
RocketChat: Slack-like online chat, built with Meteor - sachalep
https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
======
primigenus
Funnily enough there are actually multiple Slack-like chat app projects
underway in the Meteor community. I guess building a chat app is the new
building a todo list app?

Yesterday at Meteor's main meetup Devshop this was presented:
[http://spacetalkapp.com/](http://spacetalkapp.com/) and the speaker mentioned
that there's a big community effort underway to keep improving it.

Let's see which one wins the race :)

~~~
whoiskevin
I think chat apps are the new todo list app. Everyone is building one and
frankly they are all boring and don't offer anything significant.

~~~
oldpond
I tend to agree. Instant messaging seems to be dying out in the workplace. I
used to find it a highly effective mode of collaboration, especially in large
enterprises. Small shops seem to leave it off the list. We cranked up Slack
for my team of 15 devs, but since we are co-located it didn't add any value. I
guess if you were trying to make a buck off the cloud an IRC SaaS solution
might look like a good idea. I don't think Freenode has to worry. :)

------
decaprime
I've been building
[https://github.com/mattfeldman/nullchat](https://github.com/mattfeldman/nullchat),
a meteor chat application as part of a commit-a-day pledge of working with
meteor.

I think the reason there are a few of these popping up is that it's a lot of
fun to build a chat application with meteor. I never intended to be a 'clone'
of slack as as much as rocketchat or spacetalk.

I've been running it for a small group (~10 active daily users) for about 6
months - it has more social features like rich embeds, mentions,
notifications, sms gateway, giphy search etc.

Demo Instance: [http://nullchat.space](http://nullchat.space)

~~~
marceloschmidt
Would you be willing to join efforts with Rocket.Chat? There's a lot of neat
stuff on nullchat that could be really useful there.

------
zaargy
So you set this up and you use it for a few hours and everyone on your team is
like hey this is kinda cool.

* a month or so passes *

Now everyone is invested in the tool and since the expectations have been set
by things like Slack they expect integrations to work flawlessly, search to be
infinitely fast, 99% uptime, Google OpenID authentication, and a slew of other
features and before you know it you have someone spending two hours out of
every day keeping it running.

As a personal project for kicks? Sure it's cool. Would I let me company run
it? Hell no!

~~~
cuddlybacon
What if you can't run slack because your company doesn't allow chat services
that are externally hosted?

EDIT: This seems like something that never gets brought up in any discussion
of Slack. No company I have worked for would have allowed an externally hosted
chat service. Have I just been unlucky, or is it just the people in my
situation never speak up?

~~~
icelancer
Unlucky. We used Slack at the last three companies I worked for.

~~~
danielsamuels
You can't be a very loyal employee given that Slack has been out for less than
2 years.

~~~
icelancer
I'm not. I'm a consultant.

------
broabprobe
Another sweet new open soruce Slack alternative is Friends,
[https://github.com/moose-team/friends](https://github.com/moose-team/friends)

~~~
hobarrera
There's also letschat: [http://sdelements.github.io/lets-
chat/](http://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/)

Dunno why people tend to flock over to the propietary option though. :(

~~~
aroch
> people tend to flock over to the propietary option

Because it Just Works(tm) and there's no fiddling or faffing about necessary.
I'm all for [FL]OSS applications, but sometimes proprietary solutions, even if
they do the same task, are just easier to use and integrate (both technically
and bureaucratically)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
In the case of something like Slack though, there's a huge business risk:
Storing your confidential internal discussions with a random startup of
questionable security practice.

~~~
aroch
True, but it also gives you an out if customer data is breached. You, with
good faith, contracted a thirdparty to manage and secure your data. If you run
your own Letschat and some exploit is found that dumps your chat db,
you're/your company is on the hook.

FWIW, I don't and likely will never use or promote Slack for intracompany
chat.

~~~
lez
The opposite. If you install opensource software on you own servers, and make
it available only for your company's intranet, you are perfectly safe from
outside attackers. Proprietary software can also exploited or they can just
sell your data for bucks, when they are about to bankrupt.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Unless someone compromises your intranet as a whole.

------
scotty79
The fact Slack is a thing is evidence of how horrible dominant IM companies
are at their business.

