Slack is Buying HipChat and Stride From Atlassian (bloomberg.com)

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Slack is Buying HipChat and Stride From Atlassian (bloomberg.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday July 26, 2018 @08:23AM from the big-fish-small-fish dept.

Atlassian is selling its corporate chat software to rival Slack Technologies and taking a small stake in the startup, as they face greater competition from Microsoft. From a report: Slack will pay an undisclosed amount over the next three years to acquire Atlassian's HipChat and Stride products, chief executives from both companies said. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield described both the payment and the investment by Atlassian in his company as "nominal" in financial terms but important strategically. He declined to elaborate on the former. The deal gives Slack, valued at north of $5 billion, more customers, most of whom pay a monthly service fee, and allows Atlassian to exit a business that failed to generate as much demand as expected. Combining the two businesses bolsters Slack at a time when Microsoft is pushing a rival product called Teams to some 135 million Office cloud customers. Microsoft introduced a free version of Teams this month in a bid to lure people who don't subscribe to Office 365.

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or you could use IRC for free by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:26 · Score: 0

You could still use IRC and have it not cost you a dime.
1. Re:or you could use IRC for free by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  You'd have to train two irritating groups of people to use IRC: Young Newbies, OLD Newbies
  No thanks!
2. Re:or you could use IRC for free by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:34 · Score: 1
  
  You've never had to put a room full of OLD newbies through Microsoft Team's training either....
3. Re:or you could use IRC for free by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:34 · Score: 0
  
  You have to train irritating groups of people to use Slack: Young Newbies, OLD Newbies
  No thanks!
4. Re:or you could use IRC for free by Penguinisto · 2018-07-26 09:18 · Score: 1
  
  No need to at this rate - this merger just knocked one (of don't ask how many) IM client off of the list of IM clients commonly used and supported internally by our company at large.
  Just a dozen more mergers, and we'll actually have a single standard IM client/server solution!
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
5. Re:or you could use IRC for free by telek83 · 2018-07-26 14:57 · Score: 1
  
  You already have a standard IM client solution.. IRC + Bitlbee + ZNC = win
  Bitlbee is an IRC to IM gateway, it allows any IM account libpurple (Pidgin and a few other plugins) can connect to, which is pretty much anything
Very Surprising Move by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:34 · Score: 1

Slack is Buying HipChat
I really didn't expect Patrick Volkerding to make such a purchase.
1. Re:Very Surprising Move by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:35 · Score: 1
  
  Oh you old geezer. Slack != Slackware. I'll get you your metamucil now.
2. Re: Very Surprising Move by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 09:25 · Score: 0
  
  I must be old - Iâ(TM)ve never heard of all three of these companies. I also originally read Hipchat as Asshat, and wondered what their business model looked like.
3. Re:Very Surprising Move by UnknownSoldier · 2018-07-26 09:31 · Score: 2
  
  Considering Patrick is broke (Why isn't this news?) he couldn't afford it:
  
  I've been mulling over exactly how to tell you all this, and I guess this is as good a place as any. The store has been ripping me off horribly, and I'm very nearly broke. I have no evidence that they've ever done anything with donations besides line their own pockets. I've not been paid any money by them in two years. That was upon the 14.2 release (and followed another long period of time with no income). The 14.2 release generated nearly $100K in revenue. The store gave me $15K, and later said that I was "overpaid".
  When I agreed to set up the store, it was structured as a company where they owned 60%, and my wife and I owned 40%. I had not yet escaped California and would have quickly gone broke there with a house underwater had I not taken the deal. And 60% seemed fair, since the idea was that the company would be providing health insurance, paying for the production of the goods, and handling shipping and related customer service. And when my daughter was born and needed surgery and continuing medical attention I could hardly jeopardize our insurance in the days before the ACA. I was between a rock and a hard place like many residents of the US. Since then, the store has ceased to provide any benefits, and shouldn't even be getting a 50/50 split in my opinion, much less looting the coffers for 81+% (anything they want to spend money on is an expense, apparently, while any expenses I have to support the actual project come out of the peanuts they toss me). I only found out about how bad it really was last year when I finally managed to get some numbers out of them. I thought the sales were just that bad, and was really rather depressed about it. Another side note - the ownership of the 60% portion of the store changed hands behind my back. Nobody thought they needed to tell me about this. At that point I'd say things got considerably worse for me.
  This is sad news -- I guess he should have retained 51% of the store. :-(
4. Re:Very Surprising Move by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 11:38 · Score: 0
  
