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Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects (drewdevault.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (14 children)

from the article:

In short, using Discord for your free software/open source (FOSS) software project is a very bad idea. Free software matters — that’s why you’re writing it, after all. Using Discord partitions your community on either side of a walled garden, with one side that’s willing to use the proprietary Discord client, and one side that isn’t. It sets up users who are passionate about free software — i.e. your most passionate contributors or potential contributors — as second-class citizens.

Interesting to do a “s/Discord/Github/” replace on the above. Same situation yet hardly anyone gives a shit.

So yes, Drew DeVault is right. But he overestimates people’s commitment to free world digital rights principles and consistency thereof.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (6 children)

not at all the same situation. Git itself is not proprietary so all the projects can survive without GitHub if the need arises. Additionally, you don’t need an account to view the repository or its discussions. There is of course a walled garden for participation and it is an issue, however it doesn’t compare to discord, which is much, much worse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Git itself is not proprietary so all the projects can survive without GitHub if the need arises. Ad

You’re neglecting the exclusion that’s inherent in Github when the need to bounce does NOT arise.

Also worth adding that during the war in Gaza some of us boycott Israel. Which implies boycotting Microsoft.

Additionally, you don’t need an account to view the repository or its discussions.

Advocating read-only access is comparable to endorsing only freedom 1 and 2, not freedom 0 or 4. Which is precisely what I’m talking about: FOSS projects that discard digital rights and partake in digital exclusion for some convenience frills.

There is of course a walled garden for participation and it is an issue, however it doesn’t compare to discord, which is much, much worse.

Bug trackers have more of a monopoly on bug reports than discord has on discussions. There are countless decentralized discussions about free software all over the place -- threadiverse, probably facebook, ad hoc phpbb forums, IRC, usenet, mastodon, mailing lists, conferences like FOSDEM … and rightfully so. Discussions don’t need the centralization that bug trackers do. General discussions also do not have the degree of importance to QA that bug tracking does.

Case in point, when bugs are reported outside of Github, they don’t get noticed by developers and triaged.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

not sure what to answer, I made clear in my comment that github is also problematic, discord is simply worse, therefore they’re not the same like the original commenter said. I’m hoping both of them will fuck up like reddit and twitter did and more people will make effort to move away from it.

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