[kazinator]

"federated servers" is the only way to maintain a form of freedom while (out of necessity) operating software as a service.

If you think that you can't do free software development without relying on all the capabilities of Slack, then the honest thing to do is to quit and spend the rest of your days just working on proprietary stuff. You obviously prefer the solution which has features over any other concern, so why would you waste your time having anything to do with free software?

Richard Stallman obviously used proprietary software. But not past the point when he had replace it, even imperfectly: "I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done my editing on other kinds of machines until then." [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf] This tells us that Stallman used Unix. Well, why wouldn't he have; what other practical way was there to code anything? (One supposes he could have started from the bootloader on up, like the Unix guys before him.)

Stallman wouldn't use Unix today, since it has been replaced by free software, and he wouldn't use arguments like, well, such and such proprietary Unix has better memory management or faster I/O, so I will still use that.

If you're using things like Slack or Github without the slightest intent of working toward replacing them, yet using them for free software activities, then that is a comically conflicted position.

[oneplane]

Federation has been tried a lot and in the end it always fails, even if it's the best solution. XMMP is pretty much dead regarding free use, IRC for a lot of FOSS project is slowing dying, there were a lot of federated social media projects that simply failed because they couldn't attract anyone.

Being technically the best (or the best in 'freedom') doesn't seem relevant to anyone.

[wahern]

Centralization has never succeeded. Let's see how popular Slack is in 5 years. 10 years. There's no reason to believe it won't go the way of ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, etc.

IP, TCP, SMTP, HTTP, these are fundamentally technologies of federation. They succeeded and continue to succeed spectacularly. However, with the commercialization of the Internet there are much stronger countercurrents. I still expect federated solutions to succeed, but adoption will be slower and punctuated, and in the interim there'll be countless proprietary also rans.

[oneplane]

I suppose you are right from a technology standpoint. I was aiming at the user-facing side of things. There is SMTP and email that is federated and usable by most people, so I suppose there are examples of user-success.

[rjsw]

I would guess that he was editing source on ITS or a Lisp Machine before this point.

I think you can see some evidence of what people thought were development machines by the fact that Lisp Machines only seem to have been NFS servers, not NFS clients.

[malvosenior]

Yeah, I don't think so. I work on other OSS and happily use Slack because it's fun and easy (I used to use IRC). I'm not conflicted at all because I appreciate a good UX. I think it would be totally awesome if more open source developers realized that people will use whatever is better for them which often doesn't mean prioritizing openness over usability or features.

I totally get the value of a non-corporate, non-centralized solution. It just needs to have at least as good of a UX for me to switch back to using it.

[kazinator]

You're only narrowly escape being conflicted because you identify as an "OSS" developer rather than a "free software" developer. The term "open source" and its identification was basically crafted to avoid being conflicted this way.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

> A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, “I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?” This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

> The free software activist will say, “Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.” If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

Relying on Slack, Github and what have you is clearly not to "get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement.” It aligns with attitude exemplified by the "pure open source enthusiast".

[malvosenior]

This is correct. I care about user experience far more than any political statement. I love open source because I'm a developer and can work with the codebase but that doesn't hinder my enjoyment of closed source software at all if it provides an excellent user experience. There are way more buckets someone may fall into rather than closed source freedom killer and free software activist.