I'm old and I don't like IRC. It's so annoying to use. It's almost as bad today as it was in the 90s.
> Go help build a better alternative
Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.
> Go help build a better alternative
Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.
Remember the last "better alternative" that was also very good, worked on all major platforms, also got sold to MS for multiple billions?
To go back to the OP's point and the article. If you are a neophyte who cares about nothing but the immediate convenience, sure, stick with whatever Big Tech is pushing you. But if you want longevity and stability, DO NOT BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND.
2. How many of them are of a libertarian mindset? Or very politically active/vocal, otherwise?
When MSN Messenger existed, I pushed hard to get people on XMPP. "It's no problem, there are multiplatform, multiprotocol clients anyway". I had more than 200 contacts on MSN Messenger. Most or all of them, people I met in real life.
On XMPP? Maybe like... 10? Out of which perhaps only 2 I met in real life, and the rest I met on Linux forums. I was really aggressive on getting people to XMPP to the point I eventually closed my account and told people to reach me on XMPP. Nobody gave a fuck, of course they didn't. The world doesn't revolve around me.
Look, we get it. It's sad that corporations are realising they can hold users hostage for profit, but unfortunately that's the tradeoff with ease of use.
Oh, and Discord does so much more than IRC. It has voice chats "well just use Mumble", yeah but... why? Discord already has it. Or desktop sharing "use Jitsi", again, Discord already does it. Or large file sharing "roll your own FTP server", uhhh... no? Discord does it?
And a web UI if you don't want to chat online. And reliable mobile notifications. And two factor authentication. And in-game overlays.
FOSS fanatics struggle to admit commercial tools are so frickin' easy to use. I used to be like that, I understand. And then I got a job :P
I would say, think again about whether this casual drive-by insult is necessary. Is anyone in the above conversation behaving like one?
> ...struggle to admit commercial tools are so frickin' easy to use. I used to be like that, I understand.
I agree, this is the usual tone of FOSS people. "Oh, it's trivial to set up an SMTP server".
But, crucially, that is not what 'rglullis and I are saying in the conversations above. It's more something like "It's not trivial to set up an SMTP server, but maaaaybe you should think of the tradeoff of that versus learning a new chat system and losing all your conversations every 5 years. And yes, we should strive to make open solutions as seamless as Discord".
> And then I got a job :P
Again, a casual drive-by insult by implication that you should really rethink. I think most of the people on this site have jobs as well. That does not prevent us from thinking about long-term robust storage at data. In fact, it might even be directly relevant to some of our jobs.
No, that is quite easy to admit. What is hard for "FOSS fanatics" to do is to give up their freedom for convenience.
While true, we should be striving to minimise that. The internet era radically accelerated the rate at which we pick up new "external dependencies", and we should be trying to bring this rate down rather than embrace it.
Didn't Discord end up ending talks with Microsoft and staying independent? I don't think this deal ever actually went through.
Whatever you build on will be ripped out from under you and you'll be forced to evolve, just as we all have had to since the beginning of software engineering.
One thing is true as has been since the beginning - the next generation always knows better than the previous until life bites them in the ass and they learn their lessons the hard way too. As sure as the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow. There's little point in complaining about it. What will be, will be.
Well, you could equivalently say that the problems with IRC are just life. It's relatively easy to have data from my IRC from 15 years ago -- do you think that will be true for people who are using Discord today?
All I'm saying is, if you value your conversations and data, maybe explore the other side of that tradeoff where you don't have to keep moving from one platform to another, but keep working for 15-20 years on continuously improving an open platform; and get to keep all your data into the bargain. And it doesn't have to be IRC. It can be Matrix or Zulip or Mattermost (instead of Slack or Discord).