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Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

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Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#191

Post by hanniabu »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #33

As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn't a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren't able to get them to provide support around moderation of users. There is no mechanism…

Have you tried Discord? I seems like it would meet all these desires. We switched to it a year ago and it's been great.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#192

Post by LamaOfRuin »

Certhas wrote: post #49
ori_b wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that by left in the dust, you mean "remained lightweight and simple". The popular alternatives so far don't seem to have any clients I find pleasant to use, and are rather strongly discouraging anyone from writing third party clients.

No, by left in the dust they mean plummeting usage numbers. It seems your priorities are not well aligned with those of the majority of users...

You could say that about everything Mozilla has done in the last 10 years. They continue on because it's as much about changing people's priorities as enabling them.

If they then choose out of pragmatism to behave in ways contrary to their stated principles, people will justifiably call them out for hypocrisy.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#193

Post by lenkite »

Please Mozilla! Use an open alternative like Matrix/Riot or even better - BUILD one of your own if you think Matrix doesn't cut it. A foundational OSS company depending on a closed source product and closed protocol for such a fundamental need such as communication is simply wrong.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#194

Post by snazz »

bartread wrote: post #94
wahern wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix shows how thorough the switch to HTTP has become. Like with DoH, what makes Matrix most attractive is the ability to implement solutions using pre-existing web application stacks, like Node.js. It's a sort of path dependency where the easiest way to implement a simple solution starts with a very complex, mostly superfluous foundation. The fact that port 80 and 443 are less likely to be blocked is a distant, se…

> Frankly, I've never been on a network that blocked other outbound ports. That's just down to who you've worked for. I've worked for two companies, both well-known brands, both operating in the consumer space (nothing secret/shady), where most outbound ports were blocked. In one case it certainly was possible to get them unblocked for access to specific hosts or endpoints but you'd have to go through an approval pro…

At one time in a past life, I was running SSH on port 80, then using a SOCKS proxy to escape the madness of the network I was on.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#195

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

bastawhiz wrote: post #169

When I worked at Mozilla, "talking to a room full of bouncers" was a common joke on my team. In a fully distributed team (we were spread out across the northern hemisphere) this is a terrible way to work. You don't know who is online or whether you can contact them. There's no guarantee they'll get your message if you send them something urgent. Everything that's not "typing text in real time" is harder and worse (se…

> You don't know who is online or whether you can contact them.

I've actually had this problem with most, if not all, IM/chat systems I've had to use for serious work. They have better UX design for indicating availability, but I can't think of one where it's consistently worked the way I expect it to. Some explicitly allow people to fake/hardcode their status; others have some mixture of caching/update issues and strange criteria for deciding whether a user is "active" or "present" such that the indicator isn't very reliable in practice.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#196

Post by intertextuality »

zapzupnz wrote: post #110
astrobe_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC has gigatons of clients because it is an open protocol. Some clients are even shareware/commercial. Same goes for servers and server admin interfaces. IRC may have its shortcomings, but its worst defect, for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate, is that it is not "modern".

> for the too many people that want to have fun while pretending to communicate It's exactly this kind of flippant dismissal that is why IRC is dying, because there are too many people who equate modernity with frivolity. That is, unless our requirements strictly adhere to your arbitrarily-defined notions of that which has merit, our voices are left unheard. And IRC's greatest defenders wonder why everybody jumps shi…

> I find it pretentious that anybody could consider the following features "having fun while pretending to communicate"

straw-man argument. Nobody considers these things to be frivolous. I would consider slack's annoying gifs and discord's extensive emoji to be frivolous.

> the ability to modify one's own messages

Please, no. People editing their own messages later on is possibly the most annoying thing about slack and discord. Say something and move on, or append a message if you made a mistake.

