New Discussion Platform

by Colin Finck | March 13, 2019

After decades on IRC and around 3 months of internal testing, the ReactOS Project has officially switched to a self-hosted Mattermost server as its main discussion platform.

Mattermost is a modern open-source solution for team communication, eliminating many of the limits of IRC:

  • Ever missed an opportunity to contact a person, because that person wasn't on IRC at the same time as yourself?
  • Ever thought "A picture is worth a thousand words", but were too lazy to look up an image hosting service, publish your image there, and then post a link to IRC?
  • Ever wondered whether a person on the IRC channels is really the same person from the ReactOS website?
  • Ever had problems following a conversation, because too many topics were discussed at the same time?

These are problems of the past now! Mattermost enables richer communication instead of text-only messages and gives the same experience on desktop and mobile. You don't even need an app for it and can just use the web client.
People can be contacted no matter if they are online or offline. Any missed message is pushed to your mobile (provided that you use the app) or delivered when you log in to Mattermost next time. E-Mail notifications are also supported.
Our server at chat.reactos.org is connected to the same user directory as the ReactOS website, so you can easily verify that people are who they pretend to be.

At ReactOS, we take your privacy seriously! Therefore, we have chosen a self-hosted discussion platform with an open-source core over the proprietary alternatives.
This is the only way to ensure that none of your private communication leaves ReactOS servers. It also makes your single ReactOS.org account for all services even more powerful.

If you still prefer IRC over Mattermost, be aware that there are no plans to shut down the ReactOS IRC channels on Freenode any time soon.
#reactos and #reactos-dev are bridged to the Mattermost Town Square and Development channels, so discussions can take place using either system. However, please note that the experience in Mattermost is usually better due to the technical differences of both systems.

We would like to thank Mattermost, Inc. for granting ReactOS a Mattermost Enterprise license for Nonprofit organizations!