Chat Room Requirements

[simonv3]

Riding on the wave of success that is us choosing our new logo, let's move on to the next project on our Projects list on the front page!

After talking to @paulproteus on IRC (I hope that's the same Asheesh) I wasn't sure what we wanted out of a chat room anymore.

I'm not sure whether anywhere we actually state those requirements.

Some questions I have

1. Is this for our community specifically or are we hoping to make it a multi-use tool? @paulproteus Set up https://opensourcedesign.herokuapp.com/ which is an instance of https://github.com/0x263b/Designers.im. It seems to work great. I don't know if anyone has reported anything along the lines of it crashing @0x263b.
2. What do we want the tool to do? Is it enough to be a friendly easy to use host? Do we need to use Shout? It has some legacy issues as far as I'm aware and apparently crashes regularly.
3. Does it need to be IRC?

Let me know all of your thoughts and we can start hashing things out for a better chat experience for newcomers!

Edit, also worth looking at is some of our previous conversations on this topic in the Monthly Rehashes

[ei8fdb]

Personal honest feedback follows:

(This feedback comes after watching a separate open source/privacy software thread meltdown as a result of the question slack or irc.)

Personally: I have no preference for real-time communications medium. I will use IRC, Slack, or anything in between that is reasonable.

I am more interested in the tool promoting communications between designers, researchers and developers in open source.

However, saying that, there are a few points:

• let’s use Slack!

Slack is the tool de jour at the moment. It’s great for small teams. We use it in work. We have 100 odd people who are designers/devs who love it.

The other discussion (that melted down) I mentioned above focused on the arguments of “its not open source”, “its open to surveillance by others” (it was privacy conscience community, and is valid).

The main reason, I can see, for the argument for a “Slack-like” tool is that its not IRC, it’s more accessible to “non-technical” people.

And they are valid reasons not to use IRC.

But since there are more usable interfaces to IRC, personally I think we should try to have a presence where both groups can co-exist.

The UI of the herokuapp that’s been set up is very…similar…to the Slack, which is a good thing for those who would prefer that, and still allows IRC people to use BitchX if they choose ;)

• there is the argument of “using open source protocols and software”. I would add to that “where possible”.

We’re trying to bring together 2, maybe 3 different, communities here: developers, open source developers, ux designers/researchers.

As a designer/researcher I believe we need to meet the other groups where they are, OR at least be able to bridge to them.

There are a number of more appealing interfaces to IRC for those who don’t want to/can’t/choose not to install an IRC client.

There are other options: Mattermost which is an open source alternative to Slack. [1]

Looking at Mattermost there is integration with IRC, which might be prove useful for enabling both of those groups to communicate using their preferred platforms. [2]

So in terms of requirements I would suggest the following:

The tool:

• must provide 1-to-many communications
• should provide 1-to-1 communications
• must provide a bridge to IRC
• must be have a web interface
• must provide secure communications between the client and server
• should provide archives/logs
• should be scalable (seriously, how many people will we get?)
• should be usable on a mobile device

There’s other things, but that’s a start. Please rip apart or discuss!

thanks,
Bernard

[1] http://www.mattermost.org/
[2] http://www.mattermost.org/community-applications/

On 29 Oct 2015, at 16:54, Simon [email protected] wrote:

Riding on the wave of success that is us choosing our new logo, let's move on to the next project on our Projects list on the front page!

After talking to @paulproteus on IRC (I hope that's the same Asheesh) I wasn't sure what we wanted out of a chat room anymore.

I'm not sure whether anywhere we actually state those requirements.

Some questions I have

• Is this for our community specifically or are we hoping to make it a multi-use tool? @paulproteus Set up https://opensourcedesign.herokuapp.com/ which is an instance of https://github.com/0x263b/Designers.im. It seems to work great. I don't know if anyone has reported anything along the lines of it crashing @0x263b.

• What do we want the tool to do? Is it enough to be a friendly easy to use host? Do we need to use Shout? It has some legacy issues as far as I'm aware and apparently crashes regularly.

• Does it need to be IRC?

Let me know all of your thoughts and we can start hashing things out for a better chat experience for newcomers!

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[jancborchardt]

@ei8fdb I think that’s a very good starting proposition!

