mepholic

I've never heard of MatterMost. It's good to see that there's an open-source alternative out there with a similar interface. I've never really given XMPP a fair rap... Maybe it's time again to check if any decent implementations have popped up.

If anyone can recommend any other open platforms for me and the other concerned readers of this post, that would be highly appreciated.

In my mind, federation is a pretty important feature, as it allows you the possibility to bridge the gap between all the disparate chat systems we currently have. Chat bifurcation is a major issue that is serving to help divide us all.

They already have Discord Turbo. I agree that it's likely because their profit model is on shaky grounds, which makes me wonder: why do it in the first place?

What other avenues do that have for monetization? Could they potentially be collecting user data, chat logs, or voice recordings to potentially monetize off of down the road? Might they decide to start automatically injecting targeted ad content into chat sessions?

Here's a crosspost of a reply to a comment on the Reddit thread that was along the same vein:

I understand that writing code is an artform that takes lots of practice and patience and also deserves a lot of praise. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to make money off of their code. I DO think that support contracts are generally a more reasonable way of achieving this goal.

By closing off your source code from the community at large, you prevent people from auditing, extending, and improving your codebase. There IS power in the masses, and such a power can be used to offload the work that you DO NOT want to do, such as achieving portability, to those who actually care about it.

I wonder if this is also disallowed by their ToS.

This is probably the best solution for crappy business tactics in the end.

That's hardly the point. I disagree with cancel's distribution methods, and lack of providing the client as open-source; I would even go as far as to say that taking the position of "eventually charging for it" is probably one of the reasons why Discord has this policy in the first place. The fact of the matter is though, that these policies are destructive to any potential open-source innovation that would be to happen as well.

I understand that writing code is an artform that takes lots of practice and patience and also deserves a lot of praise. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to make money off of their code. I DO think that support contracts are generally a more reasonable way of achieving this goal. My problem with cancel's decision is that they're saying they may eventually charge users for an application which in all likelihood will get them banned as a result of Discord Inc.'s crappy ToS.

Just mirroring the thread here in case the Discord Inc. overlords decide they don't like the bad PR.

Title: Ripcord - unofficial native Discord client. No Electron, no rounded userpics (Staff reply) >> This sounds like a good way of getting your account banned, or am I mistaken about the API rules? > You are not mistaken. We do not support 3rd party clients, and they are not allowed per our ToS/API ToS. (Staff Reply)

This is honestly unacceptable.

On this page here: https://discordapp.com/open-source

You claim that "Discord ️ Open Source". If this were true, than Discord Inc. would recognize that not all Open Source developers run x86_64 machines, and of those that do, not all of them use glibc as their system standard C library.

The fact that both Discord's standalone desktop application (which uses Electron; a resource hog on its own) and the in-browser version of the app are both massive resource hogs prevents those who are not well off and do not have modern computer equipment from using the service.

Additionally, Discord's web application fails to successfully function in most Linux web browsers that I've found. This includes Firefox ESR and Otter on x86_64 using musl libc. Text chat hardly works in Firefox, as the entire interface goes blank and acts like it's refreshing on a fairly regular basis; the login page doesn't even load in Otter. To even think that voice chat would function under these circumstances is a straight up joke; and sure enough, voice chat fails to function for reasons OTHER than the one stated above on both ALSA-only AND PulseAudio configurations: I cannot get it to detect my microphone (granted, Firefox's terrible, or rather, complete lack of an audio configuration interface is probably more to blame here)

The fact that Discord Inc. is threatening to ban users who use 3rd party clients just adds insult to injury. If Discord Inc. is really not willing to provide open and portable solutions to use their service to their users, they should at least allow 3rd parties to offer such solutions. The entire stance of "YOU MUST USE OUR CLIENT" makes me have one of two thoughts: 1. Discord Inc. is embedding Information Gathering code into their own clients, and wants to make sure that they can collect and sell information on ALL of their users; 2. Discord Inc. is not confident in the reliability and robustness of their server infrastructure, and therefore wants to limit which applications hit their _public_ API's.

Long story short, what I'm seeing here is a complete lack of customer obsession; it really seems like Discord Inc. doesn't actually care about their users.