  Oh that sucks to hear that Patrick is broke. Most of what I learned to get my career as a sysadmin was learned on Slackware in the mid 90s. I remember downloading the floppy images via modem. Nice thing was that you didn't need to download ALL of the images, just what you needed to get you going. I seem to recall never getting much past the disks lettered 'N', where all of the networking stuff was.
  I hope life gets turned around for him.
5. Re:Very Surprising Move by phantomfive · 2018-07-26 15:16 · Score: 1
  
  Patreon, Kickstarter, or similar and I would donate.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
6. Re:Very Surprising Move by phantomfive · 2018-07-26 15:16 · Score: 1
  
  Oh you old geezer. Slack != Slackware.
  One of those takes freedom, the other one gives it.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have a corporate chat app by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:37 · Score: 0

It's called "MadSickChat." It's for sale for just $50. At that low price, isn't it worth the tiny risk to buy me out? I really need gas money.
1. Re:I have a corporate chat app by RenderSeven · 2018-07-26 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  If it works on self-driving rental scooters, I'll give you $500 million!!!
2. Re: I have a corporate chat app by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 10:17 · Score: 0
  
  Put me down for 5 of your chat scooters!
Atlassian is a Scourge by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 08:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

If there's one company who can go lower than Microsoft in terms of support and product functionality, it's Atlassian.
1. Re:Atlassian is a Scourge by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Atlassian Jira for Agile Development. Install their software package on your Java server today and watch it get overloaded when you have more than 40 people on your team.
2. Re:Atlassian is a Scourge by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 13:36 · Score: 1
  
  I support a Jira instance with over 10,000 users. It handles 1000 concurrent users with no major performance problems.
3. Re:Atlassian is a Scourge by Simon+Rowe · 2018-07-26 18:26 · Score: 1
  
  Then you're doing it wrong, our instance has ten years worth of issues and is in constant use by 1,000+ users. Badly written bots or extensions can cause problems, but the core platform works well when deployed correctly.
4. Re:Atlassian is a Scourge by _merlin · 2018-07-26 23:25 · Score: 1
  
  But they just keep removing useful functionality and making the JavaScript slower. It used to be useful, but they seem to be intent on ensuring it isn't any more.
5. Re:Atlassian is a Scourge by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 23:56 · Score: 0
  
  Its the worst, except for all the others. I don't like the re-design (shoot whoever came up with 'flat' design), but for the most part it works, gets the job done, it scales, and it's stable. The experiences that we've had with the host of other products have been far worse, in terms of stability and functionality. If you have something that provides issues tracking and wiki better, please let me know. I was thinking that github was headed in the right direction and would become a one-stop-shop, but with the MS acquisition, I am skeptical.
A great step in right direction! by Gravis+Zero · 2018-07-26 08:57 · Score: 2

At this rate, Shitty IRC will be as good as IRC in the next decade! ;)

--
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
1. Re:A great step in right direction! by AndroSyn · 2018-07-26 12:06 · Score: 2
  
  Make everyone at your office use IRC with Microsoft Comic Chat.
  That's pretty much what Teams is anyways, without being as much fun.
apps! by OrangeTide · 2018-07-26 08:57 · Score: 1

I feel like this is a problem that could be solved by an app.

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
1. Re:apps! by Penguinisto · 2018-07-26 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  Bring back AIM!
  (ugh... I'm really sorry guys, it sounded funnier in my head.)
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Anyone else by Hognoxious · 2018-07-26 09:24 · Score: 1

I'm an old fart who once wrote JCL from scratch, but am I the only one who went "Who, what, what, who?"

