The two closest things to Slack in the open source world are Mattermost and Rocket Chat. Both support all the popular features of Slack including inline code snippets (Rocket Chat even offers code highlighting), inline images, archived searchable conversations, easy sign up, web apps, desktop apps and mobile clients. Rocket Chat also includes support for Markdown, and Mattermost can import Slack user accounts and channel archives to smooth the transition.Where the two differ is in the user interface and in the backend setup (Rocket Chat uses MongoDB behind the scenes, while Mattermost uses PostgreSQL). Mattermost user interface is a bit closer to Slack, while Rocket Chat seems to have taken more inspiration from full-featured IRC clients.Both, however, are self-hosted, which means projects can get most of the advantages of Slack over IRC, but retain control of the open source tools. If the history of web services teaches anything, it's that relying on third-party services for key parts of your development infrastructure is almost guaranteed to fail in the long run.While Mattermost and Rocket Chat, along with services like IRCCloud, which piggybacks on IRC to offer a more Slack-like experience, can fulfil 90 per cent of the Slack experience, none of the them match Slack 100 per cent. Mattermost lacks an Android client (it's in the works), none of them have the amount of third-party integration that Slack offers, and none of them have the install base that Slack claims to enjoy - 1.1 million “daily average users in July last year so it said.

It's the last point that open-sourcers needs to consider. Ubiquitous install trumps everything else. With more and more developers using Slack on small teams at work (as it's intended to be used) it's natural to want to use the same tools for other projects.There is an opportunity here for open source, though. Setting up and using Slack may be simple but extending it is not. If more developers turn to open source alternatives there will be more developers to hack on these alternatives. More momentum means more features, more cool hacks and in the end a more useful product. This is why Apache trumps Microsoft IIS, WordPress thrives while Movable Type is a memory, and Linux is the most wildly deployed operating system on the server.On the other side of the argument, lack of developer interest in alternatives is part of why Dropbox has no real open-source competitor, Google Docs continues to be more popular than open-source options, and Foss offers almost no competition to Skype.Slack may be the best choice now, but investing in open source alternatives like Mattermost or Rocket Chat is the best choice for open source coders in the long term.

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VMware's popped out its second update to vSphere 6.0 and addressed a long-time vAdmin gripe by adding a new web interface that doesn't rely on old-school plugins.The new VMware Host Client is an all HTML-5 affair. The new code is derived from a “Fling” VMware posted a few weeks back (Flings are useful-but-unsupported code that VMware suggests vAdmins might want to play with) and has now made it into ESX.It's still no masterpiece of usability – as the illustration at top (or here for those reading our mobile site) attests – but is notable for two reasons. One is that VMware has remained loyal to the ancient Netscape derived NPAPI plugin standard. Moving to HTML 5 does away with that. The second is that vAdmins have often bemoaned the state of the web clients available to them. The new enhancements here will therefore be welcome.The headline feature of the vSphere update is support for 25 G and 50 G ethernet link speeds, handy for obvious reasons.There's also an upgrade to vSphere's VAIO – that's the vSphere APIs for IO Filtering, not a laptop - to better handle all-IPv6 environments.

There's half a dozen security fixes included, none toe-curling, and fixes for the usual range of small problems like “ Hostd randomly stops responding on hosts with 3D acceleration” and “ Unable to perform vMotion with VMs that has two 2TB virtual disks.”AMD's copped a little kick: its Opteron 12xx, 22xx and 82xx series CPUs are no longer supported because they're not on sale so VMware can't be bothered supporting them any more. Wouldn't happen to old Intel kit, we bet.Review I've always wondered what people who pay more than £2,000 for a Windows laptop are thinking when they boot the machine.It's a bit like paying a fortune to gain admission to a secret and exclusive members club, only to discover once you're in, that it's run by the bloke who does the pub quiz on a Tuesday night at your local... and all the bar regulars you thought you'd paid to avoid.

"Oh... hello, Windows. Fancy seeing you here. No, go on, tell me that unfunny story I've heard a hundred times before."Sumptuous and slightly absurd, Microsoft's Surface Book is the most expensive laptop you can get, short of ordering a 24-carat custom gold plated jobbie.Six months after its bombastic unveiling (during which Surface chief Panos Panay looked like he was going to hit someone), it's finally washed up on these shores. And very nice it is too. As you'd expect for £2,249 including VAT (pen included), which is what the top model will set you back. (Or $3,199 in the US.)Sony never had much trouble shifting £2,000 Vaios and Microsoft has cracked it. Redmond claims to have $4.2bn extra cash in the coffers thanks to the Surface line, which is now widely imitated. You could argue (I won't, but you might) that Apple's oversized iPad Pro is Cupertino's response to the Surface – or a hedge against its continuing success.
The Surface Book is a quite different proposition to the Surfaces that have come before it. It's bigger, with a 3200x2000 (267ppi) 13.5-inch display; this beast weighs 3.34lbs or 1.5kg.

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And its own lavish custom keyboard, which houses an Nvidia graphics unit, and an extra battery. An Nvidia GPU isn't an option for all Surface Book configurations, but it is in all the i7 configurations, and was in the model reviewed here.The inclusion of a GPU means you can't just yank it out – the software you're running might be using the Nvidia card, so there's a strange little dance where you wait for confirmation that it's OK to remove the Surface from its keyboard.It's the graphics card, a rarity in laptops for years now, that gives it gaming and professional media editing chops. The display itself is dazzling and the sound superb.
Note the orientation of Windows from the photo – that the Surface thinks you're the main user. An obvious use is 1:1 presentations
What gives the Surface Book its distinctive look – the wind blows through when it's closed – is the hinge. The trick here is using a shape memory alloy that can shape and contract. It doesn't fold back flat, which is where the other trick comes in: the machine is reversible. Lift it out, rotate it 180 degrees, and drop it back in. You've got a display tablet with the keyboard still attached. There's a dedicated Eject key for removing it, with an LED that is red if it thinks yanking away the Nvidia GPU will cause the software problems.

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