Mastodawn

Henryk Plötz 5d ago

huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28

Enshittification comes for open source:
Slack is kicking two large open source groups, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Kubernetes, off of their donated enterprise tier, giving them one week notice to migrate multiple years of data to a new platform before it's all deleted: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/06/16/cncf-slack-workspace-changes-coming-on-friday-june-20/

Instead of learning from this experience and not trusting the good will of profit-motivated closed source companies, it looks like both projects will be moving to ... Discord. Because "people know it." Will we never learn?

(Dropped Cory because he's probably getting tons of spam from this. Sorry!)

#enshittification

CNCF Slack Workspace Changes Coming on Friday, June 20

The CNCF Slack workspace will be converted from an enterprise plan to a free plan on Friday, June 20, 2025. This will have implications for how Slack works for our community…

CNCF

@huxley @pluralistic God, I've complained about them (and other open source projects) being on slack for as long as I've seen it, so I can't say this isn't giving me some schadenfreude, but them going to discord is infuriating.

Elias Mårtenson 5d ago

@ainmosni @huxley @pluralistic If they stayed on slack for this long, I wouldn't expect a single argument in favour of an open solution would convince them discord is a bad idea.

@loke @huxley @pluralistic I would say the argument of that this very sudden move will happen again should be enough.

Elias Mårtenson 5d ago

@ainmosni @huxley @pluralistic It should be. But with people who has stuck with slack for such a long time, I don't know.

EndlessMason 5d ago

@loke
You sick with what you have to avoid making a decision, as a result when you're forced to move you haven't even considered alternatives

@ainmosni @huxley @pluralistic

@huxley @pluralistic if k8s folks would experience performance of , lest say irc, they might never touch k8s again

@huxley @pluralistic I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

What percentage of companies using CNCF projects and/or Kubernetes are using them to provide the back end services for their shitty proprietary products?

How many of them will completely fail to see the irony?

Keith Mitchell 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic Not even slightly surprised. The likelihood of this eventually happening was a major reason we chose mattermost as our community chat platforms for UKNOF and DNS-OARC. 5 years ago.

Pilsnerd 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic Every day I wake up thinking about the existence of the official DEF CON Discord.

@huxley @pluralistic I'm going to relate an incident from earlier this week - maybe people will 'get it'?

I'm working on converting a little tool to rust and gtk4 for a friend.

I ran into some errors related to some obscure gtk4 syntax.

Docs - no help. YT - no help. Copilot/Gemini - no help.

What finally helped was stumbling over an ancient forum post from the start of the GTK4 rollout with links to a very specific section in the doc.

Without that forum, I'd have never gotten it done.

@huxley @pluralistic If it had been locked behind a discord, I wouldn't have found it.

I would have used something else. That's how open source projects get forked.

@huxley what are the open source alternative?

huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28 5d ago

@jstockdi zulip is a good one, we use it on the Mixxx project

@jstockdi @huxley I would guess Rocket.Chat or maybe something from the Matrix family? ( Depends entirely on the requirements though )

@jstockdi @huxley XMPP, delta chat, signal, it depends of what they need

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉5d ago

@jstockdi @huxley I use Discourse for my projects. It's more forum than chat, though it also has chat and PM features. But, it is easy to administer, has good moderation and anti spam tools, and is easily searchable without an account. I have literally no complaints and I always have complaints. Discourse is close to perfect, in my estimation. Can be self-hosted or they offer a hosted service for a reasonable cost. I self-host it, as I need custom plugins and WordPress auth integration.

Guillaume Louvel 15h ago

@jstockdi
Also Mattermost and Zulip which look more similar.

I recently setup Discourse for teammates as well, because it has a forum part and a group chat part. However there is little engagement, which I think is due to: people are too shy to post on the forum, or maybe they think what they have to say is just unimportant. Chat would then be better suited for spontaneous interactions, but you don't get enough notifications from the Discourse chat to make people stick.

@swelljoe @huxley

Guillaume Louvel 15h ago

I think the lack of a proper phone app also doesn't help hooking people.

@swelljoe how about your experience, did you get people easily involved?

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉15h ago

@GullumLuvl Discourse works great on phones, just as a web app. I never thought to even look for a phone app. The chat apps are all JavaScript all the time, anyway, so I assumed their phone apps are just just web apps thinly wrapped into phone apps? I never think "I wish this website had an app for my phone", I just want the website to work well in phone browsers, but I may be unusual.

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉14h ago

@GullumLuvl and, for what it's worth, the Discourse instance I maintain is much more active than my work Slack. There's occasional flurries of chatter on the Slack but I don't feel like it's doing a better job getting problems solved even though it feels more instantaneous (but Discourse is also fast and shows when people are typing replies like a chat).

I've never leaned into the chat features but use PMs heavily for support tickets. But, I also think a forum is better suited for OSS projects.

Guillaume Louvel 7h ago

@swelljoe yeah the web app is great, but I wish I could have notifications from it, even with the tab in the background. Not sure if that's doable, I never tried as I usually avoid notifications 😅

FoolishOwl 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic There's a relatively straightforward process for migrating from Slack to Mattermost, which is designed to be familiar to Slack users. That's not the case with Discord.

huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28 5d ago

@foolishowl @pluralistic I've been hearing about mattermost, I need to check it out

AndreasDavour 3d ago

@huxley same here. I clearly need to figure out what it does, and how.

XMPP used to power a lot of the world's biggest chats so maybe it could be used. But XMPP is just a protocol, and Slack and Discord is easier to grasp I guess, as it's a platform you just jump on.

I read the FAQ about the migration and found it telling that they had considered Matrix and that it doesn't cut the mustard. I think that should cause a bit of a think about how well Matrix works.

