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Did you read the article to the end? The author isn't sticking his head in the sand, he puts his money where his mouth is and it currently developing a Slack-li

Did you read the article to the end? The author isn't sticking his head in the sand, he puts his money where his mouth is and it currently developing a Slack-like client built on XMPP. The protocol can support many of the Slack-style features you cite, but a lot of the clients are currently lagging behind. Also, if you let hatred of other people's imagined smugness drive your technical and tooling decisions then ... well, I'm not sure it's the most effective metric to use.

raverbashing 9y ago
Interesting if it ends up supporting Emoji Reactions (note, this is not just Emoji, but Emoji Reactions to messages) and Threads That's the right answer, I'm very skeptical of people saying "this can be done in XMPP" but when it comes to the actual implementation it falls short Edit: also note the author updated the article and Emoji Reactions are still not supported in XMPP but are in development
Can_Not 9y ago
> The author isn't sticking his head in the sand I think he was talking about HN users who argue that IRC does everything slack does.
- octalmage 9y ago
  Yeah anytime Slack is mentioned at work someone brings up IRC. So I get what he’s saying.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  Nobody argues that. But they may very well argue that IRC doesn't everything they want it to do.
  - black_puppydog 9y ago
    I know people who literally argue that. Needless to say, I don't agree with them. :P
  - typon 9y ago
    See the replies to my comment 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495893
    - cup-of-tea 9y ago
      Most of the replies are criticising the ghastly inefficient app. What is wrong with that?
  - rwmj 9y ago
    My argument is that IRC is better because it doesn't do a lot of things. I really don't feel my day would be enhanced by people pasting images or animated emojis into my IRC channels.
    - cup-of-tea 9y ago
      Ugh I messed up my post, "doesn't" was supposed to be "does".
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  > One of the sad things that has come out of Slack's meteoric rise to success, has been how many free and open source projects have jumped over to using it (after previously using IRC or XMPP). He's definitely honing in on a group of people who should support federated solutions and instead evangelized the opposite. Ironically there's a similar frustration with using the proprietary GitHub service rather than open source git sites like GitLab
  - tachion 9y ago
    Apples to oranges, GitHub provides Git as a service and Git is open source, so you can take your repo any time and host it yourself in number of different ways. It just happens that GitHub is most popular (for now) Git As A Service, probably due to the fact that GitLab had few horrible outages regularly every few months for past 2-3 years and hosting it yourself is/was also a bit of nightmare. Anyway, it's not like that. ;)
    - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
      The problem with GitHub silo is not the repo hosting per se but the ancillary services. Issues are not easily exported. The milestones and related metadata are not easily exported. Even the identities are not easily exported since you can use noreply email addresses in git actions if you turn off public email
      - tachion 9y ago
        Neither of these are Git features. Vote with your legs if you think what you want should be available in a service like this.
      - true_religion 9y ago
        My company has gone through three different milestones and issue apps. Sure its mot manually exportable but thats why we pay for data entry staff.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
- black_puppydog 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying this for me while I was afk. :) I wouldn't constrain it to HN only, but yes, that's my point.
dmitriid 9y ago
> but a lot of the clients are currently lagging behind. ^ this. A lot of people are so mad at Slack and extolling the virtues of XMPP and IRC and fully forget that there are about zero clients for either XMPP or IRC that have the same functionality (consistent across multiple platforms) as Slack. Yes, I'm fully aware of exactly one client for Android (Conversations) that supports mobile-friendly XEPS. And yes, I'm fully aware of IRCCloud, a closed-source, proprietary 100% web-based product on top of IRC (all the things that people seem to hate about Slack. Go figure)
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  > And yes, I'm fully aware of IRCCloud, a closed-source, proprietary 100% web-based product on top of IRC (all the things that people seem to hate about Slack. Go figure) My understanding is that many of IRCCloud's Slack-like features are based on the open IRCv3 standard. If this standard ever takes off (fingers crossed...), IRCCloud will have a lot less vendor lock-in than Slack does.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    > If this standard ever takes off Hard to imagine it will for Slack's audience. Slack is serving the case for the non-technical folk extraordinarily well right now. A significant amount of their user base doesn't care about standards or IRC channels. They just want a consistent, well-designed product that does the things they need it to for work. They've never opened a terminal in their life and they don't need the terminal-irc-gateway that this recent change has killed off.
    - gurkendoktor 9y ago
      All of that is true, not to mention that Slack is free (up to a certain point). But many IT departments require on-premise hosting, which Slack doesn't offer. Users don't care about open standards, but maybe their sysadmins do. If IRCv3 can capture this audience, it has a chance to co-exist with Slack.
      - 9y ago

raverbashing 9y ago

Interesting if it ends up supporting Emoji Reactions (note, this is not just Emoji, but Emoji Reactions to messages) and Threads That's the right answer, I'm very skeptical of people saying "this can be done in XMPP" but when it comes to the actual implementation it falls short Edit: also note the author updated the article and Emoji Reactions are still not supported in XMPP but are in development

