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Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

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Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#51

Post by rakoo »

dijit wrote: post #50
rakoo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The client -> relay protocol for weechat relay is not the same as the client -> ircccloud protocol for irccloud, and both of those are _not_ IRC All those clutches exist to support the deficiencies of IRC, which only proves the initial point: IRC in its current form doesn't do enough, and that's why Slack, with all of those features out-of-the-box, "won".

What I was eluding to was that irc (as a server to server protocol) is fine. As a client it has deficits but those are quite literally smoothed over by websocket capable bouncers and weechat relay. IRC The protocol is not competing with slack. The IRC ecosystem is. And yes, it lost.

You might actually be right, server-to-server IRC is good for finding an efficient path between all the servers in the network (ie it considers the network as a whole, not just a series of 1-to-1 connections) and send the minimum information required, so we should be able to keep that and make the client-to-server protocol different.

In short, make the relay/bouncer part of the server itself, and tell clients to connect with the relay protocol, not the IRC protocol. If there were some common standard for this second part that would actually be a great thing.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#52

Post by Spivak »

ryukafalz wrote: post #34
truckerbill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are chained to a hotmail or gmail and don’t really understand the underlying architecture in my experience.

They may not understand the underlying architecture, but they definitely do understand it from a user perspective - they can send an email regardless of provider. Telephones are the same way, too. You get a phone number from whatever company you want and can use it to call people no matter what provider they’re using. I’m not convinced that open/federated protocols are inherently more difficult for people in general…

It's not the idea that you can chat with people on other providers it's that you still have to choose a provider with no real guide on how you would make an informed decision among them.

You choose your phone provider by looking at the top 3 or so established providers and the choice is usually made on price or other signing incentives. With your ISP you just pick from a couple ISPs that serve your area. With email you just pick GMail or whatever your work gives you.

All of these decentralized chat systems just need to act centralized. Have Matrix.org just be the matrix server that people sign up on and let the fact that other providers exist just be something that comes naturally. Have Mastadon be the StatusNet server but casually interface with other servers.

What seems to kill these projects is that the group positioned to own the market actively shoots themselves in the foot in an attempt to not become too big.

Let the protocol be an implementation detail. Sell the provider as a service.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#53

Post by Spivak »

apple4ever wrote: post #49
mstudio wrote: post #9

This article is comparing apples to oranges. IRC is a protocol, Slack is a client/app that uses protocols (one of which used to be IRC). Many IRC clients, although beloved by some users, are rough around the edges. In my opinion, Slack has "won" over other clients because of UX: it's extremely easy to sign-up, understand, and use productively. Plus, even large orgs (ours included), can use the free version if they're…

Slack made the process easy, and with emojis and slash commands, fun and useful. I think another benefit to slack is you can come back to it and see the history. IRC is ephemeral unless you stick to a single device and leave it running. That's impossible for a mobile phone. It frustrates me that some large projects (ex Ansible) who insist on all discussions there, and explicitly ignore things like GitHub issues.

I am in no way saying that this isn't a barrier to entry (and if we're honest I think that barrier is an intentional choice) but you're supposed run a bouncer/logger and just connect your client to that.

It's always weird to me that IRC didn't evolve like email with something like IMAP.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#54

Post by Spivak »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #45

Slack wasn't competing with IRC. By the time Slack launched, IRC usage within companies was a very tiny slice of the market, mainly by very technical people. Slack was competing with Microsoft Lync, Google Talk, HipChat, Campfire, and the various other "IM for businesses" software products that were available in 2013. Yes, Slack borrowed some of the better features from IRC, which helped drive its popularity, but ver…

Yep, the only place I ever say IRC in actual corporate environments was for private chats for the sysadmins.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#55

Post by Spivak »

rakoo wrote: post #48
dijit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird distinction. There’s no difference from this over using weechat relay.

The client -> relay protocol for weechat relay is not the same as the client -> ircccloud protocol for irccloud, and both of those are _not_ IRC All those clutches exist to support the deficiencies of IRC, which only proves the initial point: IRC in its current form doesn't do enough, and that's why Slack, with all of those features out-of-the-box, "won".