To put my opinion in a really short TL;DR:

• We either use IRC and a good frontend for it (there’s IRCCloud but that’s closed source)
• Or if it’s not IRC, a very good established open source alternative to Slack – Mattermost is the obvious candidate here
• Slack itself is a choice I would strongly dislike as it is neither open source nor does it use open protocols – unlike Github which exposes git

Using some random open source chat tool which doesn’t use IRC as protocol base doesn’t seem a very good course of action in my opinion. Even for the smaller chat tools which do use IRC as a protocol base I have seen so many come and gone that by this point I would only settle for something which already has some base following (like Mattermost, I guess).
In addition to IRC, having a persistent chatlog for others (who are new or were offline) to see is very important. On top of that avatars and inline image / video stuff is nice.

[jancborchardt]

Here’s the topic about an IRC bridge for Mattermost: http://forum.mattermost.org/t/irc-bridge-for-mattermost/408

[raucao]

Is it urgent?

We'd have something where you guys can even help design the whole UI/UX, and which is not just "yet another chat server", but based entirely on open protocols, standards, and formats, right down to the chat logs and storage backend. 😇

[evalica]

An idea is also Gitter, see https://gitter.im/orgs/opensourcedesign/rooms since it's using the GitHub repository.
You can also have a 'Gittter: Join Chat' badge on the repository's README, like here
Although I'm not actually using it, I consider Gitter to be somewhere in between Slack and IRC.

[raucao]

It's firmly on the Slack side of things in regards to openness, though. Even more so because it is a proprietary service by itself, plus it's fully dependent on another proprietary service in addition to that.

[simonv3]

@skddc At the moment we're in a holding pattern with what we currently have, which is okay, but just generally not the most user friendly experience. Personally more than a product right now I want to be able to say "this is what we're very actively working on to make this better."

Someone, don't remember who, said something along the lines of "best tool for the job right now", and I think that has a lot going for it. So maybe we set up an instance of something that is operable now that interfaces with IRC (mattermost maybe, but I don't want to get too stuck in the REST-as-a-protocol framework? Is that even a valid concern?) and then we can direct people to work on something new. @skddc can you tell us a bit more about the status of Kosmos? Do you have something working that people could try out?

I'd also pass on Gitter because it's so tightly linked to GitHub.

[raucao]

@skddc can you tell us a bit more about the status of Kosmos?

It's still pre-alpha, but we'll have something a working demo up soon-ish (probably December, maybe January). We can also migrate logs and/or add logging to your mattermost, if you have an IRC gateway for that, so all your stuff is available to search in Kosmos and any app that implements its logging format later on.

[jancborchardt]

Just some food for thought as well:
https://drewdevault.com/2015/11/01/Please-stop-using-slack.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541

I feel that if we want to call ourselves »Open Source Design« or anything regarding openness etc, promoting Slack severely impacts our credibility and integrity.
We don’t just want to bring together devs and designers – we want to bring together open source devs and designers.

[ei8fdb]

I agree with all that.

To be fair though, the blogpost is written by a dev so he seemed familiar and comfortable with IRC.

He says the IRC bridge is a PITA to setup in Slack, its not really. All of about 2 mins work.

We don’t just want to bring together devs and designers – we want to bring together open source devs and designers.

Yes, but if a Slack-like UI (notice I didn’t say Slack) is something more accessible to those who 1) are not comfortable/familiar with IRC, 2) want a persistent connection (or at least the possibility to replay channel contents then I think it’d be worth trialling a Mattermost instance to see how it goes.

I’d like to see Mattermost in operation to see how usable it is. Can we get something together?

---

Bernard Tyers
E: [email protected] | T: @bernardtyers

Talk to me privately. My public key is here: https://keybase.io/ei8fdb

On 1 Nov 2015, at 17:14, Jan-Christoph Borchardt [email protected] wrote:

Just some food for thought as well:
https://drewdevault.com/2015/11/01/Please-stop-using-slack.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541

I feel that if we want to call ourselves »Open Source Design« or anything regarding openness etc, promoting Slack severely impacts our credibility and integrity.
We don’t just want to bring together devs and designers – we want to bring together open source devs and designers.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[simonv3]

Looks like it should be fairly easy to get an instance up. http://www.mattermost.org/download/

I'm asking some of the sandstorm people whether anyone has made attempts at packaging it yet. I know there's a Rocket.Chat package for Sandstorm. I've got an instance running for OSD here.

Edit: Here's some thoughts on how to get mattermost onto sandstorm https://botbot.me/freenode/sandstorm/2015-11-19/?msg=54525961&page=2

[razetime]

Here's one thing I'd like the chat app to be like : http://rocket.chat

[simonv3]

@razetime See my previous message - I've got an instance running for OSD testing purposes on Sandstorm.

https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/jQWy0pNrmY4MP0ou4p3z8Joz-uN8OLBuOHi1mAlRiUR