Can_Not 9y ago

> The author isn't sticking his head in the sand I think he was talking about HN users who argue that IRC does everything slack does.

octalmage 9y ago
Yeah anytime Slack is mentioned at work someone brings up IRC. So I get what he’s saying.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
Nobody argues that. But they may very well argue that IRC doesn't everything they want it to do.
- black_puppydog 9y ago
  I know people who literally argue that. Needless to say, I don't agree with them. :P
- typon 9y ago
  See the replies to my comment 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16495893
  - cup-of-tea 9y ago
    Most of the replies are criticising the ghastly inefficient app. What is wrong with that?
- rwmj 9y ago
  My argument is that IRC is better because it doesn't do a lot of things. I really don't feel my day would be enhanced by people pasting images or animated emojis into my IRC channels.
  - cup-of-tea 9y ago
    Ugh I messed up my post, "doesn't" was supposed to be "does".
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
> One of the sad things that has come out of Slack's meteoric rise to success, has been how many free and open source projects have jumped over to using it (after previously using IRC or XMPP). He's definitely honing in on a group of people who should support federated solutions and instead evangelized the opposite. Ironically there's a similar frustration with using the proprietary GitHub service rather than open source git sites like GitLab
- tachion 9y ago
  Apples to oranges, GitHub provides Git as a service and Git is open source, so you can take your repo any time and host it yourself in number of different ways. It just happens that GitHub is most popular (for now) Git As A Service, probably due to the fact that GitLab had few horrible outages regularly every few months for past 2-3 years and hosting it yourself is/was also a bit of nightmare. Anyway, it's not like that. ;)
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    The problem with GitHub silo is not the repo hosting per se but the ancillary services. Issues are not easily exported. The milestones and related metadata are not easily exported. Even the identities are not easily exported since you can use noreply email addresses in git actions if you turn off public email
    - tachion 9y ago
      Neither of these are Git features. Vote with your legs if you think what you want should be available in a service like this.
    - true_religion 9y ago
      My company has gone through three different milestones and issue apps. Sure its mot manually exportable but thats why we pay for data entry staff.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
black_puppydog 9y ago
Thanks for clarifying this for me while I was afk. :) I wouldn't constrain it to HN only, but yes, that's my point.

dmitriid 9y ago

> but a lot of the clients are currently lagging behind. ^ this. A lot of people are so mad at Slack and extolling the virtues of XMPP and IRC and fully forget that there are about zero clients for either XMPP or IRC that have the same functionality (consistent across multiple platforms) as Slack. Yes, I'm fully aware of exactly one client for Android (Conversations) that supports mobile-friendly XEPS. And yes, I'm fully aware of IRCCloud, a closed-source, proprietary 100% web-based product on top of IRC (all the things that people seem to hate about Slack. Go figure)

gurkendoktor 9y ago
> And yes, I'm fully aware of IRCCloud, a closed-source, proprietary 100% web-based product on top of IRC (all the things that people seem to hate about Slack. Go figure) My understanding is that many of IRCCloud's Slack-like features are based on the open IRCv3 standard. If this standard ever takes off (fingers crossed...), IRCCloud will have a lot less vendor lock-in than Slack does.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  > If this standard ever takes off Hard to imagine it will for Slack's audience. Slack is serving the case for the non-technical folk extraordinarily well right now. A significant amount of their user base doesn't care about standards or IRC channels. They just want a consistent, well-designed product that does the things they need it to for work. They've never opened a terminal in their life and they don't need the terminal-irc-gateway that this recent change has killed off.
  - gurkendoktor 9y ago
    All of that is true, not to mention that Slack is free (up to a certain point). But many IT departments require on-premise hosting, which Slack doesn't offer. Users don't care about open standards, but maybe their sysadmins do. If IRCv3 can capture this audience, it has a chance to co-exist with Slack.
    - 9y ago