Promote Rocket Chat instance as an alternative to Slack

It would be great to get some more infos:

• What are the guarantees that the service is here to stay?
• Who's paying for the server?
• Who are the admins/contacts?

@ciss take a look here!

and ask him

or just use Twitter

Need more Information? just watch this

This service is created by the Community for the Community.

Built with FOSS software ( https://rocket.chat ) on cluster architecture so it can be decentralized with a consistent history.
As a community we need to be able to learn from our own history.

It is owned and funded by the Drupal Europe Stichting (a Dutch Foundation)

There is currently a set of ~10 hand picked ops whom are also community enthusiast / leaders.
We are happy to facilitate the Global Drupal Community.
Roadmap

Scaling plans have backing of many major Drupal hosting companies.
Kind regards,

Floris van Geel

@idevit Thanks for your feedback! May I suggest to create a project on drupal.org specifically for the service? This could act as an official point of contact to all admins and also provide a central source of information.

Also, what is your current registration workflow? There's a beta registration page (with which I tried to register, but hadn't received any mail yet), while on the front page it states that the chat is "invite only" and applicants need to contact you or "community members" (which are who?).

@ciss Our goal for DrupalChat was and is to hook it up to an centralized authorization provider from drupal.org. As this infrastructure is still not there we decided against a complete open registration for bootstrapping. The beta registration page is the right place to go ATM and is the link that should be shared with our peers. There might be a little delay until you receive the registration mail. Otherwise we welcome you over there at the channel #rocket.chat for ideas and improvements :)

@ciss thank you for the feedback, we'll create a service project on d.o.

The beta registration works, perhaps check you spam box?
Assuming you used a valid email address on a non blacklisted server?

The goal of this "beta" registration is to have Community members sign up, no fake / spammers.

This will eventually be resolved awaiting this issue:
https://www.drupal.org/project/infrastructure/issues/2908988
Then we can directly authenticate against d.o. and increase community engagement.

@idevit Perhaps my request was considered spammy because I provided drupalchat.eu@{mypersonaldomain.tld} as email. I'll reapply, otherwise I'll wait for the project and create an issue there.

+1 for moving to DrupalChat.eu :)

+1 we need to get out of the walled garden. matrix/irc/rocketchat they all integrate in an open way.

Great to see Rocketchat in the mix.

But with an .eu domain name... it kinda excludes the rest of the world.

The intention might be to include the rest of us - but that needs to be made really really clear.

I wonder if we could discuss possibility of having chat.drupal.org or drupal.org/chat or something like that instead ?

But then that makes it something the DA might have to support, which isn't realistic at this point.

This is really timely. I have a BoF created at Drupalcon Nashville (Thurs 1pm) to discuss moving off of Slack. Please come if you're attending Drupalcon!

I also agree with with @kattekrab on the .eu tld.

BoF: https://events.drupal.org/nashville2018/bofs/moving-drupal-chat-communit...

@mherchel this project needs some volunteers: https://www.drupal.org/project/matrixchat with that we can make a bridge to keep IRC people, connected with rocketchat and, obviously, matrix.org

The server code lives here: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse
Clients for every platform: https://github.com/vector-im
and it's 100% FLOSS

That project (https://www.drupal.org/project/matrixchat) came out of the Bof in Drupalcon Vienna 2017 and we are looking for more people that can help move this forward.

For now please join the test bridge living at: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#drupal-bridges:drupalch.at (IRC+Drupalchat.eu+drupalch.at+gitter...) conversation is transparent and unified.

For the records, this where the decision to create this project came from: https://events.drupal.org/vienna2017/bofs/irc-and-bridging-drupal-community

I think nobody would argument against drupalchat.org if this is available.

@ricardoamaro That seems really interesting. I'll add it to the document.

@rogerpfaff Drupalchat.org seems to be registered under private registration. I wonder if the DA would consider setting up a subdomain, chat.drupal.org?

+1 for drupalchat.org

Before deciding to move to a different platform for chat, I think we should consider the following factors, which as far as I know, were not really considered when the community moved to Slack (not necessarily officially, but pretty much everyone stopped using IRC and switched to Slack):

a) Software maintenance: Who is maintaining this platform, and is it sustainable? For instance, Drupal, Linux, IRC, etc. are maintained by large FOSS groups with a long history. Slack is maintained by a company with its own interests. What about this new channel?

b) Usability: What features make this platform better/worse than Slack and IRC? Is it more or less usable/intiutive? What are the barriers for joining (do you need to download a specific client, etc.)? Is it usable all platforms (various desktop O/S, mobile, etc.)?

c) Infrastructure: What infrastructure / load / maintenance burden / moderation burden etc. does this platform introduce?

d) Accessibility: Can users with screen readers use this service (all screenreaders? some screenreaders?) What about other accessibility groups using other types of adaptive technology or technology limitations (no mouse? large fonts? high contrast? etc.)?

I don't see immediate answers to these questions in this issue... it would be good to have a comparison matrix between IRC, Slack, and this new platform, in these 4 areas (and possibly others I have forgotten).

Accessibility is very strong point! RC changing its UI every minor release (last release made chat list very small font).

Usability is good enough except of mobile clients... I'm using 3 of them and each one has own issues, my daily choice is RocketChat+ cos eats less resources & allows to mvp for chat.

Huge downside is missing threaded conversations comparing to slack but IRC has no this feature as well.

I'm a bit confused about this status and i'm confident many others are confused as well.

Please fix the signup process before creating more promotional rumor.
The message "Please contact... doesn't even allow me to copy-paste the URL of whom to contact.

There is open source promo stuff for a long time :)
There is also a issue queue: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalchat_service

As drupalchat.org is registered would drupalchat.io be an alternative?

chatdrupal.org is free.

+1 to providing a good alternative to slack. But before this gets promoted it needs a login system. In order for this to work the login system needs SAML, or Oauth2 (or other) support from the DA. And IMO it needs WCAG 2 AA accessibility.

Just chiming in that we're working on Oauth support in the current sprint and into the next one. Not sure it will be deployed before Nashville, but we're getting much closer.

Can't wait to use it

I think it would still be helpful for new users coming to this to know why we want to promote any Slack alternative. I've therefore taken the liberty of adding the summary from the other issue to this one's IS.
Anyways, great initiative, looking forward to a working package!

I very much doubt this is the case but the drupalchat.eu domain name isn't registered by a UK legal entity, is it? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/29/eu_dumps_300000_ukowned_domains...

Since the support for Search API Solr Search 8.x already works well for the German community on DrupalChat.eu I went ahead and announced on our project page that https://drupalchat.eu/channel/search will be the chat to get support beside the issue queue on drupal.org.

