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> But first: join our Discord! This is such a turn-off for projects to me. Please accept random terms of service and privacy policy of a closed-source product

> But first: join our Discord! This is such a turn-off for projects to me. Please accept random terms of service and privacy policy of a closed-source product that will be collecting and selling your data as the only means of participation in this community.

zzo38computer 5y ago
I agree; I don't like that either. My own projects are using the IRC and NNTP instead, and I will not add Discord despite anyone else's suggestions (although there is a Matrix to bridge with the IRC). (Currently there isn't anyone else on; I have been told that it is because I do not publish binaries, but I don't know.)
- toastal 5y ago
  I don't necessarily see something wrong with having one for a project that follows the code of conduct, but a) making it the only means isn't acceptable and I'd argue b) bridging to Discord is possibly more harmful since it can implicitly be sending data where ToS cannot be declined by community members.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- petee 5y ago
  Unless you mean binaries for Windows, I'd assume the lack of community is due to something else; IRC is definitely foreign to the younger crowd, but its not a hard hurdle to jump. Personally I avoid IRC since I just don't like "chatting", email or forum is a far easier flow, socially. It also seemed rare to find anyone actually present in their channels, timing never works out. I'll still use it though if its the only option and I realllly want an answer
  - zzo38computer 5y ago
    This program is a Linux program, and uses some GNU functions (and some other assumptions that are appropriate for UNIX-based systems but not Windows), so will likely require changing it to get it to work on Windows (although it might work on WSL, but I have not tested this). This project has NNTP, so if you don't like "chatting", then the NNTP can be used, which is more like the email or forum.
    - petee 5y ago
      I mentioned Windows since most linux users at some point have been exposed to compilation, where as windows users aren't likely to even know where to find a compiler. I have never used NNTP, but now im curious to learn some more about it; growing up I had never seen it used, but i think i just missed that age
      - zzo38computer 5y ago
        About Windows/Linux I believe you. Nevertheless, there are only a few people on the IRC/Matrix and they have not written anything there (although I have written). About NNTP, there is the RFC documents relating to it, and some NNTP servers. Some are Usenet, although the NNTP server for my project is specific to that project. You can use any NNTP client software to access it (or just operate the protocol directly); some email software can also use NNTP.
JeremyBanks 5y ago
I prefer it over the old days, where it was "don't join our mailing list".
- petee 5y ago
  Mailing lists are far easier and quicker, since all you need to sign up is your email. Thats it. No passwords, account names, download an app, etc... Not everything needs all the bells and whistles
Taywee 5y ago
I completely understand why gaming communities centralized on Discord. It has the most convenient and obvious interface for managing little communities of multiple related rooms, and the drop-in drop-out voice chat room system is obvious. I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why so many tech and programming (especially FOSS) communities still flock to Discord, especially given how programmer-hostile the company is. Matrix is more than good enough to manage it now. The only things about Matrix that bother me right now is that presence is still disabled on the matrix.org homeserver, and the phone call metaphor for group voice and video chat rooms is clunky.
- toastal 5y ago
  When I still did online gaming, we'd tried a couple of different tools but the last one we settled on making everyone, even the non-tech-savvy, happy was Mumble because it was lightweight, no frills, low-lag with good audio and decent detection for auto enabling and disabling voice for people (like me) that didn't like extra buttons for push-to-talk.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Mumble has long since falling out of favour. It’s missing most of what people consider critical features now including mobile support, good IM support, and the ability to instantly create new communities without dealing with hosting. I’d say it’s likely that most discord users are mobile or at least half.
    - toastal 5y ago
      I won’t disagree. My anecdote was from 4–5 years ago. We’d assessed that Discord was too much for us specifically. I had used the Mumble Android app from F-Droid a time or two to communicate while on the go just to chat. As for the hosting, at the time I also had dynamic DNS and actual ISP and it was lightweight enough to self-host a room with a couple of people without issue. I think not dealing with hosting probably is a big issue for a lot of people. Monetarily the difference is small, but philosophically free vs. $2/mo is massive.
CTOSian 5y ago
I know some projects for hobbyists that they setup facebook groups and you can only get support via their effin facebook group, damn them all... at least I have a total-fake account for things like that, so feed the system with BS.
sagaro 5y ago
Most of these just require forum and not a chat community channel like Discord, where everyone keeps asking the same question, because things are not easy to search or organize. But the reason people aren't making forums, is it is not as easy for community owner to make forums (need to get cloud storage, then configure something like discourse forum, get a domain name etc.) Same for the end user who wants to be part of multiple communities, has to remember the URLs of multiple communities, has to have multiple logins and passwords and needs to create an account in each of them. If someone combines discord + discourse (basically an app, that has all your forums on the side bar with just one login, and people can create a new forum for anything, similar to how you can create a discord server) then I think we might end up going back to forums with more meaningful discussions and all information related to some issue in one place.
- spurgu 5y ago
  Ding ding ding, I think you hit the head of all the nails there. I don't use Discord for anything serious but it's just very convenient to join any Discord group with a single click since I'm already logged in there. I think we need to put aside the security practices of Discord (it's not like the discussions tend to be sensitive in any way), because I'm not aware of anything that comes close in ease of setup and user onboarding, at this point. Setting up Zulip or Mattermost, paying for hosting and then managing it all is quite a hassle in comparison.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    It's not only about the security practices, it's about the visibility. I'm not a huge fan of Discourse, but when projects use it, I don't need to create an account to read, and it acts like a webpage, not an application.
    - toastal 5y ago
      Personally I think Discourse strikes a pretty good balance. It's a bit like a mailing list where it's easier to search and users can edit mistakes while having more modern features a browser can provide.
Hawxy 5y ago
> privacy policy of a closed-source product that will be collecting and selling your data I know this the general HN opinion of free & closed software, but I think this is one scenario where it doesn't ring true. On top of Discord's privacy policy explicitly disallowing/negating data selling, the CEO, CTO and CFO have all made public statements that they have no interest in the monetization of user data. The CTO has suggested that they're at least breaking even with Nitro subscriptions, and they've shrugged off acquisition attempts, instead wishing to go public at some point. The risk of Discord performing commercial suicide via a data selling scandal appears exceptionally unlikely.
- thih9 5y ago
  For now. Their goal is still to make money and as with any freemium product, the rules might change.
- Levitz 5y ago
  It's as simple as waiting until they have enough market saturation to be able to dismiss any competition and start selling data then.
- Jasper_ 5y ago
  They've taken nearly $1b in funding [0] (likely over that goal now, given the last few rounds were undisclosed). Regardless of their current costs now, I doubt they'll ever make up $1b on a subscription product. And investors are likely looking for a 10x return, which means an exit of $10b. I doubt they can get there by either selling data, or by selling subscriptions. Turning down the $12b acquisition offer from Microsoft felt like a foolish move; I expect they'll get bought out by someone like Amazon for half that price. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/discord https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/discord
petee 5y ago
I had the same reaction when i read it - why is this necessary? Discord is a terrible experience...even here, right off the bat, the link is expired! I'd even argue that simply using Discord just makes projects seem juvenile, and not to be taken seriously. Its the modern equivalent of "ask your Pro question on our AOL Instant Messenger" page...yeah, no.

