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FOSSGIS @amapanda@en.osm.townOuch. A large OpenStreetMap group has been using a proprietary chat platform as a community space for ~10 yrs. Now they gotta pay a $80k/yr (or $10k??) for usage. 
Slack (now Salesforce) now wants to charge @OpenStreetMapUS for all ~6k users on their server. Ouch.
This sort of bait & switch is why open, community owned platforms (like this!) are vital!
read more on the slack (while you still can??!): https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C029HV951/p1705438543546349
#OpenStreetMap #OSM #FreeSoftware #Cassandra
Note: #weeklyOSM successfully switched to FOSS MatterMost years ago, hosted by #FOSSGIS. Thank you #MatterMost developers. Thank you #FOSSGIS. We are happy to share our experiences. Just send us an e-mail.
CC: @thefive @weeklyOSM
@derFred @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS @thefive @weeklyOSM we use self hosted mattermost at work due to security concerns with slack. It's perfectly fine. They're all just fancy IRC anyway, it's not like slack is some brilliant breakthrough as software
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS To be clear, it's not payment for usage, it's payment to maintain status quo in terms of scrollback/history.
I wish there was something equivalent to Slack in the OSS world!
@ian @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I have used Rocket Chat in the past, it seemed to work fairly well, though I don’t know how it would work at this scale.
@jimkreft
pretty sure it does, and rocket chat now uses Matrix iirc. So it's interoperable with other matrix clients/servers (iirc)@ian @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS
@ian Yup.
Maybe you should just switch to the “messages are gone after 90 days” option? Could be interesting for seeing what positive & negative changes that does to the culture...
@amapanda Yep, I think it would reinforce the idea that real time communication is meant to be ephemeral. Longer term decisions and thoughts should go in the forum, wiki, etc.
Or people would forget to migrate things and stuff would get lost. But maybe that's not the end of the world.
@ian losing all that history is just sad...
i hope they do an export...
@ian @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS it has it's annoying moments, but overall Matrix via Element is a pretty good experience. We've been using it since 2016 here with @osm_be.
Services don't run themselves. Those fees are quite reasonable on a cost per use basis.
Collectives like OSM really should properly organize and manage funds and pay for what gets used.
Anyone else you move to for "free" can and will need to stop at some point.
Insulting those who've given such a valuable service for the past decade is a bad look.
@gpshead @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS It's not an insult to decide that the service we were getting for free is not worth paying for. That's how the market works.
Reasonable?
Chat + history for 6000 users yearly needs one full time employee to run? (Hosting costs + disk space is negligible)
No.
$10k? Doubtful.
The question is if the group _needs_ four nines or if it's enough with a home server. I would presume the latter - and there are plenty of people running those for free.
@gpshead OSM is very anarchistic and decentralised. Many OSM groups use free versions. It's just this group went with this option
@gpshead @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I keep repeating that when 'free (as in beer)' comes along.
Yes, slack is making a margin. But it most certainly is less than your own costs. Every hour a volunteer puts into updating/scaling/ migrating, say, mattermost, is one they don't spend on OSM stuff.
In for profits the same: every hour that Chris spends on fiddling with free tiers or alternatives cost you an hour of Chris' wages AND an hour of Chris not building stuff for customers.
@gpshead OSM runs on very low budgets compared to other open source orgs. So can't blame them for not wanting to pay that much
@ian @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS email. Mailman specifically.
Well, I’m on dozens of similar groups happily running on Matrix, so there certainly is
Soon to be on Discord too !!!
@Tacitus @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS And GitHub next!
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS And people think that migrating to the next honeypot called Discord will fix the problem.
@obrhoff what could possibly go wrong
@amapanda @obrhoff the nice thing about a transparent community and organisations is that you can go back and look at the reasoning no need to speculate. Defintely the OSM-US board at the time knew what it was getting in to (proprietary platform) but because there was the allure of network effects thought that it was worth while. So the question at hand is really solely are the network effects worth $10k or not.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I would like to read the text but then I'd have to login to #Slack. The irony! 
So, do they want to charge for *past* service as well or only for the future? If it's only for the future, they should run away ASAP to avoid a hefty bill.
And open a #Matrix group. 
And yes I fully agree; I've been warning people about proprietary platforms but they don't listen. 
Guess they have to learn it the hard way then.
@amapanda yeah, would definitely be nice if someone could share the post.
Btw OSM already is on Matrix:
https://matrix.to/#/#osm-space:matrix.org
and lots of their channels have bridges to other platforms like discord or telegram.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I'm not compassionate with people using non-FOSS software without a real reason.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I can't read the linked post because you have to log in to see it. Do you have a copy of what the post says? I don't want to create an account to see it.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS h e double hockey sticks ! ! !
