I think it would be pretty cool if F-Droid had a discord server, I think it would help not only the F-Droid foss store but help spread the word of Foss software to the mass’s. Thoughts? Suggestions? Pro’s & Con’s? Let’s talk about it.
Discord is not FOSS so it’s NOT COOL for F-Droid. There is GitHub - spacebarchat/spacebarchat: 📬 Spacebar is a free open source selfhostable discord compatible communication platform but it hasn’t finish. We have official Matrix room and IRC channel. I see no reason to have a discord server.
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I was not aware of this. the same IRC that was recently bought? Sure discord itself isn’t Foss but to reach new users, one must venture into the places where they are. Correct? @linsui Take this hypothetical situation, You are a pepsi sales man, and You want to let people know how good pepsi is, you wouldn’t want to advertise in a city that only drinks pepsi, you would want to advertise in a city that drinks coca-cola. By limiting your reach into these non-foss areas, you are also limiting the advancement of the very thing you think is better. This is like… Basic marketing. I don’t understand how you would think it is NOT a good idea, unless you think echo chambers are a good thing. I would like to hear/read your opinion on my comment. Hopefully an argument better than Foss good, other bad. Also I am not trying to be argumentative, just simply posting a question, please do not take my responses negatively, thank you.
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When I see a FOSS project (that is importantly focused on FOSS) and there is a big chat button for Discord, it puts a bad taste in my mouth.
the same IRC that was recently bought
IRC is a protocol.
You are referring to freenode, which was co-opted years ago, nothing new to see there.
F-Droid’s IRC channel is on the OFTC network.
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I understand what IRC is, thank you. lol
I don’t think discord or IRC is useful to sell F-Droid to users. They won’t join a channel if they don’t know F-Droid.
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What do you think would be a better approach into reaching new users? I would also like to mention there are a LOT of linux and linux distro channels/servers on discord already, pushing the FOSS ideology
A recent effort is publishing an F-Droid forum app to Google Play.
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This statement makes several assumptions that I would not necessarily agree with.
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Growth is a priority: F-Droid is not a for-profit business and free software developers are generally not concerned with growth the same way companies and proprietary app developers are. While we should be welcoming of new users of course, we don’t need to sacrifice our principles to seek out growth at the expense of all else, because there is an existing user base that already aligns with these principles.
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F-Droid needs to market itself: As far as I am aware, F-Droid markets itself to the kind of person who would be interested in free software and privacy. in spaces where those sorts of users frequent. These users would avoid Discord or only begrudgingly use it.
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“FOSS good” is not a good justification: to some users (such as myself), the four freedoms are why we use free software. “FOSS good” is indeed a valid reason to use free software, and we should not shy away from promoting on principle.
To some degree I agree with your suggestion that we should not limit ourselves entirely to free software spaces, but operating a Discord “server” and advertising it is a step too far - it is endorsing and advertising a non-free service and app. It would be a betrayal of principle.
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I just think, going where the children and youth hang out is a good place to start. And that place atm, is discord.
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Most F-Droid contributors are on IRC and Matrix. I don’t know is there anyone who want to maintain a discord channel. But maybe it make sense to have a bridge though there is no plan.
Isn’t twitter and youtube much more popular?
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yes but, i don’t see how fdroid could make a video beside a, idk psa? same for twitter. And lets all be real, kids are not going to use IRC these days anyways. That’s the more 1337 crowd. I appreciate the comments posed by my question, ty to all replying. I have to go now. Again, ty for contributing to the question i have posed for the community.
We hace an official mastodon account. We also have a twitter account but it’s not maintain I guess. And there are some video made by contributors.
The problem of discord is that there is basically no contributors on it. Even if we have a channel it will be unmaintained. So, bridge may make more sense.
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I think an official Discord F-Droid community would look wrong, because F-Droid is all about being libre. But I wouldn’t mind being involved in an unofficial F-Droid Discord server so if you start or know of one, feel free to send me a PM 
The official community is on Matrix, bridged to IRC.
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Are gay people allowed in?
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Take this hypothetical situation, You are a pepsi sales man, and You want to let people know how good pepsi is, you wouldn’t want to advertise in a city that only drinks pepsi, you would want to advertise in a city that drinks coca-cola.
Continuing your hypotetical situation:
You won’t promote pepsi by drinking cocacola
How to promote FLOSS by using Non-Free software? Is a countersense.
People are clever: Hey those promoters of FLOSS use themselves Non-Free software, LOL
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Why doesn’t F-Droid run their own XMPP MUC server? Or do they?
Well, the answer to that is pretty simple: because there are always an infinite amount of things that could be done but a finite amount of contributors and time.
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However you should be able to follow the f-droid matrix room as well from xmpp using the address: fdroid#f-droid.org@matrix.org
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