Let's imagine I'm on a small open source project using slack. We don't want to h...

Vinnl · on March 12, 2018

https://gitter.im/ was acquired by GitLab and thus likely to remain for quite a while. Also, it might even suit the needs of such a project better than Slack, as apparently it's aimed more at communities rather than teams, but I'm not sure what that means in practice.

Arkanosis · on March 12, 2018

… and it's open-source (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/).

unicornporn · on March 12, 2018

https://riot.im/app/#/register

Register matrix.org accounts there. There's a web client, desktop clients and mobile clients (called Riot.im). It's open source and federated. And, there are IRC bridges!

Aaronn · on March 13, 2018

There are plenty of public matrix servers, most notably matrix.org hosted by the matrix developers. There is also a small list here: https://www.hello-matrix.net/public_servers.php

You don't have to host your own server.

jjrh · on March 12, 2018

There is a large list of public XMPP servers one can register on ( https://list.jabber.at/ & https://xmpp.net/directory.php )

https://movim.eu/ is another option (has a fancy web client, android & linux client and of course supports any XMPP client)

nileshtrivedi · on March 12, 2018

http://open.relay-chat.com is hosted MatterMost offered for free to open-source projects.