2025-01-01, 12:28 AM
I definitely agree that we should have *some* kind of IM chat zone for folks wanting to hack on the firmware. Make no mistake we will have something. And I do agree as well that there seems to be no truly good solution at this time.
As a primary channel for longer-form discussion, requests for support, etc., I think this forum is still the right tool. It is very visible and searchable, and the barrier to participation is low. I think whatever IM chat approach we end up going with, I will aggressively ask folks to take larger discussions to the forum.
As for the specific IM platform we choose... I don't know. They really are all bad in various ways;
- Matrix makes people extremely mad, and also sounds like it's a real pain in the ass to run and moderate.
- IRC is... idiosyncratic. For folks who have been using it for decades it seems like a fine choice, but I've always found it to be totally impenetrable. We could maybe spin up a channel(?) on libera.chat and point folks at one of the nicer web irc frontends?
- Discord is obviously not very FOSS, and making chat logs visible outside of the platform is an ordeal. But it does have the advantage that all the CTZ folks are already on Discord for personal+community chatting.
- Some of the smaller chat platforms like mattermost or zulip look okay, but have the disadvantage that it's Yet Another App, so higher friction for folks to participate.
It's hard. I will take a few days to mess about with the options and think about it. Most likely we will end up needing to make a decision that's bad in various ways.
As a primary channel for longer-form discussion, requests for support, etc., I think this forum is still the right tool. It is very visible and searchable, and the barrier to participation is low. I think whatever IM chat approach we end up going with, I will aggressively ask folks to take larger discussions to the forum.
As for the specific IM platform we choose... I don't know. They really are all bad in various ways;
- Matrix makes people extremely mad, and also sounds like it's a real pain in the ass to run and moderate.
- IRC is... idiosyncratic. For folks who have been using it for decades it seems like a fine choice, but I've always found it to be totally impenetrable. We could maybe spin up a channel(?) on libera.chat and point folks at one of the nicer web irc frontends?
- Discord is obviously not very FOSS, and making chat logs visible outside of the platform is an ordeal. But it does have the advantage that all the CTZ folks are already on Discord for personal+community chatting.
- Some of the smaller chat platforms like mattermost or zulip look okay, but have the disadvantage that it's Yet Another App, so higher friction for folks to participate.
It's hard. I will take a few days to mess about with the options and think about it. Most likely we will end up needing to make a decision that's bad in various ways.