This decision was eased by the fact that slack started presenting this message to me this morning:

I hope that more projects on drupal.org will join the initiative.

@rachel_norfolk the domain is registered in the netherlands, no problem here.

There is now a documentation page Chat with the Drupal community using DrupalChat.eu (Rocketchat) (created by @sanduhrs)

Who can add a sentence to the Community Landingpage?
https://www.drupal.org/community and https://www.drupal.org/chat

Is this system really ready for the Drupal community to adopt it? I haven't seen answers to #26, #6, and other questions posed here, and the docs page says it is a Beta... There's a lot of enthusiasm, but not many details. It's probably not really time to add it to the Community landing page yet?

#6:
* There is a project at https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalchat_service
* Registration is freely available
* Administrators are also documented at https://www.drupal.org/node/2958812
* The registration workflow too

#26:
* New domain (non-eu) has been ordered (afaik)
* Registration workflow is documented https://www.drupal.org/node/2958812
* Issue for OAuth provider on d.o https://www.drupal.org/project/infrastructure/issues/2908988
* No idea about the accessibility (is Slack accessible? – no idea either)

What other questions?

Might want to change the "Invite only" text on http://drupalchat.eu homepage.

Also should document that your admins store everything without any acknowledgement, and can read all "private" messages at any time.

I'm all in favour of looking at Rocket.Chat. Lots good with it. There are some outstanding accessibility issues to address https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Ai...

Not that there aren't problems with Slack's accessibility too, however, there's an existing community out there that's working on identifying and improving them.

This could be the same for Rocket.Chat too.

Oh ya, the Government of Canada has moved to Rocket.Chat so they too can be pushed to get involved and improve the interface.

I thought I'd take a look at this to see what it's like, and just to echo a couple other comments:

1) The .eu domain is a non-starter for those outside the EU. That makes it feel like a chat tool for Drupal folks in Europe, not for all.

2) I need to contact a specific person that I don't know to get an invite? That also is a non-starter. Really important for there to be a way for people to join in an automated manner and get access quick without having to wait for somebody else to give access or to have the entire sign-up service dependent on one or more individuals.

I'm open to looking at this and trying it out, but those two things are barriers to even giving it a look.

1) Europeans manage to use .com addresses without feeling it's “not for them”. As it happens, a new address is being purchased, as detailed above.

2) Also as detailed above, the idea is to use OAuth to connect using your d.o account. So, this temporary login process won’t be around permanently.

From the Drupalchat #slack channel (where there's some discussion), Floris registered drupalchat.me, and will change the domain name at some point. Agree w @mdrummond that the .eu TLD is weird. I know it's not weird for Europeans to use .com, but it's also not the same. It'd be like using a .us tld. Anyway, all of this really doesn't matter (it's bikeshedding).

Now, the real question is what color the header should be!!!

The german community effectively has moved to DrupalChat.eu leaving Slack alone.
No new relevant messages on Slack since weeks, while the communication on DrupalChat.eu is in constant flow :)

EU domain, minor accessibility issues and not yet implemented OAuth vs. data loss and various limitations if you don't pay.

To be forced to pay, just to be able to provide support for free is a no-go.
I'm very happy with my decision to stop answering questions on slack!
And I assume that those people who came to drupalchat.eu for Search API Solr support are satisfied :-)

BTW today I found a perfect solution for an ugly workaround someone had to apply to Solr itself. But I'm unable to share the solution because I'm not able to scroll back so far in the slack channel and I don't remember his username.

Would be great to upgrade servers to new RC version 0.62.0 or later to allow use resh Andrion client

Would be great to upgrade servers to new RC version 0.62.0 or later to allow use resh Andrion client

@andypost Can you please create an issue in the project? Also, afaik an update is planned for today (or next monday at the latest).

@ciss filed #2962838: Upgrade to latest version

@mdrummond
The Line about "contact 'x' to get an invite" is a left over from the initial beta stage. I believe it is fixed now to refer to a page on D.O.

Nice writeup https://davelane.nz/why-slack-better-and-why-open-communities-shouldnt-u...

FWIW, I had the chance to speak with Mina Markham, who's a developer at Slack. She said that they do not offer FOSS communities free full instances (confirming what we know), but there is a loophole, where each employee gets a free full instance to do with what they want. So, if we knew someone at Slack (Mina couldn't do this), they could sponsor it. However, I have no clue what would happen if they ended up leaving Slack.

Yeah, @mherchel - it's "gratis-by-association" not gratis by design. And not free, either... It's not worth committing community data to someone else's repository, where the community has to pay a 3rd party (with a monopoly on holding that data) to keep it, and to maintain access to it...

It was hard enough to get replacements up when people have left the project (or died) and their work was open source. Imagine how hard it would be replace a closed source communication medium just because someone gets fired. Or imagine the stress this would put on someone trying to consider a CoC violation when that person holds the keys to a third the community's voice.

Not trying to limit the community's speech, just trying to talk through some of the repercussions. Much of the above could be said about freenode, rocket chat, or matrix, if they are controlled by a single person.

Yes, @frob - the key thing is that control of the community communications is in the hands of a distributed group that, ideally, reflects the broad interests of the community. A fully open source solution are hosted on a 3rd party party platform controlled by the community are both necessary, but not sufficient. What is clear to me is the use of Slack is definitely not a good option for an open community.

What is clear to me is the use of Slack is definitely not a good option for an open community.

True, but it is happening and it is also not good for the community to be forced to leave a communication medium that it is using. The community uses slack and it will likely aways use slack so long as lack is an option and isn't horrible. The focus should be on making sure there is a viable option that fits the criteria you stated:

control of the community communications is in the hands of a distributed group that, ideally, reflects the broad interests of the community

Make that actually happen and make that tool good and I bet that Drupal's community would use it.

I think that https://drupalchat.eu already fulfils most (if not all) the necessary criteria @frob. I agree that people have the freedom to continue using non-free Slack if they want, but I think it's on us to explain to them why it's against their own best interest to do so (I've attempted to do that with the essay linked above).

It seems that Drupal community members, as a whole, don't place an extremely high value on the free and open source nature of their chat software/channel (which I think is a bit ironic, but whatever) -- or else no one would have switched from IRC to Slack. But apparently the features (or something else?) were worth it for most of the chatting Drupal community, and although we still have IRC, hardly any conversations happen on it any more.

By which I mean, if you want people to make another switch in their chat programs, you might want to consider why people switched to Slack, and make sure this new platform has the same value proposition. I personally am unsure as to what those features are... I wouldn't have switched, except that the conversations are all on Slack now so IRC is pretty quiet.

That's why I wrote this, @jhodgdon - https://davelane.nz/why-slack-better-and-why-open-communities-shouldnt-u...

