IRC I think we’d all like it if IRC was … something it is not. Only the technically inclined use IRC, and even then, I know many programmers who simply see no value in it at all, when there are other communication channels with less friction. I like IRC, but it is not convenient.
Self-hosting {Slack Clone} It is quite honestly not a great use of time or resources for OKI doing this. I’m also of the personal opinion that doing so does not somehow ensure that data is safer or protected.
3rd party hosting {Slack Clone} Why? sandstorm.io looks cool to me as I’m a developer, but I can’t see why buying into sandstorm.io is inherently better than just using Slack.
I don’t have any particular preference for Slack. I have a preference for OKI executing better in the area of community engagement.
From all the options I see in front of us here, Slack has the mindshare, and user experience to help build more inclusive communities. Of course, the real work will be when we just take such a decision and then use it as a tool for us to do better community engagement.
About Slack lock-in, you should also consider that beyond 10k messages, you cannot search the chat history. This can be a real annoyance in terms of accountability.
And, if you want to search history, Slack becomes very expansive for a large group, 6$/user.
I would suggest using an open alternative to Slack.
Something like http://www.mattermost.org/ I can imagine… We are going to test it for our open Summer of code 2016 project and see whether it is good enough to replace slack
I am not sure if you are still pursuing for any text chat, but I truly recommend Gitter. It is not entirely GitHub dependent and the freemium plan is very flexible. The main downside is that you cannot have more than 25 users. For my case, that is more than sufficient for now.
Well, the problem is that I created Gitter from our GitHub account and that is also as okfn-oe. We can have both, I guess. Changing it now would have several implications… As you guys prefer
The current IRC channels for Labs and OpenSpending remain (even though they are barely used).
If we see this works well for tech communities, we will likely look at using Gitter for tech communities going forward and deprecate IRC.
Our experience so far with Gitter has been great, and the integration direct from GitHub repositories is seamless and intuitive. I think it is a winner, but we’ll assess in 3 months.