Cordless Project Closes Down
github.comIt really is time to start a push to move open communities to open source software. Running a whole bunch of open communities out of slack and discord has always surprised me.
Slack is particularly bad with making anything longer than 10k messages inaccessible. The amount of internet history being lost in these groups is boggling.
Zulip [1] is free/open source and arguably has better usability. Bubble [2] runs our day-to-day chat on Zulip and it's worked really well.
The message history is all there, held hostage by Slack. Clearly it's not a burden for them to store it or they would simply delete everything past 10,000 messages rather than still storing it and reminding me frequently that they have it if I ever decide to pay.
If you’re an owner of a slack instance, you can export all of the history without paying.
Export to what? Can I import it into Matrix?
I assumed all these SaaSS products are built like carnivorous plants - The spikes only point in.
I tried the data export from Asana once and it was useless.
Here [0] is a link to the slack export documentation. Slack not providing an export to the provider of your choice isn't necessarily slacks issue, it's Matrix's issue.
> I tried the data export from Asana once and it was useless.
I don't think you can infer that all SAAS platforms lock your data because you had a failed attempt with another such tool once.
[0] https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/201658943-Export-...
I don't know about matrix, but you can import your slack archive into mattermost. So whatever the export is clearly well-structured enough to be useful.
https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/migrating.html?hi...
JSON[0]. Here is the export I did for my employer, Hyperledger.
There are very few, if any, opensource alternatives that provide the same level of convenience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093106 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25093556
What are the good open source alternatives out there?
DuckDuckGo'd a few ones. But not convincing ones.
I was surprised how much I liked zulip. The threading model and the policy of few notifications by default speaks to me.
The UI is not the most modern but the software is productive and friendly for a chat application, particularly when you look for an old information burried in the history.
I've used https://rocket.chat/ in one company and it was perfectly fine.
Self-hosted Mattermost?
IRC.
Discord bots, on multiple occassions, have DM'd me child pornography with invite links to related servers. I have no idea how these bots have found me or why they are allowed to message me, and so far any attempt to make Discord answer me about them has failed.
This earned yet another twitter DM to them telling them they fucked up. They benefit directly from the open source community so this is a huge "fuck you" to everyone involved.
Slimey, shitty tactics. I was previously going to run a company through them but now I'm going to evaluate other options.
Are you aware that there is an option to disable messages from unknown users, and users you do not share a server with?
There is also a setting for discord "scanning" your messages for bad content, maybe that's something you're looking for.
Yes, and it's enabled. That is the problem. Only users in shared servers are allowed.
I'm confused. What did Discord do wrong? Spam is a problem across all message platforms.
Discord took two weeks to get rid of it and still haven't answered any support requests about wtf happened or why it took so long.
Fucking hell, I'm using finch to handle discord notifications on my pinephone from my girlfriend. If discord starts enforcing the no 3rd party client thing I'm dumping it.
finch?
Aaron Finch. He's an Australian cricketer bloke. I guess OP's girlfriend is an Aussie, so he uses finch as a mediator. And OP seems to be saying he'll dump the girlfriend if finch isn't allowed to mediate.
Aussies... Goodness.
I'm guessing the ncurses-based IM client based on libpurple (in other words, the text-based version of pidgin).
Which I used quite a bit when that kind of thing was more useful
Ah, thank you! I did a quick search (just "finch") but nothing relevant was on the first page. "finch software" got me what I wanted (a few results down the page).
I wonder what this means for Ripcord, https://cancel.fm/ripcord/
Cordless is still using an outdated API, which is a red flag, Ripcord is up-to-date and uses the same endpoint as Discord's own client, so it's less of a risk getting banned
I know modding the official client is against the rules, but how is a replacement client in breach when there’s a public API?
Does anyone know the specific rule, in the ToS, that Cordless breaks?
Not the ToS, but the "guidelines" [0] states:
The API is explicitly for bots, so this pretty clearly bans using said API for accessing user accounts.You may not use self-bots or user-bots to access Discord.Adherence to the "guidelines" is accepted as part of the ToS, "you agree to comply with the restrictions and rules of use set forth in these Terms and our Community Guideline"
Thanks, I'd looked through the ToS, but didn't see the "guidelines".
Seems odd to have an API for bots but ban 3rd party clients!
