Discord Is Not an Acceptable Choice for Free Software Projects (2020)
sneak.berlin
sneak.berlin
I barely tolerate it for people whom I actually know and like, a stranger asking it of me as a hoop to jump through is a complete nonstarter.
I used to follow some of the console homebrew / piracy Discord servers from a distance. (For some reason, this was where you had to go to get some of the homebrew, even if it wasn't related to piracy.) They would always complain about servers getting shut down and people getting banned, but for some reason the idea of just moving to a different service was unacceptable. They need to be on Discord to get their 7th account banned and set the server back up for the 10th time. They could just host it on some service that won't shut them down (or self host), but they'd rather just keep getting banned on Discord. Why?
However, I think that IRC can be useful. IRC is not the same as Slack and Discord like they mention, but often the other things are not needed, and IRC also is not too complicated to use and does not require a large web app or other stuff like that, which is a significant advantage of IRC. Also, another thing they did not mention, which can be helpful, is NNTP, which can be used both for announcements and for discussion, like email can be. This way, no web apps are needed, and email subscriptions are not needed; however, it can also be bridged with email if needed.
For vertically integrated propriatery closed Discord it's both forbidden and made difficult. There is one alternative and you take it or leave it. Hopefully the latter. There's a reason clients like ripcord never make it.
well, there is another alternative, namely the EU laws forcing interoperability. i don't know if they have passed yet, or how likely it is that they will pass, but i seem to remember a recent announcement of one system going to be interoperable with whatsapp.
Discord hides everything from Google, and now from LLMs. So, the end-user asking "how do I __ with __" with their most common search tools cannot find the answer.
Why?
What zzo said though, IRC is simple and many free software projects already use it (eg Tor, gentoo) but I think there's a different barrier to entry since users may want old chat history (bouncers), IRC-specific spam and client choices (GUI, CLI, no mobile??) (& I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong). Then again I should expect hackers to actually know how to use that, but probably less so of an enduser
I expect there are mobile choices, but if not, someone can write one; however, there is also possibility of having web chat (which seems to be common), etc. (However, I dislike the web chats that do not display the information for using IRC clients. They should be made to display such information even if JavaScript is disabled.)
For history, it is possible to have public logs for public channels, which can be either recorded by a dedicated client, or recorded by the server (although using a client is probably more common, it can be done on the server as well).
> I'm pretty sure IRC networks used to be somewhat anti-Unicode? correct me if I'm wrong
You can use multiple character sets on IRC, including Unicode. (If necessary, you might use ISO 2022 to switch between them, although this does not seem to be common.) (Also, some older IRC servers might not be 8-bit clean, and so might some newer ones that require Unicode (which are only partially 8-bit clean), unfortunately; however, any proper IRC server should be really 8-bit clean in order to avoid these problems.)
Good old forums are much better. They are readable without even creating an account and they are also indexable by search engines.
Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Relevant conversations moving off Discord is what's really needed and where I think effort is better spent though.
An appropriate indexer would obviously distinguish between those and actual semi-private chats (where I assume backlash came from). And would probably get shut down after a while anyway either by being banned for ToS violation or the maintainer quitting because maintaining such project gets grating enough anyway at some point.
using discord as the only way to reach a project and find documentation about it. the author mentions sending private messages right after joining. i would not have joined discord to do that, i'd have searched for their emails. if they or other ways to reach the developers can't be found then that is where the problem lies. the author doesn't mention if he tried that, and he doesn't point out the difference exclusive and optional use of discord.
but beyond that, communities form where the people are. many FOSS projects are on discord because the people are already there. there are lively communities for fedora, debian, javascript, golang, to mention just a few. they are not the central space of those projects but they reach a number of people that probably would not participate in those communities otherwise.
one community that is important to me has the core developers on a forum that is gated to a mailinglist, while the wider user community used to hang out on IRC, but eventually switched to discord. there are a few communities that did that because participation on IRC was dwindling and not getting new people. getting new people is a lot easier on discord.
bridging to discord is at least possible, even though not ideal, it does allow participation from people that don't want to use discord. we could for example create a bridge to the old IRC channel.
for some communities the choice is discord or no chat at all. github would have to integrate messaging for that to become a more attractive option than discord. but then github is not ideal for FOSS projects either. unfortunately the current reality is that the more aligned a communication platform is with FOSS ideals, the less attractive it becomes for most users. sometimes it is a tough choice.
side note: i don't appreciate that swipe against RMS. i don't care about your opinion of him. keep that to yourself please. backbiting is a vice that hurts us all.