Re:Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
by hardwaresofton on Monday February 01, 2016 @01:05PM
(#11013714)
@tptacek:
Slacks growing usefulness is predicated on the fact that you people build bots for it.
It's not that IRC can be as good as slack -- IRC is NOT the same kind of thing as slack, they are different. IRC is a protocol, slack is not, slack is a product. My point is that the right product needs to be build AROUND IRC to make it viable/interesting.
From the previous comment, it seems like the features people are loving slack for are:
- Well designed interface
- File sharing
- Inviting/sharing channels with people
- Functionality provided by bots
Is that incorrect? I'm sure that list is incomplete, is there anything very significant I left off?
@publicfig:
Not all? Which aren't possible?
And yes, it is true that slack avoids this problem -- the same way apple avoids having to deal with disparate use models for their hardware and software. You are arguing for a walled garden right now. That is the antithesis of what FOSS should be built on.
So this is the place where standards come into play -- by finding reasonable ways to implement these features ON TOP of a protocol, people can implement them (or NOT implement them) consistently across clients. As long as the feature standards were written to degrade gracefully (as in they would still work reasonably well if your client didn't support any advanced features), there would be little problem with clients that didn't implement certain features.
If you're using a client that doesn't support certain features, the beauty of FOSS is that you can actually change that client. You can make your tool better. That, or switch to a better tool?
Slacks growing usefulness is predicated on the fact that you people build bots for it.
It's not that IRC can be as good as slack -- IRC is NOT the same kind of thing as slack, they are different. IRC is a protocol, slack is not, slack is a product. My point is that the right product needs to be build AROUND IRC to make it viable/interesting.
From the previous comment, it seems like the features people are loving slack for are:
- Well designed interface
- File sharing
- Inviting/sharing channels with people
- Functionality provided by bots
Is that incorrect? I'm sure that list is incomplete, is there anything very significant I left off?
@publicfig:
Not all? Which aren't possible?
And yes, it is true that slack avoids this problem -- the same way apple avoids having to deal with disparate use models for their hardware and software. You are arguing for a walled garden right now. That is the antithesis of what FOSS should be built on.
So this is the place where standards come into play -- by finding reasonable ways to implement these features ON TOP of a protocol, people can implement them (or NOT implement them) consistently across clients. As long as the feature standards were written to degrade gracefully (as in they would still work reasonably well if your client didn't support any advanced features), there would be little problem with clients that didn't implement certain features.
If you're using a client that doesn't support certain features, the beauty of FOSS is that you can actually change that client. You can make your tool better. That, or switch to a better tool?