Alexey Abramov
kepanoToday in ransomware, Slack increases pricing by $195k with a week's notice for a non-profit that teaches teenagers how to code.
Evert Pot@kepano oracle's gonna do what oracle does best
Mythic Beasts@kepano our experience with critical suppliers is that they will extort you unless they're a mutual organisation (e.g. internet exchanges, Nominet) or you can credibly move to a competitor. We believe in managed open source rather than propriety software as a service so our customers are always free to take their business elsewhere if we're not doing a good job. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/05/23/moss-the-antidote-to-saas/
@kepano for example, if you buy a smart fridge, the fridge manufacturer will change the terms so they can sell your fridge door to advertisers. https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/samsung-family-hub-refrigerators-advertisements/
Frances Perkins was right@kepano happy update on the original post! “I’m very happy to announce that a couple hours ago, Slack’s CEO got in contact with us and offered to put things right (I can’t exactly say what it is, but it’s better than the plan we were on previously!) A massive thank you to everyone who helped spread awareness - it was incredibly heartwarming to see so many people support us and help get this sorted.”
Mark LevisonUgh, Slack.
In my brain, I'm thinking about how we might use a Shared Obsidian vault as a Slack alternative.
This is a real feature request for Obsidian.
If you ever nail collaboration, I will happily pay for the Sync service for my whole team.
Heck it might even replace our Kanban board.
It would so useful, that I would offer to pick up my IDE and join the team to make it happen.
and I just discovered that Obsidian Sync is halfway there.
There is a threaded chat plugin:
https://github.com/k4-br0n/obsidian-threaded-chat/
Missing:
- support more than 20 users (doesn’t affect me, but it would be nice for the not for profit that started this thread)
- Versioning/Diffs so that you can see easily see someone else’s edits. The current sync versioning is only per change and doesn’t allow diffing over a longer set of edits.
- Notifications - Slack lets you know of posts in a channel.
As I dig further there is a piugin that already handles the diffs:
https://github.com/antoniotejada/obsidian-edit-history
The only thing, I missing: Sync Service doesn't tag the user. So we need to use the timestamp to figure out who made the change.
GitHub - antoniotejada/obsidian-edit-history: Obsidian Edit History Plugin, automatically save all the edit history of a note, browse and restore previous versions
Obsidian Edit History Plugin, automatically save all the edit history of a note, browse and restore previous versions - antoniotejada/obsidian-edit-history
Nick (Alatar the Blue)Let’s not forget that Slack is now owned by SalesForce, who is a predatory company almost on par with Oracle.
Kay Ohtie 🔜 FWA@alatartheblue
School of business here just asked for it to get connected to a database for being able to run reports.
We already have reporting software in several ways. I even maintain one of them now.
My boss and I agreed "Salesforce exists to sell more Salesforce".
@kepano
Phillip 
@kepano Honestly, ransomware is the perfect description of SaaS like this. It’s a massive racket
betalars 
@home@phillip thank you so much for being one of the few comments that's blaming slack and not the victim.
@betalars Are people really blaming the non profit? I haven’t seen any of that on fedi at least
@phillip should have seen that coming, that's why you don't use SAAS ... the majority of responses are in that direction.
@betalars Fair points broadly speaking, but doesn’t consider that most people aren’t even aware of this stuff, much less have the time, energy, and knowledge to do something about it
@phillip especially as this is a particularly krass example. I think in Germany business practices like these would plainly be illegal.
nullagentAbsolutely horrible sales strategy
derptron@kepano I'm getting really pissed off I have to continue supporting these shit companies to do my job.
I'm paying $20 a month right now for two fucking people just so I can connect to my clients. They themselves are probably paying out these several hundred k.
Knud JahnkeAre there more cases like this with #Slack? We have a 25k€/year plan and non-profit status and if this is systematic then I would initiate a #Mattermost installation _now_.
On a side note: Are self-hosted Mattermost instances free of license charges or do they still cost money?
I've been toying with the idea for a long time, but, as usual, the lock-in effect is quite substantial. We built a lot of workflows in Slack and have actual experts.
If Mattermost were free as a self-hosted instance, we would probably switch, but that I still think is not the case. Then we'd have an incentive to spend the time to transition.
