Alternative to discord (revolt)

[Iltis2017]

Hello community,

I would like to tell you about an alternative to discord that is open source. If you like to have a server on an open-source service. I could create one and maybe make it official one day.

The site in question https://revolt.chat/

Ilt1s

[Iltis2017]

Hello

It's a test server told me see that you in thought https://app.revolt.chat/invite/09EqT6J1.

[Stan`]

Hey,

The project sounds nice. I'm not a fan of the AGPL license though. It seems it's not really actice though?

[Lion.Kanzen]

33 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Hey,

The project sounds nice. I'm not a fan of the AGPL license though. It seems it's not really actice though?

What is that?

[Stan`]

It's like GPL, but it requires that anything interacting with the software be open source too.

[Iltis2017]

We have to see how the project will evolve. The project and relatively recent.

[Aoidos]

I too believe having an open source alternative to discord would be greatly beneficial (I for one don't have any will to join discord). What about matrix https://matrix.org/?  it is a mature protocol with good clients, including web.

Regarding the AGPL, I understand there is a continuous debate between the permissive and copyleft licenses camps, but I don't see how that would impact we using something under the AGPL, as long as you don't modify the code or distribute it you don't need to AGPL anything, and isn't 0ad engine GPL (great choice imo)?

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, Aoidos said:

I too believe having an open source alternative to discord would be greatly beneficial (I for one don't have any will to join discord). What about matrix https://matrix.org/?  it is a mature protocol with good clients, including web.

Regarding the AGPL, I understand there is a continuous debate between the permissive and copyleft licenses camps, but I don't see how that would impact we using something under the AGPL, as long as you don't modify the code or distribute it you don't need to AGPL anything, and isn't 0ad engine GPL (great choice imo)?

Technically we don't have a Discord.  We have many but no official ones.  Experience shows that most of our players don't seem to want to use anything else. I mean the lobby is XMPP we could use that too. 

Technically if you follow the license by the letter using windows is a breach of the license, because I don't have the source ^^ But yeah in most cases one should be fine.

[Iltis2017]

I think if you put an official 0ad server on another network than discord many players will follow especially if its looks like discord. Open source must support open source by using it in my opinion.

[Stan`]

7 minutes ago, Iltis2017 said:

I think if you put an official 0ad server on another network than discord many players will follow especially if its looks like discord. Open source must support open source by using it in my opinion.

Well we have IRC That does not work. The problem is everyone has all their friends on Discord :/

@Dakara, @Exodarion, @psypherium, @superflytom, @The Undying Nephalim, @Sevda and all other would you switch to another platform if we made an official Revolt server?

 

[Aoidos]

I agree with Iltis2017 that open source should support open source, and 0ad is already amazing in which it has both code and art assets free and is one of the biggest free software game projects out there. Drew Devault has an interesting article on why free software should not rely on proprietary infrastructure https://drewdevault.com/2022/03/29/free-software-free-infrastructure.html the most critical point in my opinion is when he writes that by using proprietary services you lend some of the credibility of the project to these services. Anyway, I know Discord server is not official I'm not saying 0ad is endorsing anything, I just think this is an interesting and healthy discussion.

42 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Well we have IRC That does not work. The problem is everyone has all their friends on Discord :/

@Dakara, @Exodarion, @psypherium, @superflytom, @The Undying Nephalim, @Sevda and all other would you switch to another platform if we made an official Revolt server?

I didn't know you had IRC, that makes me very happy! Guess I'll pop up there some other time. I suggested matrix, instead of IRC, because I know what a hard pill to swallow IRC is for most people (although I don't get how things like Slack take off, it is basically a glorified IRC that hogs all your memory).

[Sevda]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

all other would you switch to another platform if we made an official Revolt server?

I would be willing to try out Revolt.