zzo38computer 5y ago

I agree; I don't like that either. My own projects are using the IRC and NNTP instead, and I will not add Discord despite anyone else's suggestions (although there is a Matrix to bridge with the IRC). (Currently there isn't anyone else on; I have been told that it is because I do not publish binaries, but I don't know.)

toastal 5y ago
I don't necessarily see something wrong with having one for a project that follows the code of conduct, but a) making it the only means isn't acceptable and I'd argue b) bridging to Discord is possibly more harmful since it can implicitly be sending data where ToS cannot be declined by community members.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
petee 5y ago
Unless you mean binaries for Windows, I'd assume the lack of community is due to something else; IRC is definitely foreign to the younger crowd, but its not a hard hurdle to jump. Personally I avoid IRC since I just don't like "chatting", email or forum is a far easier flow, socially. It also seemed rare to find anyone actually present in their channels, timing never works out. I'll still use it though if its the only option and I realllly want an answer
- zzo38computer 5y ago
  This program is a Linux program, and uses some GNU functions (and some other assumptions that are appropriate for UNIX-based systems but not Windows), so will likely require changing it to get it to work on Windows (although it might work on WSL, but I have not tested this). This project has NNTP, so if you don't like "chatting", then the NNTP can be used, which is more like the email or forum.
  - petee 5y ago
    I mentioned Windows since most linux users at some point have been exposed to compilation, where as windows users aren't likely to even know where to find a compiler. I have never used NNTP, but now im curious to learn some more about it; growing up I had never seen it used, but i think i just missed that age
    - zzo38computer 5y ago
      About Windows/Linux I believe you. Nevertheless, there are only a few people on the IRC/Matrix and they have not written anything there (although I have written). About NNTP, there is the RFC documents relating to it, and some NNTP servers. Some are Usenet, although the NNTP server for my project is specific to that project. You can use any NNTP client software to access it (or just operate the protocol directly); some email software can also use NNTP.

