Then you have to pay for a domain name (which granted is cheap), setup something to handle your IP changes, install and maintain the pi itself and hope there aren't any vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain a foothold in your home network, which means segragating it behind a VLAN which your ISP router probably doesn't support so you need to buy a router then of course you need to buy the pi it self and an SD card and powersuply since the normal micro-USB doesn't provice enough juice, but then again you didn't know that when you started. Then you probably want to buy a case for it so you don't just store a naked PCB on a shelve/floor. Then of course you need to setup the software and learn how it works and keep it up to day forever.
Or you can just spin another Discord "server" which you already know how to do and not have to worry about hosting anything.
Sure but good luck if you ever want to leave Discord or do anything with the data.
TBH it’s kind of weird to hear someone bemoan running a raspberry pi on hn. You could also use Digital Ocean for $5 a month, I think they have a one click Discourse install. I guess running your own stuff is old fashioned.
the free cycle is the worst, vc money screws over a lot of people that could just be running traditional businesses - there are good institutional shake ups as a result sometimes, but then the new players ultimately become what they sought to disrupt
I know how to run pi, but that doesn't mean it makes sense for everyone else or even most of the people. Say you have some open source project and there is a need to have some form of communication. You can either jump through the hoops to host your own forum that you need to host and monitor. Now you are spending time you could be using to work on your project on sysadmin stuff. So either you pay for it, which feels bad when there is free alternatives available which will do the job just as well with only lacking some discoverability in form of text search, but you can redemy that by making a sticky comment where you have FAQ or whatever you need.
Evne with digital ocean you still need to worry your server and keep it up to date which again takes time out of your actual project.
I don't see what problems you people see with Discord. Yeah you can't take all of the conversation data with you, but is that really what you would even want? I don't know what kind of projects you are running where forum is so much superior to discord.
a project other people use? they can google answers or use forum search… I’m not at their beck and call to answer questions in chat
different people will like different things, but chat is transient
an hour a month on server maintenance isn’t going to make or break anyone’s project, but if you don’t like tinkering with things there’s nothing wrong with that
Or you can just spin another Discord "server" which you already know how to do and not have to worry about hosting anything.