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1. Re: Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 10:21 · Score: 0
  
  Not as old as you, but all you need to know is fuck Hipchat, and fuck Jira.
2. Re:Anyone else by Peter+P+Peters · 2018-07-26 13:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'm an old fart who once wrote JCL from scratch, but am I the only one who went "Who, what, what, who?"
  Allow me to try fill you (and anyone else) in.
  Team Chat is a thing that when used properly within the right scope pretty much replaces the olde worlde email as the primary communication platform
  Slack is the cool player in the team chat space. In Digital-land everything is Agile and Devops and modular and distributed, so open team chat is the best method to collaborate rather than email. These new team chat platforms are not just apps like IRC, Skype, Messenger etc, they have all sorts of useful new features such and integrations, APIs, Bots, wiki, document storage, search etc.
  Atlassian is company that got popular in developer world for creating newer Agile type tools such as Confluence (wiki), Jira (issue tracking), Bamboo (CI/CD), and Bamboo (repo). Hipchat is their version of team chat.
  Microsoft as usual realised late the Slack and Atlassian had a potential game changer that threatend Skype and Outlook/Exchange so created their product 'Teams' to try and do the same thing. Teams is a lot more shit, but MS have market power which a lot of the times means more than good products.
  I assume that Slack and Atlassian saw this threat so have joined forces to try fight Microsoft.
3. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 23:39 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you
4. Re:Anyone else by Thelasko · 2018-07-27 03:30 · Score: 1
  
  I'm an old fart who once wrote JCL from scratch, but am I the only one who went "Who, what, what, who?"
  Ironically, I'm a mechanical engineer with very little software development experience (aside from some data processing), and I knew exactly what this article was talking about.
  
  I'm usually the one out of the loop here.
  
  Now I have to go put a Jira ticket in.
  
  --
  One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
5. Re:Anyone else by Hognoxious · 2018-07-27 04:46 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who thinks 75% of cases where email is used would be better using something like usenet[1], do these things leave a trace?
  Because if they don't, they're useless.
  Monday. Marketing: Make it all purple!
  Tuesday: Your boss: Why did you make it purple? Marketing are throwing a fit.
  [1] Yeah, first rule...
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
6. Re:Anyone else by tlhIngan · 2018-07-27 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  Slack is the cool player in the team chat space. In Digital-land everything is Agile and Devops and modular and distributed, so open team chat is the best method to collaborate rather than email. These new team chat platforms are not just apps like IRC, Skype, Messenger etc, they have all sorts of useful new features such and integrations, APIs, Bots, wiki, document storage, search etc.
  And ensuring you have the latest and greatest hardware. I've never seen a chat client consume 30% CPU resources before, for what is effectively webchat. Other web chat things like Discord and such, no problem, they take less than 1% idle.
  So if you're using Slack on anything lower than an i7 (i9 preferred) with 32GB of RAM, or preferentially a whole separate machine, it's painful.
  And yes, webchat - because the "app" is actually a node.js/electron thing that wraps their webchat into an independent app. Which is preferable, since some browsers would just clog up if you used the web interface. The app just ran its own instance of Chromium independently so it wouldn't bog down your web browser.
  
  As someone who thinks 75% of cases where email is used would be better using something like usenet[1], do these things leave a trace?
  Because if they don't, they're useless.
  Monday. Marketing: Make it all purple!
  Tuesday: Your boss: Why did you make it purple? Marketing are throwing a fit.
  [1] Yeah, first rule...
  Well, there's plenty of logging, and it's a bit cloudy too, so even if you joined today, you can still see previous chat logs (don't know how far back, but if you just keep scrolling back, more is fetched). So even if your boss bamboozles the new guy on the team, one he logs in to the chat, he can always scroll up and see what your conversation was.
7. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-27 06:48 · Score: 0
  
  If you're paying for it, it's a perpetual log. Even if Boss is the last person to join the chat, days later, Boss can go back and read last week's chats, last month's chats...
  If Boss is a new acquihire from the company you've absorbed, same story, they can roll back and read stuff from before joining the company, unless that's been changed by Slack.
8. Re:Anyone else by Peter+P+Peters · 2018-07-27 14:13 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who thinks 75% of cases where email is used would be better using something like usenet[1], do these things leave a trace?
  Because if they don't, they're useless.
  Monday. Marketing: Make it all purple! Tuesday: Your boss: Why did you make it purple? Marketing are throwing a fit.
  [1] Yeah, first rule...
  Yeah it's persistent, but the point of it is for high productivity, dynamic let's-make-stuff-work type teams, not cover your ass type culture where everyone's primary function seems to be to find someone else to blame. If your boss is a cunt then it's probably best to stick with email.
9. Re:Anyone else by Hognoxious · 2018-07-28 00:16 · Score: 1
  
  for high productivity, dynamic let's-make-stuff-work type teams
  
  1% of teams who think they're all that actually are.
  
