I'm sure you are aware that:
- Most open source projects on the Internet are on Github. One could argue Github itself has taken a significant role in the growth of OSS in the last decade
- Using Discord is totally du jour for open source communities in 2025
- Reddit is still the biggest discussion forum on the Internet. Including discussion about open source
The normal, uninitiated folk don’t know any better about their choices of technology & what that means for our private data & autonomy. We have seen this song & dance of getting locked into shitty platforms like Slack, but projects are repeating history when they know better. Why not just tell folks to use Google & Apple Photos or Facebook? If you can see the advantage of your FOSS project & how it protects users, the same should apply to your own tech choices. If you want to maintain broad appeal for some reason instead of actually introducing them to other FOSS tech that would also be good for user, it might be a bit hypocritical tho understandable to have these channels open, maybe even official—but to make these the only option? Not a gateway/bridge? No mirrors? No email to send patches? Not cool.