Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects
Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects
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As someone deeply involved in Foss for many years and with multiple large Foss services running on my back, these constant requests for purity from outsiders will go nowhere until volunteers people step up to do the hard work of setting up and maintaining the infrastructure and management of such Foss solutions in the place of the core developers
? What's the difference between setting up a free forum (they're everywhere) versus setting up Discord channels? It's the exact same process.
a free forum
"Oh great, I'll have to create another fucking account" - me, already having some 300 accounts in my key-vault...
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make unless you're saying no one has to create a Discord account, or have to download an app, or have to find an invite to locate the server. My keys are auto-generated and auto-saved, simple 20 second process. Forums are also a lot easier to sign up for than Discord, if you're worried about making another account I don't know what to tell ya because every service requires it.
You set up a discord account once. When you want to join a project discord all you have to do is click the invite link and hit „accept“. Bam. Done. No need to join a forum. No need to keep track of another website and check if you got a personal message from someone or something. The benefit is that it is all one location.
I'd much rather have email for forums (Linux kernel style) than discord. I'll even take IRC
It’s undoubtedly nice during that step of the process, but afterwards you’re on a platform that may not be well suited to the purpose. It’d be better just to make the new account on an actual forum. Granted, I use Bitwarden now, so I don’t sweat making new accounts anymore.
This makes me wonder if there is a centralized system for forums. We have stackexchange already, but that’s really designed to be a question and answer site.
Discourse, NodeBB and Flarum are all currently working on ActivityPub federation support. The first two have some basic support already available.
Edit: I read "decentralized". The "centralized" system for forums is obviously Reddit.
This makes me wonder if there is a centralized system for forums.
Is this not what Lemmy is, to a certain extent?
Lemmy is not a Forum…
No, but it has several forum-like features. Each Lemmy community is kind of like a mini-forum, with posts, threads, comments, etc. Lemmy is certainly more forum-like than Discord is.
Should we tell him that he doesn't need more than 1 discord account?
I'm probably way out of the loop but from the perspective of devs getting to contribute, don't stuff like Discourse ship with "login with your Github account" already? Or Google, or Facebook, or...
Also, please, it's 1 click nowadays to make your browser remember your logins for you, if it comes down to laziness
Ease, convenience, existing userbase, familiarity, choose a few
I guess we have different perspectives. Ease, convenience = forums, existing userbase? = Do you prefer Reddit for this reason?, familiarity = forums lol, search-ability = forums, privacy = forums, etc etc.
Forums are not the same as real-time. And yes for most of the people using discord, forums wouldn't cover the same niche.
Discourse has somewhat decent chat built in these days.
I don't want real time. Does me no good in my time zone.
That's what lemmy is for.
I think you might just be blinded by Discord for some reason. I'm not sure what "niche" you're referring to with Discord that can't be provided with forums (unless you're worried about cosmetics I guess?). There are forums with real-time communications like chat, notifications, direct-messaging. I'm not trying to argue, getting your perspective is always helpful and might show something I'm missing, but your responses seem vague and not really a counter-point.
My perspective is of a FOSS developer with multiple communities of thousands. If you can't grasp it, that's on you. It's also why purity moralizing isn't useful. I have only so much mental bandwidth to spend on organizing and self-hosting. If people are not stepping up to do the community management and infrastructure work, I will go with the past of least resistance.
If you can’t grasp it, that’s on you. It’s also why purity moralizing isn’t useful
oh ok, thanks for the clarification.
If people are not stepping up to do the community management and infrastructure work, I will go with the past of least resistance.
That's basically it in a nut shell, path of least resistance. Doesn't refute any claims made in the article or arguments presented here. Just a shame another company has a stranglehold on a whole category of services that have to be used to participate in society ... while developing FOSS.
Doesn’t refute any claims made in the article or arguments presented here.
Nothing to refute. I never said otherwise. Discord is just more convenient for people already overworked.
Just a shame another company has a stranglehold on a whole category of services that have to be used to participate in society … while developing FOSS.
Yes, it is a shame. I hope you're doing something practical about it instead of moralizing towards FOSS devs.
Building communities and stuff that bring value to users is what really matters at the end of the day. Too many folks in the FOSS world like to stand on soap boxes.
My time is valuable, if I can have someone else run a service, then that's time I can spend doing things I enjoy. Self host when it makes sense, either from a cost perspective or a data privacy perspective. Everything is a balance.
Nothing will ever be as convenient as letting someone else handle your infrastructure headaches. You don't win by complaining, you win by providing a better user value.
It's why Steam beats Torrents and Torrents are coming back over streaming. My time is precious man.
Exactly this.
Great, use Matrix
I've used matrix. I am still using matrix. Just not for anything with a significant community
NixOS uses it, and it has the biggest repo out of any distro, so I'd consider it a significant community
Great. Which means NixOS has enough volunteers to handle that part. I don't.
Servers & clients use too many resources. Because of this, most have centralized around Matrix.org which kind defeats the purpose.
Servers & clients use too many resources.
Didn't XMPP solve that in, like, 1999?
(Really, what is with devs and nu-protocols these days? Back in my days you could run a webhost on a potato)
The did, but Matrix is coming to reinvent that while but by wasting resources trying to duplicate the state of everything at massive storage costs & without the extensibility because JSON.
There's a Mozilla home server as well, so federation is working.
That server is under the Matrix.org fleet. It’s like saying Edge isn’t Chrome.
Just do a matrix space
I've used matrix and spaces before. Nowhere close as convenient as a discord server. In fact I even had a matrix to discord bridge so I can get the best of both worlds until I had to hide all my matrix channels because of uncontrolled spam
Meanwhile the OCaml IRC chat gets spam from Discord Crypto bots due to bridging with that proprietary platform.
Ok. And?
Open source projects improve over time. Corporations improve being able to make money over time, eventually leading to enshittification.
I know which one I'll support
Took way too long to find a response from someone that actually does the work.
Most of this discussion is just the neuro spicy and olds angry that everyone doesn't do it the "right" way.
I bet there are billions of hours wasted by people trying to make the perfect way to document and discuss stuff, while the answer is "it's hard, tedious, and pretty manual work to create and manage good documentation".
But nobody wants to do it because it has and always will suck.
I'm amused to know that I can look through old irc chats talking about how forums are the death of foss projects. Or mail lists complaining that everyone is using IRC wrong..
Sure, I literally do this for my work. How much are you offering me?
You're not even worth responding seriously to.
I mean yeah I technically can't offer the hosting without the authorization of my boss, but, ceteris paribus, how much are you offering?
I wouldn't even take you if you paid me.
We're on the same page then, as someone who says to go around involved in "multiple large Foss services" (no evidence to that) but that demands to be given freeloading on infrastructure by everyone else because otherwise Discord, well, is not really worth responding seriously to either.
Lol I don't go around linking my credentials before I reply. Those who know, know. Those who don't, check my profile, before insulting me,. And those who are useless to Foss , leave replies like yours.