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posted by martyb on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the slack-off dept.

Benjamin Pollack has blogged about why he hates the proprietary chat tool, Slack, which competes with IRC. He covers six points as to why you should too:

"Yeah, that’s right: there’s finally something I feel so negatively about that I’m unsatisfied hating it all by myself; I want you to hate it, too. So let’s talk about why Slack is destroying your life, piece by piece, and why you should get rid of it immediately before its trail of destruction widens any further—in other words, while you still have time to stop the deluge of mindless addiction that it’s already staple-gunned to your life."

[Ed. addition] I had troubles accessing the site, even wget failed to download anything... but lynx.exe on Windows 7 Pro worked on the first try!?! For the curious, here are the six points from the blog post alluded to above:

1. It encourages use for both time-sensitive and time-insensitive communication
2. It cannot be sanely ignored
3. It cannot be sanely organized
4. It's proprietary and encourages lock-in
5. Its version of Markdown is just broken
6. It encourages use for both business and personal applications


Original Submission

Related Stories

Slack Mops Up its Competition (HipChat and Stride) 8 comments

Slack made a surprise announcement today that it’s acquired HipChat, once a primary competitor to its workplace chat service, from enterprise software giant Atlassian. As part of the partnership between Slack and Atlassian, HipChat will be shutting down and the two companies will work together to migrate all of its users over to Slack. The same goes for Stride, the chat and collaboration successor to HipChat that Atlassian launched last year. Atlassian clarified that Slack is only buying the intellectual property behind the two products, and that the two companies will be working on future integrations together.

Slack is buying, and shutting down, HipChat and Stride

HipChat, the workplace chat app that held the throne before Slack was Slack, is being discontinued. Also being discontinued is Atlassian's own would-be HipChat replacement, Stride.

News of the discontinuation comes first not from Atlassian, but instead from a somewhat surprising source: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. In a series of tweets, Butterfield says that Slack is purchasing the IP for both products to "better support those users who choose to migrate" to its platform.

Butterfield also notes that Atlassian will be making a "small but symbolically important investment" in Slack — likely a good move, given that rumors of a Slack IPO have been swirling (though Butterfield says it won't happen this year). Getting a pre-IPO investment into Slack might end up paying off for Atlassian better than trying to continue competing.

Slack announcement. Also at Bloomberg, Android Police, and Wired.

Related: Why I Hate Slack and You Should Too
Slack Valued at Over $5 Billion


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:22AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:22AM (#536755)

    None of the points are compelling, except maybe the proprietary business. And who's this guy anyways?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:27AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:27AM (#536756)

      The real reason not to use Slack is it's a laggy POS.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:48AM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:48AM (#536760) Homepage

        Benjamin Pollack is a fucking nigger.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:04AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:04AM (#536761)

          Takes one to know one.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:22AM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:22AM (#536764)

      I don't really agree.

      4 is an annoyance, but not a showstopper. It is, however, perfectly true.

      5 is an annoyance, but not a showstopper. It is, however, perfectly true.

      6 is fucking retarded. This is a good reason to have a smartphone for work only, that you lock in your desk drawer before going home. Or turn off at 5PM. However, it is still not a complete showstopper.

      On the other hand, 1, 2 and 3 are serious, and in the context of Slack, basically unavoidable problems. Mixing the ephemeral and the enduring, in terms of communication, is bad because problem 1 directly leads to problem 2. If any given message could be URGENT, or LOLCAT, with no external way of telling the difference, and no enforceable way of requiring people to keep the two segregated, it turns into a stream of priority interrupts - or slush. Neither is a good outcome.

      Slack is pretty much a thing that I would tuck into a corner, with permanent DND settings, and ignore until I could find a different job because obviously the boss is retarded.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:40AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:40AM (#536767)

        4 is an annoyance, but not a showstopper.

        No, proprietary software is a showstopper. Software that doesn't respect your freedoms cannot be tolerated, mainly for ethical reasons but also for practical reasons. It has been shown time and time again (Windows) that those who develop proprietary software have power over their users and they will often abuse it to varying extents. I see no reason to allow someone else to control my computing and hope and pray that they don't abuse me.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:42AM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:42AM (#536768)

          Ok, I'm with you on the proprietary software, but in the context of the PHBs of the world, it's not a showstopper level of importance unless they're trying to get some kind of OS brownie points.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:07PM (3 children)

            by TheRaven (270) on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:07PM (#536802) Journal
            In a PHB world, being proprietary might not be a showstopper, but having no control over where your employees' communications go is. Slack stores your proprietary and sensitive data on their servers and is unable to make any guarantees about where it ends up. That's a showstopper for any business that wouldn't be comfortable using a public IRC channel for their internal communications.
            --
            sudo mod me up
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:19PM (#536914)

              Counterexample: The Cloud.

