[Talk-us] Slack: Do we need an Alternative (was Planning an import in Price George...)

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

> Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us> wrote:
> I must admit I like Slack better than some other forms of communications.
Truly, I think that's great.  And again, the many forms of communication OSM uses, including new ones, are a natural part of a project as large and diverse as OSM is.  There ARE a great many, some of which "resonate with an appropriate audience, in a certain niche" better than others.  As has been described here, Slack is claimed by its users to appeal to a certain niche of "chat," Jeffrey's X, Y, Z examples are excellent descriptions.

> For example, I don't participate on any OSM forums. IRC is nice, but the Slack, as a version of IRC, is just better. Since Slack was introduced to the community I've notice the talk-us mailing list traffic has slowed and even more so is the #osm-us IRC channel which for all practical purposes is dead.

With another OSM volunteer here on an email back-channel, I now discuss early thinkings about an existing, working-for-years software bridge between IRC and Jabber/XMPP he uses that sounds like it could mimic aspects of Slack using open source.  Not a huge amount of effort modifying this software bridge could breathe new life into IRC as it is/can be used by OSM participants.  This is a medium-scope back-burner for me right now, but it shows with a little glue and effort, open source can be leveraged yet again to fill a desire/need.  Peering off into the distance a bit, I am here.

> Communications within the community is one of the most important aspects of what makes our community thrive. We need tools that allow people to be engaged in discussions and process to be successful. Tools that people want to use. To me, seeing the number of people that use Slack compared to other forms of communications, means the community has chosen. 

Precisely what I wish OSM to guard against:  the false choice that "choosing" one means a certain exclusivity of others.  A "danger" here (as well described by Frederik) is to freeze out participation, as in "hush, we discussed this on Slack last year and you weren't there."  Such exclusivity enables this, we don't want this, (as you state, communication is vital), and "the community has chosen" seems to contradict or at least clash.

> I'm also part of a open source community that uses IRC and mailing lists to communicate. When Slack was introduced, just like OSM, traffic drop to nothing on IRC and mainly announcements on the mailing list. Part of that maybe because people use Slack in their day job.

"People use" is only the subset who do.  Importantly, that is a long, long way from everybody, or being inclusive towards communication in our very wide community.  In fact, it bumps up against that danger of exclusivity I want to call attention to so we avoid it.

> I don't wouldn't have any objections to another platform with more agreeable terms of service. But what specifically to Slack's terms is objectionable?

Rather than "get lost in the weeds" of specific paragraphs I find objectionable and why...(yawn, snore), I believe this list resonates enough with a higher-level description of "commercial software, with (perhaps) onerous or difficult-to-agree-with clauses/paragraphs, and the entire proprietary nature that being commercial and licensed implies."  We're adults, though it has gotten much easier to blithely click an "I agree" button and now you are under the thumb of the publisher of the software, with very, very little ability to negotiate better terms (more openness/transparency, more clarity with regard to data ownership and retention...).  "Open source vs. proprietary" is an even more brief way to say it that most people can understand.  The concept is also well-respected, and all over the world, too.  Not to mention it resonates well with OSM, whose first name, after all, is Open.

> I'm also interested in how others feel about Slack. Is it good for the community or should we look elsewhere?

Again, it isn't "either-or" and some kind of false choice of "let's standardize on one thing."  We not doing that, we shouldn't do that.

Thank you for the +1, Mark.  Jeffrey, yes, "too much control in the hands of a commercial entity" is concise (and a good start, even enough).  As well as X, Y, Z and "noise tends to overwhelm signal" and "real-time can exclude less-dedicated members."  Excellent, all of these.

Maybe the best thing to come out of this is wider discussion of the many communication methods OSM DOES use, and how they fit into niches and particular workflows, and what works (better, worse) and what doesn't.  That should be ongoing, anyway, so I suppose we can say we're doing OK.  I often wish us to do better, nudge, nudge.  Sometimes that begins with good discussion.  Look, we presently have here a rough initial inventory of communication methods/channels/protocols/software.  I'll take that as a good beginning.

SteveA
California