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I don't get why people still use proprietary software for team communication. Slack is just a glorified IRC owned by a private company that you have to pay to g

I don't get why people still use proprietary software for team communication. Slack is just a glorified IRC owned by a private company that you have to pay to get something remotely useful. My teammates hate me for not even having slack installed on my computer.

glogla 10y ago
Especially when you can use Mattermost, which is self hosted and open source and it can do pretty much anything Slack can.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  How are the phone apps? It says the exist but haven't tried them.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    The phone apps work, but they are react-application web views. At least on Android. I saw that they had an open hiring req for a React Native person recently, so I suspect that is about to change.
shortsightedsid 10y ago
I was on the same boat given that I have used IRC for since the 90s. The one thing that Slack does solves is IT. It makes IRC "enterprisy" which means that IT can do account management, tie it with authentication etc.. The second thing it solves is management buyin. At my company we used Lync and I tried to introduce Hipchat, but nothing worked until the company President explicitly bought in to the idea of Slack. Not sure who or what convinced him but he made it clear that it's the tool he wants to use. Pronto, all 500 employees (baring some of us older guys), clicked their heels and marched. IRC works great as technology and I love it. But Slack solves management issues and as a company I think that's their biggest advantage.
mac01021 10y ago
The killer feature is out-of-the-box server-side logging of all conversation history with full-text search. Make an free/opensource product that will do that for me with no configuration or administration effort and I'll gladly use that instead.
- michalskop 10y ago
  we use Telegram as a free (no cost) alternative, "poor-man Slack"
  - eitland 10y ago
    +1 for Telegram. HN loves to hate it and I know I should treat it as unencrypted as the crypto might or might not be good but both mobile and desktop clients works nicely (actually IMO brilliantly) across Android, IPhone, Linux desktop and Windows desktop. Bonus points for bot API and channels.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
brianwawok 10y ago
Slack has more features with no configuration. HR people can use slack. Most hr people have never heard of IRC.
empath75 10y ago
I literally work for a company that owns an instant messaging and group chat platform and everyone uses slack instead of our own product.
jasode 10y ago
>Slack is just a glorified IRC A lot of smart people who are old enough to be familiar with IRC see it differently. See comments from old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 Many many not use Slack but they certainly can see the value of it over IRC.

glogla 10y ago

Especially when you can use Mattermost, which is self hosted and open source and it can do pretty much anything Slack can.

brianwawok 10y ago
How are the phone apps? It says the exist but haven't tried them.
- ci5er 10y ago
  The phone apps work, but they are react-application web views. At least on Android. I saw that they had an open hiring req for a React Native person recently, so I suspect that is about to change.

shortsightedsid 10y ago

I was on the same boat given that I have used IRC for since the 90s. The one thing that Slack does solves is IT. It makes IRC "enterprisy" which means that IT can do account management, tie it with authentication etc.. The second thing it solves is management buyin. At my company we used Lync and I tried to introduce Hipchat, but nothing worked until the company President explicitly bought in to the idea of Slack. Not sure who or what convinced him but he made it clear that it's the tool he wants to use. Pronto, all 500 employees (baring some of us older guys), clicked their heels and marched. IRC works great as technology and I love it. But Slack solves management issues and as a company I think that's their biggest advantage.

mac01021 10y ago

The killer feature is out-of-the-box server-side logging of all conversation history with full-text search. Make an free/opensource product that will do that for me with no configuration or administration effort and I'll gladly use that instead.

michalskop 10y ago
we use Telegram as a free (no cost) alternative, "poor-man Slack"
- eitland 10y ago
  +1 for Telegram. HN loves to hate it and I know I should treat it as unencrypted as the crypto might or might not be good but both mobile and desktop clients works nicely (actually IMO brilliantly) across Android, IPhone, Linux desktop and Windows desktop. Bonus points for bot API and channels.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

brianwawok 10y ago

Slack has more features with no configuration. HR people can use slack. Most hr people have never heard of IRC.

empath75 10y ago

I literally work for a company that owns an instant messaging and group chat platform and everyone uses slack instead of our own product.

jasode 10y ago

>Slack is just a glorified IRC A lot of smart people who are old enough to be familiar with IRC see it differently. See comments from old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541 Many many not use Slack but they certainly can see the value of it over IRC.