Revolt became Stoat (stoat.chat)
from Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 21 Oct 10:12
https://sopuli.xyz/post/35523960

Stoat (formerly known as Revolt) is a selfhostable, FOSS replacement for discord [Group chats and voice channels you can join any time].

Cool new name, however not as easy to use in other languages.

Voice chat is stil not officialy implemented.

Self-hosting there. Apparently nothing to do for you if you had already hosted before the name change.

The Android app has unfortunately disappeared (not been updated) on F-droid.

Edit: added short description for clarification

#selfhosted

threaded - newest

Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world on 21 Oct 11:09 next collapse

I looked at the website and every link and have no idea what it does.

“Connect with your friends and community” was in a screenshot.

Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz on 21 Oct 11:11 collapse

Ah! If you have never heard of it I can tell you: it’s the foss, self-hostable equivalent of Discord. Except we are still waiting for the voice channels.

Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world on 21 Oct 11:44 next collapse

If there’s no voice channels, then why reinvent IRC?

ayyo@sh.itjust.works on 21 Oct 12:55 next collapse

Compared to some other alternatives, I think the thing it really has going for it is how simple it is. It’s really a drop in replacement for discord, something I actually think maybe my friends that don’t really care about Foss would consider switching to. They’ve told me they don’t want to take the time to learn a new messaging software, I don’t think they’d have to with this.

lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org on 21 Oct 13:59 next collapse

There’s a wide gap of stuff one can do between IRC and “chat with voice channels”. For example, having a better protocol with better formatting options, a moderation API, better account management, other forms of multimedia (page embeds, images).

Eyekaytee@aussie.zone on 21 Oct 14:12 next collapse

is this a genuine question?

Jayjader@jlai.lu on 22 Oct 11:27 collapse

Syntax highlighting for code blocks is the reason I prefer discord over slack for collaborating and just chatting with friends who know how to code. I imagine some irc clients exist that so the same, but at least with discord I know my recipient is guaranteed to see what I see.

papertowels@mander.xyz on 21 Oct 13:35 collapse

Wait when I tested revolt a few months ago they definitely had voice channels - was that a beta feature?

Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz on 21 Oct 13:42 collapse

Yes it needs extra steps if you are selfhosting and is not supported in the third party app clerotri for example. It seemed an hassle enough that I did not try it on my selfhosted instance.

papertowels@mander.xyz on 21 Oct 14:39 collapse

Gotcha that does match my impression.

You’re right though, there’s value in it being a drop-in replacement for discord. Along those lines, I’m very excited for cinny, a matrix discord-like frontend. There’s a PR for voice calls that I check every now and then, the moment that goes in I’ll be trying to convince my friends to hop over.

null@piefed.nullspace.lol on 21 Oct 21:39 collapse

Why not any of the other Matrix clients? I’ve got some friends on Element with some bridges and it’s pretty much perfect.

papertowels@mander.xyz on 22 Oct 00:48 collapse

The UI of the ones I’ve tried (schildichat, fluffy, element) felt very unintuitive to me. Spaces were really awkward because it was a different paradigm.

I’m hoping that the familiarity of cinny will help with wider adoption.

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 21 Oct 11:40 next collapse

I wonder who made the legal threats. I suspect it was Element (Matrix), as they are the only ones with a possible to confuse trademark in the same business sector (“Riot” the old name of their webclient).

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 21 Oct 12:26 next collapse

do you think they would spend their little money on this?

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 21 Oct 13:19 next collapse

You mean the multiple millions of VC money and crypto investments? Absolutely.

The Matrix foundation also would have plenty of money if it wasn’t just a front for Element and most funds being siphoned off to pay for services provided by Element.

scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech on 21 Oct 14:18 collapse

Yeah I would assume if anything they would have helped them bring federation

poVoq@slrpnk.net on 21 Oct 17:21 collapse

Not sure if that is still in their FAQ, but the Stoat devs previously said that they don’t want federation, and if that ever changes they would likely prefer XMPP over Matrix.

scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech on 21 Oct 17:57 next collapse

They said they were open to it but they had zero priority of doing it themselves, and essentially “submit a PR if you want it”. A shame really, their interface is great, and such an easy setup. If they implemented either xmpp or matrix I would switch immediately. All of my friends want a discord clone that “just” works, but no one wants to go to this server for this group and then login to that server for that group. They want a single-pane interface like what discord offers.

