[gmx-developers] team communication tools for GROMACS

[Erik Lindahl]

Hi,

> On 01 Oct 2015, at 23:33, Roland Schulz <roland at utk.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Szilárd Páll <pall.szilard at gmail.com <mailto:pall.szilard at gmail.com>> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 4:08 PM, Roland Schulz <roland at utk.edu <mailto:roland at utk.edu>> wrote:
> There are a couple see for example:
> http://beebom.com/2015/04/slack-alternatives-for-team-communication <http://beebom.com/2015/04/slack-alternatives-for-team-communication>
> 
> I've seen this list, unfortunately none of those listed seemed to offer a great deal more/better functionality than slack - except perhaps HipChat with 25k history limit, or Pie with no limits _but_  data lock-in due to lack of export in the free version - , but I have to admit, I only browsed briefly.
> 
> I think the pricing structure for slack is quite bad for us. I think the 10,000 is not sufficient in the medium term. And it is probably to expensive to use anything other than their free plan. And if we hit the limit and can't afford upgrading, then even if they let us allow to export data, we would loose all experience, integration, and training with that system.
> 
> Bitrix24 has a first paid plan which might be affordable and a limit which is probably sufficient even in the medium term. The free plan is sufficient to test.  
> 
> We might want to ask for some of them whether they would be willing to offer us a plan as a academic open-source project which is discounted. And we should make sure that the pricing plan is sustainable for the long term so that we don't need to switch later.

Slack appears to offer educational plans with 85% discount, which might work.

To keep the number of accounts manageable, I think we could do something where active developers (basically those who frequently commit code) get personal/paid slack accounts on our tab, and then there are features where we can invite guest users into open channels so anybody can participate in those discussions even though they might not be as active developing.

Cheers,

Erik


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