As the rather religious people of the US of A like to say.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS just imagine all the development for matrix you could've funded with that money. I hope they move away. (There should be tools for bringing the data with you)
@NafiTheBear @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS This is exactly what always ends up frustrating me about these cases. Nominally open communities going "but Matrix/IRC/whatever is not good enough", and instead of investing time/money into contributing to fixing that problem, they invest that same time or money into buying a proprietary solution...
This happens *so often* and it's a really good example of how a sense of solidarity is frequently completely missing in open-source (and otherwise 'open') communities. This stuff isn't going to happen by itself.
@joepie91 what bothers me most is those fork ways. going to closed alternatives in the first place is sometimes fine you want to get as many ppl. as possible on board so that you project grows, but there is this critical part, where you are asked for money, then you should be: "ok I invest that money for a move to an open source solution instead" and this is where the projects usually say: "everyone is used to this now, we can't move". which I think is bullshit.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS I agree that Slack is perhaps not the best fit for a community like OSMUS, but this wasn't really a "bait-and-switch", right? We just outgrew the already-established limits of the free FOSS plan?
@or OSMUS has been using slack for 10 years. How can you say it's not a good fit.
I don't know the specifics, but this seems like a new situation. They now have to pay lots for what they got for free. Seems like bait & switch to me.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS OpenStreetMap is on Matrix, welcome to join https://matrix.to/#/#osm-space:matrix.org which contains all related rooms. Ditch the proprietary platforms.
@cos @amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS
Heard about matrix for the first time yesterday and immediately wondered if OSM was in it. Thanks for this!
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS i blame it all on salesforce. the startup i'm at had a call with salesforce a year or so ago about partnership opportunities, and salesforce turns out to be exactly who you think they are. we did not bother with a second call.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS And so the “enshitification” of the internet continues
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS Sigh... @lightweight has written about this kind of thing here https://davelane.nz/why-slack-better-and-why-open-communities-shouldnt-use-it
https://davelane.nz/why-free-proprietary-software-will-always-end-tears
I know that OSM has a discourse forum, on which they could enable chat.
@bigblen
Why would they bother to do that? "Enshittification" of proprietary, non-interoperable communications platforms is now so blatant and well-documented that the term even has its own wikipedia article now. Why shouldn't they just learn the lesson the hard way that everyone in the open-source and collaborative development communities tried to tell them all along, and switch away from such proprietary platforms now?
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS is there a way to read about it without connecting? I don't have a slack account
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS Oh no!! That was easy to see coming. Should have used a List Server like just about every core technology on the internet was developed with. https://bookofadamz.com/the-most-intelligent-people-on-the-internet-use-this-instead-of-slack-teams-or-discord/
@Adam there's loads of OSM mailing lists, always has been
@amapanda Oh, haha! Problem solved! :) I wonder why they wanted to fragment comms, productivity, archives, & cognitive energy across multiple systems that do the same thing.
@Adam if you thought *that* was fragmented, you haven't seen OSM.
It has it's advantages. We like it. 
@amapanda I don't want to know what will happen to the hundreds of open source/community projects that use discord once they'll ask for money! I was (not once) sent away when I tried to raise this question in some open source projects I contributed to.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS enshittification spreads
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS Sad thing is that open source solution like Matrix in current state would probably suck for 6k users (Maybe Matrix 2.0 will fix it but I think for now large servers have huge problems on matrix). Tho maybe Revolt could but I don't know.
@MarkAssPandi
Performance problems? From what sizes? I do only use it in small rooms, but I remember that I've been in rooms of thousands of people, which seemed to work normally.
@OpenStreetMapUS @amapanda
@hydrandt @OpenStreetMapUS @amapanda I heard about issues when syncing large rooms, especially across federation. But to be fair I did overheard it so might be incorrect/anectodal.
From my experience I did have issues with bigger rooms (for example ArchLinux one), it probably (aka, a guess) was because I self-host my own instance and it got overwhelmed when syncing.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS come on, everyone moved away from slack years ago for a reason. Now that matrix exists I have no sympathy.
@amapanda@en.osm.town @OpenStreetMapUS@en.osm.town I mean, yes, that sucks, but did you honestly expect this to turn out any other way? We all knew #Slack was shit, and only interested in money. This is not the first move they make to enshittify their platform. Accept the fact that a very dumb mistake was made, and learn from it, that's all you can do going forward.
Standardize on a free and open platform, especially if you're a free and open platform/project yourself. Go use #IRC or #XMPP.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS web based irc was bad, when they broke the irc interface it was time to do them.
Luckily the company I'm at did exactly that.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS Reminds me of Oracle's recent Java "audits"
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS You have to login to read this thread. NO.
@amapanda @OpenStreetMapUS they should have used use-net …
#FBPE 
I'd suggest making backups right now so you can move swiftly to another system that will be open this time: we can't even read your announcement because we don't have slack accounts
@amapanda @icd @OpenStreetMapUS Only #smolnet can save humanity from big corps.