Pro and anti Discord

[IceXuick]

PS. it would also be super awesome if you (@Abma) could join our Discord - we have so much amazing talks and progress going on over there. You can easily mute all comms from Discord, so you won't get distracted by it.

You can use this link to join: https://discord.gg/sVkS5JH

[abma]

Sorry to bother, but is there a chance of getting the build issue resolved?

sure, but its again the "i have to few time" problem.

PS. it would also be super awesome if you (@Abma) could join our Discord - we have so much amazing talks and progress going on over there. You can easily mute all comms from Discord, so you won't get distracted by it.

atm this would only make my "to few time problem" just bigger, so thanks for the invitation, but i have to deciline, sorry.

[ThinkSome]

PS. it would also be super awesome if you (@Abma) could join our Discord - we have so much amazing talks and progress going on over there. You can easily mute all comms from Discord, so you won't get distracted by it.

You can use this link to join: https://discord.gg/sVkS5JH

use of proprietary software is not progress, sorry.

just my $0.02


thats a bit offtopic: i've split this thread. -- abma

[Forboding Angel]

You ever read a comment and think to yourself "What an incredibly idiotic thing to say."?

[raaar]

Discord's useful, but relying on yet another US software company is annoying to me.

Sometimes I learn from discussions that happened in this forum years ago. What's said on discord stays there and gets drowned in spam. You can't do a google search and stumble upon it. It's inferior to a forum in a number of ways.

The fact that discussion happens elsewhere also makes spring and its projects appear "dead" from the point of view of people who visit this site.

[MasterBel]

Yeah, I wish the technical discussions would happen here. Real time chat is awesome for certain things but for organising information? Nah.

[ThinkSome]

You ever read a comment and think to yourself "What an incredibly idiotic thing to say."?

Have you ever read Discord's terms of service? I see where all this is heading and I don't like that future one bit.

There is some "organised real-time chat" software out there that is FOSS, e.g. Zulip. I have not tried it, yet.

[ivand]

No matter if you like it or not, 95% of the tech and content talk has moved to Discord, and that is one of the reasons the forum feels wasteland-ish for the last few years.

That said, I'm requesting a moderator action to move all pro and anti Discord messages to a separate thread: I do want my transition engine builds and don't want my thread to be derailed.

[zwzsg]

No matter if you like it or not, 95% of the tech and content talk has moved to Discord, and that is one of the reasons the forum feels wasteland-ish for the last few years.

With reasoning like that, this open source utopia should be immediately abandonned and all energy redirected to pivoting to mobile micro-transactionning (or at least Epic exclusivity). Also, close forum and use facebook (don't you know 95% of humanity has moved there?).

[Ares]

SpringRTS is a good open-source forum. Discord is useful when you get banned from using the open-source forum.

Abma, please join the Balanced Annihilation Discord to discuss unbanning poor Mando as he cannot post here.
Justice for Mando! https://discord.gg/Yd6nT2m

[ivand]

With reasoning like that, this open source utopia should be immediately abandonned and all energy redirected to pivoting to mobile micro-transactionning (or at least Epic exclusivity). Also, close forum and use facebook (don't you know 95% of humanity has moved there?).

That is not a reasoning, it's a hard fact. However the use of Discord as a convenient, modern communication mean has nothing to do with abandoning anything. Lots of FOSS projects use Discord for communication and don't cough. I just don't see how you connect the use of Discord to the rest that you wrote.

As far as forum, right now it's not very useful, but it's priceless for the history perspectives, past concepts, etc.

[Ares]

You can use this link to join: https://discord.gg/sVkS5JH

Why is my discord invite to Abma deleted but not Iceuicks? Please stop BAR favoritism and treat all mods equally, engine mods like Gajop already abandoned BA discord to take residence in BAR discord and work full time for BAR. At least let BA use the forum fairly. You can play favourites on Discord but forum should be for all Spring mods.

You can use this link to join us Abma: https://discord.gg/Yd6nT2m

[ThinkSome]

With reasoning like that, this open source utopia should be immediately abandonned and all energy redirected to pivoting to mobile micro-transactionning (or at least Epic exclusivity). Also, close forum and use facebook (don't you know 95% of humanity has moved there?).

That is not a reasoning, it's a hard fact. However the use of Discord as a convenient, modern communication mean has nothing to do with abandoning anything. Lots of FOSS projects use Discord for communication and don't cough. I just don't see how you connect the use of Discord to the rest that you wrote.

