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I really hope Matrix to take off as The modern IRC alternative instead of proprietary solutions like Discord...The amount of open-source projects using Discord

I really hope Matrix to take off as The modern IRC alternative instead of proprietary solutions like Discord...The amount of open-source projects using Discord as a chat forum is too damn high. However, their "generic" naming of their apps doesn't help: Matrix, Element (seriously?)

jaemoe 6y ago
Yes, this is really sad to see that much people in the OSS scene using nonfree ways to communicate. At least, IRC had open-source servers and clients but in my opinion, it's too old nowadays.
- judge2020 6y ago
  OSS primarily uses a non-free way to host source code (GitHub), so it's not much different to use Discord.
  - jaemoe 6y ago
    And it's sad to see.
    - snazz 6y ago
      There are at least a few different "OSS scenes" that have different priorities. More principled, idealistic developers fall under a different category than more pragmatic ones, so it should be no surprise that they use different tools.
      - frabbit 6y ago
        Using non-Free tools has been shown to be distinctly non-pragmatic under a wide variety of considerations. A better term would be something like "Tied programmers" or "Dependent progammers". Maybe "sharecropper progammers"?
        snazz 6y ago
        "Sharecropper programmers" might be an accurate way of describing developers for Apple platforms, but that's not what is happening when people use GitHub and Discord to work on open-source software. They can easily move their Git hosting and chat to another platform—they just choose to use the popular, coincidentally non-OSS, platform for its pragmatism. A large base of existing users, easy onboarding, and good visibility makes a big difference for many OSS projects. Using a self-hosted Git hosting system and mailing list is a lot of work—and it adds a not-insignificant barrier to entry for potential contributors. What issues exist with popular, proprietary Git and chat tools that make them unsuitable for OSS development? What are some of the considerations you're thinking of where using a popular option is not pragmatic?
  - rednut 6y ago
    So what if Github itself is not OSS? The technology behind is already open source and decentralized. You can switch to a Gitlab instance with just a few mouse clicks while also migrating your issues and pull requests.
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      > So what if Github itself is not OSS? The technology behind is already open source… So is much of the technology behind Discourse.[1] [1] https://discord.com/open-source https://discord.com/open-source (click on "OS Libraries")
    - thekyle 6y ago
      I don't believe issues or pull requests are part of the Git repo. If there is a way to migrate them it would involve some GitHub API which could be shut down.
      - Arnavion 6y ago
        The commits in pull requests are part of the git repo, in that they can be fetched from the repo's remote. The comments are not.
        samoa42 6y ago
        as said; the issues are not part of the repo. as much as many projects could use a clean slate here, i dont think the burden of migranting them manually or the act of just dumping them is realistic.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > Yes, this is really sad to see that much people in the OSS scene using nonfree ways to communicate. And the reasons are entirely understandable: - you don't have to run your own infrastructure - you don't have to run your own protections against fraudulent activity, DDOSes, bots etc. - you don't have to worry about availability on any number of platforms, including mobile
  - detaro 6y ago
    free software as a hosted service is a thing.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      It is a thing, is there enough of this thing? Is it free? Do these hosted services provide the infra and protection? Do these hosted services solve the issue of the dearth of clients for these services? And if you look at hosted services like IRCCloud, it turns out they are not that different from Slack/Discord: closed source, for full range of capabilities you need to use their apps.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > nonfree ways to communicate Does that include Hacker News?
  - jaemoe 6y ago
    It does, currently waiting to be either invited to lobsters or for the registrations to open again.
    - ptman 6y ago
      Check out federating reddit -like service lemmy.ml: https://dev.lemmy.ml/ https://dev.lemmy.ml/
agilob 6y ago
and riot
business007 6y ago
just joined it, I was looking for something like this. Hope it take off as The modern IRC too :)
johnisgood 6y ago
Take my opinion with a pinch of salt but any projects that use Discord as their platform for anything (chat, support, whatever) are not worth a dime, or should not worth a dime. I am pretty sure we all know Discord. Read the Privacy Policy, read the Terms of Service. See their business model. I mean, it is against everything I, as a FOSS developer stand for. Plus, one might say Discord is generic by now, but it still revolves around gaming quite a lot.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Sadly, they are a few years too late, it's going to be extremely hard to beat Discord now for anything that doesn't consider libre software and/ or privacy as critical. And by the point when Discord is going to get complacent (probably in a decade or so), Matrix is likely to be seen as kind of obsolete (like XMPP is now). (Not that I'm not going to use Matrix as much as I can...)
- m4rtink 6y ago
  >Sadly, they are a few years too late, it's going to be extremely hard to beat Discord now for anything that doesn't consider libre software and/ or privacy as critical. Can't we just wait till they run out of money for all the free services they are currently giving away ? Next they will try to agressively monetize their user base, which will make people migrate to something else - ideally self hosted or federated & based on open protocols this time.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    I remember people saying this about YouTube and Twitter. Yet it doesn't seem to have worked out despite both having several competent alternatives.
    - Kalq 6y ago
      Yeah Discord is not going to go away anytime soon. If they ever start to actually struggle for money they'll just be bought up by some tech giant.
    - samoa42 6y ago
      commercial content distribution platforms _will_ fall victim to copyright and censorship in general. its already underway and most progressive ideas have to be expressed elsewhere.
      - BlueTemplar 6y ago
        Capitalism has no trouble accommodating / subverting progressive ideas. It's the conservative ideas that tend to be silenced. EDIT : Also, interesting that the American right has moved from Twitter to not Mastodon, but to Parler instead : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 I wonder why ? Mastodon presenting itself as being too left-wing ? (Though make no mistake, a lot of the American right is 'conservative' only in name, and is instead wildly anti-conservative both in their speech as well as in their deeds.)

