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The web is awash with reasons not to use Discord, especially for open source projects. One of the easiest ways to trend on HN is to rant against the use of Discord for OSS or information storage:
6+ years ago at Discourse we were particularly confounded by the prevalence of Slack in open source communities. It didn't support threads at the time, and users couldn't even join by link. Either they had to be invited manually, or you'd go through the trouble of setting up a custom invite-link service. Why would anyone in their right mind opt for Slack?!
Discourse partially solved for the first two with our free 'groups' plan (which I started and ran for several years) and in-built chat, although neither was ever committed to as a re-framing of Discourse as a viable first-stop for community builders.
As for the missing networking effect, we never got around to that, in spite of some great ideas and founders who had previously made the very successful Stack Exchange network.
Slack maintained its dominance for open source MVCs (minimum-viable communities) until Discord came along with open invites and an even more ubiquitous network: Gamers. Many OSS contributors are on a Slack chat for work, but practically all of us are on a Discord chat for gaming.
Beyond its Slack-like functionality, Discord has functionality like a social graph, seeing what games your friends are playing, voice chat, etc. These have been misunderstood by the market. They aren’t random small features. They are the backbone of a central nervous system.
Competing with Network Effects
A legitimate alternative to Discord - as is Commune's foremost aspiration - will have to match it on all three aforementioned differentiators, along with some additional edge.
Which leaves the big one - making a network - which is simultaneously a technical and social problem. The bigger a network is, the more likely users are to join it in order to access and be accessible to the people who are already there.
We witnessed the power of open networks as something which netizens understand and seek out during the user exodus of Twitter and later Reddit. Although there were plenty of both open source (but centralized) and well funded proprietary alternatives feverishly competing to be the new home for the large wave of digital migrants, the clear winners of these migration events were the two most mature network platforms at the time, Mastodon and Lemmy. They weren't perfect, but they were the best alternatives lying around.
When Discord inevitably enshittifies like Twitter and Reddit before it, there's only one clear contender for migrants in search of an open messaging network:
Matrix, “an open network for secure, decentralised communication”. It's a foundational assembly-kit for networked chat applications. Most importantly, it's an established network with over 100,000,000 registered accounts and 3 million monthly active users, which is equal to or more than the higher profile fediverse of Mastodon & co.
This growth is likely to accelerate further with Matrix' adoption (and active driving) of the emerging MIMI interoperability standard, which incidentally is leading to a simplified API surface known as Linearized Matrix.
As far as chat networks go, nothing else comes close. Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Discourse, Zulip & Linen are all great open source alternatives to Discord as a group messenger, but they're not networks. And while Matrix may not yet rival Discord in terms of network size, its network is almost exclusively made up of open source savvy software professionals, which is Commune's first-mover target market. I.e. the emerging market of COSS companies developing in the open, which are under constant pressure [1][2] from their constituents to use OSS comms platforms.
So when we're asked 'why Matrix?', this is why. It's not just an established network, but also an established market. Element already employs ~200 people in the business of catering to governments and large, private-first institutions. This makes them very enterprise-y and Slack-like. Commune takes aim at the other end of the spectrum by positioning itself as a Discord-like for public-facing communities.
Beyond Discord
Due for further elaboration, but in short we'll be exploring our "additional edge" thusly:
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The web is awash with reasons not to use Discord, especially for open source projects. One of the easiest ways to trend on HN is to rant against the use of Discord for OSS or information storage:
Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712098
Discord Is Not An Acceptable Choice For Free Software Projects
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22384356
Discord, or the Death of Lore
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35050858
Discord is not documentation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36746154
Please stop closing forums and moving people to Discord
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28549739
Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502258
In spite of countless pleas, not much has changed. Before Discord was the subject of these admonitions, Slack was the popular punching bag:
Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10486541
Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14087002
Use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29154216
Minimum Viable Community
6+ years ago at Discourse we were particularly confounded by the prevalence of Slack in open source communities. It didn't support threads at the time, and users couldn't even join by link. Either they had to be invited manually, or you'd go through the trouble of setting up a custom invite-link service. Why would anyone in their right mind opt for Slack?!
Three "simple" reasons:
Discourse partially solved for the first two with our free 'groups' plan (which I started and ran for several years) and in-built chat, although neither was ever committed to as a re-framing of Discourse as a viable first-stop for community builders.
As for the missing networking effect, we never got around to that, in spite of some great ideas and founders who had previously made the very successful Stack Exchange network.
Slack maintained its dominance for open source MVCs (minimum-viable communities) until Discord came along with open invites and an even more ubiquitous network: Gamers. Many OSS contributors are on a Slack chat for work, but practically all of us are on a Discord chat for gaming.
Discord also operates more like a social network than Slack:
https://kwokchain.com/2019/08/16/the-arc-of-collaboration/
Competing with Network Effects
A legitimate alternative to Discord - as is Commune's foremost aspiration - will have to match it on all three aforementioned differentiators, along with some additional edge.
How to do freemium without imploding is a very solvable business problem, to be covered in another topic.
The MVC problem is solved by making a community platform that's chat-first rather than forum-first.
Which leaves the big one - making a network - which is simultaneously a technical and social problem. The bigger a network is, the more likely users are to join it in order to access and be accessible to the people who are already there.
We witnessed the power of open networks as something which netizens understand and seek out during the user exodus of Twitter and later Reddit. Although there were plenty of both open source (but centralized) and well funded proprietary alternatives feverishly competing to be the new home for the large wave of digital migrants, the clear winners of these migration events were the two most mature network platforms at the time, Mastodon and Lemmy. They weren't perfect, but they were the best alternatives lying around.
When Discord inevitably enshittifies like Twitter and Reddit before it, there's only one clear contender for migrants in search of an open messaging network:
Matrix, “an open network for secure, decentralised communication”. It's a foundational assembly-kit for networked chat applications. Most importantly, it's an established network with over 100,000,000 registered accounts and 3 million monthly active users, which is equal to or more than the higher profile fediverse of Mastodon & co.
This growth is likely to accelerate further with Matrix' adoption (and active driving) of the emerging MIMI interoperability standard, which incidentally is leading to a simplified API surface known as Linearized Matrix.
As far as chat networks go, nothing else comes close. Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Discourse, Zulip & Linen are all great open source alternatives to Discord as a group messenger, but they're not networks. And while Matrix may not yet rival Discord in terms of network size, its network is almost exclusively made up of open source savvy software professionals, which is Commune's first-mover target market. I.e. the emerging market of COSS companies developing in the open, which are under constant pressure [1][2] from their constituents to use OSS comms platforms.
So when we're asked 'why Matrix?', this is why. It's not just an established network, but also an established market. Element already employs ~200 people in the business of catering to governments and large, private-first institutions. This makes them very enterprise-y and Slack-like. Commune takes aim at the other end of the spectrum by positioning itself as a Discord-like for public-facing communities.
Beyond Discord
Due for further elaboration, but in short we'll be exploring our "additional edge" thusly:
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