              "We're going to put all our servers in The Cloud!"

              "Uh, there are regulations about customer data and payment data and stuff..."

              "Cloud, bitches! Now!"

              "Fuuuuck ..."

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @07:57AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @07:57AM (#537053)

                That's when you remind them that cloud is a buzz-word, and the technical term is "someone elses server".

            • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 10 2017, @06:24AM

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday July 10 2017, @06:24AM (#537045) Journal

              That's a showstopper for any business that wouldn't be comfortable using a public IRC channel for their internal communications.

              You mean those same businesses that let Google handle their email?

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:25PM

        by Bobs (1462) on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:25PM (#536915)

        I don't agree: his first three issues are easily dealt with.

        The first thing I do whenever we are using Slack is set up an "alerts" channel. Then make sure important automated alerts, and time-sensitive posts from people are posted there.

        You can tune the notify option options by channel. I get pinged for "alerts." The other channels I look at when it is convenient and don't get bothered when it is not.

        Have been using Slack for years off and on. It is not a panacea but it can work well when their isn't an alternative in place already and you have nontechnical users.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:51AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:51AM (#537012)

      A random nothing nobody like 99.999% of the internet that post their vapid ramblings in hope of 15sec of e-fame. HOWEVER!

      2. It cannot be sanely ignored
      2. It cannot be sanely ignored
      2. It cannot be sanely ignored

      I was forced to used this excrement-ware at my last job, all the *non* developers loved it. They could post all their dumb cookie cutter cat gifs and link to their asinine comedy-news political dogshit in the #randon channel, which they did all day long. If anything it stood as a shining example of how little work they did.

      But with slack (at least when I last used it months ago) you cannot customize the notifications IN ANY MEANINGFUL MANNER WHATSOEVER. Go buy an egg timer, set it to go off randomly every 5-10min if you can, do it the entire day your trying to work and discover exactly how annoying slack is.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 10 2017, @06:27AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday July 10 2017, @06:27AM (#537047) Journal

        If anything it stood as a shining example of how little work they did.

        You mean they were slacking? :-)

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:14AM (3 children)

    by Lagg (105) on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:14AM (#536762) Homepage Journal

    Which is to say it fuckin' doesn't.

    Still though it's not exactly intrusive. You just open a window and the tab will get an asterisk or other icon when new messages are in.

    1. Yeah, but this is one of its usecases. This is why there's so much webhook shit. It's part notification thingy.
    2. I have the phone app installed for on call purposes. If it was not for that alert I would just have it sitting in a second browser window that I tab to when I want to check. It's pinned and the favicon/title changes when there's new messages/highlights.
    3. True
    4. "To the extent I can do anything, I need to write directly against the Slack API, rather than using something commonplace like XMPP or IRC". This doesn't make any goddamned sense or should anyone that wants to do bot notifications write a dedicated daemon bot that sits in IRC. Which... Why would you do that
    5. It's not meant to be markdown, part of the language is a table format and other such extended syntax in the same vein as mediawiki.
    6. No the almost-identical-clone-with-voice also known as Discord is what tries to get you to use it for personal applications. Or perhaps any of the 5-6 other almost identical apps that probably make point 4 moot. Especially if you go after Matrix [matrix.org] which solves the lockin feature entirely with similar or better feature sets. Including IRC bridging.

    This blag rambles more than I do.

    Not that I like slack in particular or make defense of it. But my usecase isn't personal. If it's trying to get me to use it as such it's doing a bad job. I find it hilarious that the post's conclusion - from an ERC and org-mode and therefore emacs user - is both that it doesn't do enough and does too much. And speaks of one-size-fits-allness.

    Fucking emacs users you guys I swear.

