work together because of small differences in implementation
frik 11y ago
All open source projects should offer an IRC channel, mailing lists and a forum! And almost all do. Even newer ones like Elixir that started with Slack have now a mailing list and an IRC channel.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > mailing lists and a forum Ideally those can be the same thing; see the current Mailman interface, or Discourse, both of which can provide a forum-like interface to a mailing list.
  - aggieben 11y ago
    +1 for discourse
  - frik 11y ago
    Discourse is a forum, with a modern UI. Forums are more for new and normal users/fans of open source projects. Technical discussions happen over IRC. And even more longer insightful technical discussions (often over several days) happen on mailing lists.
- aggieben 11y ago
  Mailing lists are the only thing worse than IRC. Seriously.
- cballard 11y ago
  This is true for large open-source projects but there are plenty of µframeworks and tiny Unix-philosophy-following tools that don't need more than a Git(hub|lab) repository with the issue tracker enabled.
ltbarcly3 11y ago
If you don't want to use Slack for FOSS projects then don't, but if you do, go for it. This is what OSS is all about, Freedom, use what you think is right. Diversity is good, maybe people leaving IRC will lead to innovations in IRC that address it's 20 year old deficiencies that have never been addressed.
- ipozgaj 11y ago
  OSS (as the name suggests) is about *openness", and that's exactly the point where Slack is falling short and what the article is about.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    And that openness extends to being able to use whatever software one wants be it open source, closed source or whatever.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    GitHub is also a proprietary walled garden, and it's pretty much the nexus of open source today, much like SourceForge was before. At any given time there seems to be a minority that really cares about open infrastructure while the majority just wants convenient stuff on a free tier.
    - adamors 11y ago
      It's hardly a walled garden when you can take your entire repo (including commit history etc.) and go to another provider or go with your own git server.
      - mbrock 11y ago
        Sure it is. How do you get your issues and wiki into another Git server?
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
Bahamut 11y ago
In my experience, I like IRC (been using it for ~10 years), but sometimes there is a lot of noise. For example, the Angular.js IRC channel devolved into a flood of bad questions with not enough information to help, and some entitled users. Many in the Angular community ran away to Slack in response. Code snippets aren't as nice either in IRC vs. Slack. I'm not sure what the solution is, but IRC is lacking (and sometimes blocked at workplaces) & Slack seems to solve most of the issues, but it not wanting to support large open source communities is an issue as well. There is a hole in tools available.
theaccordance 11y ago
This comes off as a snobbish article IMO. I don't want to discredit the work the author has done, but it's all over a communication tool, one that many of us have adopted in other environments. Having open source projects on the same platform as our other groups is simply a matter of convenience for the project organizer.
- elliotec 11y ago
  Yeah this guy needs to move on. He is welcome to hold on to IRC forever, as is anyone, but Slack is obviously an extremely useful, popular, and effective communication tool for open source projects as well as just about any team function.
rasengan 11y ago
IRC is fine if you package it right. IRC is just a protocol anyway. Slack is way more convenient versus IRC + etc. However, we can change that.
aggieben 11y ago
Uh, no. So much no. So many things are better than IRC. Even Jabbr.net is better.
forrestthewoods 11y ago
The positives listed in "Problems with IRC that Slack solves" are significantly stronger than the negatives listed in "Problems with Slack". By a lot. No wonder FOSS projects are choosing Slack! I also like how the "IRC is better for your company" section doesn't actually give reasons as to why it's better. It instead lists multiple services you can employ to achieve the features Slack provides out the gate.
Kinnard 11y ago
There's a Free and Open Source Alternative to Slack called Mattermost: http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/
- it33 11y ago
  Thanks for the mention! Mattermost team here, just to add, there's an option to use Mattermost as an IRC server via: https://github.com/42wim/matterircd https://github.com/42wim/matterircd So if part of your team wants to stay on IRC and part wants to use Mattermost with file sharing and messaging across PC and phone, and integrate with Mattermost apps (http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/ http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/) all that is available.
tyre 11y ago
Things I care about: - User experience. In 2016, I'm not using the hacker's AIM to collaborate. I know many people love it, but there are seriously better options. Syntax highlighting inline and file attachments that Just Work are fantastic. - Product development. I want products I use to be continually improving. Not yearly but weekly. If something breaks, I don't want to fix it because I'm not here to build a chat program or manage one. Things I don't care about: - Closed Source. A dedicated team paid to work on the product full time, financially incentivized to expand the ecosystem is a major plus. - A walled garden. This sounds like the same as #1. Slack allows many integration points, including chatbots that can be programmed to do anything. I'm not sure it is that closed off. There is a reason large teams collaborate over Slack as opposed to IRC. If IRC filled people's needs, they would use it. It doesn't.
- davidw 11y ago
  > - Closed Source. A dedicated team paid to work on the product full time, financially incentivized to expand the ecosystem is a major plus. > - A walled garden. This sounds like the same as #1. Slack allows many integration points, including chatbots that can be programmed to do anything. I'm not sure it is that closed off. Give it time. You'll come to realize that there are some good reasons - many of them quite grounded in practicality - why those of us who have been around for a while place some value on these things.
  - vulpino 11y ago
    Then name them. I realize this sounds caustic, but to say "Well, you're wrong" without giving adequate reasoning beyond "I've been around a while, so I know better" contributes nothing to the discussion.
    - davidw 11y ago
      Look them up. People have written books and articles on this stuff. Here are a few: * http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html * Internet Explorer in the 2000's. * Look how Microsoft got everyone by the balls with Office software for many years. * Look up the whole Bitkeeper fiasco with the Linux kernel. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in * Did you catch all those people freaking out because Parse is shutting down? * Were you there when Twitter shut down a lot of people integrating with it? * Unix is fairly open in terms of its interface, but plenty of people got stuck on proprietary ones over the years, only to see most all of them disappear in favor of Linux and the various BSDs. I'm no RMS, and don't have problems with proprietary software, but am very wary of getting locked in to something, rather than simply buying a product that I use and can easily switch away from when there's something better that comes out. And chat protocols are very much about positive network externalities that leave you tied to something, like it or not.
jeena 11y ago
> Slack makes it so that you can see what you missed when you return. With IRC, you don’t have this. If you want it, you can set up an IRC bouncer like ZNC. So perhaps I'm hoding it wrong, but I've been using ZNC for a couple of years and every time I forget to close Xchat at work and people keep talking, I can't see what they said on my phone or at home. Also I can't scroll up nor search for stuff which were said in the past. For me that is the biggest drawback with IRC. A sensible alternative, which I also was able to push at work, is Mattermost http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/ Although I would love to see us using http://matrix.org/ http://matrix.org/ but I don't expect our customers to install their own instance so we could federate any time soon.
- kuschku 11y ago
  > For me that is the biggest drawback with IRC. Ever heard of Quassel? An IRC bouncer where the client integrates with the bouncer – just scroll up to load more backlog. Disclaimer: Am working on Quassel.
  - jeena 11y ago
    Hm nope, never heard of it. Does it work on my Sailfish OS phone, my Linux laptop and on my iMac?
    - yarrel 11y ago
      Yes.
      - jeena 11y ago
        I can't find the Sailfish OS version but it is C++ and Qt so it might be possible to migrate.
- majuscule 11y ago
  ZNC channel playback is configurable: KeepBuffer = true Buffer = 5000
fideloper 11y ago
Those bullet point against slack are really common around here, but I've yet to hear an explanation as to why they're a con. Example: It's closed source. Apparently that in itself is intrinsically "bad", and obviously so, because I've yet to see any explanation attached to that argument.
- jeena 11y ago
  You can't know what happens with the content you put in there.
  - zepto 11y ago
    What does that even mean? Surely the same is true for IRC, since anyone can be running their own code for relays, bots, and clients.
    - yoo1I 11y ago
      The difference is that if freenet started to use my messages to #IluvCarrots and sell them to the carrot industry, I could tell them to shov it and migrate over to OFTC with little friction. If Slack starts doing that, and I want to continue to use my client software I'm pretty much screwed.
- yoo1I 11y ago
  Not sure that that really needs an explanation in an article about FOSS Software projects, but here goes: Using a closed source messaging system you never know, if 5 years down the line the company who owns you, and who is in control of your communication, decides that they would like to monetize your "contributions" to their system to synergize shareholder smileability, by adding ads to your projects channel. Or they might want to change their pricing structure so suddenly the barrier to entry to your project is suddenly higher. Or they get bought by google for their engineering talent and the whole thing ceases to exist. Or they exclude the bot that you write and depend on a little bit from their network with no explanation given. Or any other further or not so far fetched scenario in which the owners of the software can do whatever they want without consulting with you, leaving you with little alternatives. Using a free protocol with free software, if these things happen wrt to the entity writing the code that you rely on or the the hosting of services you rely on, you're still inconvenienced, but these things do not impact you as much, because you're free to continue to use the code without the new sucky modifications, fork if if your able (or rely on some other entity taking over the code) and run the damn service yourself. Forking and self-hosting aren't always the best solutions, but the more invested you are in a service the better they start to look.
unexpand 11y ago
Finally someone said it. I have a tough time with one of the project I am working on during my personal time. By the time I go home and get time to work on it or ask a few questions, I don't see anyone in that slack room. When I am work, slack is blocked, so I have to wait till weekends to get someone answer my question.