I genuinely couldn’t care less whether the tool I use for Instant messaging within the Drupal Community is Open Source or not. After all, the tool I use for creating Drupal is closed source. I do care, passionately, that whatever we use provides the safest and most welcoming environment possible. Especially for those new to our community - first impressions last.

Quite rightly, questions are being asked about the setup of this new system but let’s not forget that Slack is not perfect in this regard, either. Where is their data stored? Who has access to it? What happens if it “goes away”? Where are the written processes for governance of its administration? How do I know that the person I’m talking to is the same person with that ID on drupal.org? How can I be sure that if a person is blocked they won’t just setup another account?

Drupalchat is in an interesting position. Being in total charge of its destiny means it can build the teams, processes and supporting materials to provide a safe and welcoming IM environment that answers all those questions above. It will be a lot of work but I believe that the team working at this early stage understand that and are committed to delivering.

Drupalchat has an opportunity to be an order of magnitude more welcoming than any alternative. I think that is the key to attracting the users. The technology is a mere detail.

Caveat: I believe that having an open, but hosted chat solution would be an ideal situation. In many ways DrupalChat fulfills those goals.

However, the devil is in the details. There are a few key issues that I haven't seen in these comments (or restating them):

1) Personal data security isn't guaranteed. With slack, no admins have access to DMs and slack as a company has policies in place to keep your data secure.
2) One of the big things that moved people to slack was they were using it already in their day jobs. Many people don't like to have multiple chat applications. This is also why it took a while for slack to take off.
3) Hard to trust what seems to be a random chat server ran by volunteers.
4) Cannot use chat.drupal.org because of security issues.
5) I don't even know if the DA would be able to accept the liability for making sure data is secure and keep the servers running as the community moved to it.

@japerry, While I agree with you about having a hosted but open solution and your interpretation of the DA's opinion on the matter. I take issue with your acceptance of Slack security. There is no end-to-end encryption of DMs in slack. The content is stored on their servers therefore, Slack admins have access to any and all DMs/posts/messages hosted on their system. All that is protecting user data is a companies policies. As we have seen over and over again, as the value of that data increases so does the likely hood of a company's policy changing.

As far as I know, when it comes to privacy. Matrix/Riot was the only platform that offered key based end-to-end encryption of messages.

Totally agree, @frob - @japerry, I don't think taking Slack's word for it on their staff's access to data is well advised: they reserve the right to change their Terms and Conditions at any time, at their whim/discretion. They have VCs they have to please, and they'll be looking all over for ways to "monetise" their userbase. I'd say all incentives are pointing towards losing their scruples, especially given that they are an opaque system, and its users cannot verify Slack's assurances - and that's by design.

I think it's painfully short-sighted for designers/developers working on an open source project like Drupal, and benefiting from a dynamic global open community, to accept a proprietary platform for collaboration (especially one that throws away the history of that collaboration/communication). And trusting your data (or anything else) to public or VC funded corporations is never a good plan.

A huge advantage of drupalchat.eu is that it's run by people who are part of the community. Moreover, they are likely to have differing diverse interests and incentives which help to balance each other out - they're not tied by corporate structure/employment agreements, etc. And they have no pressure to turn a profit to pay back Venture Capitalists. They're doing it because they care about this community. To my mind that's hugely more trustworthy than any 3rd party proprietary software corporation's product.

@frob Rocket chat also has a secure message possibility, (OTP) while not implemented for all chat messages you can choose to employ it for a specific chat. This chat is than cryptographically secured with keys that only exist in the client of rocket chat at either end. (ergo if you use multiple clients you will only see gibberish since only 1 has the key) . OTP requirers that both partisipants are online at the smae time and that they both agree to use it (pop-up window).

Sorry, Sorry, I didn't mean to start the rhetoric machine again. We have discussed all the pro-anti-merrits-etc at length. Lets not hijack this issue.

I am on DrupalChat, however, there doesn't seem to be a lot of traction into moving away of Slack. Is there smoething to be done there? I really don't like loosing chats that often.

Also, while not rocket chat, discord is a nice alternative. Reactiflux has a very nice community built around it.

I personally would prefer to move off Slack (due to the message loss and also because it is commercial), but it is hard to convince people to move. I haven't seen much discussion about it other than on this issue though... maybe if more people started chatting about it (on both Slack and DrupalChat) and if people wrote some blog posts about it, it would happen. Also maybe some informal gatherings (BoFs) at DrupalCon or other Drupal gatherings could help -- Dev Days is coming up I think?

Regarding discord and reactiflux, are they open-source software that the community could install and have control over, or are they a commercial service like Slack that owns the content that is put up there?

Regarding discord and reactiflux, are they open-source software that the community could install and have control over, or are they a commercial service like Slack that owns the content that is put up there?

They are commercial and pretty much similar to slack, with grater limitations. I am all for FOSS and all that but moving for something good to something much much better within the same commercial line is what I advocating for.

Reactiflux is just a successful community of dev-like-minded people that I am part of and I find it much better to drupal slack. Going back there to find what you wrote of flagged is just nice.

Well, this discussion is well known for me when it comes to Discord. So here are some field data discord

Our Gaming community (round about 1000 people) is discussing the pros and cons of Discord for over two years now. There is an easy solution to please them with the services Discord is providing and use foss software. Create a Rocketchat theme that looks like Discord and use Rocketchat instead of proprietary closed software.

The European Drupal community is using Rocketchat for over two years now. and it is a great tool with theming support based on HTML and CSS 3. So there is a way to please my gaming community with the freedom of rocket chat. Make it look as much as close like Discord as possible.

Discord, on the other hand, isn't free. They have annoying adds and a shop to make sure their product could be used for free. But you have to provide your data to them as a company and accept their terms. That's the price for using Discord.

And if they change any terms and exclude any feature you find useful to put a fee on it you have no other choice than to pay for it or change the platform again.

Happened with slack and it's search feature. so this is definitively a reason to not use something like discord, although it is free and adds driven at the moment.

It is not easy to spawn a rocket chat for 1000 Users when it comes to administration and handling of costs. That's where my gaming community will struggle.

But drupalchat.me seem to be stable and founded. So I know it works for more than 1000 people right now. Won't give up to find a way to provide Rocketchat to some gamers and tell them about open source.

But here is a question for you and all the slack folks out there.

What is the biggest advantage of using slack right now? Is it just the fact that the software is installed on any device of the famous faces the Drupal community has or is there a really good reason to stay with slack and not switching to Rocket Chat, too?

Are there real cons against it why shouldn't we try to convince the whole Drupal community to use Rocket Chat? Are server costs too high? Is rocket chat so much more unconvinient than slack so that some folks wouldn't use it?

