Slack and Slack alternatives discussion

[krook]

This discussion is to talk about the changes to Slack and the potential alternative platforms to use for real-time chat.

For more context and the current state of the Slack changes, see the CNCF blog post.

There is also a #slack-faq channel in the CNCF Slack to discuss tactical migration needs.

Note

The CNCF and the Kubernetes Slack workspaces are separate but related entities.

Each community may choose to go with a different approach. If you're interested in the Kubernetes discussion, follow the issue over there.

Note

Hello everyone. We've received notice from Salesforce that our Slack workspace WILL NOT BE DOWNGRADED on June 20th.
Stand by for more details, but for now there is no urgency to backup private channels or direct messages.

[ywwg]

I think the discussion over at Kubernetes is great, especially the comparison grid. As someone who runs a medium-sized Zulip instance (3K users) to manage an open source project I think it's a great platform and a good mix of functionality and openness.

[netthier]

+1 to Zulip.
I'm seeing a lot of suggestions to use Discord instead, but considering it is a proprietary product by private company with plans to IPO in the foreseeable future and with a history of increasingly attempting to make the platform more profitable, especially recently (Discord has ads!), I'm not sure if it's a sustainable solution. I wouldn't be surprised if Discord did the same Slack just did a few years down the line.

[pschoen-itsc]

I have no experience in managing a Zulip instance, but as a user the experience was just great the last time I used it.
I also think Discord is the wrong platform. From my experience you have to solve a lot of captchas and provide a phone number to even get started. As an open community we should use something without additional / unneded barriers.

[Vad1mo]

As an open-source ecosystem, the CNCF should ensure the valuable knowledge is retained and controlled by the foundation and for the good of the community.

This move would not only align with the principle of "eating your own dog food" but also safeguard the community's data and discussions for the benefit of all its members for the next decade and beyond.

IMO this is only possible with Zulip! It is also a great software with a great community committed to OSS

[austinlparker]

A point towards Discord is that people have actually heard of it. While I'm sure Zulip is great, there's something to be said for using platforms with some amount of mainstream cachet, especially if we'd like to continue to grow our user/contributor base. Younger people, especially, seem to be very familiar with Discord and I've seen an increasing number of tech communities using it.

[mlavi]

Perhaps I can put words on the negatives: picking something proprietary would not prevent the current issue from happening again, forcing a disruptive migration for the community. That should cause negative weighting on proprietary choices.

Picking something with popularity or familiarity would be a positive, but not as important as preventing community migration!

[mfahlandt]

My personal opinion on the topic is I favor discord for various reasons.

It proved to support large communities
Large Developer Communities and some projects moved there already (e.g. Google Developer Community, ARM, Backstage, dapr and so on)
It has clients for all major platforms and mobile
It supports various tools for moderation
It is mainstream, cc what @austinlparker pointed out #1053 (comment)
It is possible to basically stream all content to the web to make it searchable into Google (AnswerOverflow) - Also reduction of vendor Login

The biggest Reason:
The CNCF does not need to host anything and potentially need Ops for this to "just" run

Yes, there is a risk of them pulling the plug, but every other tool has the risk of discontinuity. Also, this is really my personal point, I don't want yet another chat client. The adoption of discord is already high, so this probably will apply to a lot of folks.

[vanderaj]

Hi there, I'm Andrew van der Stock, the Executive Director of the OWASP Foundation. We are in a similar situation, and now Salesforce / Slack is one of our biggest bills. I'd like to have a meeting with you to discuss our situations, and see if we can follow suit, especially, if we could jointly negotiate with someone like Discord. Migrating our 10+ year Slack to another platform is one of our key issues. We have all that history, thousands of participants, and so on.

[friedrichg]

I have used Slack in CNCF for a number of years. And have responded several messages per week in a CNCF channel as a maintainer and contributor.

There is something to be said about making all our community less dependent on these almost real time communications.
What I mean, I understand the pain right now. I have it too. But maybe is a good time to promote more GitHub issues and PRs and less real time responses. I understand some do prefer the personalized response, but in terms of time management. It's better we discourage it in general for the good of everybody. What do you all think?

