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RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor
- joeyspn 11y agoOne of the devs said yesterday that API integrations are coming soon. After this, replacing Meteor's Blaze for something like React could make this a serious slack alternative...
- akhatri_aus 11y agoWhat specifically would a user notice with the difference between Blaze and React? I get react is a bit faster under the hood. Its not something that would make this a 'serious' alternative?
- jbhatab 11y agoI'm an avid react user and I completely agree. It wouldn't make it a 'serious' alternative just from that, although I would always love to see react used :).
- joeyspn 11y agoThe serious alternative is having both: API integrations + react, specially the first one... Like you say, react alone won't make a big difference, but it could potentially make the UI less laggy.
- e12e 11y agoRemind me what slack offers over xmpp+web client, and/or irc+web client (apart from the lock-in, and marketing, I mean)?
- ywecur 11y agoAre mobile apps planned?
- petejodo 11y agothis. I've been looking for something to replace facebook messenger to use with my friends. Whatever it is, it would need mobile push notifications. Currently I'm using tinfoil facebook so not getting push messages causes me to miss long portions of conversations in my group chat and I don't want to just use another service, I'd rather host it
- indymike 11y agoIt's written in meteor. Meteor is for writing web and mobile apps. Rolling a mobile version goes something like $meteor add-platform android and $meteor run android-device. (you can replace android with ios).
- cstrat 11y agoPretty amazing effort, very clean UI and works flawlessly so far...
- technicalfault 11y agoI guess improving XMPP isn't as cool as building something brand new?
- butwhy 11y agoThis isn't just a protocol.
- Karunamon 11y agoXMPP is XML-based, noisy, and just plain annoying to deal with. There's only so much polish that can be applied to a turd...
- 9point6 11y agoAre there any sensible, albeit less popular, modern equivalents to XMPP?
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoIRC is better and actually more popular. IRC solved the problem of instant messaging over 20 years ago, and solved it very well. This is a problem that everyone and their mother attempts to re-solve and they always end up with a solution that's inferior to IRC. Just deploy an IRC server folks!
- scott_karana 11y agoIRC solved basic communication, but the necessity of bots for things like authentication for usernames, logging, and retaining permissions are inelegant kludges, in my opinion. If XMPP has problems, so does IRC.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y agoI don't think it'd be very difficult to set up some sort of web UI for account creation, combined with existing in-client features for usernames/passwords. That'd be more worthwhile than building a new solution from scratch. IRC has advantages over XMPP by having a much wider variety of clients and the fact that you can create your own integrations for things like build automation in a very short period of time thanks to the simple text-based protocol.
- sotoer 11y agoNot sure if this is related https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-a-slack-clone-in-meteor-js-getting-started https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-a-slack-clone-in-meteor...
- broabprobe 11y agoAnother sweet new open soruce Slack alternative is Friends, https://github.com/moose-team/friends https://github.com/moose-team/friends
- hobarrera 11y agoThere's also letschat: http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/ Dunno why people tend to flock over to the propietary option though. :(
- aroch 11y ago> people tend to flock over to the propietary option Because it Just Works(tm) and there's no fiddling or faffing about necessary. I'm all for [FL]OSS applications, but sometimes proprietary solutions, even if they do the same task, are just easier to use and integrate (both technically and bureaucratically)
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoIn the case of something like Slack though, there's a huge business risk: Storing your confidential internal discussions with a random startup of questionable security practice.
- aroch 11y agoTrue, but it also gives you an out if customer data is breached. You, with good faith, contracted a thirdparty to manage and secure your data. If you run your own Letschat and some exploit is found that dumps your chat db, you're/your company is on the hook. FWIW, I don't and likely will never use or promote Slack for intracompany chat.
- lez 11y agoThe opposite. If you install opensource software on you own servers, and make it available only for your company's intranet, you are perfectly safe from outside attackers. Proprietary software can also exploited or they can just sell your data for bucks, when they are about to bankrupt.
- pwenzel 11y agoOne of the useful parts of Slack is push-notifications to my mobile device when I'm away (and only for things I opt in to). Do any of these new-fangled open source Slack alternatives offer notifications for people on the go?
- rafaelks 11y agoIt's planned. You can see whatever is planned or not in GitHub issues. Also, you can create some feature request there or either contribute with something. https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues.
- shinta 11y agoDon't forget the integrations, I love those. The rest is easily replicable.
- idibidiart 11y agocould not register: "Please Wait..." for 5 minutes and counting
- uxwtf 11y agoSame for me, demo registration doesn't respond
- marceloschmidt 11y agoIt's working now.
