Great time to plug that https://revolt.chat/ is coming along nicely! The Android app is being reworked and is in rough shape at the moment, but the biggest feature missing from the desktop app (where I figure it matters most) is screen sharing. Otherwise it’s an entirely serviceable Discord clone that is FOSS and would benefit greatly from additional support. I, for one, will be taking the money that was paying for my Nitro and donating it to Revolt instead.
Does it have e2ee messages (even in group chats) and calling? One reason we never used discord is because it lacked that (except in calling towards the end).
Also we disagree as not all groups on even discord are public since many require invites or accepting requests to join.
Edit: Also, even if they are public I’d rather the server not be able to see my messages even if the users in any given group can. Yes, I know it’s a minor difference but I can probably trust the other users, I cannot necessarily trust the server.
I certainly won’t say no to additional privacy! But until I see cryptography experts call it secure, I’m going to continue to treat it as a public forum.
I don’t believe so, and honestly I don’t think it needs to be. It’s already FOSS. And honestly self-hosting would just complicate the process more for normies who apparently can’t figure out Mastodon as it is. Maybe if we have at lest one thing that’s dummy simple and familiar that’s FOSS, maybe it’ll be the foot in the door to getting them more comfortable with the FOSS world and out of the corporate sphere.
And honestly I just really want my friends off of fucking Discord, and the more Revolt continues to literally, in every way be “Discord but open source,” the better the odds of that happening is.
Whenever there is a single party controlling critical infrastructure, there is a potential for enshittification - even if it starts as a FOSS endeavor.
Ability to self-host a full copy of the service is the best protection we have so far.
While that’s true, the nature of it being FOSS also ensures the potential for forking and going our own way. So for right now, maybe it’s better that it’s not self-hosted, long enough to get a large number of Discord users on-board, then fork it if it does enshittify and make the fork self-hosted. At the very least, again, this is an opportunity to get a large number of normies to see the value of FOSS projects and enter the FOSS world. And that has immense value not just for Revolt, but for the FOSS world as a whole.
And I do see yours as well! I agree self-hosting gas greater resistance to devs going rogue when all the hosts can just stop participating. But the beauty of Open Source is that if it’s ever truly so bad, the project can always just fork.
The desktop app has a donation button in the settings. There’s also links to their donation pages on their github, but I do think in both instances they should have their donation link more front and center; it’s proven to work out well for multiple other FOSS projects.
Great time to plug that https://revolt.chat/ is coming along nicely! The Android app is being reworked and is in rough shape at the moment, but the biggest feature missing from the desktop app (where I figure it matters most) is screen sharing. Otherwise it’s an entirely serviceable Discord clone that is FOSS and would benefit greatly from additional support. I, for one, will be taking the money that was paying for my Nitro and donating it to Revolt instead.
Does it have e2ee messages (even in group chats) and calling? One reason we never used discord is because it lacked that (except in calling towards the end).
Edit: Seems they are “working on it”, which makes us a bit nervous but hopefully it’ll be implemented everywhere: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/597
No, it should be treated as what it is: a public forum. The only app I would trust to keep my messages truly private is Signal.
https://signal.org/
They are working on it: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/597
Also we disagree as not all groups on even discord are public since many require invites or accepting requests to join.
Edit: Also, even if they are public I’d rather the server not be able to see my messages even if the users in any given group can. Yes, I know it’s a minor difference but I can probably trust the other users, I cannot necessarily trust the server.
I certainly won’t say no to additional privacy! But until I see cryptography experts call it secure, I’m going to continue to treat it as a public forum.
Fair enough.
Did they fix the self-hosted option? If it works well, I would immediately jump to it.
I don’t believe so, and honestly I don’t think it needs to be. It’s already FOSS. And honestly self-hosting would just complicate the process more for normies who apparently can’t figure out Mastodon as it is. Maybe if we have at lest one thing that’s dummy simple and familiar that’s FOSS, maybe it’ll be the foot in the door to getting them more comfortable with the FOSS world and out of the corporate sphere.
And honestly I just really want my friends off of fucking Discord, and the more Revolt continues to literally, in every way be “Discord but open source,” the better the odds of that happening is.
Whenever there is a single party controlling critical infrastructure, there is a potential for enshittification - even if it starts as a FOSS endeavor.
Ability to self-host a full copy of the service is the best protection we have so far.
While that’s true, the nature of it being FOSS also ensures the potential for forking and going our own way. So for right now, maybe it’s better that it’s not self-hosted, long enough to get a large number of Discord users on-board, then fork it if it does enshittify and make the fork self-hosted. At the very least, again, this is an opportunity to get a large number of normies to see the value of FOSS projects and enter the FOSS world. And that has immense value not just for Revolt, but for the FOSS world as a whole.
I see your point!
And I do see yours as well! I agree self-hosting gas greater resistance to devs going rogue when all the hosts can just stop participating. But the beauty of Open Source is that if it’s ever truly so bad, the project can always just fork.
How is this app supposed to ensure its continued existence? I see no mention of donations, federation, or advertisement
The desktop app has a donation button in the settings. There’s also links to their donation pages on their github, but I do think in both instances they should have their donation link more front and center; it’s proven to work out well for multiple other FOSS projects.
Ah, I see. I was only looking at their website
if revolt puts out a ppa repository they’ll already be better than discord
It’s not an official packaging, but it is on Flathub, so maybe they have somewhere?
https://flathub.org/apps/chat.revolt.RevoltDesktop