[lizrice]

GitHub discussions, PRs and issues are great for discussions with some level of "depth". And it's a tool that almost everyone in our communities is likely to be using already (I imagine few people are excited about having to add Yet Another Communication Tool!) But that said, we do benefit from something that is real-time, threaded and lighter-weight for many interactions. It's also useful to have DMs - most conversations should be public but there are plenty of legit reasons for direct person-to-person communications too

[Vad1mo]

GitHub issues and PRs and real-time communication are two things complementing each other and not replacing each other. If they would, one could argue to replace GitHub issues and PR reviews with Slack conversations. (No sane person wants that, for a good reason)

[catalandres]

Discord is an ill-fitting tool for a developer community.

• Mattermost could work if real-time communication is a must-have (as @friedrichg mentioned, there is a chance it is not).
• Discourse works beautifully where I have seen it in use (e.g. Swift, Ghost).

Both alternatives are open source, although Mattermost is open core.

[cardil]

Discord is awful for productivity. It works the best for games, and streamers, and it's not open-source!

Hosted Zulip is open-source, and should do the trick!

[eznix86]

Well, maybe this https://once.com/campfire

It is great, and works well on a VPS. or maybe run it in kubernetes :)

[Vad1mo]

it is not designed for that! the usual size is 10-50 people. not 50k
Everything there is designed for that size

[michaelcoyote]

My question is do we have any lessons learned from this?

Was the possibility of Slack putting CNCF on a free plan ever discussed? Were there ever backups of the CNCF Slack?

I've seen folks advocate a move to Discord, but what happens when Discord decides (as is their right as a private business) to charge more than the CNCF is willing to pay?

I think that before CNCF rushes to another real time chat platform I'd love to see a full exploration and discussion of the pros and cons of the available platforms.

I'd also love to see the lessons learned from the move once it's time to do so.

[ywwg]

+1 to this. It would be a huge pain to switch to another proprietary system only to have them also suddenly raise the price. I know the Open alternatives are not as polished, but I believe part of the open source philosophy is participating in and helping to improve the whole ecosystem as a community.

[michaelcoyote]

Just coming back to this a bit. I know that the pressure is off and there's no timeline to migrate, but I still think it would make a lot of sense to come up with a lessons learned document from this and at least think about objectives for future systems.

Also I'd like to hear if there's any criteria for judging when a commercial system might become untenable even if it continues to be free to use. Are there restrictions in use or movement of data that might be considered "beyond the pale" and force the CNCF to consider a move?

[tiny-pangolin]

Would the cncf be able to run their own matrix instance or partner with elementhq to setup an instance? I like being able to use the same matrix account across multiple projects, and there are already some sizable projects using matrix like Fedora. The issue I have with discord is that they can alter the deal the same way slack did. Also I do not want to pay for a propetairy platform or have to deal with ads to participate in an open source community

[damadmai]

Matrix is very easy to maintain:
https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
And you have the backups on your own infrastructure.

So you don't have to hope that you are not locked out on short notice or even immediately some time in the future.

[damadmai]

And its no walled garden, its federated!

[damadmai]

There are also providers like https://etke.cc/ which host Matrix for you.
With Matrix you can have a backup of all your data and do not need to rely on a provider.

[abhi82482]

Hey folks, thanks for the update. Good to know the downgrade isn't happening on June 20—that gives some breathing room.

I'm actively contributing and maintaining CNCF projects, so just want to stay aligned on whatever direction the community takes.

If we’re seriously considering alternatives (like Matrix or Discord), I’d be happy to test or help with migration planning.

Also—will there be any guidelines around archiving important convos from private channels or DMs just in case?

[Kathrininfanta]

Thanks for the update. It’s good to hear that the Slack workspace won’t be downgraded on June 20th, which gives communities more time to evaluate options instead of rushing into a migration.

That said, the recent discussions around Slack policy and pricing changes are a reminder that many organizations are starting to look at alternative communication platforms for long-term flexibility and control.

Some commonly explored options include platforms like Mattermost, Zulip, and Rocket.Chat, which are popular in developer communities due to their open-source and self-hosting capabilities.

Another approach some organizations consider is building their own messaging infrastructure rather than relying on a fully managed collaboration platform. In those cases, communication platforms like MirrorFly provide APIs and SDKs to build custom messaging software with features such as real-time chat, voice/video communication, and AI-powered automation.

Even though there’s no immediate need to migrate, it’s still useful for communities to evaluate backup strategies and possible alternatives, so that if future platform changes occur, the transition can be handled more smoothly.

Curious to hear what other platforms or approaches different CNCF communities are exploring.

check: https://github.com/MirrorFly/MirrorFly-Lite-Chat-SDK-App-Angular