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Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public, I reckon this might be made in preparation for it. I think it is a wise move to offer an

Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public, I reckon this might be made in preparation for it. I think it is a wise move to offer an alternative. The design is very similar to Discord, could this possibly even go to a copyright breach or is the bar for that set too high?

wooger 2y ago
Lol, the design of discord is identical to about 9000 chat apps no?
- bryanhogan 2y ago
  There really is no other app in this space on the same quality as Discord. Discord was born out of Skype, Teamspeak and similar being so awful to use. Discord took the complaints from these and made a product which was the best version of them all.
  - grumple 2y ago
    Discord has always seemed like a Slack clone with better voice chat to me.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      With an emphasis on the gaming space and open communities, whereas Slack focused on corporate and closed communities. I've been in the Go community for a while and they had to write a bot to get access to it (as Slack works invite only) and iirc had to work with Slack engineers to work with the scale they had. Meanwhile Discord's success is down to it being open, anyone can create a new channel and get instant access to things like voice chat. Of course, this has its downside, and I'm sure Slack deals with a lot of abuse, ranging from porn to doxxing to it being used as a C&C server.
      - grumple 2y ago
        I think it’s a good product. The problem with all these chat apps (as companies to invest in) is there’s no moat; as soon as a more convenient or better option comes along, people will switch. There’s not a big integrated community or advantage to sticking to one app. Which doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t make plenty of money, just that I don’t buy into any hype around them.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    They must have been super crappy them because Discord is terrible to see and terrible to use.
    - Aachen 2y ago
      All clans' voice chats that I've been in were via Mumble, hosted on the server of whoever was the Linux nerd of the clan (nowadays that's me). No complaints about that software, but I heard lots about Skype and Teamspeak indeed. Mumble also uses TLS for encryption and authentication so it was more secure than anything else at the time as well, and more secure than Discord because the admin could maybe listen in but that's another team member and not a stranger working for a commercial entity I hate the Discord UI/UX as well (e.g.: sluggish add hell; need to press a few specific pixels on mobile to show the mute button and other controls that automatically fade out if you don't touch them for 2 seconds) but apparently what they do well is filtering out super loud eating noises, or that's what a friend said when I asked them to mute when they were eating crisps with the mic pointed directly at it as well as blowing on the mic with every breath. Apparently they never got complaints doing that on Discord I feel like an old person when muttering something about mute button etiquette to myself while writing this comment. If machine learning can fix that (if it doesn't require proprietary datasets from storing millions of peoples' conversations), I should let it ^^'
  - brulard 2y ago
    Quality? I see it as extremely bloated, very sluggish and clunky (on M3 macbook pro), search sucks bad and I can not figure out how I should keep track of multiple chained replies (like threads in slack). It's not as bad as teams, but talking about quality seems out of place.
    - Jarwain 2y ago
      Discord also has threads, if the server has enabled it. I personally haven't really encountered performance issues running discord
  - delfinom 2y ago
    I feel like Discord was born out of Slack. Slack was actually once popular for gaming groups but they decided they didn't want to capture that space and focused on business only. Teamspeak and Ventrilo were the alternatives and while they are still solid and arguably still popular with certain groups, they were a bit behind the times.
  - RAM-bunctious 2y ago
    'Awful' seems awfully subjective there. Can Skype even reasonably be grouped with Teamspeak? If all you want to do is quickly chat with a group, is Discord not actually far more annoying, all else equal? Windows isn't beating out Linux in the desktop space because Linux is awful. Network effects are much more significant.
DuncanCoffee 2y ago
I remember a gitea update where they said in the release text something like "new github-like ui" and they basically copied all of it (check some screenshot of the latest version)
- _mitterpach 2y ago
  I would lie if I said I did not ever do something similar, and I am not really aware of any court cases or litigations based on copying a design. Core functionalities, sure. There is many an open source software that could actually use a little bit of copying from the thing they are trying to emulate. GIMP is still one of the ugliest programs I have installed on my computer.
  - chuckadams 2y ago
    > I am not really aware of any court cases or litigations based on copying a design Apple tried it in the 90's with the infamous "look and feel" lawsuits against Microsoft. They lost. They've had more success suing Samsung over phone design and UI (which was about more than "rounded corners" to be sure, but a lot of the patents are still questionable).
Hamuko 2y ago
When I first saw Discord (est. 2015), my first thought was that it looked exactly like Slack (est. 2013) except was in dark mode.
- mportela 2y ago
  And with good audio chat
internetter 2y ago
> I reckon this might be made in preparation for it Revolt has been in development for many years > could this possibly even go to a copyright breach Ianl but I’d imagine this would require discord to prove they own the “multiple groups, with subchannels” paradigm, which would be difficult when slack exists
- dingnuts 2y ago
  even then it would be a potential patent infringement, not copyright. but there's prior art for literally every feature Discord has so as long as they aren't copy-pasting Discord's source code I think they're just fine I'm not a lawyer either but I am an SWE and I've had to read and been expected to understand so many goddamned licenses that at this point I feel like I'm expected to be one just to be able to navigate this field
rychco 2y ago
> Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public That’s disappointing, but even now it’s hard to imagine they’re particularly profitable. The core functionality of Discord is entirely free and I doubt that Nitro / other paid features earn that much.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I would like to know this, too. What makes it profitable, then, considering it has little to no ads?
MisterTea 2y ago
> The design is very similar to Discord And Discords design is very similar to mIRC.