jaemoe 6y ago

Yes, this is really sad to see that much people in the OSS scene using nonfree ways to communicate. At least, IRC had open-source servers and clients but in my opinion, it's too old nowadays.

judge2020 6y ago
OSS primarily uses a non-free way to host source code (GitHub), so it's not much different to use Discord.
- jaemoe 6y ago
  And it's sad to see.
  - snazz 6y ago
    There are at least a few different "OSS scenes" that have different priorities. More principled, idealistic developers fall under a different category than more pragmatic ones, so it should be no surprise that they use different tools.
    - frabbit 6y ago
      Using non-Free tools has been shown to be distinctly non-pragmatic under a wide variety of considerations. A better term would be something like "Tied programmers" or "Dependent progammers". Maybe "sharecropper progammers"?
      - snazz 6y ago
        "Sharecropper programmers" might be an accurate way of describing developers for Apple platforms, but that's not what is happening when people use GitHub and Discord to work on open-source software. They can easily move their Git hosting and chat to another platform—they just choose to use the popular, coincidentally non-OSS, platform for its pragmatism. A large base of existing users, easy onboarding, and good visibility makes a big difference for many OSS projects. Using a self-hosted Git hosting system and mailing list is a lot of work—and it adds a not-insignificant barrier to entry for potential contributors. What issues exist with popular, proprietary Git and chat tools that make them unsuitable for OSS development? What are some of the considerations you're thinking of where using a popular option is not pragmatic?
- rednut 6y ago
  So what if Github itself is not OSS? The technology behind is already open source and decentralized. You can switch to a Gitlab instance with just a few mouse clicks while also migrating your issues and pull requests.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > So what if Github itself is not OSS? The technology behind is already open source… So is much of the technology behind Discourse.[1] [1] https://discord.com/open-source https://discord.com/open-source (click on "OS Libraries")
  - thekyle 6y ago
    I don't believe issues or pull requests are part of the Git repo. If there is a way to migrate them it would involve some GitHub API which could be shut down.
    - Arnavion 6y ago
      The commits in pull requests are part of the git repo, in that they can be fetched from the repo's remote. The comments are not.
      - samoa42 6y ago
        as said; the issues are not part of the repo. as much as many projects could use a clean slate here, i dont think the burden of migranting them manually or the act of just dumping them is realistic.
dmitriid 6y ago
> Yes, this is really sad to see that much people in the OSS scene using nonfree ways to communicate. And the reasons are entirely understandable: - you don't have to run your own infrastructure - you don't have to run your own protections against fraudulent activity, DDOSes, bots etc. - you don't have to worry about availability on any number of platforms, including mobile
- detaro 6y ago
  free software as a hosted service is a thing.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    It is a thing, is there enough of this thing? Is it free? Do these hosted services provide the infra and protection? Do these hosted services solve the issue of the dearth of clients for these services? And if you look at hosted services like IRCCloud, it turns out they are not that different from Slack/Discord: closed source, for full range of capabilities you need to use their apps.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> nonfree ways to communicate Does that include Hacker News?
- jaemoe 6y ago
  It does, currently waiting to be either invited to lobsters or for the registrations to open again.
  - ptman 6y ago
    Check out federating reddit -like service lemmy.ml: https://dev.lemmy.ml/ https://dev.lemmy.ml/

agilob 6y ago

and riot

business007 6y ago

just joined it, I was looking for something like this. Hope it take off as The modern IRC too :)

johnisgood 6y ago

Take my opinion with a pinch of salt but any projects that use Discord as their platform for anything (chat, support, whatever) are not worth a dime, or should not worth a dime. I am pretty sure we all know Discord. Read the Privacy Policy, read the Terms of Service. See their business model. I mean, it is against everything I, as a FOSS developer stand for. Plus, one might say Discord is generic by now, but it still revolves around gaming quite a lot.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Sadly, they are a few years too late, it's going to be extremely hard to beat Discord now for anything that doesn't consider libre software and/ or privacy as critical. And by the point when Discord is going to get complacent (probably in a decade or so), Matrix is likely to be seen as kind of obsolete (like XMPP is now). (Not that I'm not going to use Matrix as much as I can...)

m4rtink 6y ago
>Sadly, they are a few years too late, it's going to be extremely hard to beat Discord now for anything that doesn't consider libre software and/ or privacy as critical. Can't we just wait till they run out of money for all the free services they are currently giving away ? Next they will try to agressively monetize their user base, which will make people migrate to something else - ideally self hosted or federated & based on open protocols this time.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  I remember people saying this about YouTube and Twitter. Yet it doesn't seem to have worked out despite both having several competent alternatives.
  - Kalq 6y ago
    Yeah Discord is not going to go away anytime soon. If they ever start to actually struggle for money they'll just be bought up by some tech giant.
  - samoa42 6y ago
    commercial content distribution platforms _will_ fall victim to copyright and censorship in general. its already underway and most progressive ideas have to be expressed elsewhere.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      Capitalism has no trouble accommodating / subverting progressive ideas. It's the conservative ideas that tend to be silenced. EDIT : Also, interesting that the American right has moved from Twitter to not Mastodon, but to Parler instead : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097145 I wonder why ? Mastodon presenting itself as being too left-wing ? (Though make no mistake, a lot of the American right is 'conservative' only in name, and is instead wildly anti-conservative both in their speech as well as in their deeds.)