What really prevent's us from dropping slack at all?

Ok that's not one question. It is a bunch of questions. But If we know the answers to them we can do something against the problems we may have.

Not sure about reactiflux haven't head about it until now.

I would love if the Drupal community will get involved much more into Rocketchat-Development to bring it forward. I try to sell Rocketchat to my gaming community for six months now. And they love it. They have some requirements Rocketchat doesn't fulfill right now but they love Jitsii-Meet video chatting the ease of SSO-buttons and the fact to have all features known by social media apps like whats app and VoIP software like Teamspeak bounded together And these people would prefer Discord over Team Speak 3 but they love Rocketchat.

There is another benefit for the gamers I am talking about as well. Shy people do not need to talk to each other by using team speak. and even inapparent people are able to play with us and have fun. Without be overwhelmed by message clutter in an in-game chat as tiny as you could imagine. They use Rocketchat on a second screen (Mobile Tablet) So they are able to play and follow a conversation. Talk to us when they are not at home and help each other in real life as well. Just because they know each other and gain trust.

By the way, they get a new Drupal 8.7 site to replace Joomla for ease of content editing Jus because I am in love with Drupal and the community around this pretty CMS. But that's a story for the other day.

and if people wrote some blog posts about it, it would happen

So let's talk to lullabot, and the talking drupal guys and come up with some podcasts about it. Let's discuss with the community. Do a Panel about it in Amsterdam. Bet Floris (@idevit) will be around :-D Ask them why they won't switch. Dries could ask them in his keynote :-D It's that simple.

One way to promote it would be to allow adding a "Rocket Chat channel name" on the project fields, if filled would add a link to the project's page.
Another way would be somehow feature the rocketchat info somewhere on the site, currently it's quite hard to find any info aside IRC.

I think everyone struggles with the message-count limit, however the list of communities on slack is rather large (see here) so it's hard to get everyone to go over at Rocket.

@Joachim Namyslo what a nice reply! OK, while I like Discord, I am sold on rocket chat, part of the community is there.

Maybe what we can attempt, is to suggest/promote the move in the smaller specific channels, if we make any advance in convincing interesting topic channels to RocketChat, eventually most of the community will end up following.

For example, #gatsby, #ddev, #docker, #ubercart and then, if any of those accept the move, we can move to bigger channels or it may happen organically.

I am on DrupalChat, however, there doesn't seem to be a lot of traction into moving away of Slack. Is there smoething to be done there? I really don't like loosing chats that often.

I can only speak for myself, but to me this whole “getting off Slack” project just seems chaotic, and pretty hard to follow.

1. In the linked discussion issue (#2490332: Evaluate whether to replace drupal IRC channels with another communication medium) there doesn’t really seem to be an actual consens. (Or at least no-one thought of updating the IS with one, but also I couldn’t find one in the comments. (Though, of course, I didn’t read all 396.))
2. Also, when reading through the cons of Slack, it seems to me that several of those also apply to Rocket Chat, so it’s really not clear why that should be the solution.
3. Most of those points would/could be eliminated by the DA taking care of this and integrating the solution into d.o. However, unless I’m mistaken, they have stated they lack the capacity at the moment.

I personally don’t like Slack at all and would happily switch to another platform – but I want to make sure there has been a consensus before, so that we don’t each switch to one of five different competing platforms, or need to keep switching every few months because someone thinks they came up with something better.
So, in my opinion, the order should just be: reach (more or less) consensus on a solution, make that work well enough, then invite people to move to that solution. This initiative seems to just start with step 3 instead.

In the end, I think this would need an effort by the DA. If they don’t have the resources at the moment, that’s unfortunate, but just promoting a half-baked solution without official backing doesn’t seem like the answer either. Maybe we just need to wait. Or discuss with the DA how we could change their minds to prioritize this (or give them the necessary resources to do so).

I personally don’t like Slack at all and would happily switch to another platform – but I want to make sure there has been a consensus before

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there has never been consensus to leave IRC for Slack ;-)

As a drupal.org module maintainer I'm totally happy with the druaplchat.me Rocket.Chat instance.
The desktop client and the iOS-App simply work well.
I never gave that much support on IRC or Slack because of the inconveniences of these tools.
I guess most of the 110 users of https://drupalchat.me/channel/search will second me.

Meanwhile we also "officially" moved the slack channel of the solarium PHP library to https://drupalchat.me/channel/solarium-php
So it seems that this system is attractive for other PHP or Typo3 developers, too.

The search_api eco system has always been a set of modules that requires a lot of support. And with more then 120000 installations just of search_api itself it is one of the most important ones on drupal.org.

@drunken monkey: if search_api (and the rest of the search_api ecosystem) would follow search_api_solr and search_api_spellcheck and move to drupalchat.me, that would definitely increase the pressure to find a consensus (for example to run Rocket.Chat on d.o infrastructure)!

Ok if we are all happy with it why not go further. Here is how we can make sure, that it gets founded. There is another open source Project, named modoba mail server. What tex do is to promote a specific feature, that they implement into the software only if a certain amount of money is collected.

Therefore they have a blog and a website where they write nice short articles to explain to everybody what they like to do and how many money they like to collect, to be able to work on the feature. You can see this here:

https://modoboa.org/en/sponsoring/

So what prevents us to go the roadmap down the way and start such a campaign?
Let's take a ride with a particular example

One point on the roadmap is to create a branded jitsii-meet instance for drupalchat.me to provide the community with video conferencing without to be bound to jitsii.org.

Therefore we need money. I do not know how much would be needed but lets just fill in some values.

Jitsii-meet itself needs approx. 8 - 10 GB ram to work with heavy load and it may be some loading balancers are needed too. So lets say a jitssi meet setup will cost 120 Dollars a month just to have a number to calculate with. Lets further say we like to make sure Jitsiimeet is available for 24 Months to the community. then we would need 120 $ x 24 = 2880 $.

If every drupalcaht.me user would be taken into account when it comes to founding this would be currently 1399 users let's say we are 1400 to make it easier to calculate,

2280 $ / 1400 = ~ 2,06 Dollar for each user to make sure to be able to use jitsii meet for 24 Months

So now let's imagine that some of us could not give some money or are not willing to. That's totally fine. if 700 Users will found this We havre to collect 4,12 Dollar from each of them. That's less than the price of a Big Mac Meal.

So why shouldn't we start to do more marketing and founding as Modoboa does?

All we need is a landing page with bootstrap progress bars and a PayPal account. Maybe a javascript to check how many bucks are given already. And there you go. We are a community of developers and programmers. How long would it take for ús to create such a landing page with a PayPal integration to make others able to found drupalchat?me

30 minutes? a Day? a Week?

