[Qgis-psc] Gitter chat embed

Wed Oct 28 14:44:12 PDT 2015

Hi

> On 28 Oct 2015, at 22:58, Vincent Picavet (ml) <vincent.ml at oslandia.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> This would be yet another proprietary service we would be tied to...
> If you want a chat more proeminent on the QGIS website, why not
> including an IRC webchat window somewhere ?
> 

I am going on a philosophical aside here:

IRC web clients like the free node one really suck - you get disconnected all the time and they look like they were made in the 1990’s. As an end user I don’t think they provide a good experience. And I also don’t think that it really alleviates the ‘yet another proprietary service’ issue…. all web services are essentially proprietary unless you are running them yourselves (which swaps out one issue for another  - we will have to curate and maintain it).

I think services such as github and gitter, whilst proprietary, are great enablers for people building open source communities so I don’t know if it makes sense to dismiss them out of hand because they are proprietary. Short of not using the internet (or any computing device for that matter), there is virtually no escaping the fact that our daily computing lives are driven by proprietary services. If we truly want to follow this argument to its final conclusion, we would not use GitHub, StackExchange, produce no windows or OSX binaries (we need to use proprietary software to make them), computers with proprietary BIOS's and so on. So while I am a great advocate of using FOSS for as much as possible, if there are proprietary services that help us and offer real benefit to us, I do not think we should not dismiss them out of hand.

> Not that I would really be in favour, given the risk of abuse

I agree this is probably the best argument against doing it...

> and the
> need for a team of assistance people to moderate and answer questions.

Well no more than we need a team of people to moderate and answer in an IRC channel...

> But if we do this kind of thing, could we please first look at standard,
> durable, and opensource solutions ?

Yes - that would be my first prize. I actually have done quite a lot of research into finding a good FOSS web based chat system in the past. My favourite was Kandan (http://alternativeto.net/software/kandan/) but when I was trying to use it for InaSAFE about 2 years ago it was not production ready. Maybe it has improved since then. There is also telegram though that wants your phone number and is again running on a third party’s infrastructure and I don’t think you can run it embedded in a web page. If someone knows of a good FOSS web chat system that offers a similar experience to gitter of course that would be my preference...

Lets shelve the idea - although I think we are missing out on a good opportunity to connect with our users and let them connect with each other, the issues of abuse and controlling the message are probably enough of a show stopper without the additional overhead of the proprietary SAAS debate.

Thanks for your input!

Regards

Tim

> 
> Vincent
> 
> 28/10/2015 20:52, Tim Sutton wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>>> On 28 Oct 2015, at 20:30, Anita Graser <anitagraser at gmx.at
>>> <mailto:anitagraser at gmx.at>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 6:46 PM, Tim Sutton <tim at kartoza.com
>>> <mailto:tim at kartoza.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>    Hi All - especially Richard:
>>> 
>>>    Gitter have just released a simple way to embed chats in your web
>>>    site:
>>> 
>>>    https://sidecar.gitter.im <https://sidecar.gitter.im/>
>>> 
>>>    Its very nice in that it just pops in from the side of the site.
>>>    Do you think we could add it to http://QGIS.org? <http://qgis.org/?>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Not sure that's something I would put on our home page ...
>>> Do you have a specific motivation for displaying these communications
>>> so prominently?
>> 
>> We use gitter.im in InaSAFE. Its a modern replacement for IRC and a very
>> accessible way for our users to talk to us and between us. I was
>> thinking it would be nice for people to pull up a chat directly from the
>> web site without needing to install any software or do anything special
>> other than registering an account with GitHub. I think having prominent
>> and direct access to communication with other community members would be
>> a great thing to have on our web page, so let me flip the question
>> around a bit and ask if there is any reason why we would not want to
>> facilitate this? Asking myself the question I guess the answer is that
>> the channel is open for abuse - see for
>> example https://github.com/gitterHQ/gitter/issues/332 . So maybe you are
>> right and we are better off not putting anything on our site where we
>> don’t control the message carefully.
>> 
>> Regards
>> 
>> Tim
>> 
>>> 
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Anita
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    Regards
>>> 
>>>    Tim
>>>    —
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    <KartozaLogo160x66.png>
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    Tim Sutton
>>> 
>>>    Visit http://kartoza.com <http://kartoza.com/> to find out about
>>>    open source:
>>> 
>>>    * Desktop GIS programming services
>>>    * Geospatial web development
>>>    * GIS Training
>>>    * Consulting Services
>>> 
>>>    Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
>>>    <http://freenode.net/>
>>>    Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
>>> 
>>>    Kartoza is a merger between Linfiniti and Afrispatial
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    _______________________________________________
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>> 
>> —
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Tim Sutton
>> 
>> Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:
>> 
>> * Desktop GIS programming services
>> * Geospatial web development
>> * GIS Training
>> * Consulting Services
>> 
>> Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net <http://freenode.net>
>> Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
>> 
>> Kartoza is a merger between Linfiniti and Afrispatial
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
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—

Tim Sutton

Visit http://kartoza.com <http://kartoza.com/> to find out about open source:

* Desktop GIS programming services
* Geospatial web development
* GIS Training
* Consulting Services

Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee

Kartoza is a merger between Linfiniti and Afrispatial

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