[cadamsdotcom]

Perhaps k8s could roll its own Slack replacement. Sound crazy? Consider git: born of specific needs of Linux kernel plus a struggle to use commercially available tools.

If you squint there are similarities to the situation that led Linus Torvalds down the build-it-yourself path. What a tool like Slack “is” is pretty well defined, and they’re not being evil but are just unable to support a very unique community in k8s.

Owning its own tools helps the community own its own destiny.

[bananapub]

git was a tiny crappy content tracker linus, one of the most prolific C hackers in history, did in a couple of weeks. it wasn’t even a version control system nor intended to be used directly, merely to make his personal life easier after tridge enraged larry.

“Normie focussed multi platform api-driven rich text media chat system” is 100x that work and unrelated to k8s’ existing ocean boiling.

[cadamsdotcom]

I’m not saying they should; only that they could.

Nothing about it needs to be normie focused.

“merely to make his personal life easier” is the key. What made it what it is today is - after the first barebones release, it was worked on until it was useful enough to be worked on by more people; pretty soon there were a few folks using it, and eventually the snowball effect led to it being maintained by a motivated group of folks, which eventually leads us to today.

A collab tool doesn’t need to be built from scratch. Existing options include IRC, Matrix, Zulip... Maybe one fits the bill already.