[Qgis-psc] Chat unification

[Hugo Mercier]

On 08/11/2015 19:54, Tim Sutton wrote:
> Discussion 1) Do we find it acceptable to use non-FOSS software as part
> of our project offering?
> =========================================================================
> 
> Lets first do a little stock take:
> 
> * When we decided to drop our forums some years ago we were happy to
> adopt to using stack exchange (also a proprietary platform) because it
> provided a better platform with good critical mass, and I don’t really
> see how this discussion is substantially different. StackExchange and
> the contributions of people like Anita and Nathan on it are a huge asset
> to the QGIS project in terms of helping our community, and I believe
> this far outweighs the fact that the platform is proprietary.
> 
> * We have always hosted our code on a proprietary platform - we moved
> our source code from SourceForge (which was FOSS until 2001 and
> thereafter proprietary) to GitHub (which is proprietary). Funnily enough
> we are still listed as ‘beta' software on source forge:
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/qgis/ :-)
> 
> * We run our domain on go daddy.com <http://daddy.com> which is proprietary.
> 
> * We build our windows binaries using proprietary compiler (in the old
> days Radim I think used to build under mingw but that had issues with
> linking to binaries created on other compilers)
> 
> * Our OSX build is built using clang which I guess is FOSS, but I think
> much of the glue that makes it usable is proprietary OSX stuff
> 
> * We host our services on Hetzner which uses a proprietary web panel for
> administering restarts, tickets etc.
> 
> * We even make it accessible for people to use proprietary databases
> like Oracle, SQL Server, 
> 
> * We have an official twitter account somewhere again on a proprietary
> platform
> 
> * Even in OSGEO, our parent project it looks like they are using slack
> (and probably other proprietary stuff that I am not aware of)
> - http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Slack-and-OSGeo-td5220636.html

Many of the items you cite do not have impacts on final users. I am
still free not to use Oracle or SQL Server. I am free to recompile QGIS
on Windows with mingw if I wish. Having domains on godaddy does not
restrain my freedom. I am free not to follow the twitter account.

About code hosting, this is a bit in-between, I can get the source code
without having github account. But I need one to propose changes.
This is the only small "exception" to FOSS I see we really have.

If the official chat channel is now a proprietary software, we are
imposing it to the users.

But I agree there are some exceptions to accept in order to be practical
and user-friendly :)

If free alternatives exist and does not need a huge effort to use, then
go for it.

So ... RocketChat seems nice.

Other alternative: a gentle IRC bot could be used to implement most of
the missing items. For me, the one missing feature is the history.