Spacebar is a free, opensource selfhostable discord-compatible chat, voice and video platform.
- Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
- Selfhostable (Server)
- Open Source (GitHub Organization)
- Configurable (Configure every aspect and limits to your needs)
- Decentralized (no abuse of power and doesn’t have a single point of failure)
- Extendable (secure and cross-platform plugin system)
- Themeable (cross-platform theme system with design editor)
- Secure (publicly audited and hosted FOSS software for transparent foundation in terms of security)
Why not just use Matrix? I thought it was the goto FOSS and decentralized Discord alternative.
Matrix doesn’t offer the same experience as discord. I’m sorry but it doesn’t. I set up my own to compare to see if my friend group would like it, and it was quite a step backwards. Even in it’s best platform element it was missing a lot of stuff from discord.
So, things like this I’d be very interested to watch. Revolt looked the most promising but it didn’t offer federation, and I wasn’t going to make everyone have a separate accountjust for our server
So this will be interesting. I will need at least voice to get them to come over, but I’ll watch this project closely
Voice & screensharing seems to be the thing holding all of my friends chained to discord
I mean, it’s a valid reason. I originally joined Discord back in 2016 because of it’s easy to use voice. It became the standard for voice chat. Before that I had been using the Xbox party chat and other garbage voice systems.
We were using Skype… Dark days.
Element seems to have voice and video chats in beta right now, and they plan to implement it into the Element application, so it looks like it is on the way at least.
https://element.io/app-for-productivity
Mumbleb plus moonlight, boom done
I think the original question could be about the protocol. Why not use Matrix as the protocol for the project? No one is doing the work to bring a Matrix-based Discord alternative because they’re a) on Discord b) creatin IRC face-lifts like Element c) refusing to quit IRC d) making projects with bespoke protocols like this one. It’s incredibly frustrating.
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I haven’t, but I’m going to try it out!
This one is clearly made to look like slack, which is great I need to try this out. Just wish someone would make one that looks like disc. And then matrix needs screensharing support.
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TBH both disc and slack have their downsides, disc more so, so I’m fine if they just take the best of all worlds.
But yeah, screensharing is the deciding factor for me. As much as all my friends hate discord, we use screensharing all the time (it’s just a bit jankier getting it working on Linux).
https://element.io/app-for-productivity
Element x does screen sharing
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Yeah, I saw that element is using jitsi under the hood for its screensharing. If that makes for a seamless user experience, that’s great. It’s been like 10 years since I last tried Jitsi, but it was not smooth.
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i can agree with regards to a proper threads/forum feature which is not that amazing in element right now… but it appears we are moving fast towards element call integration everywhere. this means p2p video rooms if i am not mistaken. is there something else except user friendliness in ux that could be better?
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My instance is pretty fast. Run Conduwuit as the server, problem solved
i cant confirm that. especially in the light of the new sliding sync implemented in elementx. it’s a nightmare for admins but for users it should be fine
I looked at matrix but the server setup was janky – enamoured of the current mayfly shine tools, and when I saw mumble install cleanly on my tiny arm box it was a sea change. No longer have the tiny arm box but I still run mumble.
I’d be super happy if it and its polite codecs were brought into the fed but I haven’t been paying attention.