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:36AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:36AM (#536766)

      1. The fact that they're bundling "This is our quarterly all-hands agenda" with "Holy shit, guys, the server room is on fire - and by the way, burning with pretty blue-green flames, check out this pic!" is part of the problem. Use case my cute otherkin ass. It's an antipattern for communication.
      2. ALERT: yiffy vixen wants hot equine seed NOW ... oh, wait, that wasn't the alert you wanted? Too bad, you got it. Hope that on-call money is good.
      3. Tragically, devastatingly true. Which exacerbates 1 and 2.
      4. I won't try to answer your "why" in its own right. Instead I will point to the fact that people keep doing it to serve their own needs, then refer you to the results of an activity known as "research" which may be done in a place called "the real world".
      5. Yeah, everything has its own damn wikiscript or markdown or markup or markmyterritory. It's still annoying - but not a killer bug.
      6. You must have missed all the coy you-can-totally-use-this-for-your-book-club-and-furry-pic-circles crap that Slack have been, and are, putting out.

      So, it's lousy for important business communications, which was the point of the fucking article.

      • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:24AM

        by Lagg (105) on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:24AM (#536773) Homepage Journal

        So what you're saying is that the author has a problem when he attempts to use something for a usecase it wasn't designed for? Interesting, and also expected from emacs users! Muaha!

        --
        http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @01:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @01:52PM (#536820)

        ad pimping Slack to furries [youtube.com] (SFW?)

  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:25AM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:25AM (#536765) Journal

    Does Patrick know about this guy?

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:43AM (2 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:43AM (#536769)

    "Yeah, that’s right: there’s finally something I feel so negatively about that I'm unsatisfied hating it all by myself; I want you to hate it, too."

    I think I've finally seen the truest, clearest expression of why the Internet will eternally enable, drive, and support the distribution of crackpot rants. I don't think anything in this article regarding Slack in particular could be more valuable to me than this.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @12:51AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @12:51AM (#536986)

      Lol, you're displaying the same symptoms bud!

      Posting on the internet about the one true thing and all you needed to know was what again? Please tell us your valuable insight over the intertuubes

      • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday July 10 2017, @01:47AM

        by krishnoid (1156) on Monday July 10 2017, @01:47AM (#537000)

        Sorry, just saying I can't improve on quoting this line verbatim (with attribution, of course).

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:48AM (1 child)

    by Appalbarry (66) on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:48AM (#536775) Journal

    Slack is so popular right now that I feel safe in assuming I can ignore it, because in fourteen months it will be replaced by the Next Cool Thing.

    Idle question: has SlackCorp (whatever it's called) managed to make any money yet?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:01AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:01AM (#536777)

    They dropped support for all browsers except a few... It's the 90's all over again... standards... who needs them?

    When I complained at Slack for their decision. Their answer was basically "upgrade" to one of our supported browsers, or use their app. I just switched AWAY from those browsers supported on my system... not going to do that. Their app is closed source, so I had to setup an untrusted system to installed their app for keeping use of them (my team mates think Slack is awesome, while we only use it for chatting/discussion and sharing files). I've looked into their API, but it does not allow to build an open source app around it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:06AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:06AM (#536988)

      There are 5 supported browsers, granted two of them are exclusive to Windows, and one only available on Mac, but even so if you do use Linux, Chrome and Firefox support should be sufficient, and if you prefer Chromium, just change the user-agent to match Chrome.

      Even if you prefer to use a different browser, you could make an exception and use Firefox purely for Slack, would have saved you the effort of setting up an untrusted system to run their app on.

      With Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Edge, they are covering all the major browsers, is it reasonable to expect them to support every single browser available? If not where is a reasonable cutoff line?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:27AM (#537048)

        Wild guess: doesn't work in lynx.

        Slack.com can go fuck themselves. Sideways. With a splintered axe handle.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday July 10 2017, @06:30AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday July 10 2017, @06:30AM (#537049) Journal

        is it reasonable to expect them to support every single browser available?

        That's the point of standards: You don't support a browser, you support a standard. And then any browser that implements the standard is automatically supported. And if a browser doesn't work, it's then the browser's fault for not supporting the standard.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:06AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:06AM (#536779)

    Our new overlord has emailed all of Engineering to hit us @noc for all sorts of barely relevant info. @noc doing stuff that may set off an alert, lol. Or our hapless @dba team that ignores Slack now entirely, but @noc for snapshots. @noc doing an oil change again.

    We had a sane culture where @noc was Serious Business, but now I see junk constantly interrupting Real Work with irrelevant bullshit. Slack doesn't help itself. I'm stuck all-in on a channel, or silence one completely because Slack doesn't let me set granular team settings.

