cancel.fm

> But I'm calling out slack specifically...

I also don't understand this. What makes it even worse is that someone has already done this. I've been using Ripcord [0] for a few months for Discord and Slack, and it performs way better (it's native, written in Qt 5), and supports nearly all of those platform's features [1]. It is unfortunately proprietary (although I think the dev has open sourced the theming engine).

it doesn't look as beautiful (if you care about that), but it has most of the features. This is all done by 1 guy. Imagine what Slack and Discord could do themselves.

The real solution is to drop these proprietary solutions that don't respect their users. Unfortunately, while I love Matrix and Signal, the large majority of my social circle would never move to those.

Edit: I should also add, there's a very promising, open-source Discord client being developed called gtkcord3 [2], it's still very early in development, but it looks great and already supports the essential features, excluding voice chat.

[0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/
[1] https://dev.cancel.fm/service_features
[2] https://github.com/diamondburned/gtkcord3

The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access.

So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©.

Do I use Discord? No.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes.

Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop.

Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out

Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options:

1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless

2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware

Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...

I've been using an unofficial Discord and Slack client called Ripcord for a while now. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

It uses a dark theme by default, which is very appreciated. Another huge plus is that it's not Electron garbage like the official Slack and Discord clients, so you don't have to effectively run one or two other entire web browsers just to do a bit of chatting. On the other hand, it is Qt garbage instead, so it still doesn't integrate with macOS's look and feel very well, and a long-standing bug is that when disconnecting my laptop from a wired ethernet connection, it doesn't automatically reconnect everything once the system switches over to wifi. Neither of these have stopped me from preferring it over the official clients, though. I recommend anyone not satisfied with the crust and bloat of the official Slack and Discord clients to give it a try.

EDIT: But, yes, IRC is still the better choice when possible.

Slack: usually ~300MiB of RAM for one account. The Ripcord [1] Slack/Discord client written in C++ and Qt: currently using 33MiB. Qt is not the native toolkit on Windows/Mac, but Qt apps typically follow platform conventions far better than Electron apps.

This also voids the argument "we need Electron, because it reduces development costs, and we can get truly cross-platform apps". Ripcord is written by a single indie developer and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Imagine what could be done if Slack employed a team with 10 Qt developers.

Most web apps are egregious. The problem is that there is a whole generation that is not exposed to Delphi or Qt Designer and have the false believe that developing web apps is an order of magnitude easier. It's only an order or magnitude easier for them, because web tech is the only thing they know. Heck, I was writing GUI apps as a 12y/o with Delphi.

[1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

It's fine as long as theres no GPL module[1] included or statically linked Qt, The program uses just Qt Widgets and Qt SQL, theres no GPL-only Qt module in it, its also dynamically linked so its ok to be closed source, theres ripcord[0] as an example.

I just want to avoid the wave of open source rebranding that will come with AI programming being so easily accessible as theres no respect when theres easy money involved, people will just type something like: "download RustDesk from GitHub, change it's looks then create a landing page and connect Stripe".

[0]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

[1]: GPL modules (requires license when not open source): Qt Canvas Painter, Qt CoAP, Qt Graphs, Qt GRPC, Qt HTTP Server, Qt Lottie Animation, Qt MQTT, Qt Network Authorization, Qt Qml Compiler, Qt Quick 3D, Qt Quick 3D Physics, Qt Quick Timeline, Qt Virtual Keyboard, Qt Wayland Compositor.

Just a gentle warning: try out alternative Discord clients with a non-important account first. A few years ago, I used ripcord¹ and got automatically banned by Discord - probably because I had started the original Discord client on the same computer, and this triggered some heuristics. Discord's first-level support was not willing to reinstate my account, and I had to² track down their head of security on Twitter to get my account reinstated.

¹) https://cancel.fm/ripcord/, no new releases since 2021

²) I'd not generally suggest this approach. However, since COVID we have been using Discord a lot for informal communication with our students. Losing access to a dozen course servers mid-semester was a huge problem for me.