Here, this might be contract change from "old" non-profit to a 20% rate. Which we already pay. So I'd like more statistics.
joosteto@knud @chris @kepano
What do you mean "if Mattermost were free as self-hosted instance"?
Mattermost *IS* opensource, and can be self-hosted.
Mattermost is an open-source, self-hostable online chat service with file sharing, search, and third party application integrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattermost
Yes, but as soon as we need single sign-on capabilities this doesn't work with the "free" (Team) version but requires a Pro subscription - even if self-hosted. For 1000 active users this would be again several 10k€ per year.
"Non-profit" status would not apply since we're a science collaboration and not a registered non-profit.
María Arias de Reyna@joosteto @knud @chris @kepano why do you need the single sign on? That's for companies that want to log once and have access to different services (email, chat, ticketing,...).
Any non for profit can work with a separated login on Mattermost. Which works wonderfully, if I may say.
And if you are a not for profit, ask Mattermost about some free/cheap hosting. They are usually generous and you can always migrate for free to your own instance if they stop the offer.
@delawen @joosteto @chris @kepano
We are a large science collaboration. We have a member system, we have a publication system, we have a Redmine server for issue tracking, we have a GitLab for code tracking, we have a Slack for communication, and some other services. With >1000 active people this can't be managed manually without an SSO system. We'd rather put out person power towards the science than to administrating things by hand.
Jens Bannmann ⁂@knud @delawen @joosteto @chris @kepano
You could look into #Zulip. SSO and all other features are *included* even when you go with the free plan. You just have to set it up on your own.
Paying customers will get support for these and other "enterprisey" features, but the features themselves are not exclusive to them.
@knud @joosteto @kepano Ich erinnere mich vage, etwas darüber gelesen zu haben, als ich mich mit gitlab beschäftigt habe. Ich bin nicht sicher, ob das hier der Artikel war, und ich habe das nicht ausprobiert (wir hatten ja gitlab), aber vielleicht ist es ja nützlich:
https://ayedo.de/posts/mattermost-self-hosted-sso-mit-authentik/
Leah 
4bzSSO only from Pro plan:
https://docs.mattermost.com/product-overview/plans.html
And one can only self-host Team version.
Albert Cardona@kepano Those who trust for-profit corporations to do what they could anyway do themselves, like in this case run an private IRC server or a private Mastodon server, will find that eventually the investors’ funded free ride stops and the demand for payment falls sharp where it hurts the most.
Stefan Ihringer
Ian Douglas Scott@kepano This sort of thing really shows the problem with assuming that large centrally-hosted corporate providers are the "safe option", vs a service provided by a smaller company and/or self-hosting.
I get the reasoning, but if they can suddenly demand "$50k this week and $200k a year" without warning... eh, you may be safer hosting on a server in your garage without any redundancy or backup.
Ryan Finnie@kepano Slack's doing damage control: https://www.reddit.com/r/Slack/comments/1njuchb/comment/newvtof/
Reinhard Lackner@kepano that is so fubar! #CancelSlack there are alternatives out there. Be the owner of your data, it's not that hard.
sauc3Wow this is so grimy
Daniel Jonsson@kepano TIL Slack is owned by Salesforce
Halal Cool J@kepano this is robbery, what is going ON? have to get off Slack, I got to.
@halalcoolj I'd love to read an article about your experience of moving to a different platform. Guides are great but nothing beats a testimonial to not only understand practical limitations but also encourage others to follow your example. 💖
Geoff Sweet@kepano I think slack is great. And in for-profit businesses it's a game changer for communication and how I work with my co-workers. But places like non-profits, should be looking at open source options that are nearly as powerful for basic functionality. Free to run, and easily deployed in places that can provide good security.
deedend@kepano
That should teach that non-profits should not rely on proprietary, walled garden platforms
That should teach that non-profits should not rely on proprietary, walled garden platforms
lachlan slowly taming rust@kepano Make them dependent, turn the screws.
With the threat to delete the history too - this is evil. Heck, potentially putting them in legal trouble depending on what in there forms an actual record with required retention.
Gytis Repečka@kepano Classic proprietary platform trap 