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Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects (drewdevault.com)

submitted 4 months ago by starman@programming.dev to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Ease, convenience, existing userbase, familiarity, choose a few

[-] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 10 points 4 months ago

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.

[+] cosmic_slate@dmv.social 21 points 4 months ago

[deleted]

[-] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

The discussion seems very muddled and opinionated ITT because I'm not even sure if you're talking about a Discord Server or a forum/communication platform on a dedicated server. You might be able to slap together a Discord server faster, but the organizational power and not putting that extra work on users for Discord participation makes forum's superior. Part of the project development is sysadmin. If it's not, why take it FOSS at all? Discord is designed to take up your time, those pretty bots and "perks" keep you viewing. What could've been a well thought out message on a board with a reply now becomes 20+ texts which you're stuck communicating on. Rinse and repeat every day, on a forum you simply link the previous conversation and you're done.

I think it's a neutral wash atm, Discord may be packaged better to be mainstream but it's bloat all around with lots of negatives. Anyone saying Discord is better is just preference at this point, lots of counterintuitive comments like we need "real-time" communication but also anything else takes up project development, like Discord is some kind of time saver.

[-] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 1 points 4 months ago

Discord supports threaded topic based formats as well.

The reality is that for a lot of interactions, a live chat feels better than a forum post. You can very easily do both on discord, though.

It's not perfect, but the alternatives that aren't a whole project by themselves building a tool don't have feature parity, or the user base.

[-] pop@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

please list all your personal foss projects and discussion forums you've set up for them please. I would like to join them all.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 4 months ago

Forums are not the same as real-time. And yes for most of the people using discord, forums wouldn't cover the same niche.

[-] HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

I don't want real time. Does me no good in my time zone.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

That's what lemmy is for.

[-] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 10 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Exactly this.

[-] Blaze@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 months ago

Thank you for your work

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 months ago

💙

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 points 4 months ago

Discourse has somewhat decent chat built in these days.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

Great, use Matrix

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've used matrix. I am still using matrix. Just not for anything with a significant community

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

NixOS uses it, and it has the biggest repo out of any distro, so I'd consider it a significant community

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Great. Which means NixOS has enough volunteers to handle that part. I don't.

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 0 points 4 months ago

Servers & clients use too many resources. Because of this, most have centralized around Matrix.org which kind defeats the purpose.

[-] veniasilente@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

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)

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

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.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

There's a Mozilla home server as well, so federation is working.

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

That server is under the Matrix.org fleet. It’s like saying Edge isn’t Chrome.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

The server itself doesn't matter, you can migrate it to AWS or your own physical server if you oenn the domain

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

The server does matter when it comes to who is collecting all of the metadata, data, attachments. …And having that all that data centralized around a single entity is a problem.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

In this case that would be Mozilla, not the host

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Matrix.org hosts Mozilla’s Matrix server. Further, the way all data is synced to all servers means if someone with a Matrix.org ID joins your room (which is most users), all data is synced to the home server. Almost all of the data is in Matrix.org’s possession & with the servers being as expensive as they are to run, more orgs shutdown when popular causing users to flock to the mother instance.