eddieroger 11y ago
One problem that they failed to address in the Slack over IRC section is a damn near non-existent barrier to entry. I've introduced people and small teams to IRC. I've also introduced people to Slack. IRC is just different enough, even when introduced to a team of technologists who grew on AIM and the like. Consider the onboarding experience - I emailed someone a link to a Slack channel, and before I heard back from them they'd signed up on my account and, unsolicitedly, downloaded the mobile client and were chatting with me. My setup time was nil, and there was no training. Sure, they could have downloaded Colloquy to their Mac and iPhone, and entered the settings, and hoped for the best, but I'm almost positive it wouldn't have gone so smoothly. That doesn't even include time to configure a bouncer for persistence. It's just anecdata, sure, but it counts for something, and helps to explain Slack's explosive growth.
- kuschku 11y ago
  That’s why things like IRCCloud or Quassel exist. They can sign up with IRCCloud (or any quassel-as-a-service provider), and instantly be online. Webinterfaces, clients for all platforms, and bouncer is integrated. Seriously, there are modern solutions for IRC, use them.
  - eddieroger 11y ago
    But why? Now I've got more than one set of accounts to manage, and sign up for, and troubleshoot when things go awry. Slack solves that problem for me, and they do it for free.
shmerl 11y ago
Why IRC and not XMPP?
- drdaeman 11y ago
  This. Well, I must admit, XMPP isn't the nicest protocol out there, and it has some issues (esp. with older software that implements it). One can't talk it with telnet client, and this is a downside. We've discussed it the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900859 But it has advantages over IRC. To name a few: - Universal federation. Private systems (that don't have S2S enabled) aside, any public XMPP server can talk to any public XMPP server. You don't need to have a separate account here, there and everywhere. Not that IRC really needs accounts (one can surely use it without signing up with NickServ etc), but sometimes it does. - History access. Well, it requires server to have MAM (XEP-0313) support, but if it does, then everything is there. - File transfers. Unlike Slack, it may not work for absolutely everyone but I think Jingle had gone through a lot of work and is quite capable of piercing quite draconian NATs. I'm not sure IRC's DCC is anywhere near. Well, and there's also in-band file transfers (XEP-0047) that's awful and sucks but still works for tiny content (short code snippets). And XEP-0363, although not many servers support it. XMPP's messiness has both down- and upsides. - Integrations. I think there are as many XMPP bots as there are IRC ones. Either way, there are ton of libraries for most languages so one can hack their own simple XMPP bot literally in just a few of hours. - Extensibility. XMPP can attach virtually arbitrary metadata to messages, or send extra information like typing notifications or delivery receipts. Well, it all depends on client support, but you don't need a committee to think of your own standard and make a ejabberd/Pidgin/Gajim/etc plugin or patch. And, possibly, think of compatibility approach for non-supporting clients. That's it. I don't think IRC has anything like this. - OMEMO (of Axolotl/TextSecure/Signal fame). It's not mature, but one can already have multi-point end-to-end encryption for personal conversations. Sadly, not for chatrooms yet (MUC doesn't support PubSub, MUC2 aka MIX isn't yet here), but I'm sure it will work in the future.
dawnbreez 11y ago
Is this gonna be one of those "every day until you like it" things?
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I appreciate the sentiment but the message is a bit weak. There are many things that are "closed source" that we have to use to collaborate on FOSS, I ride in closed source airplanes to get to conferences but I realize I could use a Prarie Schooner that I built out of freely obtainable materials to get there instead. Ok perhaps that is a bit too harsh, but it is the essence of the argument. Its easy to get an open source tool that replaces IRC and works like Slack, you take $5M and you hire a half dozen engineers and a couple of designers and you build a set of tools and then you give it away for free and never see your $5M ever again. Welcome to the prisoner's dilemma, FOSS edition.
josep2 11y ago
People who are maintaining the FOSS projects should decide what they use, not you.
jakejake 11y ago
I've tried and failed many times to keep IRC in my workflow. I always wind up opening it for a few days/weeks then eventually just kinda fizzle out. My company installed slack and it was just like wildfire - the whole team was on it instantly and never have looked back. If there was a client + bot setup that would offer the same functionality out of the box over IRC I'm sure we would have picked it up just as quickly. And I would have liked to be on the irc channel for a few of my favorite OS projects as well. But as far as I know, without there is no such setup?
vortico 11y ago
Projects can use https://hack.chat https://hack.chat, for which I am the main developer. I am also working on an overhauled version (temporarily named Libre Chat) supporting file transfers, mobile apps, channel subscriptions, and chat history. Both are GPL, can be installed on your own server, and have "official" hosted versions.
jscheel 11y ago
A lot of the popular FOSS irc channels have devolved into rooms with thousands of people there with nobody talking. Seriously, over the past few years, it seems like people are still on IRC, but they just don't engage on it. I wonder if that has to do with a lot of people becoming more used to other platforms doing a better job of assisting in communication.
andrewmcwatters 11y ago
I like the present-day Slack vs. IRC argument. It's an ongoing manifestation of the blatant lack of appreciation of user experience and great design. Developers need to get their heads out of their rear-ends. If IRC is so great, why doesn't everyone use it? This endless argument has been fought in multiple other products and fields as well.
Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
Author here. There's not much to say here that wasn't said last time, but here are some retrospective thoughts on this post: - Probably would have come across better if I didn't pitch IRC as better than Slack in general, but only that it's better for FOSS projects. This blog post wasn't meant to shame Slack in general, even if it kind of did in the end. - Importantly, Slack has come out as saying that they don't want big public projects to host themselves on Slack. It's really just not a good use-case for Slack to put a FOSS project on it. - In hindsight, a lot of the FOSS-friendly alternatives (Matrix, Gitter, etc) are quite good and I should have put more effort into researching them and discussing them in my article. It's probably too late to steer the discussion, but please remember that my post addresses the use of Slack for FOSS projects, not in general.
- stephenitis 11y ago
  > Slack has come out as saying that they don't want big public projects to host themselves on Slack. It's really just not a good use-case for Slack to put a FOSS project on it. I'm curious and need help finding a link to this source.
  - solicode 11y ago
    There might be better sources, but here are two that I know of: https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-is-moving-to-discord.html https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-... http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-...
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    I mention this in the article, first heading. Includes source.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mberning 11y ago
IRC sucks from a usability standpoint. Huge opportunity to make it better, but also a huge risk due to the legacy of IRC.
kaiizen 11y ago
I'm starting to see slack repeaters in IRC channels all around IRC and I am leaving those channel as it ruins my IRC settings and makes things confusing. My colored nicknames no longer work. It splits communities and makes people leave the channel. Please don't repeat slack to IRC.
halis 11y ago
I've heard this argument before. The only problem is that IMO slack is awesome and IRC is not anymore. I'm on 3 slack teams, one with some former co-workers, one for a non-profit that teaches coding and one for a side project. If any of them suggested IRC I probably wouldn't have bothered. As it is, I have the desktop client on my Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and my Windows laptop and the app on my iPhone. It's great. IRC is not. That's my opinion. You don't even give any good reasons why it doesn't work for open source projects.
kasbah 11y ago
I recently decided on gitter.im plus a channel on IRC and a bot [1] that syncs them. [1]: https://github.com/finnp/gitter-irc-bot https://github.com/finnp/gitter-irc-bot
diegorbaquero 11y ago
My vote goes to Gitter
- andrewmcwatters 11y ago
  Gitter is also a great example of excellent integration and general design that keeps developers from having to do busy work like setting up a GitHub <-> IRC bot. I use it for my own projects, too.
uxcn 11y ago
The nice thing with IRC is that it's scriptable. So for example if you want a klaxon to sound every time the secret word is mentioned, it's easy to do.
shylor 11y ago
Honestly, my group uses Discord (http://discordapp.com http://discordapp.com) now. We love it. It replaces IRC and Teamspeak for us. Plus, I can get a user on the service in 5 seconds just by sending a link to them. It is mostly used for gaming, but coding with it is just as great. There are a lot of public servers also for all sorts of things. (http://discord.me/servers http://discord.me/servers). The voice is what we love it for, chat is awesome during the day when some of us are not able to talk over voice.
- bsimpson 11y ago
  React moved to Discord after being kicked off of Slack for having too large a channel. The Discord folks welcomed them in as a supported use case. If your biggest concern with Slack is the invite-by-email hack, try Discord.
  - ValentineC 11y ago
    I've been playing around with Discord, but it seems like it lacks search and a proper API. I'm looking forward to its potential though!
kaiizen 11y ago
Weechat in tmux/screen with a bouncer is fantastic. Weechat has a ton of scripts like highlight monitoring, filtering of join/part/quit that you can customize for timeouts. Has a great support channel on freenode too. If you're doing FOSS projects, you can probably get your way around a command line enough to install and run both of these in a $3 VPS or even an AWS instance.
ex3ndr 11y ago
Almost all brazil FOSS community is in our completely open app: https://actor.im https://actor.im
ajengineer 11y ago
This article is complete garbage. I wish I could get the time back I wasted reading it. This outlines someone's personal preferences providing no tangible justification. If I wanted to know about people's feelings I would go on tumblr. The crux of the argument "Slack is closed source and you should use open source for everything" is just useless. This article left me wishing the author wasn't lobotomized before writing it.
tater_sent_me 11y ago
irc.buttes.org #flashsupport Tell them tater sent you.
7185413413 11y ago
Kauan
superuser2 11y ago
Jabber rooms seem like a pretty good idea. Lots of open source servers to choose from. Is there a reason not to use them, other than relative obscurity?
johnchristopher 11y ago
It hasn't been mentioned yet but glowing bear (http://glowing-bear.org/ http://glowing-bear.org/) is a nice web client that plus into any instances of a weechat process (that you let run in a multiplex terminal on a raspberry you plug in the kitchen, on the fridge).
