The Mana World Forums

Hello TheManaWorld Community!

I guess Discord is the new Skype/TS3/Mumble/Ventrilo.
So shouldn't we embrace it as well?

Motivation:
I better acknowledge the fact that I noticed that a guild (*cough* MAF Clan *cough*) had created a Discord channel yesterday. And that got me thinking: "Why not create a discord channel for the entire community instead of just one guild?".

Which bring me to the purpose of this thread, I have created a community TheManaWorld Discord server - here is the link: https://discord.gg/HxYSDun

I hope to see you around!

Regards

GonzoDark aka IchigoBlack

You can also add me MAF-Saulc#5410
Nice to see some players who folow my ideas

Hello Gonzo and others!

I must reply to your initial question with well-meant yet resolute: NO! Absolutely not!

Discord has indeed been gaining popularity lately, but before even considering the usage of such program, we should take a look to see that Discord is deeply flawed.

Discord is a program distributed under a non-free license, and thus it does not respect the four basic freedoms of the user in computing. That makes Discord not only unsuitable, but by principle bad and unethical. Program which disrespects its users in such a way does not in any way deserve our support.

If we are to embrace a communication platform, it should be one that will respect the freedom and privacy of its users. Ideally such a platform would also be decentralized, or even better, distributed. There are efforts to bring such platforms into creation, and if we want such a platform, we should look into those before anything else.

Among those you named was Mumble, which certainly is a fine solution the community could make use of. There may even be other projects worthy of looking into, such as Riot or Jitsi Meet. My personal favourite for the future of communication is Ring, although it is not tailored specially for gaming.

It is quite unfortunate to see the MAF Clan encouraging their members to use Discord. I would hereby like to ask the MAF Clan and everyone else to not encourage anyone to use Discord or any other non-free solution, and look into free ones whenever possible. Encouraging others to give up their freedom is not a nice thing to do, and once you're aware of that, you should try to avoid doing so.

So please do not use or reccomend Discord. Let's try to aim for something better in our digital lives!

Hello Tirifto,

First, thanks for taking the time to explain your views on Discord and non-free software in general.
And let me be clear, I didn’t mean to spark a conversation about non-free vs free software, but I guess it couldn’t be avoided given the fact that I suggested embracing non-free software in a open source community - silly me.

In short, If you allow yourself to use non-free software, then go ahead and join us on Discord - if not, then don’t.

“Discord is deeply flawed.”
This very much depends on your perspective.
If you are a free software enthusiast, then I totally agree with you. Discord is definitely deeply flawed.
But for the average user, not so much.

I also realize the contradiction, we all want the world to only use free software, as in a matter of liberty, not price - but where do we draw the line? Is it okay to be on Facebook? Should we use Steam? And dare I ask.. it is okay to use Windows? The list goes on. Again it depends on your ideology.

I will personally take the following convenient standpoint which is, as long as I am aware about the matter and I apply free software where it makes sense for me, then it is good enough.
It will not make the entire world better tomorrow, but it is a small step in the right direction.

And for me, then the reason why I use Discord is quite simple - it is a social matter.
Most of my friends use it.

And yes, I use Linux - but also Windows, Facebook and Steam.

GonzoDark wrote:Hello Tirifto,

First, thanks for taking the time to explain your views on Discord and non-free software in general...

I am glad that you are familiar with free software, but it also seems that you are very much underestimating its importance. Discord being deeply flawed by being non-free does not depend on whether you are a freedom enthusiast or the ''average user". Discord will be deeply flawed whether you care for software freedom or not. The only thing ones perspective changes is whether they care about Discord being flawed or not. And it would surely be a mistake to regard the two as separate entities; average users should be aware of software freedom.

Non-free software is not only a matter of the individual. It affects our society as a whole and we deal with it as a whole society (society/groups of people). The (possibly rhetoric) questions you listed all have a clear answer: In a way, no.

Free software needs our care and support. The first step to that is awareness. From then, we need to do what is in our powers to support free software. That said, I am not asking people to unconditionally give up all non-free software. Non-free software has weaved its way into our everyday lives and many people depend on non-free software in some way. Many people need to use Windows to run some programs that won't run elsewhere, Photoshop because they need it for work, or Skype because it keeps their social life from collapsing... But those people have things in life which matter to them much more than freedom, and yet conflict with freedom. We can't always ask people to sacrifice those important things for freedom's sake.

(Note: I am not trying to point out the importance of the above mentioned programs. This is only about the concept of a situation when we may need to give up our freedom.)

We can, however, encourage people to uphold freedom when it doesn't conflict with the other important things in their life. In simpler words, there are cases where you may need to use non-free software, and there are cases where you may merely want to use non-free software. And the latter case is where we must draw the line. We should do nothing to support non-free software that we can easily avoid.

If it's important for you to use Discord because your friends you care about use it and they wouldn't do otherwise, that's okay. But please do not suggest Discord to people who do not use it yet. That is not making a compromise to freedom to preserve something more important to you or the people. That is plainly bringing non-free software where it wasn't before and making people give up more freedom than they already have, while that could be easily avoided.