If we need a plan we can build up a working group and meed 30 minutes a week by using jitsii.org with drupalchat.me Let's talk to each other let's share our ideas and screens. There is no need to wait for Drupal Con Amsterdam or the next Drupüal Europe to get together. Ler'ts just do this. Drupalchat.me provides Markdown, video conferencing and a search bar, Some of us may miss the conference feeling when meeting online. But hey. Grab a coffee, grab a beer grab a sandwich and le'ts meet together to tackle this task down. You'll feel the conference spirit right at home. I promise. :-D

Right, I think it's about time we (the community) looked to have a clear plan to take the (currently already really quite good) drupalchat.me towards being the de-facto IM solution.

Some assumptions that can be made:

1) Rocketchat is a good software platform - we don't need to evaluate others
2) Sooner or later, we will be able to offer oAuth based login from Drupal.org (and this is a BIG deal - currently, there is absolutely no way to determine if the Rachel_norfolk on drupal.org is the same Rachel_norfolk on Slack. That's an unacceptable situation from a community safety point of view)
3) If a solid system of sustainability can be demonstrated, including providing income to support the services, a management team structure etc etc, I will happily change all the links in places like drupal.org/community to point to the new system.

I want to see a plan, with milestones etc etc that gets us from where we are to where we want to be. Then, I'm more able to get things like oAuth support prioritised accordingly.

Everything people are saying on here is right - it's the right move - it just needs to look sustainable.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there has never been consensus to leave IRC for Slack ;-)

Same thought exactly over the weekend! I remember not so long ago where a lot were still advocating for IRC over slack, and suddenly there's hardly any activity on IRC and everybody is on Slack.

I'd like to get some of the current running details on RocketChat, I asked this on #2962653-3: Address endorsement blockers, maybe if one of the current maintainers of Rocket.Chat can provide updated thoughts/requirements here?

While I value Oauth to prevent impersonation and as a valid issue, that's currently happening on Slack and I losing history of discussion when there's something that will not is maybe to be considered even before that sorted out.

Added some useful links to the summary.

Want to share some thoughts on this as well:

Firstly - to be completely clear - the DA doesn't own any of these communication channels outside of Drupal.org.

It's not really possible for us to be prescriptive about what communication tools people use. Email, issues, wechat, irc, slack, rocketchat, telegram, etc.... people will use the communication media that make the most sense to them, and especially the ones that meet them where they already live.

Furthermore, even if it were possible, I don't think the DA would want to be prescriptive about what communication channels people use. We don't run the Drupal Slack any more than we run DrupalChat - both platforms have been created by community volunteers and have built up their respective audiences organically.

What we can do from an official DA/project side is more of the following:

• Together with the community, help develop a plan for how communication channels in general are vetted and protected - and how things like the code of conduct would be enforced within them.
• Work with community volunteers and groups like the security working group, community working group, etc, to evaluate these options.
• Make the community aware of all the places that the conversation is happening.
• Reduce friction and risk, by providing tools to make things easier: like an identity provider endpoint (Oauth or otherwise)
• If necessary and sustainable - provide direct infrastructure - whether that's paying for Slack, hosting an identity service for community provided chat services, or running and hosting a chat service directly.

From a DA point of view there are a few paths forward:

• If we’re just meeting people where they already are, one option might be to try and find a way to fundraise for the Slack account, or see if we can build a broader partnership.
• We absolutely need to solve the identity issue (not just for chat, but for other things like serving camps) - and the next step on our internal task list is to write the policy for it, which is on my personal plate.
• We could see if there are now viable external hosting options for these open source chat services (that don’t risk log exposure of DMs, etc)
• We could evaluate our options for directly hosting a chat service and/or an aggregator service like Matrix.

There are already a number of related and child issues out there on some of these individual topics - so a helpful start might just be getting them all organized and appropriately summarized in the Issue Summary of a parent issue…

@hestenet

Wouldn't it be possible to just offer Drupalchat.me by using a subdomain like chat.drupal.org. Just because Drupal itself is a trademark we all trust. Maybe this would help to get at least some people to drop slack andwe could do marketing for it hand in hand with the promote Drupal initiative.

Maybe it will just work and if not Drupalchat. Me could coexist or come back.

I hope it would not fail but in my opinion Drupal. Org is trusted enough. So it may be that some folks are more willing to use a new platform if it is accessible in the d.o sit subsystem directly just like l.d.o is, by now. For example.

Wouldn't it be possible to just offer Drupalchat.me by using a subdomain like chat.drupal.org.

No. We do not deploy non-Drupal services on *.drupal.org domains. For example, our GitLab instance is at git.drupalcode.org. *.drupal.org sites can read a client’s SSO cookies, and browser security measures can have more trust of matching second-level domains. A vulnerability in one service could be used to pivot to exploiting another, so we try to limit that.

@joachim-namyslo

As much as I appreciate Rocket Chat as an alternative to Slack, and taking all above objections into account, this would be a too hasty step anyways (chat.drupal.org).

1. It would misleadingly suggest/imply DA's official liability
2. There's not much activity on the issues (https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalchat_service) and the project is seeking co-maintainers. Some issues (like privacy-related ones) are vital.
3. It would officially prefer one volunteer initiative over another.
4. The OAuth solution should be in place (most people involved in the Rocket Chat project aggree) before any Drupal Chat whatsoever could be an official one.
5. We have to be really sure that Rocket Chat can handle a huge number of concurrent users (I've heard experts saying it can't).

But I'm with you when it comes to the fundraising idea. Maybe we can think about this on a higher level, like how fundraising or making people pay for what they like could work for any of the community's awesome initiatives.

