[mgreenleaf]

I think the idea is so that core developers have a quick way to chat with one another over design ideas w/o needing to register or setup other infrastructure, then move the best over to the permanent forum record or wiki.

Then the core members don't need to have a dedicated channel somewhere else. If they did, then that would be another inbox to check; instead they can check the fossil chat when they are on the project site looking over commits or documentation.

So it is just another source of information on the main "fossil channel" instead of another channel to check. Viewing it in that way, it is reducing the number of channels by simply inlining it.

[jayd16]

>Then the core members don't need to have a dedicated channel somewhere else.

But isn't that "a replacement"?

[mscrnt]

Not a replacement inasmuch as it's not a standalone chat client to be used by disparate users for various reasons. It's a chat client for developers of a given project to convene discussion about work going on in that repository at that point in time. So where Discord, for example, is for anyone to setup a server to discuss anything; Fossil chat is for devs working on projects that already use Fossil to convene discussions pertaining to that repository. You won't setup a Fossil instance just to use as a chat client—because it's not intended as a replacement or competitor for <list of chat platforms>—but if your project already uses Fossil, now you can keep your dev-related chat in-house.