finnn 11y ago
>irccloud: Is really cool and solves all of the problems. irccloud.com Is IRCCloud not closed source also?
- kuschku 11y ago
  Yes, it is. But it still uses an open protocol – so you can switch from IRCCloud to, say, Quassel[1] easily without having to recreate channels or permissions. [1] Quassel is an IRC bouncer/client combination which handles things like backlog archiving and so on properly – you can connect with multiple clients at once, just scroll up to load more backlog, use web clients, windows/mac/linux/Android/iOS clients, etc. (The backlog lives in an SQL database, so tools like Quassel-Suche can easily query it, and you can easily export it. I personally stopped using bookmarks, and just search for links through Quassel-Suche instead)
solicode 11y ago
The fact that Slack has made it clear they don't intend to support large open source projects is the biggest thing in my opinion. Reactiflux was basically forced off Slack for getting too big. Other large communities like the Clojurians Slack community will likely be forced off soon in the near future too (some members of the community have begun discussing this and evaluating alternatives). The Elixir Slack community is also similar in size, and I see the same thing happening there eventually.
unimpressive 11y ago
I plan to write a blog post on this at some point, but as a tentative short and rough draft: IRC's biggest problem is what I would loosely term 'Grunginess'. Every single thing I've seen associated with IRC has this kind of Unix/Linux-y grunginess to it where nothing is easy and everybody rolls their own solution. If you would like to experience this first hand, try setting up eir (https://freenode.net/eir.shtml https://freenode.net/eir.shtml) which is written in an unholy mixture of C++ and Perl. (The moment I see this combination I usually know I'm in for a ride.) Or try the python IRC library (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/irc https://pypi.python.org/pypi/irc) which has almost no documentation besides docstrings and needs to be puzzled out and examined and source-read before you can use it. You want to be able to see messages in an IRC channel when you're not on? Don't worry, ZNC (http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC) is here to help, with powerful command line configuration action! Honestly IRC bouncers are kind of a red herring. Even if you can see what is typed in a room when you're not on using a bouncer, the real benefit of slack's message history is being able to see what's typed in a room before you joined, and being able to assume that this is a feature which is available to every slack user. Slack's multithreading is beautiful. One of the biggest problems with running an IRC channel is that IRC is fundamentally broken. And when I say that I don't mean it in the shallow way most people do, I mean actually literally fundamentally broken. Here's why: The average human reads somewhere between 150-300wpm. A decent typist types at 60wpm. If we take 300wpm as an optimistic estimate of average reading speed, the moment you're having a lively discussion the channel is swamped at seven participants or so. Slack makes multithreading easy by associating multiple topic 'channels' together for a single group so that you can talk about one topic in this channel and another topic in that channel and it's not confusing or unwieldy, people who want to hear about certain topics can subscribe to a channel and people who don't can just not subscribe or leave. You don't have this 'stepping on each others toes' problem where three people want to talk about this and three people want to talk about that and they all use the same channel to do it. Avatars, emoticons, that stuff is all a bit tacky but the core fundamentals of the design are a sound improvement over IRC, and IRC needs to respond to that.
- kuschku 11y ago
  IRC has responded to that. A huge part of users uses now IRCCloud, or their own ZNC or Quassel setup. And creating multiple channels is never an issue to separate topics.
omginternets 11y ago
If this post were titled "Please don't use OS X for FOSS projects" nobody would take it seriously. I'm struggling to see the difference ...
- cyphar 11y ago
  Because projects don't force you to use OS X or Windows or whatever in order to contact the maintainers. Using Slack exclusively does force people to do that.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    So? If you need to contact the maintainers, you're using Slack already... This is much ado about nothing.
sergiotapia 11y ago
Makes total sense. Let's say I have an open source project, how do I create a FREE irc channel for my users and what server to I choose to host it on?
mwfunk 11y ago
Open source is a form of software licensing that lots of people develop and use for lots of different reasons. That's it. Everything else is politics and philosophy. Some people really get into the very specific politics and the very specific philosophies of the FSF. What they don't seem to get is that the FSF merely has one out of infinitely many perspectives on why open source is important and what people should do about it. It's fine if someone wants to run an ideologically pure (per FSF criteria) FOSS project, or not contribute to projects that don't meet their criteria for ideological purity. Where it gets counterproductive is asserting that one group's philosophy has some sort of primacy over the entirety of the FOSS world. It gets especially dicey when that group claims moral superiority over everyone else. Instead of complaining about this or that FOSS project not being "true FOSS", the FSF should define a set of standards and practices that go beyond mere software licensing that DO meet their standards for ideological purity. Then a project that wants to comply with the FSF have an easy way to state up front that they are politically aligned with the FSF in every respect. Those who care about such things can use that information to set their expectations about how the project is run outside of the software licensing aspect. Maybe it draws them to the project, maybe it drives them away, but at least no one gets surprised and no mailing lists devolve into pointless political flamewars. That way no one gets disappointed (for example) when a project wants to use Slack for communication, assuming that that project has not stated up front that FSF-compliant ideological purity is a goal. Alternatively, if a contributor to a self-declared FSF-compliant ideologically pure project wants to use Slack, the other contributors to that project have grounds for denying that on a purely philosophical basis. They can focus on maintaining their standards for ideological purity rather than continually arguing over whether or not FSF-compliant ideological purity itself is valid goal.
- PuercoPop 11y ago
  > Open source is a form of software licensing that lots of people develop and use for lots of different reasons. That's it. Open is more than one form of software licensing, each license modified by the different idiosyncrasies and values of different people that develop software. > Everything else is politics and philosophy Open source IS politics as well. The origin of the term itself is a way to subvert Free Software
- 11y ago
akmiller 11y ago
This whole article and discussion is silly. Use whatever you damn well please for your projects communication!
isaiahg 11y ago
I have only one complaint of Slack. It should be much easier to find and join open slack communities and switch between them. I've used it for a small team before but we quickly finished what we were doing and now it's dissolved. So I've been hearing awesome things about it and how people are using it and I haven't really had a chance to try it out. I've applied to join a few communities but I've never received a reply. That process should be so much easier. For open source projects or communities I think Discord fits the bill much better. It allows you to take part in multiple communities in one interface and you can use it without an official account.
shriphani 11y ago
I don't mind FOSS projects adopting slack - whatever it takes to make devs/users happy. But slack's tab-completion is woefully pathetic when there's more than a few hundred members in a chat room. This is a solved problem - get it together slack!
bovermyer 11y ago
I'm not real keen on the Church of FOSS. Don't get me wrong, I love a great many FOSS projects; but my entire life does not need to be constructed of such. Posts like this smack of dogma and fanaticism to me, and engender mistrust of whatever projects the person in question is a part of. After all, if they're that dogmatic about one thing, then what's to say they aren't dogmatic about other things?
- habitue 11y ago
  The reason the dogma of Free Software exists is because often in day to day decisions it's easy not to think about the long-term effects. Right now, you have a neat chat tool. Maybe in 10 years, you have a problem where Slack has a monopoly on all project chats, and abuses that power. Today, you can look and see "Hey, Slack is a cool company. They get it. This isn't Microsoft of the 90's. They aren't going to abuse this power, they just want to make an amazing chat tool that improves all of our lives." (This is probably true) So it seems like it's ok to use Slack. The idea is that maybe this power corrupts eventually. Or maybe Slack as an entity may not always be run by people who get it. Maybe it's broken up into parts, or becomes a hollow shell as a holding company (cough Yahoo). Without an open platform and free source code, users are unable to move away. The dogma is a rule that brings the potential long-term consequences to you when you're deciding what to do now. It gives you a twinge "Hmm, that feels dirty because it's proprietary. I'll keep looking". That way you don't have to imagine how Slack gets from Cool Company to Abusive Monopoly, you can just make an easy choice based on how you feel.
  - bovermyer 11y ago
    I generally make my choices based on a balance of time/monetary cost, feature set, user experience, service integrity (e.g., SLAs for proprietary software, or difficulty of maintenance for self-hosted/OSS), and ease of migration in the event of abandonment. The choice I ultimately make is not always, or even often, open source. There is no blanket "always choose this" guiding rule for me.
- cyphar 11y ago
  You may not care about your freedom. But that doesn't mean that people who care about their freedom and others' freedom are dogmatic.
st3v3r 11y ago
He lists the stuff that Slack does better than IRC, but then ignores it. Kinda like he's just waving it off as not being important. So what's the solution for getting the benefits that Slack has, without using Slack?
smokedoutraider 11y ago
You were whining about this a couple of months ago already. Slack is simply much more user friendly and doesn't look as dated as 99% of IRC clients.
Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago
Slack client and web-app both are really heavy consuming ridiculous amounts of memory and cpu time.
e12e 11y ago
On a related note, Debian annonced [1] a new unified communications in November: https://wiki.debian.org/UnifiedCommunications/DebianDevelopers/UserGuide https://wiki.debian.org/UnifiedCommunications/DebianDevelope... I'm not a DD, so can't comment on how well it works - but I've had it on my todo-list s while to look at their real-world setup as inspiration. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/11/msg00000.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/11/msg00... Previously submitted to hn, but didn't gain any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531061

