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by malux85 2266 days ago
"We grew up with IRC"

So your protocols are open and anyone can write a client and view the server source code? You know, like the spirit of IRC and the open internet?

Or is it a bloated webkit "app", hosted on private servers?
2 comments
jasode 2266 days ago
>So your protocols are open and

You're right but in this case, I don't think your criticism is relevant to why they mentioned "IRC". Maybe I misread their webpage but it sounds like they're criticizing IRC. The full blurb immediately after "We grew up using IRC" is about "message fatigue" and "pain of having to skim thousands of messages":

>We grew up using IRC. We’re a team of engineers and designers that hit message fatigue. We’ve felt the pain of having to skim thousands of messages, and we’re building Quill to solve it.

So it's like they're actually saying, "We grew up using IRC and know all its faults really well and we're trying to fix it."

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quickthrower2 2266 days ago
I know in an ideal world developers would make their software free as in speech, but most of the time that translates to free as in beer, which means getting paid nothing. Paid proprietary services don’t meet ideals but they tend to provide good support for business customers who choose to use them.
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malux85 2266 days ago
I'm well aware of the dynamics of money in a capitalistic society. Especially for companies like this one who have taken funding and not launched a product yet.

My annoyance was them touting "we grew up using IRC" and then taking none of the hacker ethos from it. I'm not saying they have to abandon profit entirely, but I would like to have seen some openness in their protocols. Some mention of launching an open API. But nothing.

Let's project forward a little using lessons from the past : This is a company, that has taken funding, has not launched a product, and is presumably not profitable. So if they run out of cash they're going to say to their investors, we have run out of money, and the investors are going to say what are your assets?

- The code

- A huge database of private conversations

Can you see why I'm not rushing to put all my private conversations in there?

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