So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

[0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange]

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

I have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons

[archiloque@felin.social]

@0xabad1dea things you need : enough furries on the team?

[0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange]

note that I didn’t even touch on audio/video calls and screen sharing, which are HEAVILY used features of discord, but we can start with “a solid chatroom experience” as the minimum viable replacement; if you can’t get that part right, discussing the rest with a straight face is clownshoes

[lesley@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@0xabad1dea Agree with other stuff.

Federation was a "must" for me, but you make me think whether we actually need it if clients can just manage credentials for multiple servers. The friction can still be a bit high to create one account for each server, but maybe OAuth can help

[gkrnours@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@0xabad1dea french government have an open source replacement for google meet, could be a good starting place to offer audio/video next to solid chat

https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet

[gabboman@gabboman.xyz]

I do consider federation important. Single point of failure and all that

[hellpie@raru.re]

@0xabad1dea things you additionally MUST do:
- advertise it by exclusively mentioning which programming language and software stack was used
- requiring manual compilation for anything other than the linux distro it was made for
- require the user to fill out a yaml config file with gateway and api shards information
- link to your personal git server running some esoteric frontend as the only way to report issues or feedback
- provide only mobile app support for postmarketos
- "run this command in a terminal to install the client"
- make the aforementioned command for windows a powershell script that requires changing execution policy to run but also provide no instruction or forewarning about it
- make voice chat require some fucked codec that isn't fully open source and so "sorry you're gonna have to get that yourself" and then link to a github repo with no releases, no instructions, a bespoke c building pipeline nobody ever heard of and no automated script that fetches any of that on first launch

[ljrk@todon.eu]

@0xabad1dea

> - any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

I think this puzzles me most. I just... don't. I tried, multiple times. I don't get it.

> - a user interface that is Normal
> - higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world

... which is also why I wouldn't agree here, because I find Discords UI horrible :'-D

But so is Element's etc. whelp

[hellpie@raru.re]

@0xabad1dea but also of course the BEST thing to DO would be:
- violate UK law by incorporating in the UK as a London resident and offering an instance of your server that doesn't abide to the OSA act by not requiring age checks on user accounts because of course that would be counterproductive, while also lying to your users by claiming your company is based in the EU and it's EU-made software in all marketing blurbs across the entire project website

unrelated but i really like revolt/stoat/whatever the name is now

[djgummikuh@mastodon.social]

@hellpie @0xabad1dea I see you tried out stoat/revolt as well? 🤣

[hellpie@raru.re]

@DJGummikuh @0xabad1dea no i didn't, for the reason in here (https://raru.re/@hellpie/116056742280236438) i stop way sooner than finding out how bad it was

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea i'd actually argue that Whatsapp and clones already offer a decent alternative for text chats for a lot of people, so audio/video chat is *absolutely* part of any minimum viable replacement

[amyworrall@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea @drahardja One login, alll your ‘servers’ listed.

Anything that makes you do a new separate signup per ‘server’ has a lot more friction than Discord.

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@0xabad1dea

you forgot:

• windows live messenger sounds and emoticons

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea @gabboman if you don't make it distributed, you also have to host the entire bloody thing - which gets expensive once you add video chat and/or screensharing at any meaningful scale

[janamarie@mystical.garden]

@0xabad1dea I think a huge part of the last point is the room and privilege management, allowing you to somewhat properly moderate your server. The ability to create thematic rooms is, I think, what drives many people to matrix, even in smaller communities it can be super helpful to have different thematic areas on the same server. A feature that I learned to value a lot

[ntropic@chaos.social]

@0xabad1dea federation is extremely useful though here.

[stella@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@ljrk@todon.eu @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange then you probably shouldnt be the one to develop a discord replacement

[isis@infosec.exchange]

@0xabad1dea Dear user, please download our program and then use this Terminal command to bypass system security feature

[froge@social.glitched.systems]

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange discord has multiparty end to end encryption so you do actually need this for voice and video data