Post · Indieweb Studio

If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.

We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.

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trinity

@3@social.xenofem.me · 2 months ago

@cwebber
>irc
no!!! to hard!!!
>xmpp
no!!! the clients look bad!!!!

STOP making new discords and just write a pretty UI using existing protocols! isn't that all modern developers are good for anyway?

and for the love of fuck do not base your shit on matrix i'm not provisioning 2gb ram to my chat vps that is going to have to bridge to your shitfucked nucord Because Everyone Else Is Using It

Suika Ibuki

@suika@pl.ibuki.club · 2 months ago

@3 @cwebber someone here some time ago said to package https://github.com/ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC as a desktop app and call it good since ircv3 is slowly adopting things people have come to expect of modern chat platforms

GitHub

GitHub - ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC: Modern IRC Client for the web, desktop and mobile.

Modern IRC Client for the web, desktop and mobile. - ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 2 months ago

@suika @3 FWIW, I do love XMPP and IRC. I use and love them!

Please see the thread, we are talking about something specific that none of these things have: a chatroom with no center / that nobody hosts, which we think is important for sociopolitical reasons explained in the thread.

It's not to put down XMPP or IRC, both of which I love, use, and have built and run tech for before.

Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

@Blort@social.tchncs.de · 3 months ago

@cwebber
Would this be using Spritely (et al) tech? Also, what is wanted beyond what Matrix / XMPP provide?
@spritely

Toon

@toon@toon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely https://nlnet.nl/funding.html @nlnet

NLnet; Apply for funding

Daniel Blake

@Daniel_Blake@mastodon.top · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

https://elfaconsortium.eu/

They're being funded. Maybe ask for EU grant?

The Matrix.org Foundation

@matrix@mastodon.matrix.org · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely have you considered a hybrid approach - using spritely for the capabilities & decentralisation, but layering Matrix on top for the CS API? Something we've been toying with is the idea of 'portable Matrix' to make it easier to hook up Matrix to entirely different underlying protocols, rather than folks reinventing their own apps & e2ee every time.

Mark Wieczorek

@mrak@solarsystem.social · 3 months ago

@spritely @cwebber Could you just use @matrix ? If you really want to build something, perhaps add federation to Mattermost !

Luca Molteni

@volothamp@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

https://zulip.com is a good open source alternative

wide eyed doodad

@outputdoubtr@mastodon.seattlematrix.org · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

discord is bad
a discord replacement will also be bad

who needs yet another garbage chat app

Casey

@Caseydunham@infosec.exchange · 3 months ago

@cwebber @onepict @spritely Excellent. Will be following this development. I would love to assist from an appsec perspective if/when needed. We really need a good alternative.

Epzillon

@epzillon@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely How is the devlopment looking as of now? Currently looking into Stoat for the time being but will have no issues moving again. Discord-esque chat platforms is the next big thing I'm missing from the fediverse right now.

James Smith

@luggage@benehomini.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely if it can be made as simple to install and run as Mastodon, then I could see it being a great opportunity. I’m advocating for hyper local installs as a way around age verification. https://www.empathyforward.org/2025/12/community-based-fediverse-instances/

My own FOSS efforts are focused on making this easier to manage.

Kristoffer Lawson

@Setok@attractive.space · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely why wouldn’t Matrix be the natural replacement?

LΞX/NØVΛ 🇪🇺

@lexinova@cyberplace.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely just if possible try to avoid the major bug from both element (matrix), and simplex, that is losing the capacity to decrypt message because of a desyncronisation of some user on differents relay (server).

Sprocket The Clown

@SprocketClown@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely In the meantime are there any half decent FOSS alternatives one could use as a stop-gap measure?