- shampine 11y agoNot for me, I was able to get to the confirmation email, now it is just stuck in a loop.
- engelgabriel 11y agoSorry guys.. this was just our development server.. we were planning to release it in 3 weeks time :)
- shampine 11y agoNo worries, I guess I'll try again in 3 weeks. :)
- zaargy 11y agoSo you set this up and you use it for a few hours and everyone on your team is like hey this is kinda cool. * a month or so passes * Now everyone is invested in the tool and since the expectations have been set by things like Slack they expect integrations to work flawlessly, search to be infinitely fast, 99% uptime, Google OpenID authentication, and a slew of other features and before you know it you have someone spending two hours out of every day keeping it running. As a personal project for kicks? Sure it's cool. Would I let me company run it? Hell no!
- thebouv 11y agoUnless you know they never used Slack, so there are no expectations. And your company wants to run OSS, so "has a guy" that already maintains the other pocketful of apps to company is using. And since it is OSS, you can add Google OpenID auth if required. And the slew of other features you want to add, but can't to Slack even if you knew about Slack. Don't crap on the idea just because Slack is Slack and this isn't. Apply your "a month or so passes and now everyone is invested in the tool" scenario to any OSS alternative and your argument just comes off as fanboying.
- zaargy 11y agoWell it's not just Slack that sets expectations but pretty much every SaaS webapp out there. Of course, you can add features but do not underestimate how much work it is to do so and is it even worth the effort? It is what you should be spending your time on as a company if that's not your business? And let's remember Slack is going to video and voice soon...
- hardwaresofton 11y agoAlso, there's nothing stopping your company from making the product better. You shouldn't be spending 2 hours each day solving the same problems. If you make fixes, push them upstream (and others will too), then everyone gets a better product.
- chralieboy 11y ago
- patton01 11y agoWhy wouldn't I just use slack?
- mod 11y agoIt's not free, it's not controlled by you.
- primigenus 11y agoFunnily enough there are actually multiple Slack-like chat app projects underway in the Meteor community. I guess building a chat app is the new building a todo list app? Yesterday at Meteor's main meetup Devshop this was presented: http://spacetalkapp.com/ http://spacetalkapp.com/ and the speaker mentioned that there's a big community effort underway to keep improving it. Let's see which one wins the race :)
- whoiskevin 11y agoI think chat apps are the new todo list app. Everyone is building one and frankly they are all boring and don't offer anything significant.
- oldpond 11y agoI tend to agree. Instant messaging seems to be dying out in the workplace. I used to find it a highly effective mode of collaboration, especially in large enterprises. Small shops seem to leave it off the list. We cranked up Slack for my team of 15 devs, but since we are co-located it didn't add any value. I guess if you were trying to make a buck off the cloud an IRC SaaS solution might look like a good idea. I don't think Freenode has to worry. :)
- juliangregorian 11y agoIt doesn't hurt that Meteor is basically a chat app out of the box. Just hook up the accounts component to the DDP component and voila.
- joeyspn 11y ago> Join SpaceTalk on Slack. So they're not eating their own dog food?
- e12e 11y agoA chat application is pretty much the canonical "Hello, world!" of socket programming. No wonder it is becoming the "Hello, world!" of web sockets too. Normally, the progression is time-server, echo-server (with timestamps, sometimes), "selective echo server" (don't reply to sender, allow multiple recipients/subscribers) -- aka "chat". What fun is message passing if you've got no one to pass messages to, or receive messages from? And when you're doing that, you have chat! :-)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nols 11y agoAre you asking if people would consider to a better but cheaper version of Slack? Because the answer is probably yes. Gotta get the integrations right though.
- meira 11y agoGorgeous!
- BYWallace 11y agoSeems like it's down/not responding? Unable to get in at the moment.
- filipedeschamps 11y agoParabéns pessoal pelo projeto! Pelo que vi, todos são brasileiros, isto é muito legal :) --English-- Congratulations guys for the project! From what I saw, you're all Brazilians, this is very cool :)
- thekevan 11y agoThere's a link to an "online demo" but then it asks for your login info or for you to register. That isn't really a demo then, is it?
- morganvachon 11y agoThat's the brick wall I hit too. I'm not giving them my email address for a demo, and I'm not logging in with a social media service. I suppose I could download it myself and try it out that way, but that's a ton of effort for something I may not even want in the end. Rocket.Chat devs, if you're listening, please provide a way to demo the program without giving up real information.
