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It's pretty frustrating how many OSS projects use Slack but there are no options available to pay for a discounted pro plan. We'd love to pay a flat-ish fee for

It's pretty frustrating how many OSS projects use Slack but there are no options available to pay for a discounted pro plan. We'd love to pay a flat-ish fee for the community but it creates a disincentive to grow. Their active user fair pricing helps a bit, but it's not great.

nimbius 5y ago
why not just run a mattermost server instead? https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/
- Narretz 5y ago
  One reason you already mentioned, you have to run it. Slack is run for you.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    That's a good thing, though. Get a VPS for 5$ per month, set up LetsEncrypt and launch the software in a Docker container - and you will have to do very little administration. Then no one can limit the messages that you can have in the chat or make you pay for many of the features or suddenly take the software away from you or make you have an outage due to external factors of any software vendor.
    - PenguinCoder 5y ago
      Until you get spammed to hell, or the next vulnerability leaves your system broken, you're utterly owned. There's a lot more that goes into self administration then just "put a server up".
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        If updating a Docker tag every month or so after verifying that your backups are working is too hard, then it is probably indeed a better choice to rely on SaaS, however that line of thinking is dangerously close to falling into the trap of SaaSS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... And if you want automatic updates, then either use the :latest tag, use apt/yum/... packages with unattended upgrades or something like Snaps for Ubuntu. However, in my experience, updates should be done manually and only when you're ready to roll them back (unless there are non-breaking security updates which are only available for OSes most of the time). As for spam, if you can't moderate your Discord or Slack Space, then the same will apply here, of course. As for getting owned: if your passwords are simple enough to be guessed or you don't follow other best practices, then the same will apply both to SaaS offerings and the software you're hosting yourself. Basic common sense like not exposing DBs to the Internet and using your firewall to only expose the ports you want was assumed, but not explicitly pointed out in my post.
        marcellus23 5y ago
        That's a lot of stuff to worry about and get right vs. just paying $XX a month for someone else to deal with it.
        KronisLV 5y ago
        You know, that's a fair point. On one hand, feeding a YAML file into a container orchestration solution takes care of some of those concerns, as does enabling VPS backups and using something like KeePass to generate passwords (which can also be used for everything else, should you so desire). On the other hand, not everyone necessarily knows how to do that, or wants to do that. To that, i'll indeed concede. It's just that claiming that these things are too hard for the average technically inclined person to do (regardless of whether they have 2 or 10 years of experience) leads to a mindset in which people rely on SaaSS for everything and never even learn how to run their own software, thus either paying too much for it (relative to the worth it provides them with), or just locking themselves into a particular vendor. Lastly, by hosting your own software, you are a smaller target than the larger and more centralized SaaS platforms. If a large SaaS gets hacked, although unlikely, it will affect a large amount of people. If your own instance gets hacked, even if more likely (less visible to hackers, almost no gain to be had for hacking John Doe's Nextcloud instance, yet probably also easier to do), it will only affect the few people using it.
    - lupire 5y ago
      please do that and sell a hosting service.
  - jasonblais 5y ago
    Hey, Mattermost PM here. There is a hosted SaaS version of Mattermost as well. We don't have an established non-profit license for it yet, but you can contact community[at]mattermost.com and we'd be happy to discuss options.
kissgyorgy 5y ago
Please don't use Slack for open projects! It's a walled garden, search engines cannot index the content and registration is needed to even see the discussions. What you put in there is basically closed from the public, complete opposit of openness.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  In fairness discord has this same problem, but saying “don’t create a discord or a slack for your community” is kind of… not really realistic. Does matrix / someone else solve it? How?
  - keb_ 5y ago
    I'm also curious about this. Gitter.im (which now is integrated with Matrix) is also an option, but not as user-friendly as Discord. With Discord at least you have unlimited searchable chat history (which is invaluable for OSS communities, and one of the top reasons you should avoid Slack). However, I can see Discord removing this free luxury in the future...
  - calebkaiser 5y ago
    Gitter seems to be indexable by search engines. My experience using it as part of open projects has been mixed—the UI isn't great and the notification system is, in my experience, unreliable—but if you're worried about your messages being discoverable, it might be up your alley.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Well, there are plenty of open solutions that you can self host. Personally, i find Rocket.Chat ( https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ ) to be simple enough to set up in a Docker container and have running as a passable alternative to Slack/Discord. There are downloadable clients as well. The only real downside I've seen is somewhat bad support for calls because their WebRTC implementation is still new and integrating with Big blue button or whatever else they offered is hard.
  - tabbott 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nimbius 5y ago

why not just run a mattermost server instead? https://mattermost.com/ https://mattermost.com/

