Do you use Discord? Well if these reports are to be trusted, it looks like they might get a new owner under Microsoft.
In an article on Bloomberg which cites anonymous sources "familiar with the matter", Microsoft are apparently in talks to buy Discord for more than $10 billion USD. This follows from another article from VentureBeat that claims Discord has been exploring options for a sale and has "signed an exclusive acquisition discussion with one party". Earlier this month the WSJ talked about how Discord revenue has increased quite a lot to $130 million in 2020 (up from $45 million in 2019) but it's not actually profitable yet.
For the Linux support of Discord, if Microsoft did acquire it we don't expect much to change. Discord's Linux client is full of issues that never get solved so Microsoft can't do much worse - we could even see an improvement perhaps. Nowadays Microsoft aren't exactly the same when it comes to Linux with the likes of Teams, Visual Studio Code and Edge all on Linux in some form. Microsoft are also the owners of GitHub which huge parts of the open source community entirely rely on.
Still, with all the acquisitions Microsoft has done, that's a lot to have under a single roof. This continued consolidation across the gaming industry is pretty concerning. Some companies really do end up with far too much influence and power.
How do you feel about this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Matrix + Mumble FTW
Just don't use a communication platform that's not open. There's so many to pick from, these criteria could be valuated a bit more, don't you think?
Just don't use a communication platform that's not open. There's so many to pick from, these criteria could be valuated a bit more, don't you think?
3 Likes, Who?
InhaleOblivion Mar 26, 2021
"You were the chosen One"....
1 Likes, Who?
Cyba.Cowboy Apr 2, 2021
Quoting: tomaszgWell, time to look for alternatives.
I'll be doing the same, though I will wait until any such takeover has been confirmed through an official source... Admitedly, I don't use Discord all that much; but I'm still not about to continue using it under Microsoft's stewardship - I value my privacy.
Quoting: tomaszgBTW. I'm surprised so few projects decided to move away from Github...
This.
Microsoft shamelessly makes no secret of the fact that it places absolutely no value on privacy whatsoever... Yet all of these Open Source projects - many of which claim to value privacy - continue to indirectly support Microsoft and its culture.
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Why microsoft didnt change it they just pumped funding into the backend and increased bandwidth. So far they havent changed anything really its still github
That may be so... Except that it is now owned by one of the biggest anti-privacy (tech) companies in the world.
Some people - disappointingly, a (very small) minority in the world - place value on privacy.
Quoting: GuestAnother account to delete... What's next? Will they buy my country too?
Well they basically "bought" mine (Australia)... Open Source is a dirty word in my country, and everybody - from the smallest business you can find, right up to just about every educational and Government body - is obsessed with Microsoft products; in many cases, they even go as far as officially prohibiting the use of Open Source software (in policy, not legislation / law).
Even in the midst of all this "hoo ha" over Google "pulling out of Australia" just recently... The default answer was automatically "Microsoft"; "Open Source" didn't even enter the conversation, despite the fact that such a change would (rather obviously!) be trading one dictatorship for another.
Quoting: RoosterFortunately there are more than enough good alternatives for Discord, in case they screw it up.
Any particular suggestions?
Admittedly, I don't use Discord very much - but it does have quite a following, and it seems to be pretty polished.
Quoting: The_AquabatI bet this will come with a new EULA, "all your rights belong to us".☝ Don't forget your first-born, too!
Quoting: Loftyit's capitalism 101. Be the shark that eats / hoards (acquires) all the growing smaller fish until there is no other fish left in the ocean but just one giant shark, eventually and inevitably a crisis occurs, there is not enough food for the rest of the fish to eat. The shark gets to swim to the government boat and ask for a free food bail out. whilst all the everyday mino fish get nothing when they have nothing left to eat because the big shark consolidated and consumed it all and there is nowhere else to find food (work)
the little fish are told to pull themselves up by their boot straps but they don't even wear shoes.