If you replace IRC with SMTP the story is very different. IRC has a lot of protocol problems but the biggest one was honestly just not having an IMAP equivalent. IRCCloud is just providing the complementary protocol to IRC. Its existence doesn't necessarily mean that IRC is a bad transport protocol.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#56

Post by teuna »

bsdubernerd wrote: post #20
alexandernst wrote: post #2

Because whenever somebody asked for: * 24/7 presence, the reply was "you can do that with a bouncer" * backlog, the reply was "you can do that with a bouncer" * full text search, the reply was "that's up to the client implementation" * file sharing, the reply was "it's already possible with XDCC" and so on and so forth. Basically, it's not that Slack is great, it's because IRC as a whole just refused to adapt to what…

I like the ephemeral nature of IRC. It's supposed to be for real-time communication, the "chat" in irC, not for keeping bouncers. Bouncers defeat the point of IRC entirely. I also use slack btw, and discord, and matrix too, so I fully understand the importance of a backlog, and having server caching for files is much more convenient than using an additional sharing site. IRC is not perfect, but for what it does is pr…

I like how your comment, which I totally agree with, is right below this one when I read it.

> Frankly, it reminds me a lot of XHTML vs HTML5. I buy all the arguments XHTML had, I like the vision it had for the internet. It also wasn't what actual end-users valued, and something that offered that won out because it provided more value, even if it didn't pursue the same vision.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#57

Post by mattl »

ryukafalz wrote: post #28
stereolambda wrote: post #21

I think the key deciding factor isn't even technical, but: if you want to enter Slack (or Zoom, or similar), it is streamlined, easy and clear what you need to do. Compare it to IRC, where you have to find a client, make the choice, and make many other small decisions. It's also about immediate benefit: the way many people try to start with IRC involves searching for rooms and trying to somehow fit in and enter the c…

> Dealing with Riot/Matrix system/client confusion. Most people don't care about such distinctions, I should probably just focus on talking about Riot. The thing I haven’t figured out is... why would people find this hard to understand for chat, but not for email? Everyone uses email, and everyone knows they can send an email to whatever email address they want no matter who their provider is.

I think a lot of people know that, but also a most people use one of a few email providers in their country.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#58

Post by JoBrad »

quicklime wrote: post #47
axegon_ wrote: post #18

I still kind of struggle to understand why Slack is so popular within the corporate world. It is a good choice when you have some public initiative and let people swarm in, yes. But when it comes to private entities(I'm talking about large corporations), I really don't get it. I've been using MatterMost for years and while it had a rough start, at this point I'd take it over Slack any day of the week. Functionality i…

In a lot of corporate environments, "self-hosted" is not an advantage if you're the one trying to set up something new. In order to self-host, you have to go through your corporate IT department to provision servers. This alone can take 6 or 12 months, and you still have to find someone to maintain the service. And the kind of companies that value self-hosting will usually want this to be set up inside the company's…

It took _forever_ to get a self-hosted Jabber-based chat client going at a mid-sized corporation, about 10 years ago. Someone went “rogue” and set a server up anyway. Our security staff began blocking ports, so it eventually died anyway... in favor of Skype and Yammer. All because no one wanted to host chat history and a server.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#59

Post by 1337shadow »

apple4ever wrote: post #49
mstudio wrote: post #9

This article is comparing apples to oranges. IRC is a protocol, Slack is a client/app that uses protocols (one of which used to be IRC). Many IRC clients, although beloved by some users, are rough around the edges. In my opinion, Slack has "won" over other clients because of UX: it's extremely easy to sign-up, understand, and use productively. Plus, even large orgs (ours included), can use the free version if they're…

Slack made the process easy, and with emojis and slash commands, fun and useful. I think another benefit to slack is you can come back to it and see the history. IRC is ephemeral unless you stick to a single device and leave it running. That's impossible for a mobile phone. It frustrates me that some large projects (ex Ansible) who insist on all discussions there, and explicitly ignore things like GitHub issues.

> another benefit to slack is you can come back to it and see the history

As long as you pay the price.

Re: Why did Slack win out over IRC? (2018)

#60

Post by JoBrad »

ejflick wrote: post #27
joeyguerra wrote: post #7

it was giphy. that's why.

Also the ability to upload custom emojis.

This is actually a huge + for any extensible chat client. We send alerts from various monitoring solutions and use emoji to quickly identify the environment and app. Makes it very easy to understand exactly what is going on.
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