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I've never used Mattermost before today. After checking out their site, I can see they are also a for-profit company. What does Mattermost offer that Slack do

I've never used Mattermost before today. After checking out their site, I can see they are also a for-profit company. What does Mattermost offer that Slack does not, other than a bill lower than $195K/year?

ForHackernews 1y ago
Mattermost is open-core software: you can self-host and they can't turn you off or raise the price.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  What's your case for calling it open-core? The whole thing is AGPLv3, so... I'd call it FOSS with some components optionally being usable under Apache 2 terms
  - ForHackernews 1y ago
    That's how they describe themselves: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost > Mattermost is an open core, self-hosted collaboration platform that offers chat, workflow automation, voice calling, screen sharing, and AI integration
    - pcthrowaway 1y ago
      Interesting. Notably, they also call themselves "open source" in the "About" of the repository. I'm not aware of any critical extensions which are closed-source. The change you've highlighted was made 4 months ago under a commit that gives no explanation: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files , and the discussion there is private. Notably, they do have some "source-available" code that goes into the enterprise release, at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/enterprise https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/... This mainly seems to relate to metrics and fuzzy search, though it's possible more will move here in the future (it looks like this is a relatively recent development). Until recently they also had experimental support for Bleve full-text search (now seemingly deprecated), but the elasticsearch enterprise feature seems to be the replacement (otherwise they use postgres's ILIKE for built-in text search) So, all told, Mattermost was open source, and may be moving to open core. Which means now is probably the best time to create a community-maintained fork. The team edition, and almost all features, are currently still open source.
      - jrochkind1 1y ago
        It sounds like the enterprise release is not open source? When someone above says "The whole thing is AGPLv3," I'm not sure everyone is talking about the same "whole thing"?
actionfromafar 1y ago
You can deploy it self-hosted without paying any fee, so you control your data much more.
- wltr 1y ago
  Last time I checked they cripple the self-hosted version, asking to subscribe for enterprise plan here and there. Source: deployed their chat locally a couple of weekends ago. Overall, I liked their Slack clone, they this one was a red flag to me. Now I’m not sure we want to deploy this, but I know very little alternatives. Zulip, but it cripples its self-hosted version too. It allows just 10 mobile users (notifications). Maybe Matrix it is then, but it’s not very suitable for airgapped company-wide deployment.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - adastra22 1y ago
    Mattermost is AGPLv3. You can deploy the whole stack and own your data without paying a cent to Mattermost the company.
  - Arathorn 1y ago
    > Maybe Matrix it is then, but it’s not very suitable for airgapped company-wide deployment Element is literally built for airgapped company-wide deployments - this is precisely what https://element.io/server-suite https://element.io/server-suite is? It was originally built to install onto SIPRnet; it's been airgap-first since day 1.
    - wltr 1y ago
      Hi Matthew, thanks for the clarification. Then, Matrix is the only player who does not cripple self-hosted instances, I assume.
      - Arathorn 1y ago

ForHackernews 1y ago

Mattermost is open-core software: you can self-host and they can't turn you off or raise the price.

pcthrowaway 1y ago
What's your case for calling it open-core? The whole thing is AGPLv3, so... I'd call it FOSS with some components optionally being usable under Apache 2 terms
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  That's how they describe themselves: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost > Mattermost is an open core, self-hosted collaboration platform that offers chat, workflow automation, voice calling, screen sharing, and AI integration
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    Interesting. Notably, they also call themselves "open source" in the "About" of the repository. I'm not aware of any critical extensions which are closed-source. The change you've highlighted was made 4 months ago under a commit that gives no explanation: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/pull/31247/files , and the discussion there is private. Notably, they do have some "source-available" code that goes into the enterprise release, at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/enterprise https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost/tree/master/server/... This mainly seems to relate to metrics and fuzzy search, though it's possible more will move here in the future (it looks like this is a relatively recent development). Until recently they also had experimental support for Bleve full-text search (now seemingly deprecated), but the elasticsearch enterprise feature seems to be the replacement (otherwise they use postgres's ILIKE for built-in text search) So, all told, Mattermost was open source, and may be moving to open core. Which means now is probably the best time to create a community-maintained fork. The team edition, and almost all features, are currently still open source.
    - jrochkind1 1y ago
      It sounds like the enterprise release is not open source? When someone above says "The whole thing is AGPLv3," I'm not sure everyone is talking about the same "whole thing"?

actionfromafar 1y ago

You can deploy it self-hosted without paying any fee, so you control your data much more.

wltr 1y ago
Last time I checked they cripple the self-hosted version, asking to subscribe for enterprise plan here and there. Source: deployed their chat locally a couple of weekends ago. Overall, I liked their Slack clone, they this one was a red flag to me. Now I’m not sure we want to deploy this, but I know very little alternatives. Zulip, but it cripples its self-hosted version too. It allows just 10 mobile users (notifications). Maybe Matrix it is then, but it’s not very suitable for airgapped company-wide deployment.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- adastra22 1y ago
  Mattermost is AGPLv3. You can deploy the whole stack and own your data without paying a cent to Mattermost the company.
- Arathorn 1y ago
  > Maybe Matrix it is then, but it’s not very suitable for airgapped company-wide deployment Element is literally built for airgapped company-wide deployments - this is precisely what https://element.io/server-suite https://element.io/server-suite is? It was originally built to install onto SIPRnet; it's been airgap-first since day 1.
  - wltr 1y ago
    Hi Matthew, thanks for the clarification. Then, Matrix is the only player who does not cripple self-hosted instances, I assume.
    - Arathorn 1y ago