As you can easily notice, today many open source projects are using some services, that are… sus.

For example, Github is the most popular place to store your project code and we all know, who owns it. And not to forget that sketchy AI training on every line of your code. Don’t we have alternatives? Oh, yes we have. Gitlab, Codeberg, Notabug, etc. You can even host your own Gitea or Forgejo instance if you want.

Also, Crowdin is very popular in terms of software (and docs) translation. Even Privacy Guides and The New Oil use Crowdin, even though we have FLOSS Weblate, that you can easily self-host or use public instances.

So, my question is: if you are building a FLOSS / privacy related project, why using proprietary and privacy invasive tools?

  • @hperrin
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    1928 days ago

    I run a fairly popular open source project called Svelte Material UI, and I can tell you why I use Discord for support. My users want me to use it. GitHub too.

    People want to use what they already have, and most people, even developers, don’t care that much about privacy. I would gladly self host a support forum, but tons of people would rather use a different library than sign up for my personal support forum. And the people who really care about privacy wouldn’t trust my self hosted solution either, so there isn’t really a better option than Discord, as much as that sucks.

    • @[email protected]
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      6728 days ago

      When support is hidden away in discord, web searches can’t find it. Nobody can even look through it without having an account.

      • @hperrin
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        28 days ago

        I agree that it sucks. I would much rather use a more open platform. But my users don’t want that. Discord is convenient, people want convenience, and I want to give my users convenience (even if it means I have to answer the same questions once in a while).

          • @hperrin
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            828 days ago

            Sure, but I’ve actually had people ask me to set up a Discord, and no one has ever asked me to set up anything else.

            • @[email protected]
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              627 days ago

              I wonder if they just pass on the project since the documention is hidden away. I know I’ve done it a bunch of times

              • @hperrin
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                327 days ago

                Support != documentation. I have plenty of public documentation.

            • @[email protected]
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              428 days ago

              Yeah, I gave up long ago to suggest ppl some alternatives. The problem PPL Here have is the discord only thing. With tools like matter bridge you could combine several tools seemlessly, but that is of course way to much trouble for smaller projects.

              • @[email protected]
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                127 days ago

                Having the ability to bridge doesn’t mean you always should… you are now exposing folks to Discord’s data collection + ToS as well as all the inevitable spam that flows into these rooms.

                • @[email protected]
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                  226 days ago

                  Didn’t say you should. I would rather not, but, e.g., the mautrix bridges are the only way I can keep contact to a majority of family nowadays sigh

                  • @[email protected]
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                    126 days ago

                    I still need to set up something like Slidge myself. The worst are these accounts that require Android or iOS apps to work.

        • @IsThisAnAI
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          328 days ago

          Nobody here is going to hear you. They are hard-line zealots who will actively hurt their own projects in some pyrrhic victory.

          • @hperrin
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            28 days ago

            I think you’re right about some people here, but anyone who is genuinely interested in why open source maintainers make the decisions they do will hear me.

            Considering the question was asking about the motivations of open source maintainers, and I actually am an open source maintainer, I would hope that most people here would want to hear my position. But I understand that a lot of people here are upset with my decisions, because the things I prioritize aren’t the things they would prioritize if they were in my position.

        • AnyOldName3
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          227 days ago

          If past support questions showed up in searches, then more users would be able to help themselves and would never need to ask for support, so it wouldn’t matter as much what platform it happened on.

          Personally, I think it would be good if support discords were all bridged to matrix spaces (currently doable, but matrix needs locking down more than discord to stop spam as the tools to prevent and remove it are worse) and the matrix history was archived somewhere search engines could index it like mailing list archives are (currently not doable). That approach would let users use what they want without forcing anyone else to, and keeps self help as easy as it was in the days of forums.

          • @hperrin
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            27 days ago

            Typically, what I’ll do is if multiple people ask the same question or need the same guidance, I’ll put it in the readme or the “Quick Guide” section of the demo site. If anyone knows a solution to make the discord server publicly viewable/searchable though, I’d happily implement it.

            Right now, if you have a Discord account, you can join and view the server, and post in the support channel and forum. Maybe there’s a Discord bot I could set up to mirror the content.

            • AnyOldName3
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              127 days ago

              I’m thinking more for the scale of something like OpenMW, as we’ve got more frequently asked questions than we could hope to put on an FAQ page. In the olden days, stuff showed up from our forums when people googled it, and now it doesn’t, so we get loads of questions through Discord, and very rarely one from Matrix.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 days ago

      I can’t even use discord at all because it forces me to verify with a phone number as soon as I sign up, every single time, no matter what ISP/browser/etc. I use.

