We've maxed out the messages allowed on our free Slack team and are now losing information. This, plus the fact that Slack isn't available on the other side of the Great Firewall, means the community is investigating its options for Real Time Chat (RTC or Chat). This page is for tracking the community requirements for an RTC system as well as the candidates that the community is considering.

Requirements

Currently in no particular order

  • Possible to log/archive conversations
  • Widespread geographic availability (read: can use it in China)
  • …? What else?

Candidates


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2 Comments

  1. Casey Cain

    Sadly, I don't know of any popular desktop chat apps that are definitively available in China.

    I recommend that we investigate the following options:

    • IRC
    • Continue using Slack, despite the message cap
      • Available in China with a VPN
    • Microsoft Teams
      • Surprisingly Powerful with very nice features. 
      • Not available in China
    • Discord
      • Not explicitly blocked in China, but most users will likely require a VPN as a number of carriers do block Discord.
      • Open Source
    • Rocket Chat
      • Slack alternative
      • It has a cost, but much cheaper than Slack.
      • Has the same geographic restrictions that Slack does.

  2. Dag Stenstad

    Instead of implementing a properitary solution like Slack/Discord/Teams, what about Matrix? Mozilla just migrated to Matrix from IRC.

    It has a lot of clients for all platforms, and is fully federated. So there can be local servers in china that participate in the same channel as the "origin" server. And we could probably puppet/bridge in the old Slack rooms as well.