[Freeswitch-users] New FreeSWITCH Community Resources - SignalWire.community

[Alex Balashov]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 11:11:29AM -0600, Anthony Minessale wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 5:12 AM Madovsky <infos at 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-slacks-valuation-an-interactive-analysis/#4af960c67616

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/