Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects : foss

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

YESSS. I so wish this would be considered more.

There's several FOSS projects that I engage with that use discord pretty much exclusively and as such I'm locked out of the community. Like Home Assistant.

I really don't understand why they use it for FOSS projects that are all focused on privacy (home assistant for example focuses on using home automation without cloud so your data doesn't end up everywhere). And then lock you in to such a privacy-hostile service to communicate with them, when actually great alternatives are available like Matrix/Element.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The answer is pluralkit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

You're not "locked out". You choose to exclude yourself by placing such a high value on privacy. Privacy for what here? For some near-public announcement threads and support channel chats that anyone else in the channel could screenshot or download or post online anyway? That is your choice but framing it as the project developers locking you out is strange.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Privacy for what here?

For anti-surveillance

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You choose to exclude yourself by placing such a high value on privacy. Privacy for what here?

It's not the privacy of the content we're discussing, it's the horrible Discord client that keeps datamining your PC. It even inspects all the processes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/43lqyb/why_is_discord_recording_our_open_programs_and/

And they don't allow third party clients. They say it can't be turned off because of their push to talk features but I never use those anyway (and they are not needed for FOSS projects, they're more gaming features).

Anyway I don't trust them and don't want to do "business" with them (and definitely not with Tencent). My point is that this mindset of "placing a high value on privacy" while admittedly quite niche, is definitely something many FOSS projects subscribe to. In particular Home Assistant which I mentioned, because a big reason for people using it is because they don't want all their home data in a big data cloud (e.g. homekit, alexa, google home etc). The whole point of home assistant is so you can use your smart home equiment without having to subcribe to commercial companies. And then they do something like this.

What they could do is provide a secondary channel or a bridge to discord which they don't bother with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’s not the privacy of the content we’re discussing, it’s the horrible Discord client that keeps datamining your PC. It even inspects all the processes.

I agree that Discord isn't a good choice for FOSS projects for various reasons including privacy, but can't you just use the web client to avoid that specific issue?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I don't really want to sign up to their T&C's, but I did in the past. But their web client is really annoying, it's constantly blocking me and kicking me out and giving captcha's. Probably I have too many ad/tracking blockers :P

But again, with a real FOSS ecosystem you wouldn't have to worry about such skullduggery because there is no tracking to block.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago

I absolutely agree with the central message. I would add a few reasons, notably lack of end-to-end encryption and partial ownership by Tencent, as strong reasons to stay away if you can avoid it.

That said, a lot of the particular details listed here actually aren't right to me.

By choosing Discord, you also lock out users with accessibility needs, for whom the proprietary Discord client is often a nightmare to use. - From the footnote: "What I can tell you is that, to my surprise, Discord’s accessibility has apparently improved in recent years, and more blind people are using it now. One of my blind friends told me that most Discord functionality is very accessible and several blind communities are using it."
Users of novel or unusual operating systems or devices (i.e. innovators and early adopters) are also locked out of the client until Discord sees fit to port it to their platform. - What do you mean? The web client doesn't work on web browsers that are running on unusual OSs?
Discord also declines service to users in countries under US sanctions, such as Iran. Privacy-concious users will think twice before using Discord to participate in your project, or will be denied outright if they rely on Tor or VPNs. - I've used Discord through Tor and as far as I can tell it works fine.

Like I say I actually agree with the central thesis but not with more or less any of the specific reasons he cites.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why does nobody ever recommend GitLab

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Because they rm -rf ed their server

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wait, what did I miss?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Such an iconic video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLdRBsuvVKc

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

...is that seriously your reason? Do you know about how Codeberg displayed something about a javascript error on top of that website for months? Mistakes happen, and as long as they have backup plans I don't see how that is an issue.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

I think providing guidance on replacing discord, while maintaining flexibility, is just as important.

I'm not a dev but this topic keeps popping up on Lemmy and maybe the solution is to create a megathread or some sort of wiki detailing best practices for FOSS and suggestions on what the community supports.

Maybe less experienced people will take too long to reach this conclusion otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

But why not issue trackers?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I feel like cross-posts should share comment threads…

Now comment threads are split across 6 communities.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Kbin website implements this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh really? That's interesting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, to be precise, kbin groups posts with the same URL.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I've seen some Lemmy apps/interfaces do that as well. So maybe it's not all that different?

I think what they're suggesting is that a post would have a merged view of all comments from all the different duplicate posts in all the different communities it's posted in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I see the cross posts all at the top but comments are separate

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

To combine the comments would probably require a revision to the lemmy protocol, plus an even bigger one to the backend software to keep backwards compatibility

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If it is possible to detect which posts are cross posts, it should be possible to create a client app that combines the threads. Maybe give you an option to chose which one to post your comment.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I don't think it should be a client feature. It should be federated, like the posts are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think the issue with federation of comments is moderation of comments.

You might not like the admins of example.org:foo but you might have no issues with the admins of example.com:foo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I was just thinking about a possible solution based on what we have. I agree it would be better if cross post comments were federated, but I guess there's different opinions on that (do the lemmy devs agree for example?).

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The convo on HN about this article is worth a quick scroll.

The first comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39570137) launches a discussion about freedom filled with anecdotes. There are even more anecdotes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39570364). And even some praise (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39570484).

I am not a dev. I don't rice, I don't game. I'm a FOSS user and have been for years. If I run into a problem, there is no way I will be creating an account on Discord to get help. It might not be worth the time and effort. A searchable forum is good enough. IRC logs are good enough. Email lists are good enough. But, also, some open source software makes onboarding seem more cumbersome than it actually is. Getting on Matrix is easy, but in he eyes of a new user it comes off as Herculean. And when a dev decides to use Discord we shake our fists instead of proposing a solution like operating the bridge for them.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If I run into a problem, there is no way I will be creating an account on Discord to get help. It might not be worth the time and effort. A searchable forum is good enough.

I use Discord, but I actually agree with this. It's a really good platform for small groups of people to communicate with each other - for example, we have one for my class at university, which allows us to keep in contact about assignments, projects, deadlines, etc. What I don't want to do is join a Discord server for every single game or piece of software I need help with. It's just not a great platform for having hundreds or thousands of people trying to get help, often asking the same questions over and over, while the community regulars are chatting about their personal lives.

Searchable forums, website-based FAQs and help files, or any other option that makes help accessible without having to download new software or sign up for new accounts, are the most suitable options for making help available.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

What's more, Discord clearly wasn't intended to be used like this at the start. The 100-server limit on a Discord account ensures the user has to curate the servers they join, at least to some degree.

The only way to join more servers than that is to start using the higher-tier paid Nitro plan, or get comfortable running multiple Discord accounts.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing this article! This prevented me from working on projects and software. Not only FOSS projects should refrain from using Discord. Community-driven projects like Skywind are barring themselves from helping hands, they desperately need, by using proprietary, privacy-threatening software as their way of communication.

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