Move to Slack

[iredelmeier]

This was also discussed during the F2F Trace-Context meeting.

Pros

• Slack is already a more common part of most community member's workflows
• Slack is (subjectively) easier to use:
  • Slack channels vs Gitter rooms
  • Slack notifications seem to behave more consistently across apps and are much more configurable
  • Slack has search

Cons

• Unlike Gitter, Slack isn't OSS
• Slack's free plan is limited
  • The premium features are arguably limited in Gitter, so this might not actually be a delta? e.g., free Slack has history limitations, but Gitter's lack of search makes old conversations hard to use anyway 🤷‍♀️

[tedsuo]

I like slack.

"10k searchable messages" will go pretty quickly. IMHO, that is the only free tier limitation which has real ramifications. I have definitely (painfully, sometimes) dug through old DMs on gitter to find some relevant piece of information. In short: we may regret losing the chat record for OpenTelemetry.

If this turns out to be the case, I would advocate for switching to a chat system which can record the entire message history, even if it is missing other features. Some options:

• https://spectrum.chat/
• https://discordapp.com/open-source
• back to http://gitter.im/open-telemetry

Other than message history, I don't see any reason why slack wouldn't work well!

[bogdandrutu]

From the PR discussion:

Can we please run this proposal by the https://github.com/open-telemetry/community/blob/master/community-members.md#admins people?

[caniszczyk]

You're welcome to create as many channels on slack.cncf.io which has the pro plan included (which we recommend for CNCF projects)

[iredelmeier]

@caniszczyk thanks for adding that! Meant to suggest it as an alternative.

The (big!) upside is what you mentioned. The main drawback I see (also discussed last week) is that it may be confusing to keep track of amidst the other CNCF channels. Then again, that may also double as an upside, since it might encourage more cross-pollination 😃

[AloisReitbauer]

Main advantages of Slack:

• Easy to have different channels for different work stream (e.g. languages)
• Good app support for automation (e.g. push notifications on PRs etc.)
• Support for video and voice conferencing built-in
• Better usability and stability

I am not saying it is the only solution that can do this, but Gitter is really limited in functionality.

[caniszczyk]

@iredelmeier I'm all for less Slacks out there :)

[iredelmeier]

@caniszczyk I very much agree there 🤣

Do you (or anyone else) know of any other CNCF projects that use that Slack for multi-channel purposes? e.g., gRPC, K8S, and Linkerd all have community forums elsewhere.

[caniszczyk]

@iredelmeier

I'd have to dig around but I know of cloudevents off hand

#cloudevents
#cloudeventssdk
#cloudeventsdemo

[irabinovitch]

Have we considered moving decisions and discussions from chat rooms to mailing lists? Ala The Apache Way of "If it didn’t happen on the mailing list, it didn’t happen."

[spirosx]

I think Slack is strictly better than gitter for all the reasons mentioned by @AloisReitbauer and @iredelmeier but IMO the 10K messages limit for a project with as many contributors and members is a show stopper as we will lose history and the background/arguments for whatever decision we make on Slack.

I suggest we either use the cncf one (maybe with an #opentel- prefix for our channels) or we find a way to pay for it (this might be unrealistic if every member is on it)

[iredelmeier]

@irabinovitch there have been some brief, in-person discussions about mailing lists. My admittedly subjective take:

GitHub - not Slack/Gitter/mailing lists/whatever else - should be the source of truth for all decisions. It's where the code lives; there's already (I believe!) consensus around using the issue/PR workflow; etc. It seems like Apache's usage of mailing lists for consolidating decisions is juxtaposed to our use of GitHub, not our use of Slack. (Side note: I believe - and there's been some discussion affirming - that we should use a dedicated RFC process for spec and other cross-cutting decisions, rather than ad-hoc issues and PRs; see #56).

As far as the use of mailing lists vs Slack or Gitter goes, I personally think that this can be an AND, not an OR. Mailing lists are a great common denominator, in that they have such low barriers to entry. However, this comes at the cost of having fewer niceties, e.g., it's hard to use notifications and other mechanisms of following conversations or topics outside. I'm all for having a mailing list in addition to at least one app-based solution; however, I think we lose a lot by using the mailing list as our primary (let alone exclusive) place of discussion.

[iredelmeier]

re: using the CNCF Slack vs a dedicated Slack, some more questions:

• Anyone know what the CNCF Slack's pricing plan is like? Specifically, would we potentially have a significant impact on their Slack budget? (I admittedly don't know much about Slack pricing!)
• Anyone have context on the Slack plans for any of the other CNCF projects (other than K8S) with dedicated Slacks?

I don't mind trying to track someone from CNCF or another project down this week at KubeCon, unless someone else already has answers or is in a better position to get them.

[caniszczyk]

If you use the CNCF Slack there will be no impact so you don’t have to worry about anything fiscally, that’s why we recommend it

On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 6:23 PM Isobel Redelmeier ***@***.***> wrote: re: using the CNCF Slack vs a dedicated Slack, some more questions: - Anyone know what the CNCF Slack's pricing plan is like? Specifically, would we potentially have a significant impact on their Slack budget? (I admittedly don't know much about Slack pricing!) - Anyone have context on the Slack plans for any of the other CNCF projects (other than K8S) with dedicated Slacks? I don't mind trying to track someone from CNCF or another project down this week at KubeCon, unless someone else already has answers or is in a better position to get them. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#53?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAAPSINYIVILN5BJC2L63NDPWLGARA5CNFSM4HOBIIP2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGODVZLPMQ#issuecomment-494057394>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAPSIKIWN7KKOQDYNC3T4DPWLGARANCNFSM4HOBIIPQ> .

-- Cheers, Chris Aniszczyk http://aniszczyk.org +1 512 961 6719