Every now and then I find myself in discussions with people around which tools we should use for what job. This comes up especially often in the context of FOSS with regards to communication platforms. Do we use IRC, Slack, Gitter? Also, are mailing lists still a thing? Should we have a Discourse instead?
Fairly often the reaction of people will be “no you can’t use Slack, use FOSS tools for FOSS projects”. Up to a point I agree. It really irritates me that by now I have more than 10 Slack accounts whereas I’m in about 30 channels on Freenode with no additional account management headaches. Ideally we’ll be able to use FOSS projects to power all of this. But just because something is proprietary doesn’t make it a bad fit.
The most obvious example is GitHub. It is entirely proprietary but through webhooks provides most people with the necessary extension points. GitHub has also been instrumental to the rise of open source projects and Git in general. Without it the FOSS landscape would look very different.
Of coure, GitLab is also around nowadays and a very nice alternative, fully open source. But it doesn’t quite have the traction GitHub has and most people will assume that if it’s a FOSS project it’s likely on GitHub. There’s also Gogs if you’re looking for a lighter alternative and Mercurial has code browsing solutions too.
If your core values are “opensource way or the highway” that’s fine and you can tailor your selection of tools based on that. But if that is the case, don’t then go host your code on GitHub but get mad at people over using Slack.
However, for me, the most important question to ask when deciding on where to host your code, what communication channels to use etc. is “what will help your project grow”. Depending on what your project is and who your likely users and contributors are, that can be BitBucket and HipChat. Or GitHub and Slack. Or GitHub and a IRC channel on Freenode plus a Google Groups mailing list. Or carrier pigeons delivering patches.
I would prefer to use a fully open source code hosting solution but that shouldn’t go at the expense of the project or the contributors. They’re one of the most important factors to keeping your project growing and that should carry a lot of weight in any decision you make around it. If Slack solved the account management headache I would probably use it too, considering the amount of traction they have and it otherwise being a rather pleasant product with an easy way to integrate additional services. Sure it’s fun to write IRC bots but at some point I’m done with it.
For the forseeable future I’ll be hosting my public projects on GitHub, because that gives them the most exposure and a bigger chance of having a larger impact and receiving contributions. I’ll probably also keep using IRC and Gitter but not Slack. Gitter provides a good alternative to Slack without the account management headache and the IRC bridge is somewhat uesable.
Hopefully, eventually, that toolbox will change for a fully open source toolbelt with a good UX and low bar of entry for any contributor.