sfdc is much larger but doesn't see itself as overly corporate altho it materially is, I think

Oh. Maybe I better slow down on my picture hanging. Where would we go from here? Is there an OSS pricing model for Slack? Were you (@U04V70XH6) the “We” in the “We reached out…“? How can I help? This community is ineffably valuable to me. A scene from War Games is coming to mind.

We = the Admin team here. No, there is no OSS pricing -- Slack was always designed for corporate use, OSS communities just happened to start using it and liked it. You certainly should not use Slack for any content you want to "keep" for yourself for the future. Consider it all transient. We just happen to have full features and full access at the moment.

The Clojurians Zulip instance is on a free OSS community plan that is "full-featured" but the community there is smaller and Zulip has fewer features than Slack.

Let’s build our own. Can we squeeze into the free tier at AWS?

Folks have tried that before but you're welcome to try again. Check out notes here https://github.com/clojurians/community-development/tree/master/hackpad-archive (and elsewhere in that repo) for information about what/why/how...

Zulip is the closest to Slack in terms of features and free OSS community support and it already has zulip-mirror-bot archives from most of the channels here stretching back several years, all searchable, but the community just hasn't grown much over there -- despite folks pointing to it every time "commercial Slack" concerns crop up.

As always, thank you, Sean.

If you go to r/Clojure on Reddit, there's a decent list of communities in the right hand sidebar, there are also lists here https://clojure.org/community/resources and here https://clojure-doc.org/articles/ecosystem/community/ so there are plenty of online spaces to discuss Clojure and they all have different pros and cons. This Slack existed for over six years before we got "Pro" for free and I am sure it will continue to exist long after we lose Pro status -- and it's been the largest Clojure community online since shortly after it was created eight and a half years ago...

Is an ask for a Pro (bono) renewal on the horizon? If so, I would appreciate an understanding of the timing. With that understanding, I’d like to noodle through how to contribute. I’m very aware you didn’t extend an offer to contribute beyond rolling my own. I promise I won’t make any maverick moves. I will think out loud, consult, collaborate, respect existing internal and external relationships, and submit to better judgements.

I'm working on a personal lead with contacts into Slack. The renewal comes up in early December. Slack only talk to the Primary Owner of the workspace (me, right now).

Thanks for doing all that. If some “Why Sponsoring Clojure is Great for Slack” type document/presentation/event would somehow be supportive in your mind, I could start noodling an angle and material.

When I get through to the right people, either they will or they won't, based on the information that led them to sponsor us before. Given that they've withdrawn sponsorship from some communities, I think we should assume they will withdraw sponsorship from us. I suspect it was more due to the whims of Stu than any balanced policy.

Right. It has everything to do with how they think. I’d be happy to help show what it could do for their marketing if they might think that way.

I have no interest in adding to your workload in any unhelpful way.

One thing that might also color your views on this is content ownership. The terms of use for Slack make all content posted the property of the entity that runs the workspace. That's normally the company that is Slack's paid customer. For Clojurians, that's me. So technically I own everything posted here.

I mention this since you've talked about building a commercial product and, I assume, posting information about it to this Slack. And you've also mentioned confidentiality.

It’s thoughtful of you to raise the issue. Thanks. It’s the relationships that are the most valuable. I’ll put IP somewhere or other.

Again, thoughtful. You’re the neighbor I’d trust with the key to my house. I won’t put stuff on Slack that burdens people that way. Maintaining my client’s privacy is a daily concern. It’s a horrible burden.