Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution (was: Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat)

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2017, Christian Loosli wrote:

> But KDE is not a tech startup. As people correctly wrote, KDE has a very long 
> history and contributors of all age. I'd rather be that than one of the many 
> tech startups with a bunch of little to no experience but fancy new chat 
> systems, to be honest.  Do we really want and need to cater these mystical 
> tweens so much? Are they the holy grail that saves KDE and worth alienating 
> the people who are not this particular group? 

Indeed.

> Let's see what others do. Let's take our main, most famous friendly competitor 
> GNOME. They even run their very own IRC network still, and actively code new 
> IRC applications. 
> Mozilla? Own IRC network. 
> Reddit, quite the place for young techies and startup? Created their own IRC 
> network. Hardly turning off or away people, it seems. If we fail to attract 
> fresh blood, then maybe the problem is not actually "we use IRC". 

Actually... That is a problem, at least for me, personally. Github is a place 
where everything gets mashed down to faceless anonymity. If our code would move
to Github we would lose our sense of community for ever. But... On Freenode, 
in the same application, the same mental space, I can be around in kde, kde on 
windows, krita, but also inkscape and scribus and vc and qt and some other things
where I might just lurk and learn, or sometimes be useful.

I've never lurked on gimp's irc channel, because it's on another network, and I
would feel like I were intruding. It would be better if they were on freenode 
as well.

The biggest problem I face on #krita isn't a lack of people joining, but a 
surfeit of people thinking it's something like a one-on-one scripted company
support chat. Having multiple conversations going on at the same time is very
mind-boggling for some people. But that's not in any of the lists of problems
I've seen in this discussion.

> 
> But even if it would: to be honest, if someone decides what project they want 
> to contribute due based on what chat protocol they use internally, I'm 
> personally not sure if that is a well suited candidate due to rather odd 
> priorities.

AOL

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.krita.org, http://www.valdyas.org