5 ms·

I'm in Hack Club, the team is moving all of us to self-hosted Mattermost. It is unfortunate that we have to re-code so many things though.

mobilemidget 1y ago
Does give you more things to 'hack' for the club. Not all bad I guess, and saving that amount of money is worth creating some 'new projects'.
_zoltan_ 1y ago
mattermost is so so so clunky and uncomfortable, but hey, it's free...
- Freak_NL 1y ago
  Is it? We've been using it self-hosted for years, together with GitLab. It meets all the needs of a small company, and is very pleasant to work with for devs too (i.e., basic Markdown just works, so you can post anything from code to log snippets in a sensible manner). Setting up Mattermost was one of the best decisions we've made with regards to our tools.
  - wltr 1y ago
    What about the software nudging you to subscribe to their enterprise plans here and there? Did you turned off this, or just ignore?
    - Freak_NL 1y ago
      Not much of an issue. Did this get more annoying in the newest versions?
      - wltr 1y ago
        First time I tested a self-hosted instance was a couple of weeks back. It was their official testing docker container. So perhaps there are versions without that, I don’t know. I assume you should be able to compile this without them, or at least fork the original project. Hence, I’m asking what’s about those banners in real world scenario.
    - adastra22 1y ago
      I've literally never seen this in my self-hosted Mattermost. Where do you see it?
      - wltr 1y ago
        I afraid I nuked my installation already. There were insignificant features, like for their Playbook (or what the name is), where you are offered some extra feature, that goes with the enterprise plan. If I chose my self-hosted instance for some reason, I don’t really need that advertising in my interface all the time. I can understand the reason it’s there, but I don’t like it still.
  - Simran-B 1y ago
    Funny you would mention GitLab - I find it extremely clunky, especially compared to GitHub. Maybe GitHub is primitive in comparison, but it never makes me hunt for basic functionality and the search just works for about everything.
- fransje26 1y ago
  > mattermost is so so so clunky and uncomfortable I'm quite sure they are open to pull-requests..
  - _zoltan_ 1y ago
    yawn it's very, very old to tell people "do it better else shut up", which is exactly what you did. people can have an opinion you know. this is my opinion.
gregoriol 1y ago
Matrix would be a better alternative
devoutsalsa 1y ago
I've never used Mattermost before today. After checking out their site, I can see they are also a for-profit company. What does Mattermost offer that Slack does not, other than a bill lower than $195K/year?
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  Mattermost is open-core software: you can self-host and they can't turn you off or raise the price.
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    What's your case for calling it open-core? The whole thing is AGPLv3, so... I'd call it FOSS with some components optionally being usable under Apache 2 terms
    - ForHackernews 1y ago
      That's how they describe themselves: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost > Mattermost is an open core, self-hosted collaboration platform that offers chat, workflow automation, voice calling, screen sharing, and AI integration
      - pcthrowaway 1y ago
        Interesting. Notably, they also call themselves "open source" in the "About" of the repository. I'm not aware of any critical extensions which are closed-source. The change you've highlighted was made 4 months ago under a commit that gives no explanation: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files , and the discussion there is private. Notably, they do have some "source-available" code that goes into the enterprise release, at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/enterprise https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/... This mainly seems to relate to metrics and fuzzy search, though it's possible more will move here in the future (it looks like this is a relatively recent development). Until recently they also had experimental support for Bleve full-text search (now seemingly deprecated), but the elasticsearch enterprise feature seems to be the replacement (otherwise they use postgres's ILIKE for built-in text search) So, all told, Mattermost was open source, and may be moving to open core. Which means now is probably the best time to create a community-maintained fork. The team edition, and almost all features, are currently still open source.
shaky-carrousel 1y ago
I personally see any kind of subscription as a technical debt.

mobilemidget 1y ago

Does give you more things to 'hack' for the club. Not all bad I guess, and saving that amount of money is worth creating some 'new projects'.

_zoltan_ 1y ago

mattermost is so so so clunky and uncomfortable, but hey, it's free...

Freak_NL 1y ago
Is it? We've been using it self-hosted for years, together with GitLab. It meets all the needs of a small company, and is very pleasant to work with for devs too (i.e., basic Markdown just works, so you can post anything from code to log snippets in a sensible manner). Setting up Mattermost was one of the best decisions we've made with regards to our tools.
- wltr 1y ago
  What about the software nudging you to subscribe to their enterprise plans here and there? Did you turned off this, or just ignore?
  - Freak_NL 1y ago
    Not much of an issue. Did this get more annoying in the newest versions?
    - wltr 1y ago
      First time I tested a self-hosted instance was a couple of weeks back. It was their official testing docker container. So perhaps there are versions without that, I don’t know. I assume you should be able to compile this without them, or at least fork the original project. Hence, I’m asking what’s about those banners in real world scenario.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    I've literally never seen this in my self-hosted Mattermost. Where do you see it?
    - wltr 1y ago
      I afraid I nuked my installation already. There were insignificant features, like for their Playbook (or what the name is), where you are offered some extra feature, that goes with the enterprise plan. If I chose my self-hosted instance for some reason, I don’t really need that advertising in my interface all the time. I can understand the reason it’s there, but I don’t like it still.
- Simran-B 1y ago
  Funny you would mention GitLab - I find it extremely clunky, especially compared to GitHub. Maybe GitHub is primitive in comparison, but it never makes me hunt for basic functionality and the search just works for about everything.
fransje26 1y ago
> mattermost is so so so clunky and uncomfortable I'm quite sure they are open to pull-requests..
- _zoltan_ 1y ago
  yawn it's very, very old to tell people "do it better else shut up", which is exactly what you did. people can have an opinion you know. this is my opinion.

gregoriol 1y ago

Matrix would be a better alternative

devoutsalsa 1y ago

I've never used Mattermost before today. After checking out their site, I can see they are also a for-profit company. What does Mattermost offer that Slack does not, other than a bill lower than $195K/year?

ForHackernews 1y ago
Mattermost is open-core software: you can self-host and they can't turn you off or raise the price.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  What's your case for calling it open-core? The whole thing is AGPLv3, so... I'd call it FOSS with some components optionally being usable under Apache 2 terms
  - ForHackernews 1y ago
    That's how they describe themselves: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost > Mattermost is an open core, self-hosted collaboration platform that offers chat, workflow automation, voice calling, screen sharing, and AI integration
    - pcthrowaway 1y ago
      Interesting. Notably, they also call themselves "open source" in the "About" of the repository. I'm not aware of any critical extensions which are closed-source. The change you've highlighted was made 4 months ago under a commit that gives no explanation: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files , and the discussion there is private. Notably, they do have some "source-available" code that goes into the enterprise release, at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/enterprise https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/... This mainly seems to relate to metrics and fuzzy search, though it's possible more will move here in the future (it looks like this is a relatively recent development). Until recently they also had experimental support for Bleve full-text search (now seemingly deprecated), but the elasticsearch enterprise feature seems to be the replacement (otherwise they use postgres's ILIKE for built-in text search) So, all told, Mattermost was open source, and may be moving to open core. Which means now is probably the best time to create a community-maintained fork. The team edition, and almost all features, are currently still open source.

shaky-carrousel 1y ago

I personally see any kind of subscription as a technical debt.