I love discord, don't get me wrong, but there are some limitations that it has. Open source is one of them. Starting today that changes. Just released, is my take on the "chat application" scene, firepit. Designed to be small, performant, and best of all: functional.
Background
If you've lived under a rock your entire life, discord is an online chat platform, designed for the masses, to communicate with their friends, and make new ones. Discord has a monopoly on the masses, simply because of it's popularity. But people also hate it, because of the dev's lack of receptiveness of certain wanted features.
Benefits of OSS
Having, or maintaining open source software, can be difficult without maintainers. But it allows for the benefits of community interaction. Which is a massive plus for anything. With open source, you have to expect people to clone, and create their own versions of the code. Which is part of what makes open source so good. But it can be bad for your company. Or can it? I'll be breaking down a few reasons as to why I decided to open source this project.
Why open source?
Open source looks bad on paper for companies. I mean, people can contribute malicious code, it can take away from your companies revenue, etc. It can also be good though. I mean, you can make the people happy, and people can make your product better by making their own versions, which can help you have ideas for new features. It also allows for self hostability. While this could be bad, it doesn't have to be.
So what is firepit?
Glad you asked! Firepit, is to put it simply, a discord clone. It has similar features. It lacks some others. But that's to be expected, it's only version 1 right? Of course, there will be more to come later.
Where can I find it?
You can find it here: Firepit repository. Curently, I do not maintain a public instance, but I will make one at a later date.
Conclusion
This is going to be an interesting product development. I hope you will join me on this journey, and as I continue to work on other projects as well!