Comment on FLOSS communities right now

• crispy_kilt@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Github has discussions. He code is already there anyways

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  • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You can even have threads and comments attached to specific lines of code in specific commits. Github is practically effortless to set up.

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  • jeremyparker@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Microsoft is going to continue to increase their monetization of GitHub. It’s going to get worse, not better.

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    • clot27@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Just hoping we get some github alternative on fediverse, so far Ive seen codeberg but its hosted by a non profit org in berlin… Which is great but for e.g. I cant contribute to the code without creating an account on their instance

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      • SeekPie@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I really don’t know about these things, but I’ve heard that GitLab is a good alternative to GitHub?

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      • jeremyparker@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I’ve been loving Source Hut, but they’re not ready to handle GitHub-level usage

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• centof@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  what might everyday people use to set up forums as relatively easily and cheaply as their Discord servers, and not have them riddled with ads or other clunky elements?

  Discourse is a clean open source forum software that is commonly used for application support and well suited for it.

  Or if your a real die hard for the fediverse, you could set up a lemmy instance for application support. There’s even a phpBB frontend for an oldschool forum look and feel for it.

  Usually everyday people don’t setup forums, that’s the responsibility of the application owner(s) or provider. In this case, the easy option is also the shitty option if measured by discoverability of the content.

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  • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Usually everyday people don’t setup forums, that’s the responsibility of the application owner(s) or provider.

    By this do you mean official forums? If so I think this is kind of missing some of the independent forums for software (whether games or media players or the like) or other media, which some sorta-everyday people set up in the past. Many have migrated to Discord not only because it’s easy but, I think, because it’s simply more cost-effective.

    Forums don’t seem to be cheap. Discourse’s own managed hosting goes for $50 a month, from one of their partners it’s $20, and looks like somewhere in-between if you try to spin it up yourself (e.g. Digital Ocean droplet runs $4 a month, then add in domain, and mail-provider (~$20-35)). Looking at that, it’s little wonder so many either opt for official forums, unofficial subreddits, Lemmy/Kbin communities, or Discord servers instead now.

    Maybe if I dug around some more I could find some options for managed hosting (which makes more sense for regular people, I think, to deal with technical maintenance) for Discourse or the like that are cheaper, but I can’t imagine one may find much that beats free. Unless there is something, unfortunately I guess we’re kind of stuck with the situation as-is barring some pleasant exceptions.

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    • centof@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, I was referring to official forums for technical support or feature requests and the like. I don’t really think that everyday people were usually the ones who setup forums, it is website operators and other techies who set those up. The people who setup an independent forum are not the same people who setup a discord community. Discord has a much lower barrier to entry that usually results in a lower quality information and moderation as than a forum would.

      I mean, yeah, forums are harder, for sure. $20-35 monthly for a mail provider seems to high to me; I would expect that to be about the yearly cost. But, I don’t really have much experience with an email provider for that use case. Really the problem lies in that a website operator and a community maintainer are 2 very different types of people that rarely intersect.

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• nao@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why not Lemmy?

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• ulterno@lemmy.kde.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Matrix chat works pretty well too.
  It’s ~ as convenient as Discord. More convenient in certain cases. And one might be able to easily use the API to create an Archive site for all discussions in there.

  In other cases, you have the ability of encrypted conversations, which of course you won’t be archiving. Right?

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  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    honestly i would understand matrix more than discord, it’s a lot easier to just jump in and start existing.

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• po_tay_toes@lemmy.sambands.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  as relatively easily and cheaply

  You pay more when using these types of software than if you hired an engineer to set up a complete forum ecosystem. Just not with money.

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• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  90% of the projects that i use and other people care about are developed by people that have the technical ability to set up and host a web server. They likely have the cash. It’s not exactly outrageously expensive. If it’s small enough they dont have the cash for it, they don’t need it.

  Im guessing the discord was more of a legacy thing, someone was like “hey im having a problem, can you contact me on discord?” and then suddenly we have the rust discord server.

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