@hexabinaer Think we shouldn't call that a hasty move as we started collaboration between the stack holders at DrupalCon Vienna. Will be two years once we hit Amsterdam and that's in business environments rather long for revamping communications tools. Just see how Atlassian forced their whole HipChat user base within less that six months to paid Slack as they feared stiff competition from Microsoft Teams. But very true as a open source community we work here mostly with volunteers, therefore let's focus on our strengths for getting done either way :)

1. domain issue:
1. pretty clear DA infra won't run the service and *.drupal.org is a nogo
2. but DA could help getting ownership over the drupal.chat domain
2. project activity:
1. true maybe should move activities better from chatrooms to the issues
2. promoting more technical sprinting at events might be another factor
3. also better reachout to Slack initiative volunteers for more collaboration
3. initiative preference:
1. didn't see fundraising for Slack rather simple SaaS usage w/o cost estimation
2. as @mkalkbrenner pointed out we didn't deal democratic with IRC/Slack either
3. meritocracy works when doing gets preference especially with volunteering
4. SSO with drupal.org:
1. true and that's why we talking about it OAuth2 since the meetings in Vienna
2. couldn't we leverage external help like from the authors of the OAuth2 modules?
3. giving authority (OAuth2) priority over identity (OpenID) is leaner privacy wise
5. hosting issue:
1. upstream's default install via Snap is for SOHO usage and has scaling issues
2. DrupalChat doesn't use that and is infact a PoC of a scalable OnPrem architecture
3. RocketChat's cloud is scalable but might bring also US export exclusion (Slack-Iran)
4. Gabriel Engel also offered us coop modes with their Ops from Cloud to OnPrem

With a personal background in running a company around enterprise hosting i like to state that the hosting and domain questions are not our blockers as there's a PoC with DrupalChat and other scalable options plus migration paths due to open source. The initiative preference shouldn't be neither as a fundraising campaign for Slack as a proprietary service can be run in parallel by it's promoters. So for now we might focus on the project issues and the outstanding drupal.org integration while road mapping for BoFs and technical sprints at DrupalCon Amsterdam?

@kraut

The hosting and fundraising I was talking about weren't rocketchat at all. I talked about the jitsii-meet feature. Jitsii meet alone needs at least 8 GB Ram to run stable with much fewer users than we have. So it may be a good Idea to Make a list of features we got and the features we need. Maybe it is easier to use big blue button than jitsii Maybe we just do not want to enable video conferencing at all.

Another Feature is a slack bride. That could be used to convince slack users when oauth is ready.

There is even much more we can do but I think we need a way to track How does what how and when. Personally, I also think that it is not a good Idea at all to wait from one conference to another to talk about what we need.

With Jitsii meet Google hangouts and tools like that we are able to bring up a working group as the thriving force behind the rocketchat initiative. Let's create a roadmap and talk about how to achieve all steps on it Let's identify blockers. Let's talk to people about why they are not willing to switch platform right now. We are able to address this pain points only if we know what pain points a slack user may have when it comes to switching platform

If we know what how and when and meet regularly to achieve specific tasks together progress would be much quicker.

The Media initiative uses Google hangouts regularly and everyone interested in the progress of media can watch them on youtube without facing the pain points listed here

- How to get to xx let's say Amsterdam?
- How much money will it cost?
- Is it a weekend I am on vacation when the con comes up?
- Do I have to plan some days more to rescue before I go to work again?
- etc.

If you do it in an online meeting room you can talk about everything relevant with anyone interested to bring the project forward with your bed right behind you and you would not face any of the pain points listed above.

So I think there is no real good reason to wait until the next to get together to be able to bring the Idea forward at all.

Personally, if I have to go to any Drupal con just to talk to any responsive and tell her/him the greatest Idea ever I have to pay all the costs and plan all the things listed above just to be able to be recognized by the right person. That would be just a bad joke!

So what about regular online meetings to get back some fun in it?

Think we shouldn't call that a hasty move as we started collaboration between the stack holders at DrupalCon Vienna. Will be two years once we hit Amsterdam and that's in business environments rather long for revamping communications tools.

Oh boy thats a long time in a world where we can use video chat and online whiteboards to meet each other without going anywhere

From https://itsfoss.com/mattermost-funding

Open Source Slack Alternative Mattermost Gets $50M Funding

Mattermost, which presents itself as an open source alternative to Slack raised $50M in series B funding.

My suggestion is not to split Drupal community between two chat platforms, but merge all chats (Slack, Rocket.Chat, IRC) in one large real-time chat via Matrix.org bridge feature: https://matrix.org/bridges
#2885060: Drupal Chat Bridges IRC <-> Matrix <-> Slack is thread about bridge Slack & IRC via Matrix, so let's join forces?

@Murz and @mherchel, While I am not against Federation or Matrix. there are several issues with its use.
not only is it really hard to control who has what data (something we need to know as a community, not only to safeguard the community but also due to Data Regulatory laws).

Rocket Chat offers to most flexibility in my opinion not only to control where the data is but also in how to show this to end users.
Mattermost currently does not have an API module in Drupal for us to utilize in Drupal (Rocket chat does, I made it)
Mattermost feels clunky to me especially when I did a bigger load test some time ago. ( I did a similar test on rocket chat at that time and it handled the same load without issue).

Rocket Chat has a dedicated entry for using Drupal as a OpenId Connect provider. (With Icon, also implemented by me in the Rocket chat app)

Rocket Chat also allows us to setup (if wanted) a "live chat" for questions on Drupal.org, making Drupal.org a "best in class" Opensource solution. out of the box.

Rocket.Chat allows for Horizontal scaling without requiring an Enterprise license. (Drupalchat.me currently uses multiple service runners and multiple Database back-ends).

in Short, I am willing but there are some legal issues to iron out before we can even consider federation. in the mean time Rocket.Chat. offers us as much flexibility as we need.

The main problem for community, especially for new users, is that for asking easy question - they need to register new account, use (and track) new separate app for talk, keep it open for wait answer, etc. Together with already user favorite chat platforms (telegram, skype, gitter, whatsapp, xmpp, irc) it's not too much wish to install next one.

So Matrix protocol can bridge multiple chat platforms in one chat, and users will can use his favorite chat platform (eg telegram) for join Drupal community, and talk with Drupal community in one app, together with his other communities (WordPress, Joomla, Linux, friends, etc).

About data control: what is the problem with data, published in public chat rooms? If room messages will be duplicated to multiple chat platforms, each platform supports GDPR rules, so if user want, he can delete his message and it will be deleted in all platforms.

Private talks we can keep in one platform, and bridge only selected list of public popular channels.

So, RocketChat community will can continue chatting in old place, but new telegram/irc user will can ask question and track replies in same RocketChat room via his favorite platform, without installing RocketChat app.

About Drupal integration: here https://www.drupal.org/project/matrix_api is module with basic api implementation, and chat integration is already planned.

@Murz We tried to get a slack Bridge in the past between drupalchat.me and the drupal place on slack. We had no luck, because the admins on slack wouldn't give Access rights maybe because of data Exchange Problems maybe because slack takes bucks for bridging.

If you can investigate here and come up with a solution maybe we can try to roll out some Matrix.org stuff. But by now we faild on even Bridge Rocketchat and slack although it is technically possible. So I do not see we are able to get a Service up and running that in General Supports every Plattform out thee even if most of them are well known by someone.

If some Drupal Space Slack Admins can come here and tell us what are the pan Points for a Bridge between slak and rocket Chat we can learn something about this and make it slightly bigger, if we are able to fix those pain Points.

