First off, thanks for the reply. I've been going through a bit of deja-vu myself with this. While I came to the "game" quite a bit later than you, I've been stu

First off, thanks for the reply. I've been going through a bit of deja-vu myself with this. While I came to the "game" quite a bit later than you, I've been stung by the google and facebook xmpp stunts and so I never bought into slack as some sort of new solution to communication "because you can just log in from IRC." So yes, a bunch of "old farts" are a good a necessary corrective in our hype-driven environment. I agree with the assessment that slack is just another walled garden and comes with all the problems those bring. I even agree with the "open protocol, optionally self-hosted" conclusion. I just don't like the conclusion (not explicitely stated by you, but definitely by others) that that open protocol should be IRC and email, and that the UI for them needs to be pure text. Put a bit shorter: the people have chosen between $SLACK over $OLD_STUFF, so if you want to use something open and still sway them then you'll have to change what's on offer vs slack. Converse.js looks like a prime example of doing just that, as does e.g. conversations. I'd much rather we get our shit together and build jabber into something usable and beautiful than go back to IRC and email.