Shortsighted to not implement that IMO.

[deleted] on 21 Oct 18:52 collapse
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8osm3rka@lemmy.world on 21 Oct 13:17 next collapse

I know trademarks don’t work that way, but imagine if it was actually Revolut, the fintech company

Lumisal@lemmy.world on 21 Oct 21:02 collapse

Somewhere on Lemmy someone said it came out that it was Revolt.tv

But yeah, I honestly would constantly type Revolut instead of Revolt before, so that was my guess before too.

papertowels@mander.xyz on 21 Oct 13:36 collapse

“Riot” the old name of their webclient

I mean, by that logic discord has a much more likely claim.

sbeak@sopuli.xyz on 21 Oct 13:20 next collapse

I like things named after animals!

illi@piefed.social on 21 Oct 15:37 collapse

Thanks for making me realize the name is not just gibberish

renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net on 21 Oct 20:12 next collapse

This seems like a cool project. I especially love the UI’s similarity to Discord, but it still has a long road ahead to be a viable chat platform IMO.

I’ve been periodically checking in with Revolt Stoat for about a year now, and personally, the two things that I’m waiting for are:

  1. Voice chat - It seems like this is coming, but they had to clean up a bunch or tech debt first
  2. Federation - Self-hosted chat is great, but not being able to talk to other servers is incredibly limiting for a social tool. AFAIK they’re not planning on implementing this. This is likely a deal-breaker for a lot of folks.

I’m currently running Matrix synapse, and while matrix is kinda a messy ecosystem, it’s really hard to compete with its maturity and adoption in the FOSS / Self-Hosted space.

Also, not super important, but this blog post reads like it’s AI generated.

themagzuz@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 22 Oct 07:04 next collapse

i honestly think that if revolt had federation, then it would be the obvious choice for me, but alas. personally i’m still hopeful for polyproto getting off the ground, but the boring realistic choice for the time being is probably something like XMPP + mumble

renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net on 22 Oct 14:48 next collapse

I’m getting an HTTP 522 from that link. What’s Polyproto?

Also, is there a reason you’re not considering Matrix?

themagzuz@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 23 Oct 10:26 collapse

oh yea their website seems to be down. surely a good sign… in the meantime, you can look at the website/spec through their codeberg repos.

i’m not a huge fan of matrix because it seems very bad to selfhost. from my understanding, if anyone using your homeserver joins a big channel, your homeserver will have to store the entire history of that channel and keep it up to date. on top of that, it very much seems like the spec isn’t being developed by the community, but more that element implements some feature and then forces that into the spec. also polyproto claims to be much more resilient, allowing you to migrate to a new homeserver, even if your old one is already dead.

also a lot of matrix’s funding comes from crypto, ai and venture capital, so i think it’s just a matter of time before the whole project becomes completely subsumed by capital interests

aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works on 23 Oct 16:16 collapse

It looks like polyproto doesn’t have any intent to implement voice chat or screen sharing?

fixmycode@feddit.cl on 22 Oct 17:34 collapse

what’s really federation on a system that isolates conversations per server? can you reply to a message from one server on another? maybe the main thing would be single account, because even friend lists from multiple accounts could be merged

renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net on 22 Oct 19:59 collapse

what’s really federation on a system that isolates conversations per server?

That’s like asking why Lemmy needs federation if posts are tied to a Community.

No federation means:

  • Every server requires a different user account to join a room
  • Every server needs to be accessed from a different URL
  • Users in different servers cannot direct message, call, or friendlist one another

Federated platforms aren’t perfect, but they solve these problems.

svcg@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 22 Oct 08:48 collapse

That’s an otterly different name!