So basically... A "typical" day in Australia, then?
Quoting: Guestits amazing that their love for linux so far has been one sided. sided to microsofts best interest of course. everything has been centered around making linux things run smoother, and better on windows. to attract linux developers, to windows, to develop their linux things, on windows. none of it has actually benefited linux at all.
if microsoft truly loved linux like they claim, they would start opening up some important stuff. like directx. contribute to wine, etc. if they actively contributed to wine, i would feel far more comfortable with their work on WSL for example.
This says it all... Sure, Microsoft have contributed things "here and there" - but it's only ever been the bare minimum, so they or their supporters can dust their hands and say "See? Microsoft contributes back to the Open Source Community!"
Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 2 April 2021 at 2:55 am UTC
0 Likes
slaapliedje Apr 2, 2021
Here's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat... Steam actually has built in voice chat... Is there any reason why people don't use it? (Granted I know not everyone here uses Steam, but it's a good chance that if you are a gamer, you have Steam installed).
0 Likes
Cyba.Cowboy Apr 2, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat... Steam actually has built in voice chat... Is there any reason why people don't use it? (Granted I know not everyone here uses Steam, but it's a good chance that if you are a gamer, you have Steam installed).
Doesn't Steam hold the biggest marketshare for PC gaming? That makes the fact that it's so under-used even more ludicrous...
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Apr 2, 2021
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyTo be fair, they don't advertise it at all. I mentioned it to room at work, and pretty much no one knew it existed.Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat... Steam actually has built in voice chat... Is there any reason why people don't use it? (Granted I know not everyone here uses Steam, but it's a good chance that if you are a gamer, you have Steam installed).
Doesn't Steam hold the biggest marketshare for PC gaming? That makes the fact that it's so under-used even more ludicrous...
I'm not sure why they don't really let people know. I know it took a long time for them to have chat, and then add the voice, but I do find it odd no one uses it.
https://steamcommunity.com/updates/chatupdate
Last edited by slaapliedje on 2 April 2021 at 11:16 pm UTC
0 Likes
Philadelphus Apr 3, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...I'm not sure this is actually correct, or at least, entirely correct. I mean, sure, lots of people do use Discord for gaming voice chat, don't get me wrong, but it's also much more than that: it's basically a place for lots of communities to hang out and asynchronously communicate. Lots of games have Discord servers (I'm in the ones for Filament and Noita, for instance), where people chat and share ideas/hints/discussion/help/artwork/what-have-you (I've gotten a ton of help modding Noita from other modders in the server, for instance). There are Discord servers for programming languages (I know of Python and Rust, I'm sure there are others), even a small web-comic I follow has a(n official) server for discussions. I also use it for communicating with family back home across the Pacific and (text) chatting with friends.
If Discord were just voice chat then yes, it'd be relatively simple to replace with any of the other alternatives out there (other than the whole "network effect" and getting everyone to settle on an alternative), but it's really a lot more than that for some people and I don't know, off the top of my head, of a replacement that exactly covers all its use cases. That's the real issue for people looking for alternatives.
2 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Apr 3, 2021
Quoting: PhiladelphusYeah, what I meant wasn't that Discord was only used for gaming voice chat, but that instead of using in-game voice chat, or steam voice chat, they use Discord's voice chat. For sure, I'm in a few communities around things, one of which is the Atari VCS Founders group, and never once used the voice chat features for any of them. We use Discord for the voice chat though for our Valheim server.Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...I'm not sure this is actually correct, or at least, entirely correct. I mean, sure, lots of people do use Discord for gaming voice chat, don't get me wrong, but it's also much more than that: it's basically a place for lots of communities to hang out and asynchronously communicate. Lots of games have Discord servers (I'm in the ones for Filament and Noita, for instance), where people chat and share ideas/hints/discussion/help/artwork/what-have-you (I've gotten a ton of help modding Noita from other modders in the server, for instance). There are Discord servers for programming languages (I know of Python and Rust, I'm sure there are others), even a small web-comic I follow has a(n official) server for discussions. I also use it for communicating with family back home across the Pacific and (text) chatting with friends.