    Why did this replace IRC again?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:10PM (#536853)

      I haven't used Slack personally, so I admit I'm not intimately familiar with its failings. It sounds like we're finding a lot of examples of companies that are implementing Slack horribly. They were probably sold Slack with some slick looking charts and graphs and the promise that it would solve all of the intra-organizational communication difficulties they were experiencing while catering to all their users' needs.

      I work in a small business that's trying to grow but unfortunately has no idea how to not work like a small business where everybody knows everybody else by name. We've grown from maybe 15-30 employees to over a hundred, but that's about the limit of our growth because of some very, very human problems that management doesn't know how to confront. They're always looking to solve these human problems with technology. What it comes down to is that not only are they very poor at adhering to policy when we have one (and we don't have many because of an intractable culture of eschewing policy because "but all the customer needs is this simple thing," which is a great attitude for a small business of 30 employees, maybe 5 or 6 or so "management"-ish), we don't know how to codify the informal policies we do have, and we know even less about how to force different concerns in the business to adhere to written policy.

      We have a written policy for attendance and vacation days we adhere to, and that's really it. I'm guessing this blogger works in a similar company or OU.

      I could easily see my company buying up a sales pitch that all they needed was this One Platform to Rule Them All, and all their interdepartmental problems would be solved. "If only everybody could send informal messages to everybody else without needing to bother with email!" I've come to believe that (most) non-technical people are actually stupid people, and they hide their stupidity behind "computers are hard." (I hope I'm not being unclear; I've met plenty of non-technical people who are brilliant but are non-technical because they can't speak SMTP for example--could if they tried though.) If they do not understand computers, how can they hope to solve a human organizational problem with a computer? Therein lies the stupidity: the belief that the computer can solve human problems, no matter how many times the computer experts they pay to be experts (my boss and I) try to tell them that computers can't solve human problems.

      So, the organization buys up this software package with a slick sales team and a completely unrealistic sales pitch. The sales team says, "The experts you're paying to be experts are wrong! Computers can solve human problems!" Lo and behold, the amazing new software doesn't solve a single one of their human communication problems.

      This all leads to your question: "Why did this replace IRC again?" None of the human problems were solved. It also sounds like it introduces more confusion into the original human problems adopting Slack was supposed to solve. Now that there's a shiny new software package, nobody quite knows the boundaries and how to use it as effectively as they'd learned to use the old system over the years. It replaced IRC because somebody sold it on the promise that it could solve human problems, but since it can't, it hasn't.

      tl;dr No software package no matter how wonderful can solve the human problems that prevent an organization from working as well as it could.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:18AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:18AM (#537005)

        Eh, I'd say slack is winning because it does what IRC does, but better. Downside? Total fucking memory and CPU hog!!

  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:18AM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:18AM (#536784)

    The main reason I hate Slack is their ridiculously watered down, corporate friendly messages on starting the program. E.g. "Always get plenty of sleep, if you can!" or the worst "We like you!" *VOMITS*!

    As if employees need any more reminders of the disingenuous, exploitative, faux caring environment in which they slave away for their meagre wage. I mean, these sort of phrases border on self parody. If they weren't so bland and unfunny they'd almost find a home on despair.com.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:44AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:44AM (#536787)

      But imagine a world where you did get the warm fuzzies from crap like that, we could all finally be happy.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @01:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @01:46PM (#536818)

        Someone said there are furries on Slack. That's all the warm fuzzies I need.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:08PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:08PM (#536852)

      The sad thing is some people need to be reminded to get enough sleep. Dont be a dick. etc... Yes we are adults but not everyone acts like one.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:30PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:30PM (#536886)

        Yes but having some smart ass IM program preaching that shit to you against your will can be irritating. The tone of many of the slogans is written as if the author cares about the reader as an individual. In a commerical IM product that is aimed primarily at the business world, who primarly focus on maximizing profit and screwing the maximum possible productivity from their employees, that caring tone appears very superficial, even patronizing or insulting to an intelligent critical thinker.

        The comment about getting enough sleep "if you can" is probably particularly upsetting to some overworked employees who are suffering sleep deprivation against their own will due to the unreasonable demands of their employer. Of course I'm sure the employer would be glad if the employee sacrificed time spent on their family or recreation to get more sleep so that they could be a more efficient worker drone on Monday morning.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:20AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @02:20AM (#537006)

          I'm just curious, are you one to throw around the insults sjw or snowflake?