I'm happy to chime in. I have actually been following recent comments, but the past four weeks have been OSCON, a strategy session with DA leaders in Boston, GovCon, and now MWDS - so I've been on the road quite a bit.

I think most of my comments in comment #76 still apply.

The main things I want to see are:

• Us(the DA) need to finish a federated authentication solution (which we are behind on, I freely admit)
• Policy documentation to be reviewed - I wrote a draft in #2998735: [Oauth] Establish policies for how we choose who is allowed to use Drupal federated login
• And then perhaps some kind of onboarding process designed so we can say - how do we keep track of the commitment to the policy terms, the contact info to reach the maintainers, etc.. Probably also needs to include some kind of checklist that verifies *yes this platform has a method to comply with GDPR* etc...

I have been following the slack vs "open source alternative" for years. I notice the same questions get asked over and over again. Should we start a meta project to maintain a list of the blockers for the slack bridging?

"We could evaluate our options for directly hosting a chat service and/or an aggregator service like Matrix." in #76.

Yes, I think the DA needs to provide or endorse an official realtime chat service. Realtime chat increases community. Community is Drupal. This is really critical IMO.

Yes, I think the DA needs to provide or endorse an official realtime chat service. Realtime chat increases community. Community is Drupal. This is really critical IMO.

I have been following this for a very long time. Over the length of this rtc issues' my opinion on this has changed several times and so has the expectation of the community. Real Time Chat is the expectation of the community. I think this is really bigger than Matrix vs Slack vs IRC. In my opinion traditional RTC, like Slack, is an intermediary step.

It is time to migrate from an issue queue first system to something more real-time. Much like gitter in experience. To know what to do will take time and should happen after the finalization of the Gitlab transition and after Federated Login. But we should start having conversations around it, and honestly I think all the noise about Slack entrenchment and Matrix/Rocket is kind of a distraction from the conversation we should be having around making the Drupal Issue queue more real-time and is stopping us from having conversations about what is lacking in our communication systems that make us use Slack in the first place.

Matrix is very flexible opensource protocol with large integration abilities https://matrix.org/docs/guides/application-services#what-application-ser... so in future it can be integrated with Drupal services as we like, eg each issue in module can be separate room for real-time chats, and one large room can aggregate all issues in one timeline, and more other solutions.

And moving to Matrix will not broke all current Slack/IRC/RocketChat communities, but join them in united chats via Matrix bridges! Also we can join Telegram, Discord users to current chats via Matrix without serious changes in infrastructure! So new users will not needed to register in Drupal/Slack/RocketChat to talk with Drupal community, they will can use his favorite Instant Messaging app for talk.

As I think, this is much easier and better way, that implementing own instant messaging system, based on Drupal PHP code.

Matrix is very flexible opensource protocol with large integration abilities https://matrix.org/docs/guides/application-services#what-application-ser... so in future it can be integrated with Drupal services as we like, eg each issue in module can be separate room for real-time chats, and one large room can aggregate all issues in one timeline, and more other solutions.

And moving to Matrix will not broke all current Slack/IRC/RocketChat communities, but join them in united chats via Matrix bridges! Also we can join Telegram, Discord users to current chats via Matrix without serious changes in infrastructure! So new users will not needed to register in Drupal/Slack/RocketChat to talk with Drupal community, they will can use his favorite Instant Messaging app for talk.

The merits of Matix have been repeated many times and should be very well known by anyone involved with the discussion.

As I think, this is much easier and better way, that implementing own instant messaging system, based on Drupal PHP code

No one is suggesting this.

Well so all theese Services like rocketchat and so on are currently not maintained or hosted by the DA so there ii no Problem to do it, if you find:

• Programmers to Code a Demo
• Founders to found the Server Costs
• Testers to test the result
• and Marketers to praise the new Service to the Drupal Community.

If you can affort time and Money or get it from People willing to help start right now.

@murz

Matrix is very flexible opensource protocol with large integration abilities https://matrix.org/docs/guides/application-services#what-application-ser... so in future it can be integrated with Drupal services as we like, eg each issue in module can be separate room for real-time chats, and one large room can aggregate all issues in one timeline, and more other solutions.

Most of these are not properties of the protocol or implementation but of the concept of a chat application. Any can fir this purpose.
in fact if you wanted the integration with issue queue and least amount of effort we should use mattermost since it already has integration for gitlab out of the box (not that I want to move to that for other reasons, like performance).

And moving to Matrix will not broke all current Slack/IRC/RocketChat communities, but join them in united chats via Matrix bridges!

Bridges are not always as great as you seem to think.
They break, require special setups, only support subsets, etc.
As for specific briges to Telegram and slack. We have had both in the past for specific channels.
So this is not a 'bonus' feature of matrix. its just a feature like any other and still available to us if we want to use it (and the other side wants to use aswell... like the Slack channel owners)

@joachim-namyslo

1. Programmers to Code a Demo
2. Founders to found the Server Costs
3. Testers to test the result

1: There allready is, https://drupalchat.me its a rocket chat instance.
2: Its currently funded by the Drupal Europe stichting (Foundation)
3: You can join the 'testers' Just make an account and join the ever growing list of users.

As for promoters. there were a few sessions on Drupal Europe about it (a few boF's and it was mentioned on a few sessions). you can join in the efforts if you like.

@sysomaster I know about rc. But if they like to introduce matrix they need a separate team initiative

It might be interesting to see what mozilla ends up deciding on: http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/09/06/forward-motion/

Mozilla decided to replace IRC with Riot/Matrix:
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/synchronous-messaging-at-mozilla-the-dec...
https://matrix.org/blog/2019/12/19/welcoming-mozilla-to-matrix

Also an interesting read on how the emberjs community organized their move to discord: https://github.com/emberjs/rfcs/blob/master/text/0345-discord.md

Discord is proprietary software for gamers and should not be an option here.

Matrix would be a gerate effort, just because you can plug in literally every messenger out there and so Drupalistas have the chice to use what they like to use to communicate with each other.

But the document is well structured and contains many valid arguments regarding a switch.

Not just ember, but many open source communities have moved to discord.
https://discordapp.com/open-source

Honestly, the ability to create sophisticated bots, have unlimited chat history (or not), strong moderation tools, and integrated voice chat and screen sharing, and make it easy to join one time or as a community member are just some reasons why discord is something worth considering.

And I'll go back to the beginning, where I still believe unless the DA has a organizational footing to support a demanding service like chat, the trade-offs between self-hosted open source and a SaaS option thats not need to be seriously considered. Clearly Slack has shown the benefits of being a externally hosted app, despite its other drawbacks.

Lots of good open source alternatives provided in the thread here.

