On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 11:11:29AM -0600, Anthony Minessale wrote:
On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 5:12 AM Madovsky <infos@madovsky.org> wrote:
That's ok Anthony, I just point it out that
I always wondered how a company like slack became so popular in
less than 5 years offering their service for free with revenues coming from the sky... what' s the magic behind?
I think if you use it for serious productivity on a team for commercial use, its compelling to pay for each user to get access to premium features. If you don’t need that, the free one is still very useable.
Correct, there's plenty of revenue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/05/25/breaking-down-slac... Including from ourselves, and we're an infinitesimally tiny company. In promoting the recent addition of the Kamailio Slack channel by a member of the community, I made the following arguments in favour of diversifying beyond IRC, which I will recycle here as they speak somewhat to the issue of why it's become so popular: ----- Yes, I am aware of the open-source-purist objection to Slack; it is proprietary and perceived to be a "walled garden" of sorts. Furthermore, for those of us who have been on the Internet and involved in technology for a significant amount of time, the irony is not lost that it is little more than a packaging of the "IRC" experience in the bloated form of a modern JavaScript application. I am also very reluctant to contribute in any way to the Balkanisation or fracturing of project-related communication channels. That thought gives me no comfort. These are all concerns of which I'm mindful. Nevertheless: - A great deal of professional real-time messaging and communication in many organisations has moved to Slack. This is also true of our company, and most companies we work with. Thus, a Slack channel for would be highly complementary to a platform many other people are already using. - Slack provides a polished and cohesive user experience, which is why it has become so popular. There are clients for every platform, and a seamless user experience that is also highly compatible with mobile and tablet. One can shoehorn IRC into these media, but it clearly is not designed for them. - There are already lots of open-source discussion channels and developer forums on Slack. - Slack's inline Markdown and other conveniences make it _much_ easier to have discussions about code, configurations, etc., since it is easy to insert inline monospace and multiline blobs, attachments, etc. This is what inspired my switch to it. - A lot of people positioned within the current wave of thinking about IT and technology, and thus a big part of our candidate user base, have never used IRC. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC Tel: +1-706-510-6800 / +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/