> you can run mumble on any random Linux box in your house

That seems easy to you. That would be easy for me too and most likely 90% of the people on HackerNews.

But the average person doesn't have a "random Linux box" in their house. Most people don't even know what Linux is. Most people would be overwhelmed just looking for the terminal emulator on their computer, before they even typed a command into it.

Most people don't want to manage an always-on linux box for a voice server. Most people don't want to manage port-forwarding on their firewall/router. Most people don't have static IPs at their house and wouldn't know how to setup dynamic dns to solve the problem. Most people don't even know what DNS is.

MOST PEOPLE just want a program they can launch when they want to talk to their friends. That is why Discord has been successful.

I'm not saying that's good. I am just saying that its the way the world is.

I find it astounding that people here can not even grasp the concept of why Discord is popular. I am perfectly capable of hosting my own server and doing everything manually. But it is clear as day why discord wiped out the competition while most of the comments here seem dazed by the fact and are left wondering why people don't just use IRC.

It's no wonder so many projects and FOSS tools fail to gain large userbases when it seems that most developers seem to be living on another planet entirely.

This is an important point. I write that with no disrespect to all those FOSS developers who have devoted themselves to the work of creating new, interesting and useful things. But the fact is that usability, like intuition, is usually a very subjective matter. That's why QA and UAT were such an integral part of traditional software development, and why community engagement needs to be a two-way street.

Best comparison for Discord is to think it as social media site, Facebook or Reddit. Find or get invite to server, everything is there trivially. Creating your own space is simple, easy and fast. Everyone is already there.

IRC is pretty similar, but much more fragmented and not really very user-friendly.

somehow the only real challenge for the tech community is how to wrap all that self-hosting complexity so that most people could just use it with the click of a button.

its not a technical challenge, its a moral challenge. it means doing what is good for the users even if they don't really know it

>you can run mumble on any random Linux box in your house, you don't need to pay to have it hosted somewhere.

if you have public IP or use stuff like hamachi (at least that's how we did it decade ago)

I vouched for your comment. A lot of the rise of Discord can be attributed to convenience, network effects, and pretty features like animated reactions, but ultimately it is still surveillance capitalism. Unfortunately, it appears that the masses don't care about things like privacy, as they're more than willing to sign up for these kinds of services.

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-private-is-your-private-discord-...