As far as forum, right now it's not very useful, but it's priceless for the history perspectives, past concepts, etc.

There are convenient, modern communications means out there that are FOSS, such as Matrix. Choosing Discord means purposefully ignoring those in favor of proprietary software. To me, that is losing the spirit of FOSS. And once you are willing to give up that spirit, it is only a matter of time before the GPL and other copyleft is dropped in favor of more proprietary licensing. As zwzsg said, at this point there is nothing but existing codebase tying you to using an open engine. There are much better (in feature, platform support and developer support) engines out there. Just migrate already.

[Ares]

give up that spirit... in favor of more proprietary licensing

yes, sadly that does seem to be happening

[ivand]

There are convenient, modern communications means out there that are FOSS, such as Matrix.

Sure we could, but for now only a tiny minority use it. Once it gets its (probably well deserved) traction we may well switch over.
Although I can't speak for the others, still for now we can probably agree to set up some bridging between the two.

Choosing Discord means purposefully ignoring those in favor of proprietary software. To me, that is losing the spirit of FOSS.

Yes, and what? We all love freely available code, but FOSS doesn't make anything better or more usable. It just grants access to the programs' code. By itself it doesn't make the code more stable, the user base bigger and the interface much prettier.

As zwzsg said, at this point there is nothing but existing codebase tying you to using an open engine. There are much better (in feature, platform support and developer support) engines out there. Just migrate already.

First of all you have no reasons to do such claims. I'm here since spring was not called such and if I wanted to move I would have moved long time ago.
Secondly, I don't think you can name me an RTS engine with capabilities "much better (in feature, platform support and developer support)" than spring.

[ThinkSome]

There are convenient, modern communications means out there that are FOSS, such as Matrix.

Sure we could, but for now only a tiny minority use it. Once it gets its (probably well deserved) traction we may well switch over.
Although I can't speak for the others, still for now we can probably agree to set up some bridging between the two.

If everyone had/has this attitude, Matrix would/will never gain traction. It's there. It works. Stop the excuses.

... We all love freely available code, but FOSS doesn't make anything better or more usable. It just grants access to the programs' code. ...

Access to source code does not make Spring better and more usable?

[ivand]

If everyone had/has this attitude, Matrix would/will never gain traction. It's there. It works. Stop the excuses.

It's not an excuse, it's a fact. Matrix is a barren land as far as spring community. Who would I talk to there? To you and to Sanguinario_Joe? I'm sorry but that is not enough. The BAR Discord has ~2000 dwellers, I don't track ZK numbers, but they have a lot too. Moreover I'm a member of a dozen programming and games related servers. Why should I abandon all these and suffer in Matrix just for the sake of it being FOSS?

And just a bit of history. Discord (for games) and Slack (for enterprises) didn't just fall on us out of the blue. The IRC protocol and clients existed long ago, they all had horrendous UI and lacked features, their maintainers thought it was enough to use open protocols, being free and open source. But in fact almost no users care. People (in their majority) do care about usability and features, so when Discord/Slack popped up, offering smooth user experience and abundance of game or enterprise related features, people just flocked in, because it's cool when a product team cares about its users' needs and not about additional properties like being FOSS.

Those FOSS products, that thrive, do such not only because they are FOSS, but because they are engineering marvels. It's same for non-FOSS projects by the way too.

All in all, I'll let Matrix grow some meat around its UI (last time I tried it was far from being acceptable). Good products will find their way to people's heart no matter if it's free or not.

Access to source code does not make Spring better and more usable?

Just to underline this is a false dichotomy, I'm gonna ask one question:
Do thousands of applications not get better and more usable, despite not being FOSS?

[bobthedinosaur]

discord is slack? ugg no thanks

[raaar]

I agree that having a discord presence is important.

My point is that there are people who browse this forum and would reply here if at least part of the discussion happened here . Some will find the lack of discussion here a sign that the ecossystem is dead.


Atm someone who wants to follow spring stuff thoroughly needs to pay attention to:
- github issue trackers for various projects
- mantis / spring engine issue tracker
- discord (multiple channels - list of invite links is hard to find)
- spring forum
- zk forum
- lobby chat (some is mirrored to zk infra and/or discord, but it's inconsistent over channels and time)
- matrix (?)
- irc (?)


We have too many parallel discussion channels already and avoid using the obvious one that's directly highlighted on the web site : this forum.

[The Yak]

https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/3546

Voice channels are a big reason for discord's dominance, something that alternative ecosystems like matrix do not currently offer.

Slack has calls but they are private and require invitation.