Is this specifically a problem with Salesforce? I think people would have this reaction with almost any company that purchases Slack. It represents a shift in focus from being a messaging company to being a piece of a bigger portfolio. That shift alone is much more important than whatever the other pieces in the portfolio happen to be.

If it had been Microsoft buying them I would have been like, well, they've done ok with GitHub so far. And I begrudgingly feel that way as someone who reviles their flagship OS and office products.

How do you feel about Heroku then? Salesforce purchased them about 8 years ago.

I've never used it. But I did use a CRM product a while ago that got purchased by SalesForce, and it was a disaster.

I doubt they care. What I suspect Salesforce realised long ago was that they don't need to appeal to their end-users, they just need to appeal to the managers in charge of signing contracts. In that regard, Slack is a fantastic fit.

Sadly I suspect the people saying "we need to find a Slack alternative" today are the same ones that have been saying "Slack sucks" this whole time, to little effect.

Come to zulip! We switched our company to zulip wholesale after covid forced work from home onto everyone, and wow, talk about a force multiplier.

zulip is one of those rare pieces of software that really gives me joy to use.

feature-by-feature on paper, it doesn't necessarily stand out compared to the crowded landscape. It's not a new distributed protocol or anything unique.

but you really can tell it's well crafted, with love as slack used to say. And if you don't believe me, you can inspect the source code yourself!

How does it compare with Matrix?

It says much more about the people saying that than anything.

Salesforce is a reasonably good operating entity, I don't see any reason for Slackers to flinch.

But consider that 'Slack' was a movement - literally the name, the original premise, there was a corporate/hip aspect to it. Which now it's not, just the opposite, because it's 'Salesforce'.

So at least in part - 'it's not cool now'.

Agreed, the reactions I'm seeing here feel more more emotional than rational. (Which is totally legitimate. Emotions are a dominant factor in product "love".) If the product were to get worse, there are any number of effectively-equivalent (if not as lovable) substitutes.

It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way.

The real trick is, to figure out all those things we do that we think are based on utility, but are not.

The Saab ad comparing their car to the Jets the make appeals to our 'every little boy wants to be a pilot' fantasy.

But the Ford ads that tell us how 'strong' our vehicle is going to be ... even though many of us will never, ever use them for this purpose.

Like the guy with 1000 different tools in his shed - he buys them 'because they are useful'. But really, it's the 'emotion/novelty' of utility, not actual utility.

At least 1/2 of the tech industry is driven by this, it's hilarious. We HNers, so neurotically passionate about whatever it happens to be ... are the most guilty.

Of course a lot comes out of purely speculative and creative use of technology, it's just that we should be better at discerning.

Slack, if it's bad, is probably because it's a noisy channel, not because it's Salesforce.

> It's 'legit' to feel a certain way, the opposite to make decisions about business and productivity that way.

That seems very reasonable from a purely rational POV, and I know we all like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. (It reminds me of this: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rational-2)

TBH it would be the same in case Microsoft would buy them out. Its really hard to get out of the shadow of failed products.

Products that people started hating with passion.

This seemed to be the response in every conversation I've had with people about Slack being acquired. No matter who acquired Slack, it just seemed like negative value to the existing customers who signed on for a ubiquitous messaging platform.

I guess it's the 21st century equivalent to being purchased by Computer Associates -- which was known as the place where good software goes to die.

This is what I am excited for.

I have wanted our company to move away from Slack to something w better thread discussions.

We have long resisted Salesforce because of pricing, say, compared to Pipedrive for CRM.

I am interested to see what happens with pricing and many orgs locked data.

I know we do not pay for the high uptime plan.

Most are quick to overreact but in reality, the switching costs are non-trivial.