~~~
yebyen
Dominant IM companies are a thing?

I know this is serious, but maybe I misread your intention. The thing that
makes Slack greater than all of the dominant IMs is that IM is their whole
business.

Everyone else is busy "improving" gmail if you're Google, or monetizing
voip/video chat, or (whatever it is that SalesForce does besides Chattr),
meanwhile Slack is just chat, and whatever else you expected chat to
encompass.

~~~
scotty79
> Everyone else is busy "improving" gmail if you're Google, or monetizing
> voip/video chat

Yes. Instead of improving, they do voice, video, profile pages, silly pictures
replacing your text and all that crap.

The only actual innovation I've seen to IM is ability to edit your last
message.

Last people that tried to improve the actual IM chat were Google Wave but it
crashed and burned because they fixated on everybody seeing as what everybody
is writing when they write it (which was something nobody wanted).

Today, almost 20 years after ICQ people default to Skype even though it's
closed crap for that purpose.

Any IM company that had some users had potential to become twitter or even
facebook, but instead someone fresh came and stolen their lunch while they
were playing with crappy voice and sponsored news feeds while accumulating
bloat on their software.

------
thekevan
There's a link to an "online demo" but then it asks for your login info or for
you to register. That isn't really a demo then, is it?

~~~
morganvachon
That's the brick wall I hit too. I'm not giving them my email address for a
demo, and I'm not logging in with a social media service.

I suppose I could download it myself and try it out that way, but that's a ton
of effort for something I may not even want in the end.

Rocket.Chat devs, if you're listening, please provide a way to demo the
program without giving up real information.

~~~
Drdrdrq
Agreed. If you still want to use it however just enter
somerandomstring@mailcatch.com and then check the mail at
[http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/](http://somerandomstring.mailcatch.com/).
Very useful when you want to bypass such useless logins, just know that the
mail is public.

~~~
morganvachon
Thanks, I didn't want to deal with one of those mailinator-type accounts but
this is even easier. Adding it to my "cool tools" bin. :)

------
joeyspn
One of the devs said yesterday that API integrations are coming soon. After
this, replacing Meteor's Blaze for something like React could make this a
serious slack alternative...

~~~
akhatri_aus
What specifically would a user notice with the difference between Blaze and
React? I get react is a bit faster under the hood. Its not something that
would make this a 'serious' alternative?

~~~
jbhatab
I'm an avid react user and I completely agree. It wouldn't make it a 'serious'
alternative just from that, although I would always love to see react used :).

------
sotoer
Not sure if this is related [https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-a-slack-
clone-in-meteor...](https://scotch.io/tutorials/building-a-slack-clone-in-
meteor-js-getting-started)

------
pwenzel
One of the useful parts of Slack is push-notifications to my mobile device
when I'm away (and only for things I opt in to).

Do any of these new-fangled open source Slack alternatives offer notifications
for people on the go?

~~~
rafaelks
It's planned. You can see whatever is planned or not in GitHub issues. Also,
you can create some feature request there or either contribute with something.

[https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues](https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues).

------
cstrat
Pretty amazing effort, very clean UI and works flawlessly so far...

------
filipedeschamps
Parabéns pessoal pelo projeto! Pelo que vi, todos são brasileiros, isto é
muito legal :)

\--English-- Congratulations guys for the project! From what I saw, you're all
Brazilians, this is very cool :)

------
Dowwie
I can't seem to find a Meteor-built IRC client but maybe I'm not looking hard
enough. Is there one? Why not combine the strengths of Meteor with IRC?

------
Omnipresent
_Offtopic_

What are some resources for getting started with meteor. Being able to build a
chat apps like these seems powerful.