@foolishowl @pluralistic

Duncan Bayne 1d ago

@huxley @foolishowl @pluralistic We run Mattermost at work, and I run an instance myself. It's not bad!

Cory Doctorow 1d ago

@duncan_bayne @huxley @foolishowl We use it at EFF, too. I really rate it!

Ben Ramsey 1d ago

@pluralistic @duncan_bayne @huxley @foolishowl Is “rate” a typo of “hate,” or is this some way of saying “I rate it highly?”

Cory Doctorow 1d ago

@ramsey @duncan_bayne @huxley @foolishowl

"Rate" is a colloquial way of saying "value."

Ben Ramsey 1d ago

@pluralistic @duncan_bayne @huxley @foolishowl TIL

@duncan_bayne
Mattermost is lovely! We had it at a job where I regrettably only worked briefly.
@huxley @foolishowl @pluralistic

Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary 1d ago

@ozzelot @duncan_bayne @huxley @foolishowl @pluralistic
Heck, my D&D 3.5 group uses a self-hosted Mattermost server for our OOC chatter and between-game discussions and organization. Works great! Keeps things a lot tider than what we were using before.

Rocketman 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic Look, don’t be too hard on them.

Though it’s certainly possible for groups to run their own communication tools, you need considerable skill and technical expertise.

Not everyone has the necessary resources, ok?

</sarcasm>

Rocketman 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic it makes a weird sort of sense that the Cloud Native Computing Foundation would be unable to self-host stuff.

Erwan 🚄5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic

Reminds me of bitkeeper removing free licenses for linux kernel developers...

Fabian (Bocchi) 🏳️‍🌈5d ago

@huxley I love that people never learn... But hey, at least they can use bots and emoji

@huxley @fabiscafe And buy sparkly things that were designed for making kids micropayment addicts 🤩

@huxley @pluralistic

It's giving "Leaving Xitter for Bluesky"

KrisBuytaert 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic imvho #e14n started when open source communities chose proprietary platforms for their communication , this is just the predictable result

Tim Chase 5d ago

apropos timing on this drama showing up semi-adjacent to your Corporate-never-changes post

tusharhero 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic
Few years later: (((Opensource))) project kicked out from (((discord))).

RootWyrm 🇺🇦

@huxley that is very easily the dumbest fucking move possible proving we truly are on the dumbest fucking timeline forced by the dumbest fucking people.

It's not even the bullshit of Discord here. Discord has OPENLY SAID that they will be adding advertising and similar things because of their IPO. To say nothing of how miserable trying to collaborate on these sort of things on Discord actually is.
THESE ARE KNOWN THINGS.
AND THEY ARE ... <just throws up hands and becomes a goat farmer>

DeManiak 🇿🇦 🐧- The Real Cheeze 5d ago

@huxley @pluralistic 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

@huxley @pluralistic

I don’t think Discord will work well for this unless they do a big overhaul. That might happen if the users of those clusters flood Discord’s feedback with constructive improvements.

I don’t use Discord myself anymore. I actually don’t like the interface that much. seemed clunky the last time I used it.

huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28 5d ago

@rowanshielding @pluralistic they have done a lot of work on the ui for big communities. I hesitate to say it will probably be fine, functionally. My primary concern is their impending IPO and inevitable enshittification of their own afterwards

@huxley @pluralistic Ugh, Yeah, every time, every time I have heard of IPO, the company poos the bed after. It’s like the IPO is the signal the internet company has reached it’s peak and is now going to slide down into mediocrity. Seems like it needs a specific type of leader to not go that way.

plap women 2k26 5d ago

@huxley it'd be funny if they end up fine in discord

狐ヴィクシー 5d ago

@huxley Why not mattermost?

F4GRX SÃ©bastien 5d ago

@huxley this is bonkers on several levels.

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉5d ago

@huxley I refuse to participate in projects that use Discord or Slack. Not just because of this problem, but also because open source project communications should be public and easily searchable without an account or logging in. No matter what other features or benefits one might gain from proprietary products, if you lose that, you've already lost the war.

Kris Freedain 🙏 🏋🏻 🍕5d ago

@huxley hopefully they change course and go with Mattermost instead of Discord.

@huxley @revoltchat and @RocketChat are good options :P

@huxley Slack is a really terrible place for an open source project to begin with, to be fair

heyda.tech 5d ago

@huxley I posted this on a thread when I heard about k8s, but cncf too?! worth repeating!

the dichotomy of folks with the technical depth to keep huge parts of k8s architecture in their heads as they develop it, that they apparently possess deep understanding of reliability, scalability, security, and open-source principles, and can't figure out how to talk to each other is striking.

JKN Tech 5d ago

@huxley Yup. For all our crying and screaming about privacy and enshittification, most of the world still refuses to consider anything else. The excuses are endless and infuriating.

nassau69 4d ago

@huxley in fairness to them with a one week deadline there are likely no good options available and choosing a easiest and most likely to succeed path is the way forward

But it is always easy to criticize without acknowledging the elephant in the room. Most open source projects, even big ones llike those, don’t have the volunteers or funding to run all their own infrastructure

The volunteers come to code the cool stuff the project makes, not to run infrastructure software

Nova🐧✨3d ago

@huxley if you can find me even 1 other chat service that isn't a pain for users to use then I'd move to it... but as it is, the other options are really bad...

rocketchat has a hybrid forum/chat system that's confusing, matrix has slow incomplete clients and is lacking in moderation, revolt is a discord clone that afaik doesn't work as well as discord....

so what's another viable option?

@huxley @ramsey I can finally follow kubernetes and have discussions. Seriously dislike slack.