eldh
commented
9 years ago It won't solve points 1 (though it seems user accounts can be migrated) or 3, and I'm not sure about 2 either. But anyway, I would like to throw in http://www.mattermost.org/ as an alternative. It's built with react, it's open source, and at least on paper it provides a similar feature set as Slack. The operating cost would be limited to the cost of running a server. It's at least better fit to the Reactiflux community model than Gitter.
zackify
benigeri
aaronjensen
vcarl
robotmayo
cobbweb
jaylaw81
morenoh149
Aaike
germ13
BerkeleyTrue
Sing-Li
chiedo
sgoldsmith
commadelimited
elwayman02
juliankrispel
gajus
philholden
engelgabriel
mydigitalself
quicksnap
jryans
taion
PLEASE DISCUSS IN https://github.com/reactiflux/volunteers/issues/25
Why don't we leave Slack?
In short, we haven't found a better alternative.
1. High switching cost
7500 people already have Reactiflux Slack account. Dozens of repos link to their respective Reactiflux channel. Switching to another service would be a big deal, and we'll probably lose a significant chunk of the community.
We're not opposed to moving away from Slack. We have very high switching cost though, so we'll only move if we have very good reasons to do so.
2. The product is amazing
Slack is great, and lots of people love it. Many of us believe it's the best messaging service for teams.
3. Many of us have it open by default.
Reactiflux is unusually active compared to other public Slack groups, Gitter channels, IRC channels, etc… Why is that?
Probably because so many of us use React and Slack at work.
Many of us are thinking about React at work. We’re working using libraries, building libraries, and running into bugs and problems. So we’re inclined to talk (read complain) about it with other people.
Many of us work at startups and tech companies that use Slack for team communication. So we open Slack every day and leave it running almost all the time.
And several months ago, Slack made it incredibly to switch between all of your teams.
Which means that even though most of us could never justify having yet another app or webpage open 24/7, just to talk to Reactiflux people, it happens automatically.
Obviously this isn’t the case for everyone on Reactiflux, but it is for many of us. In the early days, tons of people that joined kept on telling me “Oh, it’s so nice to be able to ask React questions on Slack since I already have it open all day.”
What are the top contenders?
Gitter
Gitter's benefits are that:
But Reactiflux would not make sense in Gitter world. Gitter channels are based on repos. So instead of what we currently have, in Slack world:
Gitter world would look like this:
All channels would no longer be grouped under Reactiflux. The community would break up and separate into dozens of smaller organizations, like Facebook, Yahoo, and Rakt. (Are we even sure that Facebook or Yahoo want Gitter organizations?)
So in Gitter world, what would be left of Reactiflux? Not much. Why do we need another Reactiflux/redux room? There will already be a Rakt/redux room.
I don't think Gitter world would be better.
In Slack world, Reactiflux creates an overlap between all of the React sub-communities. It brings people from #redux, #alt, #reflux, and #fluxible together because it's so easy to go from one channel to the other, or to mingle in #general.
In Slack world, it's easy to find channels and to peek inside to see if you like it. You can tag people across channels, so everybody's around all the time.
Slack let's Reactiflux be a higher order community for all of the smaller React and Flux communities.