612 points by ipozgaj 11y ago

halis 11y ago

IRC sucks.

The basic problem with Slack is that it's not libre. It's a fine product in many other ways. I won't defend the ethics of libre: I'll leave that up to rms, who has done a more-than-adequate job. But libre is a more ethical choice than proprietary.

jkot 11y ago

Also free service has limit, so older messages will be eventually lost.

st3v3r 11y ago
IRC out of the box has an even lower limit (0).

tptacek 11y ago

Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541

baldfat 11y ago
Still worth repeating USE IRC :)
- underwater 11y ago
  IRC's time has passed. There's a reason that these alternatives are winning.
  - jrcii 11y ago
    > IRC's time has passed. I wouldn't go that far. Freenode is bustling.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    I don't know if the time has passed as much as people can't get through the barrier of entry technically?
  - jlgaddis 11y ago
    I still use it every day, just as I've done for the last 20 years.
  - jeena 11y ago
    I don't agree. Literarly all FOSS projects I am part of are on IRC, and those are quite many. I literarly never have thought: "I wonder if there is a slack chanel for that FOSS project", per default I look for the IRC server and chanel name. When I read articles like the OP I always wonder which FOSS projects they are using. Here is a list with the projects of the top of my head with which I'm in contact via IRC (quite often): Firefox (+OS, +sync), Qt (+Cpp, +QML, +QtCreator), Sailfish OS, IndieWebCamp, foss-gbg, golang, SELFHTML, Thunderbird, Clementine, Gnome (+calendar, +addressbook, etc.), Gimp, SyncThing, VLC, ArchLinux, ruby, Emacs, node.
  - _cudgel 11y ago
    > There's a reason that these alternatives are winning. Yes, and that reason is that the current crop of up-and-coming developers have the same problem as past generations: They'd prefer to implement their own solutions vs. looking to the past. Slack just happens to be the current darling in group communication. At some point, someone will make something that will change the fad-diet to The Next Big Thing.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      And IRC will still be there :)
  - uxcn 11y ago
- st3v3r 11y ago
  Why? What if I value those things that Slack brings to the table?
TheGRS 11y ago
I thought I just jumped in a time machine. This exact article and pretty much the same discussions popping up.

smt88 11y ago

Why not Mattermost? http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/

j45 11y ago

Ideally, Slack can consider: - doubling as an IRC client - providing open source projects pro level services similar to github.