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:24PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:24PM (#537103)

            Fuck no! I just hate people screwing with other people's lives in negative ways. Calling somebody a "snowflake" comes under that. Social justice is a good thing if it's implemented so that only the people who want support get it. Support isn't something that should be forced upon all adults in normal circumstances (with the exception of maybe UBI) and more to the point I don't see a business tool as being responsible for someone's psychological support. Do you get it yet? Haven't you ever worked in a shitty environment where the employees aren't respected yet bolt on, superficial platitudes straight out of the business handbook are used as a stand in for actually caring about people?

            It's not Slack's job to make an employee feel better or worse. It's a fucking IM platform. They don't know their users personally. Managers do know their employees personally. They're the ones that should be creating a positive environment.

            Honestly the pricks on here that rant on about SJWs, snowflakes, millennials, ethnic groups, genders, etc, etc, et fucking cetera, and the trolls that bait them are just getting so fucking old. I don't know what it is about this site that attracts that shit. What the fuck has all that bullcrap got to do with "Fuck Beta"?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:55PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:55PM (#537172)

              They couldn't be bothered to make a "show tips on startup" tickbox?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:16PM (#536881)

      *snorts* "If you can." Fuck that shit. Sleep is a need of the body. Whether I like it or not, I have a body, and it needs sleep. It's not a nice thing to have, it's not optional, it's a requirement. It's non-negotiable.

      If they want to get one of these people who don't need sleep to do my job, they certainly can. Amazingly, though, people who don't need sleep just don't have nearly the capabilities I bring to the table when I'm fully rested during business hours. Funny that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:09AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:09AM (#536989)

      Complain to your slack admin. They can set their own messages. Quite possibly, they already have.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @03:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @03:42PM (#537144)

        Or how's about the UI just gives the user a checkbox to turn the MOTD off? Is that so fucking much to ask for?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:29PM (#537159)

        Holy fuck if those slogans aren't built into a standard install of Slack and were chosen as a custom option I find that even worse but if that's really true then maybe Slack isn't to blame. I won't blame the (instant) messenger if that's the case. I will blame it for being a laggy, over hyped piece of crap though.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Geezer on Sunday July 09 2017, @10:31AM (1 child)

    by Geezer (511) on Sunday July 09 2017, @10:31AM (#536794)

    Glad I read TFS; for a minute there I thought that maybe Sub-Genii had become a targeted minority group, or worse yet, the Systemd Gods are thundering against Pat Volkerding again.

    I've been running Slackware pretty much since the Earth's crust cooled, so I'm greatly relieved that TFA refers to yet another vapid social platform and not my beloved "Bob" Dobbs-approved OS.

    It's Sunday. Time to find some slack.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:25AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @01:25AM (#536993)

      Thundering? I thought that was gas.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:06AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:06AM (#536796) Journal

    2. It cannot be sanely ignored

    Up to now, I ignored it completely, to the point of not even knowing it existed. I guess that means I must be totally insane. ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 2) by andersjm on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:14AM (1 child)

    by andersjm (3931) on Sunday July 09 2017, @11:14AM (#536797)

    We’re all still using Slack, because it’s there, and we have to

    When did they pass that law?

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Sunday July 09 2017, @03:55PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Sunday July 09 2017, @03:55PM (#536844) Journal

      We’re all still using Slack, because it’s there, and we have to

      When did they pass that law?

      The law is the sit/lie law [wikipedia.org], which criminalizes homelessness. You risk becoming homeless when you get fired from your job for refusing to be a "team player" on Slack.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:50PM (2 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday July 09 2017, @12:50PM (#536810) Journal
    poorly.

    In other news, Slack (http://slackware.com/) is still doing just fine, it's not proprietary, it just works.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:10PM (#536854)

      Slack started as a fork of an IRC client. So someone must have got bored and reinvented it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @05:12PM (#536856)

        No, idiot, PV started the project before it was a project as a LISP interpreter.

        Failed troll fails.

  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday July 09 2017, @02:11PM

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday July 09 2017, @02:11PM (#536824) Journal

    Worth noting: Ryver is more-or-less a Slack clone.

    To point 5: Both Slack and Ryver have failed to provide more than the most basic content formatting, either direct or via incoming webhook.

    I've written code that works with both; basically the mindset of both companies is "we don't care what you need to do; do it our (very limited) way."

