[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why are so many OSS communities on Discord?
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Ask HN: Why are so many OSS communities on Discord?
I'm honestly tired of seeing OSS tools/products like Gitea rely on
centralized, proprietary tools like Discord and Slack for their
communities. I could understand less technical communities staying
on Discord, but for OSS tools - especially those that focus on
self-hosted like Gitea! - to not run their own chat server seems
weird. Why is this the case? Is self-hosting just too
inconvenient/expensive/pointless?
Author : square_usual
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-09-23 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
| realPubkey wrote:
| I did a user journey and most users wanted to switch from gitter
| to discord.
| [deleted]
| snvzz wrote:
| Matrix, please!
| duskwuff wrote:
| Why pick just one? There are a number of excellent
| Discord/Matrix bridges available which make it possible for
| users on both sides to seamlessly participate with users on the
| other services.
|
| If you want to get extra spicy, there are even bridges from
| Matrix to IRC, Telegram, or Slack. And they work transitively
| -- if you've got Matrix/IRC and Matrix/Discord bridges running,
| users on Discord can see and communicate with the IRC users,
| for example.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Longtime free open source guy here.
|
| Right now, it's simple; it's because Discord is THAT GOOD. I kind
| of love and hate that about it. Discord's just infinity better
| than anything in its class.
| andrew_shay wrote:
| It's super easy, no maintenance, and free.
|
| Every minute spent dealing with a chat server is one less minute
| working on your project, or spending time with your family.
| catlover76 wrote:
| Yeah that sounds like a huge pain in the ass, and even for us
| technical users, why would I want to join someone's self-hosted
| chat server as opposed to just joining their Discord server?
|
| I don't see any harm in using Discord or Slack, but I can think
| of benefits.
|
| Now, why use a chat server at all over a forum where information
| can be persisted and more easily searchable, and where people put
| more thought into their messages--that's the real question. Too
| many things are on Discord and other chat platforms that
| shouldn't be. The information loss/question repetition problem is
| huge, and various bots that mitigate the problem are arguably
| just band-aids for a problem that needn't exist.
| ssivark wrote:
| Self-hosting is definitely not easy, but it's the _indirection_
| more so. You're excited about X and want to gather a community
| around that, and you definitely don't want to spend a lot of time
| on Y (mechanics of running a forum).
|
| It's good that Matrix is catching up in UX... we'll hopefully
| soon be at a point where it will be good enough to serve as the
| default choice. All it would take at that point (for example) is
| one SNAFU from Discord.
| graypegg wrote:
| Honestly... I don't mind discord. I've seen their "forums"
| feature actually work pretty well, and the roles system is just
| customizable enough to be useful, with about being annoying to
| configure.
|
| Yeah, there's obvious problems with it being a closed community,
| gated by Discord the company. I do wish content was exposed to
| the wider internet, like how forums (phpBB etc) work.
|
| But I get it, if your passion is a FOSS project, you want to
| think as little about the "other stuff" that only takes away
| precious free hours you'd rather put into your FOSS project.
| Discord handles most of that for free/close to free/with
| donations collected for you from your "server" members.
|
| There's a space for a FOSS project to fill, and matrix is SO
| close. It needs a push, but I think the dominoes could totally
| fall in its favour given some critical mass of projects using it.
| [deleted]
| lionkor wrote:
| Because it works, its easy to appoint anyone to help with
| moderation without risking much, and a large part of the tech
| community has an account
| catiopatio wrote:
| > a large part of the tech community has an account
|
| Is that true? I don't, and was under the impression that
| Discord was a "gamer" thing.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Discord stopped being "Gamers-only" quite some time ago.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Into what? It seems to remain occupied by gamers, YouTube
| viewers, media consumers, and other so-called "nerd"
| consumption-focused interests.
| mad182 wrote:
| Not really, I have a Discord account for at least 5 years,
| I'm a member of several Discord communities and none of them
| are related to gaming. For me it's kind of a replacement for
| IRC.
| somethingor wrote:
| Yeah, it works and people like using it. One example:
|
| > The SerenityOS Discord server is now 5000 members strong!
