[craftyguy]

Why is a IM chat platform an advantage, compared to a forum ? from user point of view I mean, so except for forum maintenance that I understand is a hard work.

IMHO it's easier to have discussions over chat than it is on a forum. I have a series of questions related to some feature I'm working on in the firmware, should I make each question a separate forum post? Should I have one post about it and list all the questions, and then try to sort out responses as folks randomly respond (or bikeshed) in the post? I don't know what else to say about this, maybe it comes down to personal preference 😅

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.

Yeah, they all kinda suck, tbh. You don't need to host anything for matrix though, just register for an account on any matrix instance (matrix.org), create a room for tangara fw, and let federation do its thing. You don't need E2EE, and you don't need to mess with Spaces or any 'advanced' matrix features. 🤷
It can be bridged to IRC for folks who want that, and I'm sure someone has figured out how to bridge to discord, signal, telegram, whatever.