I'd like to mention that Backdrop CMS recently switched chat apps. Previously used Gitter and now using Zulip at https://backdrop.zulipchat.com/. Zulip is open source, has bots, threads, private channels, etc, and can log in via Github, Gitlab which was important to the community. Zulip provides free hosted solution for open source communities.

Further on Zulip:
We have used it inside our organization with great success. There are the standard spread of web and stand-alone apps, multitudes of integrations, SaaS and self-hosted options, and so on.

The Zulip UI is a bit "different" and it does take a short amount of time to find your way/understand the way things are organized. It is relatively painless however, and has worked very well for us. We're a pretty small team with only a dozen people on our instance, but I can't imagine why it would not scale much larger.

The login methods also include OpenID Connect, which I believe is available for d.o accounts. Many other authentication methods are available/can be added

Zulip Discord oh dear community. What is so hard about setting up a matrix server so that everyone can use the client she/he loves?

While Discord, for example doesn't have end to end encryption Rocket hat simply isn't slack and we would never convince everyone to use it. So the best solution to solve this is to install a matrix server with some web Frontend and as many bridges as possible. In that way we can keep add or delete any messinging software we like and everybody can use whatever fits her/his needs.

The biggest problem with all of this is that it needs sponsorship.

If you use matrix or zulip or something else the hardware the software runs on must be paid.
.
So instead of debating which software is the best we should talk about how to fund this idea over years.

Take in account that this community has over a million users and literally every single user should be able to use such a service for chatting, uploading and exchanging files. Maybe Videochst together.

While Element.io offers all that features based on a matrix server. I couldn't imagine the costs of the server-farm needed to host more than 1000000 users and rising.

So this is what we have to talk about instead of the right software to use.

But Slack is a paid service for large communities too! At now Drupal Slack workspace is on the "Pro" plan which costs €6.25 per person, per month, when billed yearly. Who pays for it?

@Murz it's currently given for free to open source communities due to COVID. Not sure how long that's going to last.

My biggest gripe with Slack is all the conversation and discussion is CLOSED to search engines. SO much amazing support is given in the Drupal Slack and it all goes into an ephemeral internet waste bin. I think more effort should be made by the Drupal Association to scrape the data out and put it in a publicly searchable archive. e.g. Cloud Posse/SweetOps has their free Slack scraped and archived and searchable. I think it should be a top initiative at the DA. Drupal is all about community, and much of that community is a closed box now with the unsearchable Slack.

Here is how SweetOps/Cloud Posse approaches archiving their free Slack.

https://archive.sweetops.com/
https://archive.sweetops.com/kubernetes/2021/09/

Lastly, yeah, even if we setup a Matrix server, someone has to maintain that and let's just say it is one engineer full-time, that would likely be at least 100K+ year. I love open source and would love to see it, but I think it would be better just to pay Matrix to do it for us, if they offer that. And, the UX of the Matrix Client, Element (https://app.element.io/) is not as nice as Slack, yet, but I think it will be and if we throw money at anyone it should be Element/Matrix.

Until then, we should at least get Slack archived and searchable on the public internet.

Element (Matrix protocol) offers paid hosting now.

$4/month per monthly active user.

This seems like it could actually work depending on what they consider active. How many "active" users are on the Drupal Slack? We could get a pretty good cost calculation quickly. We would also be supporting another opensource community (Element/Matrix) with a paid plan.

https://element.io/pricing
https://element.io/open-source
https://matrix.org/hosting/

An admin can get weekly active user count on Drupal Slack here > https://drupal.slack.com/admin/stats (I don't have access).

Weekly active was about 2000 active users last week. Not sure that matches the Matrix definition of active though.

Thanks @hestenet!

I just tweeted that number and invited Element/Matrix to join the conversation here > https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1440842326859943939.

Jup, losing all the knowlege shared in it is the biggest problem with Slack in my opinion too!

this thread is depressing. it doesnt look like time helped with this. its been 2 years again.

sorry for thinking it loud. it's been 3+ years since i disconnected from this community.
did receive notifications, found them on email, and really i thought this had gone somewhere.
not to blame anyone, but if blockers stay up this long, no wonder why people leave.

Alongside Rocket.chat is working on a bridge with Matrix - https://youtu.be/jBtBiUXLqAk?t=1691

Update: I had tweeted out this issue/thread here https://twitter.com/ElijahLynn/status/1440842326859943939 and Element reached out to me on Twitter for a video chat. So I just chatted with Shelly, Simon and John from Element and I gave them some of the background on the history of the Drupal community from Forums, IRC, Rocket Chat, Matrix Bridge, and Slack. I explained how the Drupal community used to have a lot of support content searchable/crawlable online and it has largely gone dark now because of non-crawlable chat systems swallowing the discussions and not making them publicly searchable which in my opinion weakens open source communities in general. I did explain how many in the Drupal community are hesitant to use the Drupal Slack. I explained a bit about the Drupal Association and how the board works to vote on important decisions. I encouraged the Element team to create Drupal accounts and join the public discussion here.

I suggested that Element have an "Open Source Community Plan" that is potentially more affordable since open source communities don't usually make much more than operating expenses, and it could be really good PR for Element/Matrix as many engineers would end up using via Drupal (or any other open source community) and eventually bringing it to their own companies.

I also pitched an idea for a "Publicly Searchable Archive" feature that can be activated with a click of a button as I am not aware of any chat services that offer such a feature right now, and it is a huge feature for open source communities. I think this would be a killer feature for open source communities. Click a button and all the chat in public channels is now crawled by search engines, that would be HUGE!

I did very clearly state that I am not an official representative of the Drupal Association and have just been part of the community for a very long time and want to see us collaborate in public more again.

Also, Element's current billing is monthly active user but they only count a monthly active user as someone who has logged on for at least 2 days. So a drive-by account creation and one time question would not actually be billed, unless they logon for a followup etc. (is that right Shelly?)

I'll add more to this post if I remember more.

Want to mention, that RocketChat team is announced, that they are already working on Matrix bridge: https://youtu.be/jBtBiUXLqAk?t=1691
So Matrix in near future will join current Rocket.Chat community too!

Great news, moreover they already introced application platform which could be handy to provide integrations to d-org infra

I'm using 🚀 last 5 years and very happy with a way they going

drupalchat.me hasn't been updated since 2 years and feels more and more buggy. I don't think it should be promoted in this state. No one is even reacting to that issue #3319700: Upgrade Rocket Chat.

RocketChat 5.0 release has native support for Matrix Federation (announce, manual), so it seems to me that it's better to go with Matrix integration, instead of hosting dedicated RocketChat instance. Here is the issue about Matrix integration: #2885060: Drupal Chat Bridges IRC <-> Matrix <-> Slack