Don't Use Discord for FOSS (2021)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Open‑source developers are wrestling with whether to host their communities on Discord, a proprietary, closed platform that’s wildly popular and convenient but hostile to openness, searchability, and long‑term data access. Supporters point to its real‑time help, strong network effects, and better UX than most FOSS chat tools, while critics highlight exclusion of privacy‑conscious users, poor archival value, and dependence on a venture‑funded company likely to “enshittify” or vanish. Many argue for a compromise: keep Discord as an optional chat room, but use open, indexed tools like forums, mailing lists, Matrix, or IRC (often bridged) for primary support and documentation.

Discord’s Appeal for FOSS Projects

  • Many see Discord as a “non-choice”: it’s where users already are, so using it massively boosts reach, engagement, and responsiveness compared to IRC, Matrix, or forums.
  • Real-time help and active communities are cited as crucial: questions often get fast answers, sometimes from core contributors, and this immediacy is valued over waiting hours for forum replies.
  • People praise its UX, voice/video quality, screen sharing, notifications, and low onboarding friction for typical users. Some even use it internally instead of Slack.

Critiques of Discord for FOSS

  • Major concerns: walled garden, no open protocol, poor searchability, no web indexing, and ephemeral, hard-to-recover knowledge. “Where valuable information goes to die.”
  • Requires sign-up (often phone number), excludes privacy-conscious users, those in restricted countries, people on old/odd platforms, and those who refuse proprietary tools.
  • Projects using only Discord make FOSS-oriented users “second-class citizens” and give an exclusionary, cliquey feel.
  • Long-term risk: likely “enshittification” or shutdown, no self-hosting, unclear data export; moving whole communities later is costly.

Live Chat vs Forums/Wikis

  • Pro-Discord: real-time chat is better for support, more engaging, and matches modern expectations and social needs; forums feel slow and dead.
  • Anti-Discord: high-volume chats bury questions in seconds, answers are hard to rediscover, and support quality is better on forums/issue trackers where content persists and is searchable.
  • Widely shared view: chat is fine for casual collaboration; documentation, FAQs, and lasting support should live on web-accessible forums, wikis, or issue trackers.

Alternatives and Their Tradeoffs

  • IRC: simple, lightweight, web clients exist, but lacks persistence, good multi-device support, and modern features unless you add bouncers/proxies.
  • Matrix: polarizing. Some find it a “breath of fresh air”; others say clients/servers are slow, unreliable, or confusing, and UX still lags Discord.
  • XMPP: mature but fragmented by extensions and uneven client support; some see promise via curated products, others dismiss it outright.
  • Zulip, Discourse, GitHub Discussions, Reddit, classic forums: often praised for async, searchable, open support, but lack Discord’s immediacy and mass adoption.

Ideology vs Pragmatism

  • One camp: using Discord undermines software freedom, reinforces lock-in and network effects, and contradicts FOSS values.
  • Other camp: “community over tools” and “ship code”; refusing dominant platforms sacrifices growth and feedback for little practical gain.
  • Some take a middle path: use Discord but bridge all channels to Matrix/Telegram/IRC, avoid Discord-only features, and prioritize FOSS-accessible paths.