Re: [libreplanet-discuss] slack alternative: kaiwa, a modern XMPP client

[Adam Bolte]

On Thu, Apr 09, 2015 at 07:25:10AM -0400, Rudolf wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 4:11 AM, rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
> > Dnia środa, 8 kwietnia 2015 10:42:49 Rudolf pisze:
> > > I've encouraged the use of Slack at the office in my last two jobs because
> > > despite it being proprietary it has a really nice interface and it did
> > > support IRC (and XMPP at some point). I viewed it as the lesser evil when
> > > the only choices were Google Hangouts, Skype or Lync.
> > >
> > > Kaiwa is a web-based interface to XMPP and it looks modern and it actually
> > > looks very similar to Slack. The hard part now is convincing management to
> > > deploy an XMPP server ;)
> >
> > How about "you don't want a third party company reading our internal
> > conversations; and you might want to have a communication channel that is
> > instant and more direct tha e-mail."
>
> That may not work. They're happy to use Gmail, Google Drive, Github
> and JIRA but when it comes to user's data we only use our own hosted
> software (no cloud databases or servers or external logging services),
> things like GrayLog or Zabbix for monitoring are apparently very good
> to host internally too.


This is interesting. I feel I'm in the same boat, sort-of. At my job,
we already have an XMPP server (a service we have provided for many
years and I have actively encouraged the use of), but about a year ago
somebody signed the company up for a Slack account and most people
decided to use that instead - to the point where many people no longer
even bother signing into their XMPP client. They know full well the
implications of using Slack, but don't see it as a significant issue.

I am told the main concern is the lack of a "pretty" and functional
(with chat-room support) XMPP client for OS X. Apparently Adium
doesn't cut it for them. The workplace uses GMail and Github, and seem
to prefer whatever software is popular over whatever is free.

Perhaps over the weekend I'll try to setup a Kaiwa server and see how
many people are interested in switching back. I doubt many people will
(even if it proves to be reliable and has all the desired
functionality), but it's worth a shot. At the very least, some people
still on XMPP may prefer the web interface over installing a local
XMPP client application. Time will tell.

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature