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Open Source chat tools are sadly almost universally disappointing. I believe I tried just about every one of them before giving up and just using Slack. I det

by wheels 7y ago

Open Source chat tools are sadly almost universally disappointing. I believe I tried just about every one of them before giving up and just using Slack. I detailed the reasons here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17623005 I have the impression that Slack has gotten worse. We're again having problems of notifications not showing up.

behringer 7y ago
Have you tried out wire? I like it, but never used it in a work environment.
- mehhh 7y ago
  Matrix has been a better fit at my company, though it was a bit rough a year ago. Bridging in Slack, Gitter, IRC and other platforms makes working with external teams a breeze, everything is in one place.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
derefr 7y ago
If you were willing to use Slack after all, then I guess you were willing to consider non-FOSS alternatives? In which case, one service you don't seem to have considered: Discord. Yes, really, for business. Look past the theming. Discord has a much more solid tech base (and engineering team) behind it than Slack, IMHO. A better API, too; and—unlike Slack—real support for third-party clients! I built my own niche team-collaboration app back in 2012, and I tried out a lot of things, but ended up building my whole own stack. That was back then. If I was doing it again today? I'd just make it an alternative Discord frontend. (There are also offerings specifically designed for the "build your own custom frontend for our chat backend" use-case, like https://pusher.com/chatkit https://pusher.com/chatkit, but IMHO Discord even has these beat.)
- fennecfoxen 7y ago
  Right, let's just do all our business on an app that doesn't have SSO and instead anyone with the link who can sneak in has access. I'm sure that's not sketchy at all and your IT department will be thrilled.
  - derefr 7y ago
    > and instead anyone with the link who can sneak in has access You don't have to make those links (and you can turn off, per server, the ability to create those links.) You can invite specific users. The user already has to have a Discord account, though. And that's the thing; Discord has a different accounts model. Which is part of what I was referring to when I said they had a more solid tech base: when you're signed into a dozen Slack workspaces, the Slack client has to keep a dozen websockets open, because the open connection is for a given Slack account's view of the world, and Slack accounts are a sub-resource of Slack teams. This isn't a scalable model, and when the Slack app is using 1.2GB of memory and two full CPU cores, this is much of the reason why. When you're signed into a Discord account, on the other hand, you just have one connection to the server—and one state-sync session that includes all your open channels in all those servers—because your profile on a given Discord server is a sub-resource of your global Discord account. It's the difference between how an email client connects to N accounts through IMAP, and how the Gmail mobile app is connected to N GSuite accounts. And, as such, it wouldn't really make sense to have Discord SSO at the account level, because a Discord account is associated with the individual, not with a particular employee record of a particular Enterprise. It's not like an email address; it's more like a Keybase identity or a Facebook profile. (You could certainly have particular profiles under the Discord account that did SSO to a particular server, but this wouldn't be traditional SSO-as-we-know-it; it'd be more of a "connector" flow, like when an app wants to use your Github profile.) Github is a good comparison, actually. Most corporations just use Github, not Github EE. You don't Enterprise-SSO to Github.com. Github.com is an SSO provider, in fact, that other sites (e.g. Asana) can take auth from!
    - desertrider12 7y ago
      I always thought of Electron as a way to kick out a minimum viable product quickly before writing native versions. But nope, I guess give a $16 billion company 4 years and 1600 employees and that's still not feasible.
jjeaff 7y ago
We've been using mattermost internally for a year or so and his has worked flawlessly. I can't tell the difference from slack.
- wheels 7y ago
  At least a year and a half ago, Android notifications weren't at all reliable, even when on wi-fi. You'd have to start the app most of the time to get them. I can't remember if it was Rocket.Chat or Mattermost that also was taking 15% of the CPU while idling on macOS, but I think it was Mattermost.
goatinaboat 7y ago
Everyone in the Open Source community with the skills to write a good chat app is perfectly happy running IRC in a terminal. Good Open Source only happens when someone needs to scratch their own itch.

by wheels 7y ago

behringer 7y ago

Have you tried out wire? I like it, but never used it in a work environment.

mehhh 7y ago
Matrix has been a better fit at my company, though it was a bit rough a year ago. Bridging in Slack, Gitter, IRC and other platforms makes working with external teams a breeze, everything is in one place.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

derefr 7y ago

If you were willing to use Slack after all, then I guess you were willing to consider non-FOSS alternatives? In which case, one service you don't seem to have considered: Discord. Yes, really, for business. Look past the theming. Discord has a much more solid tech base (and engineering team) behind it than Slack, IMHO. A better API, too; and—unlike Slack—real support for third-party clients! I built my own niche team-collaboration app back in 2012, and I tried out a lot of things, but ended up building my whole own stack. That was back then. If I was doing it again today? I'd just make it an alternative Discord frontend. (There are also offerings specifically designed for the "build your own custom frontend for our chat backend" use-case, like https://pusher.com/chatkit https://pusher.com/chatkit, but IMHO Discord even has these beat.)

fennecfoxen 7y ago
Right, let's just do all our business on an app that doesn't have SSO and instead anyone with the link who can sneak in has access. I'm sure that's not sketchy at all and your IT department will be thrilled.
- derefr 7y ago
  > and instead anyone with the link who can sneak in has access You don't have to make those links (and you can turn off, per server, the ability to create those links.) You can invite specific users. The user already has to have a Discord account, though. And that's the thing; Discord has a different accounts model. Which is part of what I was referring to when I said they had a more solid tech base: when you're signed into a dozen Slack workspaces, the Slack client has to keep a dozen websockets open, because the open connection is for a given Slack account's view of the world, and Slack accounts are a sub-resource of Slack teams. This isn't a scalable model, and when the Slack app is using 1.2GB of memory and two full CPU cores, this is much of the reason why. When you're signed into a Discord account, on the other hand, you just have one connection to the server—and one state-sync session that includes all your open channels in all those servers—because your profile on a given Discord server is a sub-resource of your global Discord account. It's the difference between how an email client connects to N accounts through IMAP, and how the Gmail mobile app is connected to N GSuite accounts. And, as such, it wouldn't really make sense to have Discord SSO at the account level, because a Discord account is associated with the individual, not with a particular employee record of a particular Enterprise. It's not like an email address; it's more like a Keybase identity or a Facebook profile. (You could certainly have particular profiles under the Discord account that did SSO to a particular server, but this wouldn't be traditional SSO-as-we-know-it; it'd be more of a "connector" flow, like when an app wants to use your Github profile.) Github is a good comparison, actually. Most corporations just use Github, not Github EE. You don't Enterprise-SSO to Github.com. Github.com is an SSO provider, in fact, that other sites (e.g. Asana) can take auth from!
  - desertrider12 7y ago
    I always thought of Electron as a way to kick out a minimum viable product quickly before writing native versions. But nope, I guess give a $16 billion company 4 years and 1600 employees and that's still not feasible.

jjeaff 7y ago

We've been using mattermost internally for a year or so and his has worked flawlessly. I can't tell the difference from slack.

wheels 7y ago
At least a year and a half ago, Android notifications weren't at all reliable, even when on wi-fi. You'd have to start the app most of the time to get them. I can't remember if it was Rocket.Chat or Mattermost that also was taking 15% of the CPU while idling on macOS, but I think it was Mattermost.

goatinaboat 7y ago

Everyone in the Open Source community with the skills to write a good chat app is perfectly happy running IRC in a terminal. Good Open Source only happens when someone needs to scratch their own itch.