> So instead of paying someone to maintain it, you pay someone to maintain it who keeps all your data from you and prevents you from accessing it, and who admits he’ll read all your stuff.
You aren't paying "someone" you're paying an entire company that is dedicated to making the application highly available, with all the bells and whistles, with zero hassle.
Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason.
> Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason.
If HN has higher discussion quality than reddit, why are not all devs on HN instead? If Linux is better for servers, why are people still starting projects on Windows? etc...
The power of marketing, directly or word-of-mouth, is important. And a decentral community can never do as perfect marketing as a company can do.
There are IRC clients and apps, and third party integrations as powerful as Slack, and as easy to use. But you have to find them, install them separately – there’s no single combined effort to market a single "just works" solution, yet ;)
You aren't paying "someone" you're paying an entire company that is dedicated to making the application highly available, with all the bells and whistles, with zero hassle.
Really, if you think IRC is so similar to Slack, then why are so many companies, organizations flocking to it? There has to be a reason.