sucks VS cinny

This is correct, and it's why most open-source software will never have much in the way of users:

> They're written from the perspective of the developers

And I get it. A few years back I had an open-source project [1] get users and it was terrible. What had previously been a fun technical exercise became a pain in the ass that felt a lot like actual work. I was relieved when my hardware broke and I had an excuse to archive the project.

But that does create a huge gap that mostly gets filled by commercial interests.

[1] https://github.com/wpietri/sucks

It seems like you haven't quite got the concept of open source. If everybody consumes and nobody contributes, how long will that last?

A while back I bought a cheap robot vacuum. Their scheduling feature didn't meet my needs, so I reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced a cron-friendly CLI tool and a library so people could do other things with it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks

Honestly, this was a mistake on my part. It was a demanding audience of home-automation hobbyists mostly without programming skills. The company was thoroughly unhelpful. When my vacuum finally broke, I was relieved, as I had a good excuse for trying to hand off the project. Nobody stepped up, so I shut it down. I just ran out of interest in doing free work to support a company worth billions.

I really admire the community spirit of open source But it's not sustainable if companies making their money off it keep depending on the niceness and generosity of others without giving back enough to keep them happy, healthy, productive people.

I reverse-engineered the comms for my cheap Ecovacs robot vacuum and was surprised to discover that, like some angsty teen, it spent all day hanging out in an XMPP chatroom waiting for somebody to talk to it: https://github.com/wpietri/sucks/blob/master/developing.md

Revolt, Guilded, Element (Matrix Client), Matrix, Cinny (Matrix Client), Spacebar, Rocket Chat, Mikoto, Mattermost, Teamspeak and Nertivia

Check out these two clients: https://app.element.io https://cinny.in

or Cinny, given its country of origin... (https://cinny.in)

building on what the original comment said with the matrix mention, cinny.in is another option that is built with it if you wanna check it out! pretty similar layout to discord, already has encryption unlike revolt too

Specifically Cinny since it mimics the look and feel of Discord

Keep in mind Matrix is a protocol for messaging just like email is a protocol for mail. There's more than one client and Element just so happens to be the most popular one. A really good runner-up would be FluffyChat. Then there's Cinny

Matrix, is a decentralised messaging protocol. While it isn't a messenger in itself, it has various messaging clients such as Element, Cinny etc

Cinny, a matrix client that looks and behaves like discord

Cinny is potentially the best best Matrix client that resembles Discord

Other clients are available on the same network, like https://cinny.in/ or https://element.io