Github selects Lithium to run its community forums, Discourse dev is none too pleased

Few months back Github has launched community forums for their site, available here: https://github.community/

The surprising or perhaps shocking revelation was that instead of going with one of popular open source solutions, or perhaps developing one themselves, instead Github has decided to dish out the dosh for the Lithium community solution, that is hosted for them by Lithium and comes with pricing tag starting from $35000 /month if your site has less than 0.5m hits during billing period.

And then one of Discourse's creators have stepped in, annoyed that it wasn't Discourse that they've decided to use:
https://github.community/t5/Welcome...t-an-open-source/m-p/1068/highlight/true#M389

 

I think that's a reasonable level of frustration and an understandable reaction. If it had been Jeff on the other hand, it would have been way more inappropriate.

 

What is the argument for using a non-Open Source solution for this?

 

Though Discourse does offer hosted solutions and whatnot where they offer 24/7 support etc. And they also have log in with GitHub last I checked, not sure if Lithium has that.

 

doesn't have infinite scrolling - big win

 

Edit: just read the rant from the co-founder, that is pretty ridiculous if you ask me that a co-founder of a software literally cries over a company not choosing his software to run a part of its business.
Unprofessional if you ask me...
Well, can't wait for XF, IPS, VB, SMF, MyBB and all the other forum software developers to go to their community and have a rant for not picking their software, DDoS Github Forums with rants for not using different software!

 

At least, they have too much money if they spend this amount for that small forum.

 

35.000$

 

Good to know that it's only for a month instead of a week or day.

 

GitHub, being a company experienced in Rails must have found Discourse, which is also built around that same framework, inadequate for their needs. Maybe even bloated, who knows.
Lithium's products are mostly developed in Java, a more corporate-y language. Not that it matters, as it's a SaaS (GitHub doesn't self-host it).
I feel Lithium was the right choice, especially if they got it for free as a marketing ploy.

I would love to know how Lithium's database schema is structured and how their permission system compares to XenForo's.

 

I’ve always hated Lithium forums I’ve had to use. I’m looking at you Virgin Media...

It feels so dated and clunky to use.

I don’t see any reason why open source would be a factor, but that response talking about needing articles and polls and contests sounds like a load of rubbish to me. It does seem odd that they’ve picked a platform that doesn’t even seem to have native code block syntax highlighting in a community for devs.

But what do I know?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder if they’re getting paid to use it as an endorsement instead of being the ones paying, seeing as the platform will get so much exposure to developers if GitHub use it.

If they can get Lithium into the forefront of developers minds regularly, and get their product in the door and approved for budget at a few big enterprise clients in return, then that could be a smart move on Lithium’s part and still result in a decent ROI over time.

 

+1 for that, though with my use of discourse on cloudflare, letsencrypt and haproxy forums I find it ok but still annoying as you can no long do ctrl+f to find particular text on a page etc

 

Works fine for me?

First ctrl f brings up the built in search which allows you to search the entire thread, even content not loaded, a second time activates the browser based one to search what’s on the page.

 

Seems like a non issue to me. They clearly wanted an enterprise level forum solution that offered end to end support at a price they could afford. I assume they did their research and Lithium was the best fit. They're a business and made a business decision.

 

I don't have a ctrl key on mobile?