So our recent switch to using Discord as the primary day to communications has caused a bit of a stir with some people so we thought we’d post something to explain why in a bit more details.
We’ve tested the waters previously on twitter about a switch from irc and at the time irc won out and we carried on as we were. Fast forward a couple of months and we thought it was about time that we moved to something which provided more features than IRC. Slack and Discord were the only two contenders so we ran another poll where Discord just pipped Slack to a win.
Anyway, you wanted to know why we thought we needed a switch.
IRC is great, it’s open and simple to jump in and start asking questions but that’s where the problems start. The same questions then get asked over and over again, some of those we can fix by better docs but not all and it most likely won’t stop people asking anyway. With IRC, unless you are connected 24x7 you have no way to see previous questions. This in itself is reason enough to switch but isn’t the only reason.
The general use of another app like Discord or Slack means better support for sharing code snippets, screenshots and such like.
Discord alone had a lot of positives as well. Being able to screenshare with another user can help in debugging things and sharing what devs are working on.
We’ve done some Google hangouts before and could now facilitate that within Discord to ease the process of organising the get togethers.
Above all, the switch is there to help the maintainers out. LibreNMS has a couple of core maintainers and a few people helping out with docs, user support and code reviews. For a project of this size it’s not enough and each one of us is stretched thin juggling personal life, work life and LibreNMS life. We’re sorry some of you don’t agree with the switch but overall we feel this is for the benefit of all our users but most importantly our maintainers and contributors.