Yes to all those tools. There are at least 3 excellent open source post-IRC chat systems: Mattermost, Zulip, and Rocket.Chat. We experimented with all three for our distributed collaboration team (spread between NZ, AU, US, CA, JP, UK) and all were very impressive. We eventually chose Rocket.Chat - no regrets whatsoever - it's stable, a pleasure to use, and even the least technical folk have found it very pleasant to use (in browser, desktop app, or on mobile devices, all with open source clients). Highly recommended. Also, we also use Etherpad-lite rather than the original (Java-based) Etherpad. Both are excellent.
I think software patents (patenting "inventions consisting of a computer program") simply need to be excluded from being considered inventions, in the same way that creative works like music, novels, videos, and other forms of artistic expression are excluded. That's what we've done In New Zealand. We managed to get software patents banned (a computer program is no longer considered to qualify as an invention) in the NZ jurisdiction. I believe we were the first country in the world to do this explicitly in 2012. Here's the story of how we did it: https://softwarepatents.org.nz
Yes to all those tools. There are at least 3 excellent open source post-IRC chat systems: Mattermost, Zulip, and Rocket.Chat. We experimented with all three for our distributed collaboration team (spread between NZ, AU, US, CA, JP, UK) and all were very impressive. We eventually chose Rocket.Chat - no regrets whatsoever - it's stable, a pleasure to use, and even the least technical folk have found it very pleasant to use (in browser, desktop app, or on mobile devices, all with open source clients). Highly recommended. Also, we also use Etherpad-lite rather than the original (Java-based) Etherpad. Both are excellent.