- spotman 11y ago+1
- Drdrdrq 11y agoAgreed. If you still want to use it however just enter somerandomstring@mailcatch.com and then check the mail at http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/ http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/. Very useful when you want to bypass such useless logins, just know that the mail is public.
- morganvachon 11y agoThanks, I didn't want to deal with one of those mailinator-type accounts but this is even easier. Adding it to my "cool tools" bin. :)
- scotty79 11y agoThe fact Slack is a thing is evidence of how horrible dominant IM companies are at their business.
- yebyen 11y agoDominant IM companies are a thing? I know this is serious, but maybe I misread your intention. The thing that makes Slack greater than all of the dominant IMs is that IM is their whole business. Everyone else is busy "improving" gmail if you're Google, or monetizing voip/video chat, or (whatever it is that SalesForce does besides Chattr), meanwhile Slack is just chat, and whatever else you expected chat to encompass.
- scotty79 11y ago> Everyone else is busy "improving" gmail if you're Google, or monetizing voip/video chat Yes. Instead of improving, they do voice, video, profile pages, silly pictures replacing your text and all that crap. The only actual innovation I've seen to IM is ability to edit your last message. Last people that tried to improve the actual IM chat were Google Wave but it crashed and burned because they fixated on everybody seeing as what everybody is writing when they write it (which was something nobody wanted). Today, almost 20 years after ICQ people default to Skype even though it's closed crap for that purpose. Any IM company that had some users had potential to become twitter or even facebook, but instead someone fresh came and stolen their lunch while they were playing with crappy voice and sponsored news feeds while accumulating bloat on their software.
- radicalbyte 11y agoThey're more interested building their own little walled gardens. If they spent as much effort improving their products as they did breaking integrations then there wouldn't be a Slack.
- spotman 11y agoDoes the demo work for anyone? Would like to check it out, but does not load, just hangs.
- spotman 11y agoIt loads now. However, can't login as it demands an email. For something like a demo, this seems a little overkill. For something I might host for my employees or people I intend on collaborating with I guess it makes sense.
- beams_of_light 11y ago2 questions: What is Slack? What is Meteor?
- spotman 11y agoSlack is a software-as-a-service chat application: https://slack.com https://slack.com Meteor is a javascript app building platform: https://www.meteor.com https://www.meteor.com
- steveklabnik 11y ago1. a hosted chat service with an UX people really like. https://slack.com/ https://slack.com/ 2. A framework for writing realtime JavaScript applications. https://www.meteor.com/ https://www.meteor.com/
- decaprime 11y agoI've been building https://github.com/mattfeldman/nullchat https://github.com/mattfeldman/nullchat, a meteor chat application as part of a commit-a-day pledge of working with meteor. I think the reason there are a few of these popping up is that it's a lot of fun to build a chat application with meteor. I never intended to be a 'clone' of slack as as much as rocketchat or spacetalk. I've been running it for a small group (~10 active daily users) for about 6 months - it has more social features like rich embeds, mentions, notifications, sms gateway, giphy search etc. Demo Instance: http://nullchat.space http://nullchat.space
- marceloschmidt 11y agoWould you be willing to join efforts with Rocket.Chat? There's a lot of neat stuff on nullchat that could be really useful there.
- Omnipresent 11y agoOfftopic What are some resources for getting started with meteor. Being able to build a chat apps like these seems powerful.
- toddkaufmann 11y agoGo to https://www.meteor.com/ https://www.meteor.com/ and Start tutorial. After installed you can go through the tutorial in an hour or two depending how deep you go, and it comes with a number of examples (show with "meteor create --list"). Discover Meteor has some more; they were giving their book away (see https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/we-made-our-book-free/ https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/we-made-our-book-free/ -- first 4 chapters are free). That may be enough for the basics. Then look at telescope, or one of the chat apps listed here or search on github. Also plenty of conference talks on youtube.
- rekoros 11y agoWith all the self-hosted options, how do mobile push notifications work?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kordless 11y agoI did a containerized deployment for the project: https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-rocket https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-rocket. Still has some issues that need to be resolved, including configuring the mail server, long build time, and a handful of other issues. If someone finds it useful, let me know!
- engelgabriel 11y agohow can i help you to get that working? can we add it to our repo?
- kordless 11y agoHowdy! You can email me or ping me on Twitter or my email is {{my_handle_ here}}@giantswarm.io. Twitter same.
- Dowwie 11y agoI can't seem to find a Meteor-built IRC client but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Is there one? Why not combine the strengths of Meteor with IRC?
- qwdsacxz 11y agotest