|
| > Less than a year ago, we were an IRC channel with ~160 peak
| concurrent users.
|
| > Super happy that we made the move, as it allowed us to scale
| both our processes and the community itself!
|
| https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1491005663509884929
| sontek wrote:
| Its because there is no free/OSS alternative that is as good.
|
| - Good RBAC controls for managing your community and making sure
| there aren't bots - Nice API access for building bots - Free
| without any necessary system administration overhead
|
| Discord is just an easy to get into system to start a community
| without any large commitment on hosting.
| rg111 wrote:
| Let me go through it like this-
|
| What I like the most is Discourse. But I need to self-host it or
| pay for it. I don't want to do either for a quick study group or
| a side project.
|
| Zulip offers free hosting. I opened an account and spent the
| better part of 2 hours setting it up. I announced it. Exactly two
| people joined in. One of them wasn't regular.
|
| Then I created a Discord, and 10+ people joined in _every day_.
|
| I don't _want_ to use Discord, because I can 't have direct
| contact with the users (discord doesn't share email with server
| admind/creators), Discord is bloated, it has poor search
| functionality.
|
| But what can I do? It's where the people are. It's what they
| want.
|
| Reddit was another option, but had criticsl mass problem there,
| too for some servers related to foss/group I admined.
| SCSIfloppy wrote:
| Mailing lists will always be king. I don't get it either, Discord
| is proprietary, hosting your OSS project's infrastructure there
| just seems... idiotic.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| It's for the community discussion.
| api wrote:
| So many OSS communities are on Discord because so many OSS
| communities are on discord.
|
| It got that way in part because things like Matrix were not ready
| yet years ago and things like IRC were too moribund. Individual
| forums require that everyone make a new account and have no
| network effect.
|
| It also helped that Discord had a ton of users already via its
| original niche in gaming.
|
| Now it has network effect, which means people will use it even if
| they hate it. Network effects are awesomely powerful.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I've tried to make this argument in the past and gained no
| traction. What I did instead was to create self hosted chat
| things as a _fallback_ for the times when Discord or Slack have a
| green status page but their applications fail to operate. Even
| light-weight daemons like uMurmur [1] or devzat [2] _ssh-chat_
| can be handy in a time of need if a quorum know to fall back to
| it, especially how simple they are to deploy. Self hosted tools
| are also handy when one wants to share links or text that should
| not be on 3rd party sites _forever and for eternity_. Such things
| may also be handy if some day the internet censorium gets a
| little bit out of hand.
|
| [1] - https://github.com/umurmur/umurmur/wiki/Configuration
|
| [2] - https://github.com/quackduck/devzat
| lucideer wrote:
| > _Is self-hosting just too inconvenient /expensive/pointless?_
|
| The answer is in the question: it's the first two. Self-hosting
| is inconvenient & expensive in comparison to Discord. That's all
| there is to it.
|
| If you can run a SaaS competitor that is: (1) built on an open-
| source stack, (2) close to being as easy to use as Discord, (3)
| free to use, you will steal marketshare. Guaranteed.
|
| However, bullet-point #3 tends to contravene the first 2.
| entitleddragoon wrote:
| Overwhelming weight. If you're trying to manage a community and
| you want volunteers, you want to minimize the "hassle-hurdle".
| You can either go entirely against the grain, or use something
| that everyone already has. And even if begrudgingly, everyone has
| discord.
|
| I wish it wasn't proprietary products that won out in this
| regard, but they did, and there's little point shooting yourself
| in the foot on principle.
| kanbara wrote:
| oss tools are just annoying to use or bad ui. also, every time i
| have to use a mailing list i want to cry
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Why is this the case?_
|
| In a sentence: because doing FOSS is just a way for some people
| to enhance their careers.
|
| Anything not related to the code is extraneous to that.
|
| Running a mailing list (for example) isn't resume-stuffing
| material for someone who isn't a sysadmin.
|
| A popular, well-known FOSS project enhances your career better
| than one that is unpopular and obscure. From that perspective,
| that forum system is best which facilitates popularity.
