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by pxc 1021 days ago
Requiring stakeholders (users, contributors, whatever) in a free software project to use non-free software to fully participate in the community is a disservice to the movement, the users, and software freedom generally.

There's some room for debate about offering Discord as a bridged option. But having the official community chat only on Discord? How is there even a question?
2 comments
MatthiasPortzel 1021 days ago
This argument also applies to GitHub, yet I’ve never seen an open source project criticized for hosting issues on GitHub.

Both are proprietary websites owned by for-profit companies. Both require you to create an account in order to participate in discussion.

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toastercat 1020 days ago
A couple points:

1. Git is distributed by design. Hosting on Github tends to not be controversial because that code can also live on Gitea/Sourcehut/your private git server at the same time. If Github goes down, it does not really matter. Very different from Discord, where there is no way to actually backup server/channel data, and attempting to do so may be a violation of the ToS and get you IP banned.

2. Your argument hinges on the fact that you have never seen an open-source project criticized, but it does happen. The blogpost in the parent comment even suggests not hosting on Github.

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pxc 1021 days ago
Most sizeable F/OSS organizations track bugs somewhere other than GitHub for exactly that reason!

Don't get me wrong. I get small developers defaulting to infrastructure they don't have to set up and maintain themselves, and I understand wanting to meet people where they're at. But it's definitely a problem that GitHub plays such a central role in F/OSS development, too.

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nonethewiser 1020 days ago
Non free software? Either this seems misleading or Im confused. You don’t need to pay to participate in the discord. The server owners may have costs but thats not a burden on the community and is always going to be the case.
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toastercat 1020 days ago
You may be unfamiliar with the term "free software". See the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
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dancemethis 1020 days ago
They (Discord team) seem to not know what Free Software means too.

Some time ago I asked them whether they planned to ever become Free Software so it could be actually safe and have a community around it, and after a couple of messages they went (not verbatim, but in spirit) "oh, open source? lolno", missing the point entirely in multiple ways.

Taking into account their massive teen-focused PR campaign - which is a particularly social phase of human growth and FOMO reigns supreme, their predecessor OpenFeint's demise including a privacy lawsuit, the amounts of data and metadata implicitly and explicitly collected, it's at least _likely enough to distrust it_. The doors in the back are bound to be giving that sweet personal data to whomever has a big enough money stick, and/or other non-trustable agencies.

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