All,
We’ve had a few discussion in the Zephyr TSC regarding the need for maintaining history in our chat communication platform and the limitation that Slack imposes on this for free usage. The general feeling is that having access to historical discussions is important for the continued growth of the Zephyr community.
We have tried to engage Slack on a cost effective solution but unfortunately that does not appear to be an option. A few different options that have been evaluated (Discord, matrix.org, rocket chat, Microsoft Teams) and Discord seemed to be the best option and has had a fair amount of history with Adafruit (a Silver Member).
Some requirements for Zephyr chat platform:
* Maintain history
* integration with other services (like GitHub)
* private channels
* ideally free - or low cost
* no overhead for Zephyr Project (ie not having to run our own server).
Pros of Discord:
* Shared accounts across "servers" which are really just communities. Makes joining a new server very fast and easy.
* Strong moderation tools (mute, ban, kick) per server. No need to wait for Discord to help.
* Unlimited history for free.
* Easy to join via invite link, chat and then establish an account.
Cons of Discord:
* Can get spammy when publicly listed.
* Still in the startup phase so they are experimenting with business models. Currently "Nitro" subscription which unlocks server capabilities: https://discord.com/new/nitro
* Closed source so interop with Matrix and IRC is tricky but doable.
We’d like to get any feedback from the community at large before finalizing a decision in the TSC. The topic will be on the July 29th TSC meeting and will review any email feedback that anyone has on the topic.
Thanks
A few links:
* Current Open Source communities utilizing Discord: https://discord.com/open-source
* Zephyr Discord: https://discord.gg/28BgkM
(NOTE: The Zephyr Discord is setup for testing purposes at this time)