If Discord were just voice chat then yes, it'd be relatively simple to replace with any of the other alternatives out there (other than the whole "network effect" and getting everyone to settle on an alternative), but it's really a lot more than that for some people and I don't know, off the top of my head, of a replacement that exactly covers all its use cases. That's the real issue for people looking for alternatives.
0 Likes
Cyba.Cowboy Apr 3, 2021
Quoting: PhiladelphusQuoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...I'm not sure this is actually correct, or at least, entirely correct. I mean, sure, lots of people do use Discord for gaming voice chat, don't get me wrong, but it's also much more than that: it's basically a place for lots of communities to hang out and asynchronously communicate.
Quoting: PhiladelphusQuoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...If Discord were just voice chat then yes, it'd be relatively simple to replace with any of the other alternatives out there (other than the whole "network effect" and getting everyone to settle on an alternative), but it's really a lot more than that for some people and I don't know, off the top of my head, of a replacement that exactly covers all its use cases. That's the real issue for people looking for alternatives.
Well that's the thing - those of us that have been around (online) for a while will remember the days of ICQ / AIM / IRC / MSN Chat / Yahoo! Chat / whatever, when everyone used such services heavily... Then almost overnight, they died (largely the big companies got all worried about their legal liabilities, due to idiots hitting-up kids in chat).
Granted some of these services are still around, but they're ghost towns and the few users they still have are almost always bots, scammers or people who simply refuse to give in to changing trends. The same can be said of the "alternatives" to these early chat services, that have popped-up over the years.
I always thought that closing all these chat services en-masse was a dumb idea and I think a great big void was left... In my opinion, Discord has gone some way to filling that void for many people.
2 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Apr 3, 2021
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyIRC will always be around! Though it doesn't exactly have voice / video.Quoting: PhiladelphusQuoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...I'm not sure this is actually correct, or at least, entirely correct. I mean, sure, lots of people do use Discord for gaming voice chat, don't get me wrong, but it's also much more than that: it's basically a place for lots of communities to hang out and asynchronously communicate.
Quoting: PhiladelphusQuoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...If Discord were just voice chat then yes, it'd be relatively simple to replace with any of the other alternatives out there (other than the whole "network effect" and getting everyone to settle on an alternative), but it's really a lot more than that for some people and I don't know, off the top of my head, of a replacement that exactly covers all its use cases. That's the real issue for people looking for alternatives.
Well that's the thing - those of us that have been around (online) for a while will remember the days of ICQ / AIM / IRC / MSN Chat / Yahoo! Chat / whatever, when everyone used such services heavily... Then almost overnight, they died (largely the big companies got all worried about their legal liabilities, due to idiots hitting-up kids in chat).
Granted some of these services are still around, but they're ghost towns and the few users they still have are almost always bots, scammers or people who simply refuse to give in to changing trends. The same can be said of the "alternatives" to these early chat services, that have popped-up over the years.
I always thought that closing all these chat services en-masse was a dumb idea and I think a great big void was left... In my opinion, Discord has gone some way to filling that void for many people.
0 Likes
Cyba.Cowboy Apr 3, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeIRC will always be around! Though it doesn't exactly have voice / video.
Yeah, but like the few "old" chat / IM services still around, it's a pretty niche thing these days...
0 Likes
Philadelphus Apr 4, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, what I meant wasn't that Discord was only used for gaming voice chat, but that instead of using in-game voice chat, or steam voice chat, they use Discord's voice chat. For sure, I'm in a few communities around things, one of which is the Atari VCS Founders group, and never once used the voice chat features for any of them. We use Discord for the voice chat though for our Valheim server.Ahh, fair enough. My misunderstanding.
0 Likes
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