It’d have to be IRC or XMPP with a specific front-end, and I don’t actually know an IRC or XMPP client that has comparable features. IRCCloud would probably be the closest, and I love it, but I think that ten minutes of using it plus a Slack clone will probably be enough to show you why they’re not interchangeable.
There was that post about not using Slack this weekend, and I have to say, I wondered how hard it’d be to build an FOSS “IRCCloud” with minimal dependencies, which offered archived search, link/image expansion, and all the other niceties that Slack give you.
In reality, what you want is a nice web frontend to an IRC bouncer and you’re most of the way there.
Argh, why web interfaces? I don’t want to chat from within my browser; do you know how much memory it’s already using? The great thing about IRC is that with a good client (weechat, irssi, xchat) you could be on hundreds of channel with a lot of activity and it would barely make a dent in resource usage. We really, really need to stop trying to make every damn desktop application a web application.
End-to-end encryption in the multi-user case is a very subtle problem, and I’m not aware of anything that is usable today that I’d trust. There are several experiments trying to make it work, some over the general internet and some over onion-routing protocols, but the last time I checked they had all painted themselves into various corners with design requirements that try to hide essential complexity. As part of why this is hard, it’s worth noting that there’s almost no point at all in solving content privacy without solving metadata privacy, since metadata about who’s talking to who is far more revealing and easier to data-mine than what they’re actually saying.
XMPP+OTC does support e2e, but only for the two-people case, which is much simpler.
I agree with you that security is not meaningfully different among the choices presented here. Privacy certainly is; using a service somebody else hosts gives them the ability to snoop (in the absence of e2e). Since we don’t have e2e yet, it’s desirable to be able to choose who you trust, separately from choosing the technology. I think that’s the concern people are trying to get at.
Use XMPP or IRC with a client that supports end to end encryption if you really care. Personally, I’m happy with Slack because it works well with my iPad.
Can you name me any good ones that work in a group setting?
Surprised there was no mention of irc..
It’d have to be IRC or XMPP with a specific front-end, and I don’t actually know an IRC or XMPP client that has comparable features. IRCCloud would probably be the closest, and I love it, but I think that ten minutes of using it plus a Slack clone will probably be enough to show you why they’re not interchangeable.
Yeah, IRCCloud would be the closet, but it’s also not FOSS.
https://github.com/erming/shout/ <– closer, seems to have an alright UI as well.
There was that post about not using Slack this weekend, and I have to say, I wondered how hard it’d be to build an FOSS “IRCCloud” with minimal dependencies, which offered archived search, link/image expansion, and all the other niceties that Slack give you.
In reality, what you want is a nice web frontend to an IRC bouncer and you’re most of the way there.
https://github.com/ircanywhere/ircanywhere just found this. Not sure if its any good, of course.
Because they are not equivalent.
Or XMPP.
Copying over info I found relevant from HN comments (minus the Slack vs IRC flamewar junk):
Focus on open protocols
DM encryption
Argh, why web interfaces? I don’t want to chat from within my browser; do you know how much memory it’s already using? The great thing about IRC is that with a good client (weechat, irssi, xchat) you could be on hundreds of channel with a lot of activity and it would barely make a dent in resource usage. We really, really need to stop trying to make every damn desktop application a web application.
Web applications can be framed in app containers, which is all that slack is, by the way.
I agree with the memory usage, but I know quite a few people that would choose GIFs over low memory footprint.
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End-to-end encryption in the multi-user case is a very subtle problem, and I’m not aware of anything that is usable today that I’d trust. There are several experiments trying to make it work, some over the general internet and some over onion-routing protocols, but the last time I checked they had all painted themselves into various corners with design requirements that try to hide essential complexity. As part of why this is hard, it’s worth noting that there’s almost no point at all in solving content privacy without solving metadata privacy, since metadata about who’s talking to who is far more revealing and easier to data-mine than what they’re actually saying.
XMPP+OTC does support e2e, but only for the two-people case, which is much simpler.
I agree with you that security is not meaningfully different among the choices presented here. Privacy certainly is; using a service somebody else hosts gives them the ability to snoop (in the absence of e2e). Since we don’t have e2e yet, it’s desirable to be able to choose who you trust, separately from choosing the technology. I think that’s the concern people are trying to get at.
Can you name me any good ones that work in a group setting?
There is a “Secure connection failed” warning for Firefox on that site =(
Hm. It’s okay for me in Firefox.
I am on OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite) with Firefox 41.0.2
What specifically is the error? Can you show a screenshot?
There isn’t anything besides the error =/ Here’s a screenshot:
http://imgur.com/nAjg7gO
Let’s take this to DM. Thank you Firefox for the totally unhelpful error message. =(
EDIT: Seems like it might actually be a networking error on your end.