The OpenStack community is already all in on IRC, so a slack discussion isn't too relevant there. And since Kata Containers is part of the OpenStack Foundation, but under its own governance, the OpenStack TC does not have any say on technical
decisions made by the kata community. We can certainly provide opinions (we have no shortage of those ;) ) but this would not be the TC's place.
I do not think K8s needs to lift and shift from Slack in order for Kata to do so. Since there is a lot of overlap for contributors, this likely means this would be adding a second (or likely third) communication channel for them to install, login, and
monitor. But if we gated Kata choosing a different, more open, platform on getting adjacent communities to also make that switch, then I think we are already dead in the water.
I think this needs to be a community decision based on the needs of this specific community.
So I think the Kata community needs to decide if "open"-ness is important, and if so, what alternative is the easiest and most attractive to the overall group.
Personally, I would love to see IRC as the near-realtime communication channel of choice, but I think there have been other equally functional alternatives. But with already good support from the OpenStack infra team [1], and many client choices [2][3][4][5],
the only thing I think would be missed would be all the shiny emojis and gifs. :)
Opinions aside, I do think moving away from Slack is a very good thing to discuss.