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> I know this makes me sound old, but I really wish popular open source projects would just stick to IRC as it just works and doesn't require any proprietary cl

> I know this makes me sound old, but I really wish popular open source projects would just stick to IRC as it just works and doesn't require any proprietary client (and isn't trying to turn into video chat, screen sharing, etc.) Or I suppose I wish Slack would make its ecosystem available via IRC. I'd say you'd be far from the only one. The thing that Slack really brought was an improved onboarding experience, but I have a (probably somewhat vain) hope that protocols will win over corporate controlled walled gardens. Matrix[1] / Riot[2] are really promising and I really hope we settle on something like that sometime down the road. [1]: http://matrix.org/ http://matrix.org/ [2]: https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/

Simon321 9y ago
There is also Mattermost. An open source Slack.
- the_common_man 9y ago
  And rocket.chat
  - acosmism 9y ago
    +1
- jstandard 9y ago
  We recently did a test run for Mattermost to see if it's a better fit for us than Slack. This is a note to others who may be considering the same. Specific needs will vary greatly across teams/companies. We found Mattermost web client to be ok, however phone apps and integration coverage are both poor by comparison to Slack. We also found running, securing, and maintaining our own server to be roughly as or more expensive than using Slack. I'm hopeful the Mattermost project keeps momentum to improve. Currently though it doesn't quite seem in the same league.
  - sverhagen 9y ago
    Might still be a good alternative to companies that want Slack, but cannot afford to pay for it? (Assuming they're not finding what they need in the free version.)
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Or that don't want third parties to have access to their internal communications.
      - kbeckmann 9y ago
        This is an important point. It surprises me that many non-US companies use slack for their internal and secret communication.
    - jstandard 9y ago
      We found Mattermost to be more expensive than a paid version of Slack for our team of 16 after factoring in the costs of hosting, maintaining, and securing our own servers. It shifts the engineering cost burden onto your team. As others point out, Mattermost vs. Slack is more a discussion of self-hosted vs. 3rd party cloud-hosted.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
    I found the same. However the newest version (4.0) has proper mobiles apps done with React Native I think, which are a league above the older ones.
  - phil21 9y ago
    This will likely always be the case with open source chat solutions. Developing clients is hard. Especially good UIx and complex feature sets across a zillion platforms like Slack does. A lot of their day I bet these days is simply tracking down obscure bugs on certain platform combinations and trying to keep feature parity between everything working properly. I think most of us can stipulate Slack does a decent job there - or at minimum is far better than the competing (open) solutions. I really wish there was a Slack alternative where I could purchase a really nice unified frontend and simply connect to an open protocol backend such as IRC or Jabber or whatever. This was the original intent behind IRC as well - back in the 90's there were a number of shareware style IRC clients developed for Windows - and you saw some interesting protocol hackery to make some more graphical features work. I have yet to see open source really truly compete in the "client" arena, save for an exceedingly few notable exceptions. However, it excels at the backend where you will have developer interest and competence - and the long tail of possible bugs (and user competence) is a much more sane problem to tackle. No, I do not expect this to ever exist for obvious reasons :)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ptman 9y ago
Matrix is really wonderful and I hope it will continue to grow. It's federated, like IRC and unlike Slack. Also there's good support for bridges to other chat protocols / services, so matrix may be the solution to _reducing_ the number of chat clients you need to interact with.

Simon321 9y ago

There is also Mattermost. An open source Slack.

the_common_man 9y ago
And rocket.chat
- acosmism 9y ago
  +1
jstandard 9y ago
We recently did a test run for Mattermost to see if it's a better fit for us than Slack. This is a note to others who may be considering the same. Specific needs will vary greatly across teams/companies. We found Mattermost web client to be ok, however phone apps and integration coverage are both poor by comparison to Slack. We also found running, securing, and maintaining our own server to be roughly as or more expensive than using Slack. I'm hopeful the Mattermost project keeps momentum to improve. Currently though it doesn't quite seem in the same league.
- sverhagen 9y ago
  Might still be a good alternative to companies that want Slack, but cannot afford to pay for it? (Assuming they're not finding what they need in the free version.)
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Or that don't want third parties to have access to their internal communications.
    - kbeckmann 9y ago
      This is an important point. It surprises me that many non-US companies use slack for their internal and secret communication.
  - jstandard 9y ago
    We found Mattermost to be more expensive than a paid version of Slack for our team of 16 after factoring in the costs of hosting, maintaining, and securing our own servers. It shifts the engineering cost burden onto your team. As others point out, Mattermost vs. Slack is more a discussion of self-hosted vs. 3rd party cloud-hosted.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  I found the same. However the newest version (4.0) has proper mobiles apps done with React Native I think, which are a league above the older ones.
- phil21 9y ago
  This will likely always be the case with open source chat solutions. Developing clients is hard. Especially good UIx and complex feature sets across a zillion platforms like Slack does. A lot of their day I bet these days is simply tracking down obscure bugs on certain platform combinations and trying to keep feature parity between everything working properly. I think most of us can stipulate Slack does a decent job there - or at minimum is far better than the competing (open) solutions. I really wish there was a Slack alternative where I could purchase a really nice unified frontend and simply connect to an open protocol backend such as IRC or Jabber or whatever. This was the original intent behind IRC as well - back in the 90's there were a number of shareware style IRC clients developed for Windows - and you saw some interesting protocol hackery to make some more graphical features work. I have yet to see open source really truly compete in the "client" arena, save for an exceedingly few notable exceptions. However, it excels at the backend where you will have developer interest and competence - and the long tail of possible bugs (and user competence) is a much more sane problem to tackle. No, I do not expect this to ever exist for obvious reasons :)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ptman 9y ago

Matrix is really wonderful and I hope it will continue to grow. It's federated, like IRC and unlike Slack. Also there's good support for bridges to other chat protocols / services, so matrix may be the solution to _reducing_ the number of chat clients you need to interact with.