Narretz 5y ago
One reason you already mentioned, you have to run it. Slack is run for you.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  That's a good thing, though. Get a VPS for 5$ per month, set up LetsEncrypt and launch the software in a Docker container - and you will have to do very little administration. Then no one can limit the messages that you can have in the chat or make you pay for many of the features or suddenly take the software away from you or make you have an outage due to external factors of any software vendor.
  - PenguinCoder 5y ago
    Until you get spammed to hell, or the next vulnerability leaves your system broken, you're utterly owned. There's a lot more that goes into self administration then just "put a server up".
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      If updating a Docker tag every month or so after verifying that your backups are working is too hard, then it is probably indeed a better choice to rely on SaaS, however that line of thinking is dangerously close to falling into the trap of SaaSS: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... And if you want automatic updates, then either use the :latest tag, use apt/yum/... packages with unattended upgrades or something like Snaps for Ubuntu. However, in my experience, updates should be done manually and only when you're ready to roll them back (unless there are non-breaking security updates which are only available for OSes most of the time). As for spam, if you can't moderate your Discord or Slack Space, then the same will apply here, of course. As for getting owned: if your passwords are simple enough to be guessed or you don't follow other best practices, then the same will apply both to SaaS offerings and the software you're hosting yourself. Basic common sense like not exposing DBs to the Internet and using your firewall to only expose the ports you want was assumed, but not explicitly pointed out in my post.
      - marcellus23 5y ago
        That's a lot of stuff to worry about and get right vs. just paying $XX a month for someone else to deal with it.
        KronisLV 5y ago
        You know, that's a fair point. On one hand, feeding a YAML file into a container orchestration solution takes care of some of those concerns, as does enabling VPS backups and using something like KeePass to generate passwords (which can also be used for everything else, should you so desire). On the other hand, not everyone necessarily knows how to do that, or wants to do that. To that, i'll indeed concede. It's just that claiming that these things are too hard for the average technically inclined person to do (regardless of whether they have 2 or 10 years of experience) leads to a mindset in which people rely on SaaSS for everything and never even learn how to run their own software, thus either paying too much for it (relative to the worth it provides them with), or just locking themselves into a particular vendor. Lastly, by hosting your own software, you are a smaller target than the larger and more centralized SaaS platforms. If a large SaaS gets hacked, although unlikely, it will affect a large amount of people. If your own instance gets hacked, even if more likely (less visible to hackers, almost no gain to be had for hacking John Doe's Nextcloud instance, yet probably also easier to do), it will only affect the few people using it.
  - lupire 5y ago
    please do that and sell a hosting service.
- jasonblais 5y ago
  Hey, Mattermost PM here. There is a hosted SaaS version of Mattermost as well. We don't have an established non-profit license for it yet, but you can contact community[at]mattermost.com and we'd be happy to discuss options.

kissgyorgy 5y ago

Please don't use Slack for open projects! It's a walled garden, search engines cannot index the content and registration is needed to even see the discussions. What you put in there is basically closed from the public, complete opposit of openness.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
In fairness discord has this same problem, but saying “don’t create a discord or a slack for your community” is kind of… not really realistic. Does matrix / someone else solve it? How?
- keb_ 5y ago
  I'm also curious about this. Gitter.im (which now is integrated with Matrix) is also an option, but not as user-friendly as Discord. With Discord at least you have unlimited searchable chat history (which is invaluable for OSS communities, and one of the top reasons you should avoid Slack). However, I can see Discord removing this free luxury in the future...
- calebkaiser 5y ago
  Gitter seems to be indexable by search engines. My experience using it as part of open projects has been mixed—the UI isn't great and the notification system is, in my experience, unreliable—but if you're worried about your messages being discoverable, it might be up your alley.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Well, there are plenty of open solutions that you can self host. Personally, i find Rocket.Chat ( https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ ) to be simple enough to set up in a Docker container and have running as a passable alternative to Slack/Discord. There are downloadable clients as well. The only real downside I've seen is somewhat bad support for calls because their WebRTC implementation is still new and integrating with Big blue button or whatever else they offered is hard.
- tabbott 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]