    Which is why we're not considering using either of them any more. When you can't format your data adequately for all your users, you should really be using something else anyway. Protip: This stuff isn't difficult to write for the web. Phone apps... perhaps. OTOH, the phones have web browsers, so...

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I do, however, take issue with the 1/3/6 points: "time-sensitive vs not/it cannot be sanely organized/personal-business dual use." You can create separate Slacks or Ryvers, and channels with separate membership controls, and see to it that they are used well. If they are not used well, you don't have a "Slack" or "Ryver" problem. You have a management problem.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:28PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @06:28PM (#536874)

    i agree that slack really sucks(i won't use it for my projects), but what are the alternatives?

    rocketchat is a different use case, video calls and what not.
    discourse is ROR. i'm going to attempt testing it out soon, but i'll probably regret it.
    i just tried movim, but in my tests it seems seriously half-baked.
    i'm after chat, but behind a login, with groups/channels, persistent convos, stickys/wiki would be nice, self hosted xmpp server as chat backend to allow omemo chat with other clients would be ideal. basically a forum/blog/microblog and chat web gui combined.
    must be foss and self hosted.

    any ideas?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @07:14PM (#536880)
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 09 2017, @09:45PM (#536940)

        thanks, i'll check it out. found others to look into as well. i had forgotten about the google machine and http://alternativeto.net. [alternativeto.net.] :)

    • (Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Monday July 10 2017, @03:56AM (1 child)

      by pdfernhout (5984) on Monday July 10 2017, @03:56AM (#537018) Homepage

      See also my essay from a FL/OSS project perspective: http://pdfernhout.net/reasons-not-to-use-slack-for-free-software-development.html [pdfernhout.net]

      Key points:

      As a summary, the main issues in using Slack for free/libre software projects include:
      * Proprietary vs. Free; free alternatives exist like Mattermost and Matrix.org and others
      * Sending the wrong message about free software communications out of convenience
      * Reduces interest in free software and public standards for communications
      * Changeable Terms of Service
      * Arbitrary termination of access possible with no archive
      * Online requirement to access your previous messages
      * Retrieves contents of all URLs you include in a message by default
      * Centralizes communications in an unencrypted form
      * Could inject malware, advertising, or disinformation from the central hub
      * Privacy policy does not seem to prohibit much data mining
      * Inappropriateness for large communities (design, limits, costs, privacy, archiving)
      * Your messages may become controlled by a purchaser of the Slack company
      * Standards like email or IRC unify, but services like Slack fragment the global free software community
      * Matrix.org looks like a better choice of standard to support

      Some of these issues also apply to any organization choosing to use a proprietary centralized third-party platform for communications. Others are perhaps ignorable by some free software communities (like data mining risks if they work completely in the open anyway).

      These issues imply some principles and rules for free/libre software projects, which ideally:
      * should use free software tools even if such tools are harder to use at first and need investment to make them better
      * should expand to cover new niches when feasible
      * should promote other free software projects and open standards, not proprietary ones
      * should not ask users to agree to arbitrarily changeable terms by third-parties
      * should not be at risk of having all their communications made inaccessible
      * should support off-line browsing of their works
      * should not access the content of URLs passed around except on request
      * should be decentralized as much as reasonable
      * should reduce the risk of single points of failure in society
      * should use tools that respect privacy
      * should use tools that can scale easily, cheaply, and which can support public archives
      * should not put users at risk of having arbitrary new third-parties control their content
      * should support unifying standards
      * should be on the lookout for emerging free technologies and standards they can build on

      Now, not all free/libre software projects might follow all these rules and principles, depending on how much they are works of expediency versus works intended to support a free/libre culture. For example many FOSS projects use proprietary IDEs or use things like GitHub issues or JIRA (proprietary services). But the further free software projects get from these sorts of ideals, the more problematical the situation becomes.

      --
      The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
      • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Monday July 10 2017, @06:40PM

        by Bobs (1462) on Monday July 10 2017, @06:40PM (#537251)

        Thanks for the pointer to Matrix: looks promising and I will check it out in more detail.

    • (Score: 1) by gozar on Monday July 10 2017, @04:11AM

      by gozar (5426) on Monday July 10 2017, @04:11AM (#537020)

      Not FOSS, but:Twist - Mindful Team Communication [twistapp.com].

      Sounds like znc and IRC might be something that would work that is FOSS.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:17AM (#537436)
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