> the ability for all participants in the community to see messages in the same format, including code blocks with syntax highlighting, images, video links, and web embeds

no thanks. what if I want to disable images, video links, and especially web embeds?

all -I- want from a client is a superset of markdown, like gfm, and code highlighting for most languages. and the ability to add syntax highlighting for other languages really easily.

all that IRC really needs is a few quality of life fixes like the history you mentioned. "collections of text channels" already exist... that's how IRC works. there's no reason for every single community to repeat similar sub channels.

> everything just working

I don't think I've ever had an issue with a web client not working.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#197

Post by LamaOfRuin »

axaxs wrote: post #38
tannhaeuser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too harsh IMO. FF is working absolutely great on my desktops, phone, and as dev browser. And Rust seems extremely popular with a vocal minority on HN at least. But yeah, I'm concerned as well - Mozilla should focus on producing a good browser rather than pouring energy into side projects such as Rust and especially WASM which do not contribute to that goal.

I want to believe that, and even tried to go all Firefox for the previous two weeks. I will say they have good Sync, which nobody outside of Chrome had achieved at all. The desktop browser is mostly OK, no real complaints. On mobile, however, Firefox is noticeably slower than any of the usual blink based browsers, and most importantly to me, uses way more battery life. I love PL things and am glad Rust exists, but fr…

I experience the exact opposite on mobile, because it's possible to enable tracking protection which makes 99% of websites I visit more usable, performant, and battery efficient.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#198

Post by intertextuality »

caltelt wrote: post #174
mirkules wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once all the chat systems without persistence have disappeared, some new hip company will come along touting “no persistence” as a feature, maybe even a privacy feature. But seriously, I don’t understand why persistence is such a huge deal to people. Chat is for transient chat - it is meant to be non-persistent just like verbal communication. There are so many mechanisms for persistent messaging (forums, text message…

I know I hate it when I join IRC channels and have no context as to what anybody has been talking about, as there is no history to quickly go over. Even just having the past days history would help in this regard, at least for more active channels. It's the same as just barging into a conversation a group of people are having. You don't want to just join and start talking about a completely different topic. So you jo…

That's where you just say "hi", regardless. Chat is transient.

When I go online in Discord I don't read up the last few messages unless there's a particularly interesting discussion going on.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#199

Post by solipsism »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #149
vertis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't fathom open source projects and communities using slack as a communication platform. I like slack, it's a great product for business, where you can pay $X for each user in your org. However, OS and non-profit communities quickly run into the history issue. There is no way that some of the communities I'm part of on Slack could pay for all the users. For example, the "Maker's Kitchen" slack has 1500-2000 peopl…

As I mentioned, in our community we have some deal with Slack so that we are paid (up to a point) and have full message history retention. Search can also go through all of those messages too. This is extremely valuable, and is a selling point for Slack if you can somehow get on to a paid plan without breaking the bank. But in my experience, many don't use the search anyhow. :P I'll admit, I don't know the full detai…

If people aren't using search, then message history retention isn't that important for you it seems. I would suggest that maybe your people are using email in situations where they'd like more permanence.

This is common, and Slack is treated more like a hallway conversation. Hallway conversations are enormously valuable, but if you want a record of something or if you want to make sure it reaches everyone, you use email instead.

Re: Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server

#200

Post by intertextuality »

josteink wrote: post #148
norswap wrote: post #140

I never see addressed the biggest reason (according to me) why IRC loses, so let's spell it out. IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) unless you setup an IRC shell. This is technically difficult (much more so than dicking with nickservs and so, which is already a pain point). Hosting it is also not free . Count 5$/month on CloudOcean or some such. https://www.irccloud.c…

> IRC isn't persistent (i.e. you can't read messages delivered while you were offline) It’s chat, not email. That’s a natural feature of the medium. In the age of Google, why on earth would you want to record everything?

At least for me, I participate in a lot of programming channels. I've saved a lot of stuff for later, that would otherwise be a pain to ask someone to answer it again. I log basically all of my irc chats because

1. storage is cheap 2. you never know when something could be useful later

Let's not pretend individual nerds in IRC chat recording history is anything remotely close to what google is doing.

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