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Are there really no good open source forum alternatives?

-- asking for a friend :-)

We already use an open source forum: discourse.

If you mean real-time chat, in my personal opinion, Discord is the best choice. Zulip is good, if you can deal with it being a bit weird. The other options are fine, but not great. You may have different opinions than me personally.

You mean the same Discord that's now majority-owned by Tencent, right?

I don’t know anything about their ownership, but I also don’t think you’re actually asking that question.

Sure, it may be a bad-faith question, but I think the point still stands. IRC, as an open communications protocol, will always, always, always be better than private companies with the potential to be controlled by anything. Richard Stallman would be rolling in his grave.

Christ, you scared me there. Stallman is not dead.

He's pretty old, I was making a statement about the future. Bit sloppy nevertheless.

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