thebouv 11y ago
I doubt that's something they want to do: “these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business.” Though I do think they realize that getting these communities on there spreads the word about Slack and that is a good thing. As a reverse on your first point, and something I didn't know, it looks like those folks who don't want to get rid of their IRC clients can connect to Slack: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connecting-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connectin...
- j45 11y ago
  Having used irc for many years (haven't in a long time), my first impression of Slack was it was an updated irc client. What kind? A well organized, approachable irc client with an updated feature set to help share the things we do today. Slack has made channel based chat relevant again to a new, much wider audience. But it's not all new. There was a time, however, where IRC made chat available to a much wider audience when it was much harder to connect. Slack has done a nice job of positioning themselves near creating beginners and deserve the success from doing so. I'm not sure how much more overhead open source communities would be over the free plans that already exist. Interesting to see that you can use an irc client to connect to slack.. just not sure why I couldn't use slack to do even more of my communicating in one place to be an irc client.

ultramancool 11y ago

An additional option which is now available is to host your own Mattermost server. GitLab has integration for it even. IRC is still my preference, but it takes a fairly technical person to appreciate it and host their own server. If you're catering to more general people, having 1 technical person spin up Mattermost in docker might be a good solution.

amyjess 11y ago
Does Mattermost solve the last problem with Slack listed in the article? This seems to be the single most important complaint. Anything that can be described "hey, it's just like Slack, except it's FOSS" is still going to have that problem. Namely, is it still intended primarily for intra-team collaboration, or can it handle communication with the public as well?
drivers99 11y ago
> GitLab has integration for it even. It actually is included with the gitlab omnibus installation package now, and then it uses gitlab's LDAP for logins. I just had to set a few options in gitlab.rb because I wanted to use SSL and to set the external hostname.

publicfig 11y ago

It's really difficult for me to take this point seriously if the only proposed alternative is IRC. I understand the benefits of IRC for FOSS and have used it many times in the past, but there's a reason why projects are adopting Slack over IRC. It's easier to use, it deals with on/offline states a lot more gracefully, it allows joining and inviting to rooms much easier, it has a clean and easy to use design and it's available pretty much anywhere using the same interface without having to install a client through their web interface (which is the exact same as their app interface). Along side that, there are hundreds of other minor to major features (File Sharing! Ticketing/build integration! Link Previews! Editing a message after it's sent!!!) that make it much more useful for many use cases than IRC. I think there is definitely room for competition with Slack for FOSS projects, but trying to pretend like IRC is that ultimate solution will ignore the problem completely.

ipozgaj 11y ago
IRC is constantly evolving as a protocol, and v3.3 is currently work in progress, so improvements are being made. See http://ircv3.net/ http://ircv3.net/
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Except not really, and it hasn't changed in any significant way in over 20 years. Having a standard and a committee usually means that something has stagnated, not that it is alive and improving.
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    While standards and committees might be slow to implement changes, their existence certainly does not mean some language/technology has stagnated. By your logic, the web has stagnated. Most experienced engineers are glad about the existence of a standard/committee. This is what lets people build stuff that can inter-operate. Without such specifications written somewhere, people are going to build random shit that doesn't work together because of small differences in implementation

frik 11y ago

All open source projects should offer an IRC channel, mailing lists and a forum! And almost all do. Even newer ones like Elixir that started with Slack have now a mailing list and an IRC channel.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> mailing lists and a forum Ideally those can be the same thing; see the current Mailman interface, or Discourse, both of which can provide a forum-like interface to a mailing list.
- aggieben 11y ago
  +1 for discourse
- frik 11y ago
  Discourse is a forum, with a modern UI. Forums are more for new and normal users/fans of open source projects. Technical discussions happen over IRC. And even more longer insightful technical discussions (often over several days) happen on mailing lists.
aggieben 11y ago
Mailing lists are the only thing worse than IRC. Seriously.
cballard 11y ago
This is true for large open-source projects but there are plenty of µframeworks and tiny Unix-philosophy-following tools that don't need more than a Git(hub|lab) repository with the issue tracker enabled.

ltbarcly3 11y ago

If you don't want to use Slack for FOSS projects then don't, but if you do, go for it. This is what OSS is all about, Freedom, use what you think is right. Diversity is good, maybe people leaving IRC will lead to innovations in IRC that address it's 20 year old deficiencies that have never been addressed.

ipozgaj 11y ago
OSS (as the name suggests) is about *openness", and that's exactly the point where Slack is falling short and what the article is about.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  And that openness extends to being able to use whatever software one wants be it open source, closed source or whatever.
- mbrock 11y ago
  GitHub is also a proprietary walled garden, and it's pretty much the nexus of open source today, much like SourceForge was before. At any given time there seems to be a minority that really cares about open infrastructure while the majority just wants convenient stuff on a free tier.
  - adamors 11y ago
    It's hardly a walled garden when you can take your entire repo (including commit history etc.) and go to another provider or go with your own git server.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      Sure it is. How do you get your issues and wiki into another Git server?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago

Bahamut 11y ago

In my experience, I like IRC (been using it for ~10 years), but sometimes there is a lot of noise. For example, the Angular.js IRC channel devolved into a flood of bad questions with not enough information to help, and some entitled users. Many in the Angular community ran away to Slack in response. Code snippets aren't as nice either in IRC vs. Slack. I'm not sure what the solution is, but IRC is lacking (and sometimes blocked at workplaces) & Slack seems to solve most of the issues, but it not wanting to support large open source communities is an issue as well. There is a hole in tools available.

theaccordance 11y ago

This comes off as a snobbish article IMO. I don't want to discredit the work the author has done, but it's all over a communication tool, one that many of us have adopted in other environments. Having open source projects on the same platform as our other groups is simply a matter of convenience for the project organizer.

elliotec 11y ago
Yeah this guy needs to move on. He is welcome to hold on to IRC forever, as is anyone, but Slack is obviously an extremely useful, popular, and effective communication tool for open source projects as well as just about any team function.

rasengan 11y ago

IRC is fine if you package it right. IRC is just a protocol anyway. Slack is way more convenient versus IRC + etc. However, we can change that.

aggieben 11y ago

Uh, no. So much no. So many things are better than IRC. Even Jabbr.net is better.

forrestthewoods 11y ago

The positives listed in "Problems with IRC that Slack solves" are significantly stronger than the negatives listed in "Problems with Slack". By a lot. No wonder FOSS projects are choosing Slack! I also like how the "IRC is better for your company" section doesn't actually give reasons as to why it's better. It instead lists multiple services you can employ to achieve the features Slack provides out the gate.

Kinnard 11y ago

There's a Free and Open Source Alternative to Slack called Mattermost: http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/

it33 11y ago
Thanks for the mention! Mattermost team here, just to add, there's an option to use Mattermost as an IRC server via: https://github.com/42wim/matterircd https://github.com/42wim/matterircd So if part of your team wants to stay on IRC and part wants to use Mattermost with file sharing and messaging across PC and phone, and integrate with Mattermost apps (http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/ http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/) all that is available.

tyre 11y ago

Things I care about: - User experience. In 2016, I'm not using the hacker's AIM to collaborate. I know many people love it, but there are seriously better options. Syntax highlighting inline and file attachments that Just Work are fantastic. - Product development. I want products I use to be continually improving. Not yearly but weekly. If something breaks, I don't want to fix it because I'm not here to build a chat program or manage one. Things I don't care about: - Closed Source. A dedicated team paid to work on the product full time, financially incentivized to expand the ecosystem is a major plus. - A walled garden. This sounds like the same as #1. Slack allows many integration points, including chatbots that can be programmed to do anything. I'm not sure it is that closed off. There is a reason large teams collaborate over Slack as opposed to IRC. If IRC filled people's needs, they would use it. It doesn't.