We don't need Discord - we could easily use one of the free alternatives or use no such program at all. But precisely because we have no need for it yet, we should not try to create a need. So, again, please don't reccomend non-free software to people. When you use non-free software by yourself, you may have good reasons for doing that, but I can see no good reason to bringing other people to give up their freedom.

I personally use (to my knowledge) no proprietary software on my computer, nor do I seek out non-free services, but that's also because I see no things of greater importance that would make me do such a thing.

I must admit that the following remark left me puzzled.

Tirifto wrote:Discord will be deeply flawed whether you care for software freedom or not

If we are not talking software freedom, then it is a great piece of software.
And thus, no need to debate.

Tirifto wrote:Non-free software is not only a matter of the individual.

It is true that non-free software will affect the society as a whole, but it is up to the individual to make a change.

Tirifto wrote:Free software needs our care and support. The first step to that is awareness.

I have always recommended free software when I thought it was not only a good alternative to non-free software - but also relevant for the person.

Here I feel that it is good to be optimistic about new free software, but that we should also be realistic and know when to quit trying eg. Diaspora.

So awareness is good, but we have to be realistic about it.
Especially if we want to avoid alienating ourselves from the world we live in eg. the social aspect.

Tirifto wrote:There are cases where you may need to use non-free software, and there are cases where you may merely want to use non-free software

Yes, I agree.
I am a social being - so I consider chatting and speaking with others a need.

Tirifto wrote:If it's important for you to use Discord because your friends you care about use it and they wouldn't do otherwise, that's okay.

At last something we agree upon.

Tirifto wrote:Do not suggest Discord to people who do not use it yet.

Ultimately, then it is entirely up to me what I want to suggest to people or not.
I do see that you are trying to prove a point, but as I already said in my initial post, then I see Discord as the new Skype and I have a need to be social - even though I have to use non-free software.

Again everything boils down to the point I made in my last reply:
“If you allow yourself to use non-free software, then go ahead and join us on Discord - if not, then don’t.”

GonzoDark wrote:If we are not talking software freedom, then it is a great piece of software.
And thus, no need to debate.

Yes, from your point of view. But what I meant to point at is that even if we disregard the aspect of freedom, in will still be there, and the program being proprietary will only bring bad things for us - and that will happen whether we acknowledge it or close our eyes and ignore it. However, it is only after taking the former option that we can efficiently fight against the issue.

GonzoDark wrote:Here I feel that it is good to be optimistic about new free software, but that we should also be realistic and know when to quit trying eg. Diaspora.

So awareness is good, but we have to be realistic about it.
Especially if we want to avoid alienating ourselves from the world we live in eg. the social aspect.

I can (hopefully) agree with you that free projects may not often reach their goals in the way they have originally set out to, which would also apply to diaspora*. But assuming that a project will certainly not succeed or certainly not be very useful would be a poor stance to take - same as assuming that it certainly will succeed. We can never know exactly what the future will bring.

diaspora* is a very nice project with noble aims. Even if it will not take out Facebook, it can make for a great social network that is certainly worthy of our support. As a very popular social network it does fail, but as an ethical social network it does a fine job (from what I've gathered about it).

GonzoDark wrote:Ultimately, then it is entirely up to me what I want to suggest to people or not.
I do see that you are trying to prove a point, but as I already said in my initial post, then I see Discord as the new Skype and I have a need to be social - even though I have to use non-free software.

The problem is that you do not need to use non-free software to be social and chat with people. Some people may refuse to talk to you otherwise than via Discord, but others may be okay with using a better solution (such as Mumble). Those are not mutually exclusive. You can use non-free software when it is unavoidable and use free software when that is an option for you. In the scope of TMW community, it is very much an option.

GonzoDark wrote:Again everything boils down to the point I made in my last reply:
“If you allow yourself to use non-free software, then go ahead and join us on Discord - if not, then don’t.”

Following that I would like to ask everyone to not use Discord, for the sake of not supporting the program and the bond our community has to it. Please do not ever encourage people to use non-free software. If you allow yourself to use non-free software but still care about freedom, please do not attempt to cultivate the usage of non-free software in places where we can and should do without them.

If you allow yourself to use non-free software, this is not a good opportunity to exercise that allowance.

Tirifto wrote: better solution (such as Mumble)

For Mumble everybody needs to join the same server... So communities are scattered across multiple servers...

Discord does a good and unique job at providing an excellent free service. Of course an open source solution which provides a similar service would be cool. But hey... If Github would not have been I doubt that Gitlab would be as cool as it is today... So lets not declare all closed source software as devil but just hope that the inspiration behind Discord is picked up by an open source project. Until then I will happily use Discord. I no longer want to go through an ever growing list of saved servers just to find one guy to talk to...

Regards,
Ablu

Isn't this what IRC is for that the devs love oh so much? To communicate with people and each other?

Chicka-Maria wrote:Isn't this what IRC is for that the devs love oh so much? To communicate with people and each other?

Discord allow to reply with voice chat for me discord look more easy to use than irc

Discord is great, i like discord very much.