Changes to the Kubernetes Slack

[daft_pink]

Just isn’t practical to use Slack for open communities based on it’s pricing structure, but isn’t practical for Discord to exist based on it’s Profit and Loss statement.

Gotta be some way to split the difference and make money with online community chat without paying north of $8 per user.

[kondu]

I'm sure they considered hosting matrix or zulip, I wonder what the estimated monthly cost of that would be for a community of their size

[rcarmo]

I was on the Kubernetes slack and I’ve found it much better than any of the multiple horrors that I’ve expected in Discord. It was even (somewhat) searchable.

But in the end, I never really relied on it for finding information, and am kind of sad that people keep creating chat communities instead of searchable forums.

I also think people overrate chat for actual learning or resolving issues. Even back in the IRC days, asking a question almost never yielded an immediate reply—-quite often you’d have to come back the day after and ask again, or check your DMs on screen overnight.

Forums let you ask and check for replies later, or search for similar questions, or even (shudder) get an e-mail reply, and Discord does exactly none of those things in a way that I find effective or productive.

[teeray]

How is IRCv3 doing these days? I remember it was supposed to address all the pain-points people had that made them want to use Slack, but I haven’t heard of anyone using it in years. Seems support for its feature-set is pretty decent: https://ircv3.net/software/clients

[dijit]

It works pretty well, but there's no money in IRC - and the people who like it the most have no desire to upgrade clients.

So, the "best" experience remains with either "The Lounge", or weechat. Neither of which are comparable to Zulip for UX or Slack/Discord for UI.

[croemer]

4 days notice period to archive everything? Not a good look for Slack and/or the k8s working group (if they had known earlier already).

[croemer]

Turns out there was no notice. So it's Slack pulling the rug in an aggressive way: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/issues/8490#issuecom...

[blakeashleyjr]

I would hate to see them move to Discord over Matrix. I know Matrix has its issues, but Discord is inviting the same issue a couple years down the road. Besides, Matrix could use the attention of those talented devs using it every day!

[pdpi]

I wonder whether Discord will at some point start selling a "Discord for Business" product. Just adding SSO would get them 90% of the way there.

[vitno]

It's a product I actively looked for before setting up Slack for my company.

[arccy]

i don't understand how people use discord though.... it's somehow worse than slack at organizing information

[it33]

Mattermost CEO here, thanks to @eadmund for the mention, here are some thoughts on the main thread for those interested in Mattermost as an option: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/issues/8490#issuecom...

[croemer]

Github issue for discussion: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/issues/8490

[eadmund]

I wonder why they are going with Discord rather than Mattermost. One would think that they would have learned a lesson about relying on third parties.

[bananapub]

Can’t be a good sign financially or technically that Slack is unable to operate a 250 000 person instance.

[mikeortman]

I think technically they can. It’s because they’re downgrading them to a free service. I’m going to venture to say that it’s a money grab on a previously generous gift by slack.

[cadamsdotcom]

Perhaps k8s could roll its own Slack replacement. Sound crazy? Consider git: born of specific needs of Linux kernel plus a struggle to use commercially available tools.

If you squint there are similarities to the situation that led Linus Torvalds down the build-it-yourself path. What a tool like Slack “is” is pretty well defined, and they’re not being evil but are just unable to support a very unique community in k8s.

Owning its own tools helps the community own its own destiny.

[bananapub]

git was a tiny crappy content tracker linus, one of the most prolific C hackers in history, did in a couple of weeks. it wasn’t even a version control system nor intended to be used directly, merely to make his personal life easier after tridge enraged larry.

“Normie focussed multi platform api-driven rich text media chat system” is 100x that work and unrelated to k8s’ existing ocean boiling.