davidw 11y ago
> - Closed Source. A dedicated team paid to work on the product full time, financially incentivized to expand the ecosystem is a major plus. > - A walled garden. This sounds like the same as #1. Slack allows many integration points, including chatbots that can be programmed to do anything. I'm not sure it is that closed off. Give it time. You'll come to realize that there are some good reasons - many of them quite grounded in practicality - why those of us who have been around for a while place some value on these things.
- vulpino 11y ago
  Then name them. I realize this sounds caustic, but to say "Well, you're wrong" without giving adequate reasoning beyond "I've been around a while, so I know better" contributes nothing to the discussion.
  - davidw 11y ago
    Look them up. People have written books and articles on this stuff. Here are a few: * http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html * Internet Explorer in the 2000's. * Look how Microsoft got everyone by the balls with Office software for many years. * Look up the whole Bitkeeper fiasco with the Linux kernel. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in * Did you catch all those people freaking out because Parse is shutting down? * Were you there when Twitter shut down a lot of people integrating with it? * Unix is fairly open in terms of its interface, but plenty of people got stuck on proprietary ones over the years, only to see most all of them disappear in favor of Linux and the various BSDs. I'm no RMS, and don't have problems with proprietary software, but am very wary of getting locked in to something, rather than simply buying a product that I use and can easily switch away from when there's something better that comes out. And chat protocols are very much about positive network externalities that leave you tied to something, like it or not.

jeena 11y ago

> Slack makes it so that you can see what you missed when you return. With IRC, you don’t have this. If you want it, you can set up an IRC bouncer like ZNC. So perhaps I'm hoding it wrong, but I've been using ZNC for a couple of years and every time I forget to close Xchat at work and people keep talking, I can't see what they said on my phone or at home. Also I can't scroll up nor search for stuff which were said in the past. For me that is the biggest drawback with IRC. A sensible alternative, which I also was able to push at work, is Mattermost http://www.mattermost.org/ http://www.mattermost.org/ Although I would love to see us using http://matrix.org/ http://matrix.org/ but I don't expect our customers to install their own instance so we could federate any time soon.

kuschku 11y ago
> For me that is the biggest drawback with IRC. Ever heard of Quassel? An IRC bouncer where the client integrates with the bouncer – just scroll up to load more backlog. Disclaimer: Am working on Quassel.
- jeena 11y ago
  Hm nope, never heard of it. Does it work on my Sailfish OS phone, my Linux laptop and on my iMac?
  - yarrel 11y ago
    Yes.
    - jeena 11y ago
      I can't find the Sailfish OS version but it is C++ and Qt so it might be possible to migrate.
majuscule 11y ago
ZNC channel playback is configurable: KeepBuffer = true Buffer = 5000

fideloper 11y ago

Those bullet point against slack are really common around here, but I've yet to hear an explanation as to why they're a con. Example: It's closed source. Apparently that in itself is intrinsically "bad", and obviously so, because I've yet to see any explanation attached to that argument.

jeena 11y ago
You can't know what happens with the content you put in there.
- zepto 11y ago
  What does that even mean? Surely the same is true for IRC, since anyone can be running their own code for relays, bots, and clients.
  - yoo1I 11y ago
    The difference is that if freenet started to use my messages to #IluvCarrots and sell them to the carrot industry, I could tell them to shov it and migrate over to OFTC with little friction. If Slack starts doing that, and I want to continue to use my client software I'm pretty much screwed.
yoo1I 11y ago
Not sure that that really needs an explanation in an article about FOSS Software projects, but here goes: Using a closed source messaging system you never know, if 5 years down the line the company who owns you, and who is in control of your communication, decides that they would like to monetize your "contributions" to their system to synergize shareholder smileability, by adding ads to your projects channel. Or they might want to change their pricing structure so suddenly the barrier to entry to your project is suddenly higher. Or they get bought by google for their engineering talent and the whole thing ceases to exist. Or they exclude the bot that you write and depend on a little bit from their network with no explanation given. Or any other further or not so far fetched scenario in which the owners of the software can do whatever they want without consulting with you, leaving you with little alternatives. Using a free protocol with free software, if these things happen wrt to the entity writing the code that you rely on or the the hosting of services you rely on, you're still inconvenienced, but these things do not impact you as much, because you're free to continue to use the code without the new sucky modifications, fork if if your able (or rely on some other entity taking over the code) and run the damn service yourself. Forking and self-hosting aren't always the best solutions, but the more invested you are in a service the better they start to look.

unexpand 11y ago

Finally someone said it. I have a tough time with one of the project I am working on during my personal time. By the time I go home and get time to work on it or ask a few questions, I don't see anyone in that slack room. When I am work, slack is blocked, so I have to wait till weekends to get someone answer my question.

eddieroger 11y ago

One problem that they failed to address in the Slack over IRC section is a damn near non-existent barrier to entry. I've introduced people and small teams to IRC. I've also introduced people to Slack. IRC is just different enough, even when introduced to a team of technologists who grew on AIM and the like. Consider the onboarding experience - I emailed someone a link to a Slack channel, and before I heard back from them they'd signed up on my account and, unsolicitedly, downloaded the mobile client and were chatting with me. My setup time was nil, and there was no training. Sure, they could have downloaded Colloquy to their Mac and iPhone, and entered the settings, and hoped for the best, but I'm almost positive it wouldn't have gone so smoothly. That doesn't even include time to configure a bouncer for persistence. It's just anecdata, sure, but it counts for something, and helps to explain Slack's explosive growth.

kuschku 11y ago
That’s why things like IRCCloud or Quassel exist. They can sign up with IRCCloud (or any quassel-as-a-service provider), and instantly be online. Webinterfaces, clients for all platforms, and bouncer is integrated. Seriously, there are modern solutions for IRC, use them.
- eddieroger 11y ago
  But why? Now I've got more than one set of accounts to manage, and sign up for, and troubleshoot when things go awry. Slack solves that problem for me, and they do it for free.

shmerl 11y ago

Why IRC and not XMPP?

drdaeman 11y ago
This. Well, I must admit, XMPP isn't the nicest protocol out there, and it has some issues (esp. with older software that implements it). One can't talk it with telnet client, and this is a downside. We've discussed it the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10900859 But it has advantages over IRC. To name a few: - Universal federation. Private systems (that don't have S2S enabled) aside, any public XMPP server can talk to any public XMPP server. You don't need to have a separate account here, there and everywhere. Not that IRC really needs accounts (one can surely use it without signing up with NickServ etc), but sometimes it does. - History access. Well, it requires server to have MAM (XEP-0313) support, but if it does, then everything is there. - File transfers. Unlike Slack, it may not work for absolutely everyone but I think Jingle had gone through a lot of work and is quite capable of piercing quite draconian NATs. I'm not sure IRC's DCC is anywhere near. Well, and there's also in-band file transfers (XEP-0047) that's awful and sucks but still works for tiny content (short code snippets). And XEP-0363, although not many servers support it. XMPP's messiness has both down- and upsides. - Integrations. I think there are as many XMPP bots as there are IRC ones. Either way, there are ton of libraries for most languages so one can hack their own simple XMPP bot literally in just a few of hours. - Extensibility. XMPP can attach virtually arbitrary metadata to messages, or send extra information like typing notifications or delivery receipts. Well, it all depends on client support, but you don't need a committee to think of your own standard and make a ejabberd/Pidgin/Gajim/etc plugin or patch. And, possibly, think of compatibility approach for non-supporting clients. That's it. I don't think IRC has anything like this. - OMEMO (of Axolotl/TextSecure/Signal fame). It's not mature, but one can already have multi-point end-to-end encryption for personal conversations. Sadly, not for chatrooms yet (MUC doesn't support PubSub, MUC2 aka MIX isn't yet here), but I'm sure it will work in the future.

dawnbreez 11y ago

Is this gonna be one of those "every day until you like it" things?

