Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
A hundred different chat systems mentioned here. <i>None</i> of them compatible with one another. Well, I guess a couple of them have IRC gateways, but you have to actually set those up.<p>Gee, wouldn&#x27;t it be nice if you could pick and choose your UI? Pick and choose your &quot;integrations&quot;, your &quot;plugins&quot;, your client, etc without having to lose your entire userbase, history, contacts?<p>Some sort of <i>open</i> protocol.<p>Urgh, I&#x27;ve been working on this lately and the entire field is depressing. Between one side that doesn&#x27;t understand the legitimate need for open protocols, and another side that doesn&#x27;t understand why IRC isn&#x27;t the end-all-be-all of group chat (and why UX matters), it&#x27;s just people talking past each other.<p>Every new attempt at making &quot;the slack killer&quot; makes this problem worse, because it comes with its own protocol. Its own users. Etc.<p>PS: If somebody has free time to work on an open source multi-protocol group chat gateway, email me, I have something started.