Recently I accidentally made a Fediverse post which went viral:
stop using discord for your open source communities
That post is short, punchy, opinionated, and prescriptive, which I suspect is the cause for its virality.
Unfortunately, like many micro-blog posts, it lacks nuance, which many replies highlighted. I made the post to vent my frustration at needing to join a Discord server to interact with a community, so it is far from a measured critique of the subject.
This blog post is an attempt to address those nuances in greater detail. This is not an exhaustive analysis, and I’ve resolved to not let “perfect” be the enemy of “done”.
I would use Matrix, because it’s completely open and distributed (like the fediverse). I’m not sure whether I would use a public server or host my own.
Matrix is also good for private chats, offers end-to-end encryption, and is gaining on Discord in terms of features, so anyone creating an account would likely end up finding it useful for more than just my little community.
Eh, I have a serious love-hate relationship with Matrix. For groups its fine. But trying to communicate with individuals on matrix is a major PITA, because of its end-to-end encryption which causes constant issues, IME. It’s great, in theory. But, in practice is just far more of a PITA than its worth.
I’ve been considering switching to Matrix for individual texting. What makes it a PITA in your experience? Is it hard to create conversations, do messages not get delivered, or is it something else?
If you aren’t on the same server, encryption doesn’t always work very well, and you semi-frequently end up with conversations where you can’t read each other’s messages. Id you try get signed out of your app on a given device, you’ll likely lose past conversations. Etc. It’s just… obnoxious.
Thanks! I did consider Matrix as well, and in fact just set up a personal server yesterday. I was worried about it being too high of a barrier to entry (the reason I stayed away from my first instinct, IRC…). At least Zulip is intuitively just a chat app, even though it might turn people away who don’t want to register for yet another account. One option could be to add Matrix and IRC bridges for Zulip, in the hopes of keeping everyone happy?
I’m still not sure what the best way forward is. It’s a tricky balance between promoting FOSS and remaining widely familiar.