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I appreciate the sentiment but the message is a bit weak. There are many things that are "closed source" that we have to use to collaborate on FOSS, I ride in closed source airplanes to get to conferences but I realize I could use a Prarie Schooner that I built out of freely obtainable materials to get there instead. Ok perhaps that is a bit too harsh, but it is the essence of the argument. Its easy to get an open source tool that replaces IRC and works like Slack, you take $5M and you hire a half dozen engineers and a couple of designers and you build a set of tools and then you give it away for free and never see your $5M ever again. Welcome to the prisoner's dilemma, FOSS edition.

josep2 11y ago

People who are maintaining the FOSS projects should decide what they use, not you.

jakejake 11y ago

I've tried and failed many times to keep IRC in my workflow. I always wind up opening it for a few days/weeks then eventually just kinda fizzle out. My company installed slack and it was just like wildfire - the whole team was on it instantly and never have looked back. If there was a client + bot setup that would offer the same functionality out of the box over IRC I'm sure we would have picked it up just as quickly. And I would have liked to be on the irc channel for a few of my favorite OS projects as well. But as far as I know, without there is no such setup?

vortico 11y ago

Projects can use https://hack.chat https://hack.chat, for which I am the main developer. I am also working on an overhauled version (temporarily named Libre Chat) supporting file transfers, mobile apps, channel subscriptions, and chat history. Both are GPL, can be installed on your own server, and have "official" hosted versions.

jscheel 11y ago

A lot of the popular FOSS irc channels have devolved into rooms with thousands of people there with nobody talking. Seriously, over the past few years, it seems like people are still on IRC, but they just don't engage on it. I wonder if that has to do with a lot of people becoming more used to other platforms doing a better job of assisting in communication.

andrewmcwatters 11y ago

I like the present-day Slack vs. IRC argument. It's an ongoing manifestation of the blatant lack of appreciation of user experience and great design. Developers need to get their heads out of their rear-ends. If IRC is so great, why doesn't everyone use it? This endless argument has been fought in multiple other products and fields as well.

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago

Author here. There's not much to say here that wasn't said last time, but here are some retrospective thoughts on this post: - Probably would have come across better if I didn't pitch IRC as better than Slack in general, but only that it's better for FOSS projects. This blog post wasn't meant to shame Slack in general, even if it kind of did in the end. - Importantly, Slack has come out as saying that they don't want big public projects to host themselves on Slack. It's really just not a good use-case for Slack to put a FOSS project on it. - In hindsight, a lot of the FOSS-friendly alternatives (Matrix, Gitter, etc) are quite good and I should have put more effort into researching them and discussing them in my article. It's probably too late to steer the discussion, but please remember that my post addresses the use of Slack for FOSS projects, not in general.

stephenitis 11y ago
> Slack has come out as saying that they don't want big public projects to host themselves on Slack. It's really just not a good use-case for Slack to put a FOSS project on it. I'm curious and need help finding a link to this source.
- solicode 11y ago
  There might be better sources, but here are two that I know of: https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-is-moving-to-discord.html https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-... http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-...
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  I mention this in the article, first heading. Includes source.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mberning 11y ago

IRC sucks from a usability standpoint. Huge opportunity to make it better, but also a huge risk due to the legacy of IRC.

kaiizen 11y ago

I'm starting to see slack repeaters in IRC channels all around IRC and I am leaving those channel as it ruins my IRC settings and makes things confusing. My colored nicknames no longer work. It splits communities and makes people leave the channel. Please don't repeat slack to IRC.

halis 11y ago

I've heard this argument before. The only problem is that IMO slack is awesome and IRC is not anymore. I'm on 3 slack teams, one with some former co-workers, one for a non-profit that teaches coding and one for a side project. If any of them suggested IRC I probably wouldn't have bothered. As it is, I have the desktop client on my Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and my Windows laptop and the app on my iPhone. It's great. IRC is not. That's my opinion. You don't even give any good reasons why it doesn't work for open source projects.

kasbah 11y ago

I recently decided on gitter.im plus a channel on IRC and a bot [1] that syncs them. [1]: https://github.com/finnp/gitter-irc-bot https://github.com/finnp/gitter-irc-bot

diegorbaquero 11y ago

My vote goes to Gitter

andrewmcwatters 11y ago
Gitter is also a great example of excellent integration and general design that keeps developers from having to do busy work like setting up a GitHub <-> IRC bot. I use it for my own projects, too.

uxcn 11y ago

The nice thing with IRC is that it's scriptable. So for example if you want a klaxon to sound every time the secret word is mentioned, it's easy to do.

shylor 11y ago

Honestly, my group uses Discord (http://discordapp.com http://discordapp.com) now. We love it. It replaces IRC and Teamspeak for us. Plus, I can get a user on the service in 5 seconds just by sending a link to them. It is mostly used for gaming, but coding with it is just as great. There are a lot of public servers also for all sorts of things. (http://discord.me/servers http://discord.me/servers). The voice is what we love it for, chat is awesome during the day when some of us are not able to talk over voice.

bsimpson 11y ago
React moved to Discord after being kicked off of Slack for having too large a channel. The Discord folks welcomed them in as a supported use case. If your biggest concern with Slack is the invite-by-email hack, try Discord.
- ValentineC 11y ago
  I've been playing around with Discord, but it seems like it lacks search and a proper API. I'm looking forward to its potential though!

kaiizen 11y ago

Weechat in tmux/screen with a bouncer is fantastic. Weechat has a ton of scripts like highlight monitoring, filtering of join/part/quit that you can customize for timeouts. Has a great support channel on freenode too. If you're doing FOSS projects, you can probably get your way around a command line enough to install and run both of these in a $3 VPS or even an AWS instance.

ex3ndr 11y ago

Almost all brazil FOSS community is in our completely open app: https://actor.im https://actor.im

ajengineer 11y ago

This article is complete garbage. I wish I could get the time back I wasted reading it. This outlines someone's personal preferences providing no tangible justification. If I wanted to know about people's feelings I would go on tumblr. The crux of the argument "Slack is closed source and you should use open source for everything" is just useless. This article left me wishing the author wasn't lobotomized before writing it.

tater_sent_me 11y ago

irc.buttes.org #flashsupport Tell them tater sent you.

7185413413 11y ago

Kauan

superuser2 11y ago

Jabber rooms seem like a pretty good idea. Lots of open source servers to choose from. Is there a reason not to use them, other than relative obscurity?

johnchristopher 11y ago

It hasn't been mentioned yet but glowing bear (http://glowing-bear.org/ http://glowing-bear.org/) is a nice web client that plus into any instances of a weechat process (that you let run in a multiplex terminal on a raspberry you plug in the kitchen, on the fridge).

finnn 11y ago

>irccloud: Is really cool and solves all of the problems. irccloud.com Is IRCCloud not closed source also?

kuschku 11y ago
Yes, it is. But it still uses an open protocol – so you can switch from IRCCloud to, say, Quassel[1] easily without having to recreate channels or permissions. [1] Quassel is an IRC bouncer/client combination which handles things like backlog archiving and so on properly – you can connect with multiple clients at once, just scroll up to load more backlog, use web clients, windows/mac/linux/Android/iOS clients, etc. (The backlog lives in an SQL database, so tools like Quassel-Suche can easily query it, and you can easily export it. I personally stopped using bookmarks, and just search for links through Quassel-Suche instead)

solicode 11y ago

The fact that Slack has made it clear they don't intend to support large open source projects is the biggest thing in my opinion. Reactiflux was basically forced off Slack for getting too big. Other large communities like the Clojurians Slack community will likely be forced off soon in the near future too (some members of the community have begun discussing this and evaluating alternatives). The Elixir Slack community is also similar in size, and I see the same thing happening there eventually.

