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I don't believe so, but you should look into IRCv3. We need to fix this problem at the root. http://ircv3.net/
That page/project desparately needs a bullet point list of what it wants to fix with IRC.
> Problems with IRC that Slack solves Main thing that Slack solves as far as I'm concerned is a great and uniform client on every platform. Don't get me wrong, I love irc. This is where I started learning everything I know about computer. I tried many times to get various team on it and it always failed. I think it's mainly because the learning curve is too big for non-technical/busy people, and that there's no good…
I think this is a really important point. What Slack solves -- speaking in the general case, not specifically for FOSS projects -- is that it's an essentially out-of-the-box solution. Not just for non-technical users, although that's very important, but for all users. Both the linked article and the various suggestions in comments give all sorts of IRC-based alternatives to what Slack does, but they're all things tha…
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I really resonate with this position. IRC is open source and it has had problems FOR DECADES. IM programs from third parties add genuinely useful features which people clearly want. So rather than call for a general boycott of Slack (a negative approach) why not call to fix IRC?
IRC is just a well-established and battle-tested server/client protocol. I'm eager for the day when a competing open source server/client protocol emerges and takes over. I imagine all it would take is a really good reference implementation server and client that everyone can just start using, right?
Yes, there are many things that Slack does that _can_ be done with IRC, but they require significantly more coordination between various parts than Slack. I'd love to see an alternative to Slack not just a clone, as easy to use and administer, and built on an open protocol. Individual teams should be an easy entry point for a tool like that.
To me, the fact that a community of tech-savvy developers won't use IRC exclusively is a pretty good indication that IRC is not enough.
[1] https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-...
[2] https://github.com/reactiflux/volunteers/issues/25
[3] https://twitter.com/discordapp/status/648379244570013696
> Problems with IRC that Slack solves Main thing that Slack solves as far as I'm concerned is a great and uniform client on every platform. Don't get me wrong, I love irc. This is where I started learning everything I know about computer. I tried many times to get various team on it and it always failed. I think it's mainly because the learning curve is too big for non-technical/busy people, and that there's no good…
I sort of get why people like Slack. It's very low effort. But that's the only advantage I see.
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IRC is just a well-established and battle-tested server/client protocol. I'm eager for the day when a competing open source server/client protocol emerges and takes over. I imagine all it would take is a really good reference implementation server and client that everyone can just start using, right?
I certainly think having an open source reference implementation for a 21st century (and by that I mean having features like Slack or Yammer or other popular closed source packages) implementation of a successor to IRC would be the minimum starting point.
They need help, go check them out.
It is reasonable to raise the point that building FOSS software while using a closed piece of software as a core tool bears consideration. However, I am 25 and largely missed the boat on irc. I decided to start using it ~1 year ago. It is hard to use, but we will look at that in a minute. Often, we assume people have as clear an idea of what we are talking about as we do. That is often not the case. Let's explore IRC…
Ehh, as someone your age (a couple years younger even), I have a completely different take on IRC. It's incredibly intuitive because it's so similar to all the other chat clients we grew up with (presumably because they're based on IRC). Sure, figuring out bouncers and build bots is a little tricky at first, but so what? That's the fun part. It's kinda fun digging into the IRC protocol and figuring out how it works.…
And just because someone doesn't want to spend the time fiddling with IRC bouncers, IRC bots, getting clients to display things nicely doesn't mean that they are a bad developer. Just that they have different priorities for their time than you.
I'm not saying that Slack is perfect or frictionless, but neither is IRC. And especially if you don't do it all the time, getting people set up to work with Slack is way easier than IRC.
I really find these discussions half amusing and half depressing. 2 sides have something that is "good enough", both insist that nearly all you want can be solved with their solution, especially if you just do X1,X2,X3,Y1,Y5, and Z4 and you technically could build something that is perfect for both on top: but sadly (and understandably) no-one actually cares enough to do so. Because what they have is "good enough"(TM).
IRC kind of sucks. The experience is worse. That's why people keep making these different tools - Campfire, HipChat, Slack. It's not just a technical thing. It's an experience thing. IRC is technically fine, just way too nerdy to be main line of business software these days.
Someone should come up with an IRC client for the non technologically advanced instead of reinventing the wheel.
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Does IRC Cloud allow new employees to get the entire history of the channel? I can't see how it would from looking at its page.
Why do people talk like this is some impossible feat for IRC? 1. Have a bot that's in the channel from the start 2. cd into the bot's log directory and type python -m SimpleHTTPServer 3. put the url into the channel topic How do some developers fail to rise up to this level of problem solving? I am amazed.
Or what happens when the bot goes down? So now I really need to build some alerting into it so that someone can restart the thing when it dies, or the server is upgraded, or it's moved.. because I'm losing valuable history along the way.
Or I can just use Slack.
The snark about developer skill is an interesting one, as you failed to actually solve the problem in your hypothetical.