  If your boss is a cunt
  
  I don't see the relevance of that.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
10. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-28 12:43 · Score: 0
  
  and Bitbucket (repo). Hipchat is their version of team chat.
  FTFY.
11. Re:Anyone else by Peter+P+Peters · 2018-07-29 16:23 · Score: 1
  
  for high productivity, dynamic let's-make-stuff-work type teams
  1% of teams who think they're all that actually are.
  And those 1% need better tools, hence why Slack was created
Huh... by deKernel · 2018-07-26 09:26 · Score: 1

After reading the post, I laughed out loud because I have been working as an engineer for 20+ years and never really heard of any of those companies or "products".
Guess I will get back to work just writing code that actually makes people money.
1. Re:Huh... by the_skywise · 2018-07-26 09:39 · Score: 2
  
  Atlassian is pretty big in the cloud development space for bitbucket (as a Github competitor) and their Jira web based tracking system.
2. Re: Huh... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 10:15 · Score: 0
  
  Youâ(TM)ve been a professional developer for 20 years and youâ(TM)ve never heard of JIRA or Confluence?
3. Re: Huh... by the_skywise · 2018-07-26 10:40 · Score: 1
  
  There's a great many developers that still do work on LANs without cloud based systems junior. I worked on embedded platforms until a few years ago and even though the dev team is spread out over several countries that team STILL uses Subversion and an in-house bug tracking system.
4. Re: Huh... by deKernel · 2018-07-26 12:56 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry there, a little tongue-in-cheek humor. Yeah, I have heard of all those kewl products, spent time evaluating those kewl products only to realize that they have poorly re-invented the wheel.
5. Re:Huh... by Peter+P+Peters · 2018-07-26 13:24 · Score: 0
  
  After reading the post, I laughed out loud because I have been working as an engineer for 20+ years and never really heard of any of those companies or "products".
  Probably says more about you than them.
  Guess I will get back to work just writing code that actually makes people money.
  Atlassian went from Startup to $10B by selling developer tools and Slack went to $5B just because of their Team Chat platform. I get that not everyone chooses to use these products, but having some smug anonymous internet user guy not knowing who they doesn't make their products any less useful.
6. Re: Huh... by Peter+P+Peters · 2018-07-26 13:30 · Score: 1
  
  There's a great many developers that still do work on LANs without cloud based systems junior. I worked on embedded platforms until a few years ago and even though the dev team is spread out over several countries that team STILL uses Subversion and an in-house bug tracking system.
  I have a guy at my work who still insist on deploying everything manually and screenshotting all the steps of the install as the most robust method for releases. He will also be the same guy who moans the loudest when finds out he no longer has a job.
7. Re:Huh... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 21:18 · Score: 0
  
  That reflects more on you than Atlassian... you may not like them or their products but to not know them? Get with the times.
why not use mattermost or any of the others by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 09:30 · Score: 2, Informative

why use a proprietary persistent chat thing like slack or hipchat?
why not use any of the open source equivalents.
Because it is "Hip"? or for some specific features.
Personally, I I have distaste for Atlasian. Especially how every trivial feature is brought by some expensive plugin from some questionably source. Compare to the breath of plugins available in Jenkins...
1. Re:why not use mattermost or any of the others by piojo · 2018-07-26 16:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The main reason to use one of those proprietary programs is if it gives all the features you need and other programs don't. Some of the ones that are important to me:
  - can send code without it being parsed to smileys
  - can attach files to a message (and can paste an image from the clipboard) and have an attachment preview visible in the chat client
  - being able to edit sent messages for a few minutes
  - notifications must be compatible not only with everyone's OS, but with everyone's personal attention/focus traits
  - system should receive and hold messages while a user is offline
  - tagging a user by name should get their attention somehow
  - program should be able to search through message history
  - markdown formatting is a plus
  For work, even a single missing feature is a problem.
  