|
| Then there is the youth factor. I think that mostly older
| developers care about this issue. Younger developers who didn't
| live through the Unix wars and the rise of GNU/Linux and all that
| are deaf to the issues. They take an Internet full of wall-
| gardened social networks to be the norm; it's what they were
| already born into. Asking the kids not to gather in some Discord
| group is like asking kids of yesteryear not to hang around at the
| mall. (The mall is proprietary, so what?)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| That doesn't line up with my own experiences at all. Many of
| the hardcore FOSS devs I know focus on their passions, at a
| detriment to their career.
|
| > A popular, well-known FOSS project enhances your career
| better than one that is unpopular and obscure
|
| I just don't think any of us care about that when choosing FOSS
| products. You're talking about an entirely different class of
| developer and massively generalizing.
|
| > Younger developers who didn't live through the Unix wars and
| the rise of GNU/Linux and all that are deaf to the issues.
|
| Again, incredibly generalized. Many young people today express
| the exact same hardcore stances toward privacy and security,
| and are the reason why we have things like Matrix bridges.
|
| > Asking the kids not to gather in some Discord group is like
| asking kids of yesteryear not to hang around at the mall
|
| You got close, but still missed it. The reason so many FOSS
| products choose Discord is the ease at which they can build
| large and successful communities, due to the networking effect
| Discord provides. If a FOSS tool could match that level of
| discovery, that would be a step up, but it still doesn't solve
| the other big issue: Discord is where many passionate, creative
| people are.
|
| You can provide a product that is better in every way, and
| FLOSS, but without a successful marketing campaign and a bit of
| luck, no one will ever show up.
| acheong08 wrote:
| > In a sentence: because doing FOSS is just a way for some
| people to enhance their careers.
|
| Doubt
|
| It's just that most people are on discord. I tried running a
| matrix space/room for support but people would keep asking if I
| could use discord instead. Kept the matrix room running for a
| while but nobody ever showed up while the discord server was at
| over a 1000 people. Left both after the project was archived.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > _They take an Internet full of wall-gardened social networks
| to be the norm; it 's what they were already born into._
|
| And it's the older developers' fault for letting that happen!
| lucideer wrote:
| This is a rather absurd comment.
|
| > _Running a mailing list (for example) isn 't resume-stuffing
| material for someone who isn't a sysadmin._
|
| The assumption here is that an open-source maintainer has the
| time, energy & expertise to run a mailing list, but chooses not
| to for cynical career-related reasons. This completely dodges
| the very obvious oft-discussed point that most FOSS maintainers
| are under-resourced & overstretched.
|
| People use Discord because Discord does the work for you, so
| you have more time to make the thing you're making.
| kazinator wrote:
| Career-related reasons are not cynical; they're perfectly
| legitimate, and that person's prerogative.
|
| I mean there are situations in in which prioritizing your
| career objective over something else may be immoral. Like say
| if you choose a path whereby you get a promotion but large
| numbers of people suffer. But if you're making something free
| you don't owe anybody anything. If people don't like it that
| you're using Discord or whatever else, too bad.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > because doing FOSS is just a way for some people to enhance
| their careers.
|
| That's a very cynical view. Perhaps it is somewhat more true
| when it comes to the HN audience, but outside of here
| "enhancing career" is probably not even in the top 5
| motivations behind FOSS work...
| kazinator wrote:
| I am positing that in fact self promotion is the motivation
| if we restrict ourselves to those decision makers at the top
| of the FOSS project who decide matters such as that the
| associated forum is going to be on Discord or Slack. They are
| not the only contributors to the actual project, of course,
| and not everyone is in their Discord or Slack because they
| like Discord or Slack.
|
| If you want to promote yourself as a developer by means of
| having your name on a lot of source code out there that
| people are using the only way that's going to happen is if it
| is open source. If that's all you care about, open source is
| just a means to that end. Your name is still in a bunch of
| code that people are using if the documentation happens to be
| in Microsoft Word.
|
| Open source has been promoted that way to a bunch of young
| people are starting out in software. "Oh don't have much
| industry experience? Show that you can code by starting a
| free software project or contributing to one. Anyone who's
| anyone has half a dozen or more Github repositories."
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(page generated 2023-09-23 23:01 UTC)