5mo ago

Is there any fediverse alternative to slack or discord?

I'm working on a project that needs a similar approach to slack or discord. I know about matrix, but the person I'm working with said to be open to use a fediverse alternate when I tell them I didn't want to use slack. I mention matrix and the fediverse as an alternative and they asked me a good fediverse option.

It's needs to be good for team collaboration, easy to set and be able to maintain original images quality.

22 comments

Matrix seems the way to go, it's generally considered part of the fediverse (even though it's not participating in activitypub)
- What makes it part of the fediverse then?
  
  It’s FOSS and decentralized/supports self hosting, plus has a large following in fediverse circles so it gets colloquially lumped in
Ask them what they mean by "FediVerse." I don't know of any ActivityPub chat room software; while there could be one, trying to make a real-time interactive chat with AP seems like hammering a square peg into a round hole.
Matrix is probably the best alternative. It's just as federated as Mastodon is. Here's a reasonably brief, fairly accurate layman comparison of the two protocols, although the write up is for an unrelated topic.
If the concern is that the person wants full integration with the many different projects that provide AP integration, then there's at least one Matrix bridge for ActivityPub. Honestly, it seems like a kind of horrible idea ... like, how would an IRC chat room (IRC ~ Matrix ~ Discord ~ Slack) look like in a Lemmy client? It's even a little awkward when Lemmy content shows up in Mastodon, and vice-versa. The more the UX flow diverges, the more weirdness you see in the federation.
What would this even look like? Could you follow a Mastodon account from a chat room? And would that account's toots just randomly show up with no context in the room? Would people responding in Mastodon automatically get sucked into the room, or would the Mastodon user look like they're having a conversation you see only one side of? And would people replying to the person show up in Toots?
Anyway, Matrix is probably the best federated solution for chat, at the moment. You have one account and can join rooms on any server, or connect to any user on any other Matrix server.
- you didn't even mention xmpp
  
  Unfortunately no-one does. Since Google basically killed it, it gets ignored everywhere.
Matrix does the job okay'ish.
- The "ish" is doing championship levels of lifting there
  
  Indeed. I wonder why people market it as an alternative since it has way less functionality. I mean, I'm a fan but link previews suck and threads are buggy. A chat/productivity app shouldn't be that hard. Just considering it all, why not use Lemmy as an alternative?
XMPP or IRC?
- Are those part of the fediverse? I've used matrix in the past, but have no experience with xmpp or irc I don't want to scare them with something complicate.
  
  No, although XMPP is similarly federated to the fediverse. If by fediverse you mean ActivityPub, then XMPP and IRC are both much older than AP.
  
  They're from a good while before, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate for your use case.
  Matrix is much closer to the Slack / Discord format. It IS a bit more complicated than those two, especially if you're self hosting it, but it has a lot of similar functionality
The fediverse as most people on here would reference that term, isn't really designed for what you're looking for.
Matrix effective is what you're looking for. The only alternative to that would be something like TeamSpeak 6, which is a closed federated chat system (that's still not really fully baked).
Are you willing to set up your own thing I recomend Mattermost. https://mattermost.com/
- It's open source, but I wouldn't call it a fediverse alternative. But it's still a good slack alternative.

22 comments