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by busk07
845 days ago
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By your reasoning, any backend that’s not accessible directly by the user is proprietary. HN would then also be proprietary, because it relies on a third party (HN) and uses a nonstandard closed protocol (this comment section). Any website that stores data and exposes it via their own UI is proprietary (I leave this vague on purpose, as it is up to interpretation). Discord can be run in the browser and is accessible via APIs. I think it’s as open as any other web app by a company that has a commercial interest. Services like Discord have lowered the entry barrier for non-technical conversation and community-building online. It certainly seems to be polarizing. I’ve noticed a lot of my friends and colleagues either embrace it or despise it. I wouldn’t mind an open-source alternative to it, but with the extensive features that it offers that’s hard to achieve. |
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I've never said such thing. It doesn't matter if you can access things directly: proprietary means it's not FOSS, that's it.
> Discord can be run in the browser and is accessible via APIs. I think it’s as open as any other web app by a company that has a commercial interest
You need an account to browse Discord, which they can take away from you anytime. If you lose your account you lose your membership to any invite-only communities you belong to, which can be a big deal if you don't have other means to communicate with them to get invited back.
Also, Discord isn't indexable by search engines. So, no there's a big difference between Discord and most web forums.
Also, I don't have anything in particular against Discord (it's miles ahead of Slack in UX for instance, which I hate with a passion), but when people advertise themselves as fans of the old web, and link to their Discord, one can only smirk from the irony.