Curing Our Slack Addiction

Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by moron4hire on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @03:43AM (#11532856)

Also, email is an open standard, with plenty of choices in both client and server software. Slack is a proprietary system. Why are we actively axing solid, widely distributed, open ecosystems for proprietary ones? It'd be like if everyone woke up one day and decide "eh, Linux is just not animated-giphy enough, let's all switch to this startup OS with a crippled free version."

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by Touche on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @09:30AM (#11534186)

Because Slack doesn't have to write up an RFC and wait months/years for feedback before getting features implemented. People care about features, not interoperability (until they want out, at which point they feel the lock-in burn).

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by falcolas on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @05:33PM (#11537908)

I disagree with this. Other than the place-keeping, search, and notifications, I (and my team) don't want other features from Slack. In fact, the constant additions of features is aggravating as hell. The addition of an enabled-by-default DND feature was a real PITA for our team to try and work around.

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by dbbk on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @05:15AM (#11533151)

I don't think any of these corporations that use Slack are axing email. They still need to communicate with people outside of the organisation, right?

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by katheriin on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @08:04AM (#11533734)

In fact, Slack users have reported an average of 50% reduction of internal email (source: https://slack.com/results). But you're right, Slack is a closed system, and thus it cannot really replace email when used for external communications.

This is where Fleep comes in - a messenger that works with email, too. You can include anyone in a conversation with their email address, and if they're not a Fleep user yet, they can participate in the conversation via email. Fleep: https://fleep.io/

(Disclaimer: I do work at Fleep, and I love it :) )

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by phillc73 on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @08:44AM (#11533924)

Hadn't heard of Fleep before, but thought immediately that it might solve one use case for me.

After checking the pricing (good), if there was a self-hosted version (no, but maybe not a deal breaker) I looked for the Android app installer. Only available from Google Play Store. Unfortunately, that kills Fleep for me.

Please consider making your app directly downloadable and not reliant on Google Play Services.

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by j_s on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @12:25PM (#11535550)

As I'm sure you know, .apk files can be downloaded using a computer without Google Play Services being on the phone.

https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-download-apk-file-from-goo...

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by jqgatsby on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @10:43AM (#11534734)

Why is this a requirement?

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by phillc73 on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @11:08AM (#11534943)

I don't have Goggle Play Services installed on my phone and am not going to do so.

I understand why companies want their apps in the "Store" for discovery purposes. However, I don't understand why they won't provide an alternative direct download.

I do have F-Droid installed, but I appreciate companies may not want to open source their app. No problem, but I also won't be forced to install Google Play just to obtain it.

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Re:Curing Our Slack Addiction by janekm on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @10:46PM (#11539299)

The Google Play store is also not accessible in China, an no doubt a few other countries, so it's just sensible to provide an alternative download anyway...

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