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How is it that businesses get sold on these poor groupware solutions when they can: a. self-host open-source Zulip (or Matrix/Riot, which is not that good comp

How is it that businesses get sold on these poor groupware solutions when they can: a. self-host open-source Zulip (or Matrix/Riot, which is not that good compared to plain old The Lounge IRC) totally free b. pay for hosted software that’s open-source so their information isn’t hostaged when they decide their solution is crap? I see these kinds of poor choices made all the time. People usually don’t want to do the research or a salesman walks into the office and they get sold a contract. It really bugs me because I think: these people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars for taking other smart people on a ride. Is making hundreds of thousands of dollars orthogonal to big picture thinking? Is there a position where someone hires me to walk into their office and save them thousands of dollars on unnecessary SaaS contracts? I’d do that job with glee.

dflock 7y ago
> self host ... totally free Self hosting stuff is work for someone, and either needs hardware or rented VMs - it's the opposite of "totally free". This is why this happens.
- empath75 7y ago
  Not to mention the engineering hours spent managing it.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    My experience with these things on AWS is that they are pretty much set up and forget.
- Cyphase 7y ago
  > b. pay for hosted software that’s open-source
crag 7y ago
Have you ever worked in Corporate America? Many times the decision to use something like Teams is made in an office across the country. And usually, its made with the vendor's sales team involved. This happens in government too, all the time. You get an edict to use the software and the fun begins. I love the idea of including the CEO... have to remember that.
Zigurd 7y ago
I have used Zulip. It was fine in an environment where it was used to communicate among coders with a pretty rigorously defined and well-tooled workflow where integration with JIRA and github are important. In this environment it doesn't matter that less geeky users will find it less friendly than Slack, and coders are always using PCs or Macs and don't care that the Zulip mobile clients are ugly. I'm using Teams now with a small startup team. It's fine for that purpose. There aren't enough of us to annoy one another. Slack sucks in some ways. But maybe it sucks less. Most of my clients use Slack and are happy enough with it.
hnbroseph 7y ago
On the one hand, sales people dazzle managers, and the lowly tech workers are not asked for their input (or it's not valued). On the other hand, software/service contracts allow you to dodge various responsibilities and blame other people.

dflock 7y ago

> self host ... totally free Self hosting stuff is work for someone, and either needs hardware or rented VMs - it's the opposite of "totally free". This is why this happens.

empath75 7y ago
Not to mention the engineering hours spent managing it.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  My experience with these things on AWS is that they are pretty much set up and forget.
Cyphase 7y ago
> b. pay for hosted software that’s open-source

crag 7y ago

Have you ever worked in Corporate America? Many times the decision to use something like Teams is made in an office across the country. And usually, its made with the vendor's sales team involved. This happens in government too, all the time. You get an edict to use the software and the fun begins. I love the idea of including the CEO... have to remember that.

Zigurd 7y ago

I have used Zulip. It was fine in an environment where it was used to communicate among coders with a pretty rigorously defined and well-tooled workflow where integration with JIRA and github are important. In this environment it doesn't matter that less geeky users will find it less friendly than Slack, and coders are always using PCs or Macs and don't care that the Zulip mobile clients are ugly. I'm using Teams now with a small startup team. It's fine for that purpose. There aren't enough of us to annoy one another. Slack sucks in some ways. But maybe it sucks less. Most of my clients use Slack and are happy enough with it.

hnbroseph 7y ago

On the one hand, sales people dazzle managers, and the lowly tech workers are not asked for their input (or it's not valued). On the other hand, software/service contracts allow you to dodge various responsibilities and blame other people.