wooger 2y ago

Lol, the design of discord is identical to about 9000 chat apps no?

bryanhogan 2y ago
There really is no other app in this space on the same quality as Discord. Discord was born out of Skype, Teamspeak and similar being so awful to use. Discord took the complaints from these and made a product which was the best version of them all.
- grumple 2y ago
  Discord has always seemed like a Slack clone with better voice chat to me.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    With an emphasis on the gaming space and open communities, whereas Slack focused on corporate and closed communities. I've been in the Go community for a while and they had to write a bot to get access to it (as Slack works invite only) and iirc had to work with Slack engineers to work with the scale they had. Meanwhile Discord's success is down to it being open, anyone can create a new channel and get instant access to things like voice chat. Of course, this has its downside, and I'm sure Slack deals with a lot of abuse, ranging from porn to doxxing to it being used as a C&C server.
    - grumple 2y ago
      I think it’s a good product. The problem with all these chat apps (as companies to invest in) is there’s no moat; as soon as a more convenient or better option comes along, people will switch. There’s not a big integrated community or advantage to sticking to one app. Which doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t make plenty of money, just that I don’t buy into any hype around them.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  They must have been super crappy them because Discord is terrible to see and terrible to use.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    All clans' voice chats that I've been in were via Mumble, hosted on the server of whoever was the Linux nerd of the clan (nowadays that's me). No complaints about that software, but I heard lots about Skype and Teamspeak indeed. Mumble also uses TLS for encryption and authentication so it was more secure than anything else at the time as well, and more secure than Discord because the admin could maybe listen in but that's another team member and not a stranger working for a commercial entity I hate the Discord UI/UX as well (e.g.: sluggish add hell; need to press a few specific pixels on mobile to show the mute button and other controls that automatically fade out if you don't touch them for 2 seconds) but apparently what they do well is filtering out super loud eating noises, or that's what a friend said when I asked them to mute when they were eating crisps with the mic pointed directly at it as well as blowing on the mic with every breath. Apparently they never got complaints doing that on Discord I feel like an old person when muttering something about mute button etiquette to myself while writing this comment. If machine learning can fix that (if it doesn't require proprietary datasets from storing millions of peoples' conversations), I should let it ^^'
- brulard 2y ago
  Quality? I see it as extremely bloated, very sluggish and clunky (on M3 macbook pro), search sucks bad and I can not figure out how I should keep track of multiple chained replies (like threads in slack). It's not as bad as teams, but talking about quality seems out of place.
  - Jarwain 2y ago
    Discord also has threads, if the server has enabled it. I personally haven't really encountered performance issues running discord
- delfinom 2y ago
  I feel like Discord was born out of Slack. Slack was actually once popular for gaming groups but they decided they didn't want to capture that space and focused on business only. Teamspeak and Ventrilo were the alternatives and while they are still solid and arguably still popular with certain groups, they were a bit behind the times.
- RAM-bunctious 2y ago
  'Awful' seems awfully subjective there. Can Skype even reasonably be grouped with Teamspeak? If all you want to do is quickly chat with a group, is Discord not actually far more annoying, all else equal? Windows isn't beating out Linux in the desktop space because Linux is awful. Network effects are much more significant.

DuncanCoffee 2y ago

I remember a gitea update where they said in the release text something like "new github-like ui" and they basically copied all of it (check some screenshot of the latest version)

_mitterpach 2y ago
I would lie if I said I did not ever do something similar, and I am not really aware of any court cases or litigations based on copying a design. Core functionalities, sure. There is many an open source software that could actually use a little bit of copying from the thing they are trying to emulate. GIMP is still one of the ugliest programs I have installed on my computer.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  > I am not really aware of any court cases or litigations based on copying a design Apple tried it in the 90's with the infamous "look and feel" lawsuits against Microsoft. They lost. They've had more success suing Samsung over phone design and UI (which was about more than "rounded corners" to be sure, but a lot of the patents are still questionable).

Hamuko 2y ago

When I first saw Discord (est. 2015), my first thought was that it looked exactly like Slack (est. 2013) except was in dark mode.

mportela 2y ago
And with good audio chat

internetter 2y ago

> I reckon this might be made in preparation for it Revolt has been in development for many years > could this possibly even go to a copyright breach Ianl but I’d imagine this would require discord to prove they own the “multiple groups, with subchannels” paradigm, which would be difficult when slack exists

dingnuts 2y ago
even then it would be a potential patent infringement, not copyright. but there's prior art for literally every feature Discord has so as long as they aren't copy-pasting Discord's source code I think they're just fine I'm not a lawyer either but I am an SWE and I've had to read and been expected to understand so many goddamned licenses that at this point I feel like I'm expected to be one just to be able to navigate this field

rychco 2y ago

> Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public That’s disappointing, but even now it’s hard to imagine they’re particularly profitable. The core functionality of Discord is entirely free and I doubt that Nitro / other paid features earn that much.

johnisgood 2y ago
I would like to know this, too. What makes it profitable, then, considering it has little to no ads?

MisterTea 2y ago

> The design is very similar to Discord And Discords design is very similar to mIRC.