On Friday, November 20, 2020 11:52:46 AM MST Radka Gustavsson wrote:
On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 6:03 PM John M. Harris Jr
<johnmh(a)splentity.com>
wrote:
> On Thursday, November 19, 2020 11:17:15 AM MST Neal Gompa wrote:
> > The move to having our own Matrix server is being driven by Fedora
> > subcommunities already wanting to move primacy from IRC to Matrix.
> > Many of our adjunct upstreams have done so (Mozilla, KDE, etc.) or are
> > in the process of doing so (GNOME, openSUSE, etc.).
> >
> > The intent isn't to drop IRC as a gateway to these communities, and
> > indeed the Freenode IRC channels would remain bridged to the Fedora
> > Matrix server.
> >
> > To be blunt, we're struggling to get new folks to come talk to us on
> > IRC.
>
> Has this been documented anywhere? If so, we can likely review these
> issues,
> and see what would need to be done to solve this problem, if there is one.
>
> > Our largest user community is on Discord today, which eclipses
> > *everything* else by a wide margin.
>
> It's worth questioning whether those folks are actually Fedora uses, or
> people
> who are just a bit interested in Fedora. Given that the use of proprietary
> software, where a superior Free alternative exists, is against the Four
> Foundations, it's questionable that they'd be Discord users.
I manage the place we're talking about so I can tell you all about it. Many
open source lovers use Discord. Quite a few became Fedora contributors
through our Discord community as well. Perhaps you shouldn't judge without
ever participating. People aren't automatically bad or whatever just
because they don't mind using proprietary software when its benefits far
outweigh the downsides and when it enables them to work at their peak
efficiency.
I never said that anyone was "bad or whatever" for using proprietary software.
I'm not going to get much further into this, because I don't want this to
become another pile-on, but Discord is hardly the most efficient chat option.
I've seen videos of its use, and we have Free Software that meets and exceeds
the needs that Discord also offers a solution to.
Discord is in fact an amazing chat platform for the end user that
doesn't
have a peer out there. (I could talk for hours about its flaws, but the end
user won't notice or realise most of them.) You're extremely wrong in
saying that there is a "superior" libre alternative. There isn't, nowhere
near. If there was, it would have been popular and not Discord. Those
masses chose it for its features and ease of use. It allows people to do
whatever they want and doesn't disable anyone, regardless how "out there"
their requirements may be.
We're just going to have to disagree on that one. I look forward to hearing
about the new hotness in a few more years.
Our Discord community is not "against the Four Foundations"
like you say.
I didn't say that it was. This has been clarified by the Council at this
point, it's not an official communication platform, it's just treated as a
social media account.
It definitely hits 3/4 - Features Friends and First, and by proxy,
by
enabling people to reach Fedora contributors easier, it also enables the
FREE in the end, by further contribution from the members. I could easily
turn your logic against IRC - it's definitely not First to introduce new
Features and because of it, it doesn't bring Friends together anymore. All
it's got really going for it is the FREE.
Discord is not Free Software. In this context, Free refers not to price, but
to freedom. Libre, not gratis.
--
John M. Harris, Jr.