JeremyBanks 5y ago

I prefer it over the old days, where it was "don't join our mailing list".

petee 5y ago
Mailing lists are far easier and quicker, since all you need to sign up is your email. Thats it. No passwords, account names, download an app, etc... Not everything needs all the bells and whistles

Taywee 5y ago

I completely understand why gaming communities centralized on Discord. It has the most convenient and obvious interface for managing little communities of multiple related rooms, and the drop-in drop-out voice chat room system is obvious. I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why so many tech and programming (especially FOSS) communities still flock to Discord, especially given how programmer-hostile the company is. Matrix is more than good enough to manage it now. The only things about Matrix that bother me right now is that presence is still disabled on the matrix.org homeserver, and the phone call metaphor for group voice and video chat rooms is clunky.

toastal 5y ago
When I still did online gaming, we'd tried a couple of different tools but the last one we settled on making everyone, even the non-tech-savvy, happy was Mumble because it was lightweight, no frills, low-lag with good audio and decent detection for auto enabling and disabling voice for people (like me) that didn't like extra buttons for push-to-talk.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Mumble has long since falling out of favour. It’s missing most of what people consider critical features now including mobile support, good IM support, and the ability to instantly create new communities without dealing with hosting. I’d say it’s likely that most discord users are mobile or at least half.
  - toastal 5y ago
    I won’t disagree. My anecdote was from 4–5 years ago. We’d assessed that Discord was too much for us specifically. I had used the Mumble Android app from F-Droid a time or two to communicate while on the go just to chat. As for the hosting, at the time I also had dynamic DNS and actual ISP and it was lightweight enough to self-host a room with a couple of people without issue. I think not dealing with hosting probably is a big issue for a lot of people. Monetarily the difference is small, but philosophically free vs. $2/mo is massive.

CTOSian 5y ago

I know some projects for hobbyists that they setup facebook groups and you can only get support via their effin facebook group, damn them all... at least I have a total-fake account for things like that, so feed the system with BS.

sagaro 5y ago

Most of these just require forum and not a chat community channel like Discord, where everyone keeps asking the same question, because things are not easy to search or organize. But the reason people aren't making forums, is it is not as easy for community owner to make forums (need to get cloud storage, then configure something like discourse forum, get a domain name etc.) Same for the end user who wants to be part of multiple communities, has to remember the URLs of multiple communities, has to have multiple logins and passwords and needs to create an account in each of them. If someone combines discord + discourse (basically an app, that has all your forums on the side bar with just one login, and people can create a new forum for anything, similar to how you can create a discord server) then I think we might end up going back to forums with more meaningful discussions and all information related to some issue in one place.

spurgu 5y ago
Ding ding ding, I think you hit the head of all the nails there. I don't use Discord for anything serious but it's just very convenient to join any Discord group with a single click since I'm already logged in there. I think we need to put aside the security practices of Discord (it's not like the discussions tend to be sensitive in any way), because I'm not aware of anything that comes close in ease of setup and user onboarding, at this point. Setting up Zulip or Mattermost, paying for hosting and then managing it all is quite a hassle in comparison.
- Zababa 5y ago
  It's not only about the security practices, it's about the visibility. I'm not a huge fan of Discourse, but when projects use it, I don't need to create an account to read, and it acts like a webpage, not an application.
  - toastal 5y ago
    Personally I think Discourse strikes a pretty good balance. It's a bit like a mailing list where it's easier to search and users can edit mistakes while having more modern features a browser can provide.

Hawxy 5y ago

> privacy policy of a closed-source product that will be collecting and selling your data I know this the general HN opinion of free & closed software, but I think this is one scenario where it doesn't ring true. On top of Discord's privacy policy explicitly disallowing/negating data selling, the CEO, CTO and CFO have all made public statements that they have no interest in the monetization of user data. The CTO has suggested that they're at least breaking even with Nitro subscriptions, and they've shrugged off acquisition attempts, instead wishing to go public at some point. The risk of Discord performing commercial suicide via a data selling scandal appears exceptionally unlikely.

thih9 5y ago
For now. Their goal is still to make money and as with any freemium product, the rules might change.
Levitz 5y ago
It's as simple as waiting until they have enough market saturation to be able to dismiss any competition and start selling data then.
Jasper_ 5y ago
They've taken nearly $1b in funding [0] (likely over that goal now, given the last few rounds were undisclosed). Regardless of their current costs now, I doubt they'll ever make up $1b on a subscription product. And investors are likely looking for a 10x return, which means an exit of $10b. I doubt they can get there by either selling data, or by selling subscriptions. Turning down the $12b acquisition offer from Microsoft felt like a foolish move; I expect they'll get bought out by someone like Amazon for half that price. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/discord https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/discord

petee 5y ago

I had the same reaction when i read it - why is this necessary? Discord is a terrible experience...even here, right off the bat, the link is expired! I'd even argue that simply using Discord just makes projects seem juvenile, and not to be taken seriously. Its the modern equivalent of "ask your Pro question on our AOL Instant Messenger" page...yeah, no.