Ok, but why? Is it about the "no custom clients allowed" part of ToS?
Your question is literally the first thing answered in the README...
> I got banned because of ToS violation today
No? The part of the ToS was never mentioned.
But... context...
The rest of the first paragraph also make it pretty clear he was banned because of cordless.
If you're still not convinced, the author added later in the readme:
> WARNING: Third party clients are discouraged and against the Discord TOS. There have already been cordless users that got banned, including me (Bios-Marcel, the maker and maintainer)
But where in the Discord ‘ToS’ does it say that?
That's a fair question and I wondered too. The way I understand it, it comes from multiple places :
> You agree not to [...] copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, attempt to discover any source code, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise exploit the Service or any portion of the Service, except as expressly permitted in these Terms
Combined with
> All rights, title and interest in and to all materials that are part of the Service (including, but not limited to, designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement), except for Your Content, collectively referred to as the "Service Materials,” are, as between the Company and you, owned by the Company and/or its third party licensors.
And
> You agree that you shall not modify, copy, distribute, frame, reproduce, republish, download, scrape, display, post, transmit, or sell in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, or otherwise exploit the Service Materials without our express prior written permission. You acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by using the Service or by accessing any Service Materials posted on the Service [...]
Seem to ban client modifications, reverse engineering of the client, etc.
Then, the ToS make you agree to the Community Guidelines, in which you can find
> You may not use self-bots or user-bots to access Discord.
Which, from my understanding, is the main way third-party clients work. (Except for those simply embedding the discordapp website)
I might be wrong, but that's what I gathered from my small investigation
This part: "The Company may terminate your Account and your access to the Service (or, at the Company's sole option, applicable portions of the Service) at any time and for any reason."
They aren't against the TOS per se, just that they can kick you out at any time for any reason. They could kick you out for typing too slowly in the official client if they wanted to.
That's sad to see a open source project closing down like this :(
What is sad is that we have another corporate entity acting aggressively to user-centric efforts.
It's frustrating too because both Slack and Discord fail to adequately provide either multi-account or at least multi-client on the same host in a nice way. Because of the Slack workspace/Discord server sprawl I always run into a situation where I want to login to the community/people/work that I am focused in but some days you just need to be in two different scopes at once.
The only solution I have is to run Rambox. Sadly that just uses whatever browser variant there is so no access to better codecs for teams/discord.
Any open-source alternatives?
I am looking for: - Voice/video chat with PTT integrated - An okayish chat with search feature
I would like to be a part (developer) of such project.
Spartial channel structure (like in spartial.chat) is a welcome thing — I would like to make some sort of distributed hackspace with that.
as a contributor, this is a very sad thing to happen, there should be at least a way to submit custom clients and digitally sign them so Discord can allow using those that are accepted
I'm the contributor regarding the VTxxx stuff. I agree with your idea, considering the fact that Discord uses Electron which is just sandboxed Chromium, which uses quite a lot of RAM. For a product marketed towards gamers (or at least was), this is not good. What a shitty reality. I wish I can go back to TS3 and its Qt client... oh well, we have Mumble anyway.
> considering the fact that Discord uses Electron
Typical company using open source but also giving the middle finger to open sourcers.
Each time this happens, Stallman seems a little bit more sane.
> Each time this happens, Stallman seems a little bit more sane.
He always seemed sane to me. If anything, it's the people who knowingly use non-free software (or develop against non-free APIs) who seem a bit insane.
Can't we implement an opensourced sever with the same api and let cordless be the client to the opensourced server?
Or the Api is also copyright?
Funny that you use "we" as in who exactly would that be?
With OSS contributors getting burned out by maintaining stuff they don't get paid for, you propose that "we" build and support something from which people participating in network will get benefits from. Then maintainers have to deal with all the requests and other stuff, it is not just writing code, you also have to run some servers and it is costing money as well.
Not really, but I presume they change it frequently (I've seen cordless's author saying they're using v6 apis)
I disagree with the closure. They should fight Discord to provide an open source alternative client for a closed system who is attempting to trap their users.
Fight how exactly? Discord owns the network and API; they don't have to allow anyone else.
You are going to donate $10k for hiring a lawyer from your own pocket? Then you are going to spend evenings and weekends on promoting that cause, tweeting, posting on forums, asking people for more donations?
Well, what should I do in your opinion?