unimpressive 11y ago

I plan to write a blog post on this at some point, but as a tentative short and rough draft: IRC's biggest problem is what I would loosely term 'Grunginess'. Every single thing I've seen associated with IRC has this kind of Unix/Linux-y grunginess to it where nothing is easy and everybody rolls their own solution. If you would like to experience this first hand, try setting up eir (https://freenode.net/eir.shtml https://freenode.net/eir.shtml) which is written in an unholy mixture of C++ and Perl. (The moment I see this combination I usually know I'm in for a ride.) Or try the python IRC library (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/irc https://pypi.python.org/pypi/irc) which has almost no documentation besides docstrings and needs to be puzzled out and examined and source-read before you can use it. You want to be able to see messages in an IRC channel when you're not on? Don't worry, ZNC (http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC) is here to help, with powerful command line configuration action! Honestly IRC bouncers are kind of a red herring. Even if you can see what is typed in a room when you're not on using a bouncer, the real benefit of slack's message history is being able to see what's typed in a room before you joined, and being able to assume that this is a feature which is available to every slack user. Slack's multithreading is beautiful. One of the biggest problems with running an IRC channel is that IRC is fundamentally broken. And when I say that I don't mean it in the shallow way most people do, I mean actually literally fundamentally broken. Here's why: The average human reads somewhere between 150-300wpm. A decent typist types at 60wpm. If we take 300wpm as an optimistic estimate of average reading speed, the moment you're having a lively discussion the channel is swamped at seven participants or so. Slack makes multithreading easy by associating multiple topic 'channels' together for a single group so that you can talk about one topic in this channel and another topic in that channel and it's not confusing or unwieldy, people who want to hear about certain topics can subscribe to a channel and people who don't can just not subscribe or leave. You don't have this 'stepping on each others toes' problem where three people want to talk about this and three people want to talk about that and they all use the same channel to do it. Avatars, emoticons, that stuff is all a bit tacky but the core fundamentals of the design are a sound improvement over IRC, and IRC needs to respond to that.

kuschku 11y ago
IRC has responded to that. A huge part of users uses now IRCCloud, or their own ZNC or Quassel setup. And creating multiple channels is never an issue to separate topics.

omginternets 11y ago

If this post were titled "Please don't use OS X for FOSS projects" nobody would take it seriously. I'm struggling to see the difference ...

cyphar 11y ago
Because projects don't force you to use OS X or Windows or whatever in order to contact the maintainers. Using Slack exclusively does force people to do that.
- omginternets 11y ago
  So? If you need to contact the maintainers, you're using Slack already... This is much ado about nothing.

sergiotapia 11y ago

Makes total sense. Let's say I have an open source project, how do I create a FREE irc channel for my users and what server to I choose to host it on?

mwfunk 11y ago

Open source is a form of software licensing that lots of people develop and use for lots of different reasons. That's it. Everything else is politics and philosophy. Some people really get into the very specific politics and the very specific philosophies of the FSF. What they don't seem to get is that the FSF merely has one out of infinitely many perspectives on why open source is important and what people should do about it. It's fine if someone wants to run an ideologically pure (per FSF criteria) FOSS project, or not contribute to projects that don't meet their criteria for ideological purity. Where it gets counterproductive is asserting that one group's philosophy has some sort of primacy over the entirety of the FOSS world. It gets especially dicey when that group claims moral superiority over everyone else. Instead of complaining about this or that FOSS project not being "true FOSS", the FSF should define a set of standards and practices that go beyond mere software licensing that DO meet their standards for ideological purity. Then a project that wants to comply with the FSF have an easy way to state up front that they are politically aligned with the FSF in every respect. Those who care about such things can use that information to set their expectations about how the project is run outside of the software licensing aspect. Maybe it draws them to the project, maybe it drives them away, but at least no one gets surprised and no mailing lists devolve into pointless political flamewars. That way no one gets disappointed (for example) when a project wants to use Slack for communication, assuming that that project has not stated up front that FSF-compliant ideological purity is a goal. Alternatively, if a contributor to a self-declared FSF-compliant ideologically pure project wants to use Slack, the other contributors to that project have grounds for denying that on a purely philosophical basis. They can focus on maintaining their standards for ideological purity rather than continually arguing over whether or not FSF-compliant ideological purity itself is valid goal.

PuercoPop 11y ago
> Open source is a form of software licensing that lots of people develop and use for lots of different reasons. That's it. Open is more than one form of software licensing, each license modified by the different idiosyncrasies and values of different people that develop software. > Everything else is politics and philosophy Open source IS politics as well. The origin of the term itself is a way to subvert Free Software
11y ago

akmiller 11y ago

This whole article and discussion is silly. Use whatever you damn well please for your projects communication!

isaiahg 11y ago

I have only one complaint of Slack. It should be much easier to find and join open slack communities and switch between them. I've used it for a small team before but we quickly finished what we were doing and now it's dissolved. So I've been hearing awesome things about it and how people are using it and I haven't really had a chance to try it out. I've applied to join a few communities but I've never received a reply. That process should be so much easier. For open source projects or communities I think Discord fits the bill much better. It allows you to take part in multiple communities in one interface and you can use it without an official account.

shriphani 11y ago

I don't mind FOSS projects adopting slack - whatever it takes to make devs/users happy. But slack's tab-completion is woefully pathetic when there's more than a few hundred members in a chat room. This is a solved problem - get it together slack!

bovermyer 11y ago

I'm not real keen on the Church of FOSS. Don't get me wrong, I love a great many FOSS projects; but my entire life does not need to be constructed of such. Posts like this smack of dogma and fanaticism to me, and engender mistrust of whatever projects the person in question is a part of. After all, if they're that dogmatic about one thing, then what's to say they aren't dogmatic about other things?

habitue 11y ago
The reason the dogma of Free Software exists is because often in day to day decisions it's easy not to think about the long-term effects. Right now, you have a neat chat tool. Maybe in 10 years, you have a problem where Slack has a monopoly on all project chats, and abuses that power. Today, you can look and see "Hey, Slack is a cool company. They get it. This isn't Microsoft of the 90's. They aren't going to abuse this power, they just want to make an amazing chat tool that improves all of our lives." (This is probably true) So it seems like it's ok to use Slack. The idea is that maybe this power corrupts eventually. Or maybe Slack as an entity may not always be run by people who get it. Maybe it's broken up into parts, or becomes a hollow shell as a holding company (cough Yahoo). Without an open platform and free source code, users are unable to move away. The dogma is a rule that brings the potential long-term consequences to you when you're deciding what to do now. It gives you a twinge "Hmm, that feels dirty because it's proprietary. I'll keep looking". That way you don't have to imagine how Slack gets from Cool Company to Abusive Monopoly, you can just make an easy choice based on how you feel.
- bovermyer 11y ago
  I generally make my choices based on a balance of time/monetary cost, feature set, user experience, service integrity (e.g., SLAs for proprietary software, or difficulty of maintenance for self-hosted/OSS), and ease of migration in the event of abandonment. The choice I ultimately make is not always, or even often, open source. There is no blanket "always choose this" guiding rule for me.
cyphar 11y ago
You may not care about your freedom. But that doesn't mean that people who care about their freedom and others' freedom are dogmatic.

st3v3r 11y ago

He lists the stuff that Slack does better than IRC, but then ignores it. Kinda like he's just waving it off as not being important. So what's the solution for getting the benefits that Slack has, without using Slack?

smokedoutraider 11y ago

You were whining about this a couple of months ago already. Slack is simply much more user friendly and doesn't look as dated as 99% of IRC clients.

Sami_Lehtinen 11y ago

Slack client and web-app both are really heavy consuming ridiculous amounts of memory and cpu time.

e12e 11y ago

On a related note, Debian annonced [1] a new unified communications in November: https://wiki.debian.org/UnifiedCommunications/DebianDevelopers/UserGuide https://wiki.debian.org/UnifiedCommunications/DebianDevelope... I'm not a DD, so can't comment on how well it works - but I've had it on my todo-list s while to look at their real-world setup as inspiration. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/11/msg00000.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/11/msg00... Previously submitted to hn, but didn't gain any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10531061