  --
  A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
2. Re:why not use mattermost or any of the others by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 21:15 · Score: 0
  
  Because Mattermost is very basic for it's price point? Shame Rocket.Chat can't federate and is backed by shitty MongoDB, user experience and functionality is superior.
Whon is using what and who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 09:35 · Score: 0

Seriously, I have no idea who those names are, and why I should care.
Tiny Speck by Bing+Tsher+E · 2018-07-26 09:48 · Score: 1

And here I was hoping that Microsoft taking over the market for 'Slack' would mean that those guys would go back to working for Tiny Speck and they would bring Glitch back online.
Do it, Stoot!
1. Re:Tiny Speck by nadass · 2018-07-26 17:09 · Score: 1
  
  Ahh, Glitch, what a game!
  
  Microsoft's Teams is really a repackaged Yammer with better Skype and SharePoint/OneNote integrations. It's solid, and when the bundle can be obtained for FREE, the cost-benefit is a no-brainer compared to all of the limitations of the free Slack offerings.
Try installing their stuff by ZorinLynx · 2018-07-26 10:00 · Score: 2

All their services are based on Java+Tomcat and the installation process is clunky and annoying. Not to mention the Tomcat containers occasionally die and need to be restarted.
I find it mindblowing that large businesses depend on this stuff during day to day operations.
1. Re:Try installing their stuff by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 13:42 · Score: 0
  
  Not sure how unzipping a tar file, configuring a few options, and running a startup script is clunky or annoying.
2. Re:Try installing their stuff by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 21:14 · Score: 0
  
  Doesn't compete with containers or virtual-appliances.
3. Re:Try installing their stuff by Luthair · 2018-07-27 01:08 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect you may be doing something wrong, we have very large installs of Jira & Confluence without issue /shrug
4. Re:Try installing their stuff by datavirtue · 2018-07-27 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  Let the janitors keep it running...Jira and Confluence are worth every fucking penny. It is the only centralized system I have ever seen that flows and basically gets out of your way. If Atlassian is bad then the alternatives are fucking horrible.
  
  --
  I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
5. Re:Try installing their stuff by datavirtue · 2018-07-27 05:59 · Score: 1
  
  Sysadmins hate it because it is seen as just another tool foisted on them to support. They do not know or care about the value it brings to the business. Bunch of socially inept clueless monkeys.
  
  --
  I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
6. Re:Try installing their stuff by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-27 09:42 · Score: 0
  
  Atlassian docker images for the missing products others have stepped in and created unofficial images.
7. Re:Try installing their stuff by toddestan · 2018-07-28 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  I have to agree. I complain about their tools, but truth be told they actually are some of the best out there.
  With that said, some of their stuff like SourceTree really is awful. Luckily it's just a GUI wrapper for Mercurial/Git so there's plenty of alternatives.
Jitsi Status? by PineHall · 2018-07-26 10:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

Jitsi, an open source audio and video platform for conferencing, was bought and further developed by Atlassian. Some code from Jitsi is in Stride. Was is part of the purchase? Are the Atlassian developers still working for Atlassian? Are they working for Slack now? Or have they been let go?
Check out Jitsi Meet, the open sourced video conference product.
1. Re:Jitsi Status? by PineHall · 2018-07-27 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  From the Jitsi Community Forum: "All we can say at this point is that our team is not affected by the Slack deal."
Why? by ayesnymous · 2018-07-26 17:11 · Score: 1

I've never used Slack, but it CANNOT be anywhere near as bad as HipChat. 50% of messages people try to send will turn gray and show the progress indicator, meaning there's another 50% chance it will end up saying "Failed" with option to Retry or Cancel. Sometimes I end up seeing the same message 4 times in a row from a coworker, because it showed "Failed" on their end when it really didn't fail.
1. Re:Why? by Luthair · 2018-07-27 01:10 · Score: 1
  
  Are you using their cloud version? We have a couple hundred on HC and sending messages only really fails when the user's internet is having issues.
2. Re:Why? by MichaelSmith · 2018-07-27 10:21 · Score: 1
  
  A co-worker once DOSd our hipchat channel by posting a huge image file. We had to delete the channel and rebuild it from scratch. Atlassian need to face the fact that they are terrible at software.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
Slack... Atlassian... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 18:48 · Score: 0

Ugh. Bad memories of my recent $CORPORATE stint.
I strongly hope those bigcorps DDOS themselves into oblivion, with the help of those disgusting tools.
Good riddance.
At least it isn't the other way by MichaelSmith · 2018-07-27 10:18 · Score: 1

For a horrible moment I thought Atlassian was buying slack.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au