 

[MarcusAureliu#s]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

Well we have IRC That does not work. The problem is everyone has all their friends on Discord :/

@Dakara, @Exodarion, @psypherium, @superflytom, @The Undying Nephalim, @Sevda and all other would you switch to another platform if we made an official Revolt server?

 

Despite not beeing mentioned here, i would use an official 0 AD server on such a platform  . Right now some people use a program called mumble for voice chat. It is open source also as far as i know. There is no 0 AD server though, so we use random servers created by others.

[Aoidos]

14 hours ago, MarcusAureliu#s said:

Despite not beeing mentioned here, i would use an official 0 AD server on such a platform  . Right now some people use a program called mumble for voice chat. It is open source also as far as i know. There is no 0 AD server though, so we use random servers created by others.

I usually play 0ad with my siblings every weekend and we have been using mumble all this time, it really works great, and yes it is free software.

[seeh]

On 23/06/2022 at 7:28 PM, Stan` said:

IRC

IRC is probably great. i not a pro with it. in comparison with for example matrix, IRC look for me much more specialized, in other words less less features compared to matric. right? i recognized that there so many clients and seems that fluffy (matrix client) seems for example nice for beginners. what you think? thanks for this https://github.com/revoltchat  d i don't know it. not really tested. i not really could say something about it. looks good (website GitHub ... ).

[Stan`]

My experience is this.

IRC okay for devs, especially people used to opensource, storing logs is a must. Bad for non technical people or impatient ones. Terrible for arguments or long conversations.

Xmpp a bit more user friendly than IRC, but still requires some technical stuff has native support for logs.

Matrix haven't used much seems to be like Xmpp but with better marketing.

Rocket.chat basically a cheap ( but more expensive version of discord)

Discord. De facto standard for games, grinds the gears of all the people who are in really into FOSS because proprietary.

[Loki1950]

We at the vegastrike project use gitter which you can bridge to IRC and it also allows matrix sign-ins as they own gitter.Gitter has nice intagration with GitHub as well,you can set up several chanels inculding privite ones with email notivication of posts.

Enjoy the Choice

[hyperion]

22 hours ago, Stan` said:

IRC okay for devs, especially people used to opensource, storing logs is a must. Bad for non technical people or impatient ones. Terrible for arguments or long conversations.

Which might be a pro

Anyway how is clicking the chat link in the forum navbar a challenge for not technical people?

22 hours ago, Stan` said:

Xmpp a bit more user friendly than IRC, but still requires some technical stuff has native support for logs.

On paper the best alternative to IRC for opensource, for plain chat perfectly fine for anything beyond you don't need a degree in CS but sure might be painful.

22 hours ago, Stan` said:

Matrix haven't used much seems to be like Xmpp but with better marketing.

The landscape is far more centralized which could be considered a con, however, as a consequence most everything works out of the box.

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For xmpp and matrix there are IRC bridges which could be setup if desirable

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Anyway, as for official channels, why are the current dev irc channel and a user irc and xmpp channel not sufficient?

[Stan`]

10 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Anyway how is clicking the chat link in the forum navbar a challenge for not technical people?

Could be hard to find. But most people expect to have some conversation history and only stay for a few minutes so we don't have time to answer. Most of the history on #0ad is just lost people. Sometimes we're lucky and @Langbart can help them.

10 minutes ago, hyperion said:

For xmpp and matrix there are IRC bridges which could be setup if desirable

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Bridges have gdpr implications which is annoying sharing ips and private data depending on how its stored etc.

14 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Anyway, as for official channels, why are the current dev irc channel and a user irc and xmpp channel not sufficient?

They are adapated for developpers and not players as most of them are on Discord. Some big youtubers asked us for that too. It's one of the most common requests after steam.

[hyperion]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

They are adapated for developpers and not players as most of them are on Discord. Some big youtubers asked us for that too. It's one of the most common requests after steam.

Just checked matrix and there is a 0ad channel with close to 70 people, sure there are channels for other mediums as well, why is this not good enough? How does make them official improve anything?