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Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects (drewdevault.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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[–] 27 points 2 years ago (46 children)

? What's the difference between setting up a free forum (they're everywhere) versus setting up Discord channels? It's the exact same process.

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  • [+] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (10 children)
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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    This makes me wonder if there is a centralized system for forums.

    Is this not what Lemmy is, to a certain extent?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago* (34 children)

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

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (33 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 21 points 2 years ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (26 children)

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

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    Great, use Matrix

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (4 children)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    In this case that would be Mozilla, not the host

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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