    • @[email protected]
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      25 days ago

      Whose voices can you listen to when all of your communication options are closed? Of course the ones already on the proprietary plaforms are more okay with it. If you are worried about folks not trusting your host or sign ups, choose a decntralized service so no one has to trust it or sign up.

      • @hperrin
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        327 days ago

        Right next to the Discord link is my Mastodon link, and no one has ever reached out to me there asking for other platforms.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 days ago

          That’s a shame. It’s rare, but I have been reached out to before by way of email, IRC, XMPP, & Matrix. Mastodon tho isn’t a messaging app, but a migroblog that doesn’t have a good messaging UX (or encryption)… I usually dig around for an email before I would reach out over Mastodon since it’s not often the right platform.

          Do you follow the project & see post about it that aren’t specifically @-ing you? I did this about a small TUI app two weeks ago in a vent, & the dev reached out to me & I immediately joined the IRC where they helped me resolve my immediate issue.

          This could also be a front-end focus thing… where the average user is on a Mac & uses Twitter than the audience for TUI mail.

          • @hperrin
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            26 days ago

            I have my email available too. It’s certainly easy to get ahold of me outside of Discord and GitHub.

            I feel like what you need to understand is that most people use closed source, commercial services and don’t care about avoiding non-privacy centric services. It’s not like a this kind of developer/that kind of developer thing. You and I are a rare kind of people, even in the developer community.

            If I focused on only providing support through privacy focused venues, I would be excluding the people not willing to sign up for those things, which is a vastly larger group than you might think. Much larger than the group of people who wouldn’t sign up for Discord. Additionally, it’s harder to moderate spam on open, federated platforms. So I’d be adding more work for myself that will take up time I could be using to develop SMUI.

            I understand why people want to advocate for privacy focused and federated services. I want to too. But my goal as an open source maintainer isn’t to cater to those people or advocate for something like Matrix, it’s to help my users.

            And yes, I search around the web once in a while to see what people are saying about SMUI outside of the official channels.

            • @[email protected]
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              26 days ago

              I think there is a disconnect on what folks want to use, what they know they can, & what they actually use. I have talk to a lot of ‘normies’ that do value their privacy (else Apple would not try to turn it into a marketing point), but they don’t understand the alternative or how much data is truly getting leaked. Sure there are the I just use what’s convenient type but when you compare A to B, so long as B has most of the features they rely on or can work around will take the one with better privacy.

              For me, I feel as a software maker, I have a duty to advocate for these freedom-focused platforms since I have a better understanding of how software & data collection works. I have friends that ask for suggestions around these thing since they know I can be a trusted authority on what might actually be best for their data, or even making compromises on something not ideal like Signal (or Matrix). Additionally, if I believe that if my projects are worthy of free or otherwise moral software, I want to practice what I preach & use/support those services–and the values they represent by making sure the freedom of users are respected too. I would even go so far as to hedge that the types of users that care about tech in this way are more likely to pitch in & be closer-knit than the fly-by, can’t-be-asked-to-use-anything-but-Discord type.

              As for spam, I am in one PL IRC chatroom, & it gets flooded from spam from the Discord bridge. I would say popular platforms have a greater chance at spam than one that is less popular–in the way Linux has less viruses, not due to vastly superior architecture, but less users.

              Ultimately, it’s not that I don’t see your point of meeting the users where they are instead of making the change you want to see in the world (or maybe you don’t care that strong for doing that sort of thing), but fundamentally I disagree with that sort of compromise. …Now to the point that if a project only offers Discord, I outright dismiss it as not having values that align with mine & will seek an alternative, even if it’s worse or has a smaller community.

              • @hperrin
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                126 days ago

                You know, my code is open source. You’re welcome to fork my project and run your own version with a privacy centric support forum. Maybe you’ll be successful.

                You’re partly right though. I care more about serving my community than proselytizing to them. Not that I won’t proselytize to them, but it’s far more important to me to make sure they can use my software library for their projects than to make sure they use only privacy centric services.

                I’ve dealt with a lot of people like you, who want to shame me for the decisions I’ve made. I’m pretty thick skinned, so it’s not going to push me away from the open source or privacy centric communities. But it does push some people away, so you should change to a different tactic. It’s kind of like the difference between telling someone how bad they are for eating meat vs telling them how easy and tasty certain meat alternatives are. One of those methods is basically guaranteed to backfire.

                • @[email protected]
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                  26 days ago

                  I hear a lot of the folks in here not shaming you specifically but the general direction that a lot of projects are in. It’s nothing against you personally… especially with the “free” in “freedom” to do what you wish. They, & I, feel underserved–not just that but it feels ironic given the topic in question is free software. Occasionally I talk about sports still on Reddit despite it ’cause that sort of community I wouldn’t expect to understand why moving might benefit their community or understand the tools for migrating, but those in software I assume would.