The last time i used teamspeak i was like 15 i think. So i just forgor i guess.

I'm checking out Fluxer and Movim. I don't NEED video chat, sometimes we steam games while other people are just chilling out so they can watch, but it's uncommon. It's a small group of friends so huge support isn't massive either.

The federation stuff would be very nice since that's a big oof on Stoat at the moment.

Tool vs Platform.

Tools can focus on specific things and you can judge them based on how good they at doing the thing they do.

Platform?

Platforms create network effect lock in and breed complacency far, far more than a tool does.

Tools, sure, can induce a kind of brand loyalty type of squabbling, but platforms are an entire way of life, they become a default part of your identity and worldview. It becomes ludicrous, rage inducing, for you to imagine or consider not using the platform.

Oh you want the omni tool?

Omni tool requires you upload your soul to it, as collateral.

I’ll take anything indexable by search engine over discord

ngl, discord kinda had the best UX before the enshittification began

I don't think it's necessarily the goal — Discord is just a helpful yardstick to compare things to as a baseline (and some people are looking for something that replaces Discord as closely as possible). Having to switch services is a pain, and whilst it's not optimal in the long term to just try to replace a thing with a clone, I can see why people don't have the executive function energy to think too hard about this.

Well, Discord's UI is certainly not the holy grail, but it's quite functional and people are used to it. So it's pretty much logical you copy the concept to some extent when you want to appeal to these people?

It's literally on Fluxer.

Pros:

• AGPLv3, WITHOUT a CLA
• Familiar Discord UI
• Text and voice channels
• Images, attachments, gifs
• Emojis, reactions
• Screensharing and video calls
• Main server runs decently fast
• Federation is coming
• Not based in UK or US

Cons:

• Only 1 dude working on it
• You can optionally buy Plutonium, which isn't necessarily bad, they need money, and the code stays Open Source™
• No mobile app yet (they're working on it)
• The main server has had some downtime... which I think are just growing pains
• I don't have friends to invite to Fluxer

Do people really use screen share that much? (Sadly) I use discord to reach a lot of my friends for multiple years and we actually used screen share maybe twice? Three times?

There are actually many, many options. It's hard to guess which one will get the momentum and lift off though. You probably don't want to convince all your friends to switch to another platform just to see it die in half a year...

The MIT license of Voltage is a big red flag for me, as it could allow for either a corporate takeover, or for the company to abandon the open-source version in favor of a closed-source version that they can sell or enshittify.

Roomy has pretty much the same problem being licensed under the MPL license, which allows for the project to be packaged into a closed-source proprietary product. I'd avoid it too, despite it being federated. The license is just too risky, and the only reason not to choose GPL is because the devs likely want that capital purchase exit strategy.

There's a lot devs who know there's potentially a lot of money to be made in a successful Discord alternative. They smell the blood in the water, know the venture capital vultures it attracts, and they'll try to exploit the free labor that open-source projects bring, only to sell us out down the road after all the work has been done.

I'd say any option we move to must be licensed under GPL as a hard requirement, as that ensures it can never be exploited by corpos, and will remain owned by the community forever so that we don't have to migrate again any time soon.

The two best options on the table that fill that niche are:

• Movim (Pros: GPL, federated, encrypted, can do chat, voice calls and screenshare, based on the battle tested XMPP open standard. Cons: is currently missing discord-like rooms, but the dev is working in it)
• Fluxer (New kid on the block, still very buggy, but is AGPL licensed and plans federation and encryption in the future. Backend is still unproven, don't know how well it scales, but one to keep an eye on)

I've moved to Matrix from Discord for two small friend groups (<6 people each). Matrix is a fine replacement for the small friend Discord. But it has awhile to go before it can replace 1000+ people servers

A discord server-like would be a space, containing channel-like rooms. The main difference is that rooms can also exist independent of spaces, if you just need a single chat for some people instrad of a group of chats.

You can set permissions for a whole space, it's just that they currently work differently than Discord. Members have a power level, and you set the power level from which each function is available. So, e.g. Sending messages from Pl 0 (representing normal users), banning users from PL 50 (representing moderators), changing server settings from level 100 (representing administrators).

It sounds complicated, but once you get used to it it's pretty easy.

Everyone moved to libera. It literally happened right as the freenode fiasco happened, so I am surprised you and your group didn't hear about it.

Fluxer is AGPv3, recently promised to remove their CLA so the software stays free forever, has an ambitious roadmap with federation, and is currently being worked on by one 22 yr old dude.

It's very different than Discord.

This chad needs help. I'm more than happy to support him. This is an investment in Open Source™ and the future. If he can't work on this full-time or near full-time, he's gonna need to work for Google or some shit. Then it's never going to be able to compete with Discord.

They're also not going to be able to run Fluxer on powerful enough hardware. Take a look at Stoat. Similar idea. No funding. Their main server is HELLA slow, which I don't think it's their fault. The app is written in Rust, but it feels like it's running on a potato.

paywalling features that other platforms don’t

I might be wrong here, but I thought you could self-host Fluxer to get around the paywalls. So you could do that. What a gift! And federation is on the way, so maybe one day you can self-host AND talk to other instances! Amazing!

Don't worry, it's trying to speedrun its downfall.

I could probably just google this... but I think I just want to hear a real person explain something this time :P

What do you mean by "solves federation"? As in bringing disparate groups together under a single app?

Might as well go with Microsoft Teams at that point