~~~
toddkaufmann
Go to [https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/) and Start tutorial.
After installed you can go through the tutorial in an hour or two depending
how deep you go, and it comes with a number of examples (show with "meteor
create --list").

Discover Meteor has some more; they were giving their book away (see
[https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/we-made-our-book-
free/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/we-made-our-book-free/) \-- first 4
chapters are free).

That may be enough for the basics. Then look at telescope, or one of the chat
apps listed here or search on github. Also plenty of conference talks on
youtube.

------
spotman
Does the demo work for anyone? Would like to check it out, but does not load,
just hangs.

~~~
spotman
It loads now. However, can't login as it demands an email. For something like
a demo, this seems a little overkill.

For something I might host for my employees or people I intend on
collaborating with I guess it makes sense.

------
BYWallace
Seems like it's down/not responding? Unable to get in at the moment.

------
rekoros
With all the self-hosted options, how do mobile push notifications work?

------
ywecur
Are mobile apps planned?

~~~
petejodo
this. I've been looking for something to replace facebook messenger to use
with my friends. Whatever it is, it would need mobile push notifications.
Currently I'm using tinfoil facebook so not getting push messages causes me to
miss long portions of conversations in my group chat and I don't want to just
use another service, I'd rather host it

~~~
jdhawk
Whats wrong with Telegram?

[https://telegram.org/](https://telegram.org/)

edit: just saw where you want to host it...

~~~
aw3c2
questionable crypto, by that questionable ethics, not fully open source

------
technicalfault
I guess improving XMPP isn't as cool as building something brand new?

~~~
Karunamon
XMPP is XML-based, noisy, and just plain annoying to deal with. There's only
so much polish that can be applied to a turd...

~~~
9point6
Are there any sensible, albeit less popular, modern equivalents to XMPP?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
IRC is better and actually more popular. IRC solved the problem of instant
messaging over 20 years ago, and solved it very well. This is a problem that
everyone and their mother attempts to re-solve and they always end up with a
solution that's inferior to IRC. Just deploy an IRC server folks!

~~~
scott_karana
IRC solved basic communication, but the necessity of bots for things like
authentication for usernames, logging, and retaining permissions are inelegant
kludges, in my opinion. If XMPP has problems, so does IRC.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I don't think it'd be very difficult to set up some sort of web UI for account
creation, combined with existing in-client features for usernames/passwords.
That'd be more worthwhile than building a new solution from scratch.

IRC has advantages over XMPP by having a much wider variety of clients and the
fact that you can create your own integrations for things like build
automation in a very short period of time thanks to the simple text-based
protocol.

~~~
scott_karana
Yeah, I agree with you. Some autocracy and curation could really make a nice
ircd + bot + UI set of utilities.

------
patton01
Why wouldn't I just use slack?

~~~
mod
It's not free, it's not controlled by you.

------
idibidiart
could not register: "Please Wait..." for 5 minutes and counting

~~~
uxwtf
Same for me, demo registration doesn't respond

~~~
marceloschmidt
It's working now.

~~~
shampine
Not for me, I was able to get to the confirmation email, now it is just stuck
in a loop.

~~~
engelgabriel
Sorry guys.. this was just our development server.. we were planning to
release it in 3 weeks time :)

~~~
shampine
No worries, I guess I'll try again in 3 weeks. :)

------
meira
Gorgeous!

------
qwdsacxz
test

------
beams_of_light
2 questions:

What is Slack?

What is Meteor?

~~~
steveklabnik
1\. a hosted chat service with an UX people really like.
[https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/)

2\. A framework for writing realtime JavaScript applications.
[https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/)

------
kordless
I did a containerized deployment for the project:
[https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-
rocket](https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-rocket). Still has some issues
that need to be resolved, including configuring the mail server, long build
time, and a handful of other issues. If someone finds it useful, let me know!

~~~
engelgabriel
how can i help you to get that working? can we add it to our repo?

~~~
kordless
Howdy! You can email me or ping me on Twitter or my email is {{my_handle_
here}}@giantswarm.io. Twitter same.

