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Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

echelog.com

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Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#111

Post by snvzz »

1996 wrote: post #12
myu701 wrote: post #2

So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is? On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie? IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

freenode is the place where discussion happens. It is not closing. If it was, it would be equivalent to gmail closing. The logs - depend on your stance. For what I do, no logs is better. Fewer logs may drive more people back. But here are many other loggers. FYI, IRC is still very handy to have and deploy in 2020. It is light enough for a small VPS to handle, easy to scale by federating if needed, and the lack of fil…

>freenode is the place where discussion happens. It is not closing. If it was, it would be equivalent to gmail closing.

And it wouldn't kill IRC. Projects would just relocate to other irc networks, such as oftc. Some new networks might emerge.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#112

Post by wdutch »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #90
rasengan wrote: post #11

I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10]. IRC is no longer difficult to u…

IRC is still alive in the fact that people still use it, but its dying (less people use it over time) in a way that will never be overcome. IRC is lacking so many critical features that people consider the fundamentals of IM now. IRCv3 has been in development for forever and they still aren't done and even if they finished it it would never make it to all the irc servers and clients. At this point it makes sense to j…

I think IRC will always have a place in certain communities.

I drop into IRC whenever I need help with an Arduino project or want to catchup with old colleagues. From my own personal experience, all the open source communities I get involved with use IRC and I have never known one use Matrix, sometimes this is for personal reasons and sometimes for work. This probably depends on what techie circles you move in.

I've also noticed IRC is more popular in certain countries. Anecdotally Brazil and Sweden seem to have fairly large communities of nontechnical people on IRC.

Maybe for some people, IRC does what they want and they don't need any updated spec.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#113

Post by tastroder »

TylerE wrote: post #92
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is still alive in the fact that people still use it, but its dying (less people use it over time) in a way that will never be overcome. IRC is lacking so many critical features that people consider the fundamentals of IM now. IRCv3 has been in development for forever and they still aren't done and even if they finished it it would never make it to all the irc servers and clients. At this point it makes sense to j…

The mere fact that we always see several people jumping in to assert how IRC is alive and kicking is in fact a giveaway that it, if not actually dying, is at least starting to smell a bit funny. (And frankly I say - good riddance! It's a protocol that's at least a decade past it's sell-by date, modern options are so much better)

People often don't seem to use modern alternatives like matrix though. I often see people switching to whatever the popular walled garden of the year is instead. Personally I prefer an open ecosystem to animated GIFs, even if it might occasionally smell.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#114

Post by unixhero »

cutemonster wrote: post #56
unixhero wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, careful with doing private investigations. It might look good on Netflix, but can turn sour real fast.

What can happen?

For one, the evidence might not be admissible in court of the defense has an okay lawyer. This goes for if you're doing it all on your own, and with no approvals and alignments.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#115

Post by perlgeek »

kirstenbirgit wrote: post #59
perlgeek wrote: post #25

I also ran a public IRC logger (mostly in and around the perl/raku communities, but also other channels). Simplify figuring out if IRC logs fall under GDPR was nearly impossible to me, so I shut down some time ago. (It might have violated earlier privacy regulations as well, hard to tell). Lots of people offered their opinion on that topic, but when it goes to court, none of those opinions matter. Hiring my own lawye…

what do you imagine would have happened if you kept it running?

There's a 80% chance that nothing would have happened, a 15% chance that people would complain about the privacy implications but won't do anything about it, and a 5% chance that somebody takes action and I get some sort of legal citation/penalty/whatever.

All percentages estimations only, of course :-)

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#116

Post by josteink »

rasengan wrote: post #11

I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10]. IRC is no longer difficult to u…

> I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking!

Yes IRC has an impressive list of servers, clients and networks built up over the last 3-4 decades.

Outside the major hubs (freenode) and FOSS channels though, actual usage seems to be going down.

IRC is no longer the “default” for chat, like it used to be.

And I say that as someone heavily invested in IRC, operating an IRC-network for almost 2 decades.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#118

Post by kipari »

yborg wrote: post #107
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say chat history and asymmetrical scheduling for chat are expectations in this day and age, and the lack of them is one of the biggest reasons people find IRC irritating or difficult. (I ask a question, and if the person fit to answer it isn't logged in right now, it never gets even responded to.) Every fairly modern chat solution, Skype, Discord, Slack, etc. allows you to see messages while you were offline.…

ZNC and earlier implementations have been around for 15+ years to provide queuing proxies. Pretty much all of the "unique" features found in current chat systems were also implemented in one fashion or another in the IRC ecosystem decades ago. Ease of use has definitely improved, in exchange for for-profit company control over communications in these systems. IRC's decentralized nature still argues for its relevance…

IRC is not really decentralised, is it? Or are you arguing that it’s decentralised in the sense that each user can implement and control some features like logging?

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#120

Post by em-bee »

badsectoracula wrote: post #99
em-bee wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this list exemplifies the biggest issue i have with IRC. it's not federated. these are all islands, and i'd have to sign up on each one of them to join the community there. that said, none of the newer alternatives are any better unfortunately. it seems jabber really was the only federated system with any moderate success, and maybe matrix is getting there too with its ability to integrate different services.

FWIW you do not need to 'sign up' on IRC, just pick up an unused nickname and you're in. No registration or anything necessary.

i don't know if there are irc networks that require nick registratin, but there for sure are channels on freenode that you can't enter without a registered nick.

but that's not the issue. the issue is that i can't maintain a global identity, and that i have to add each network into any configuration instead of just sending a message to anyone on any network without creating an identity on that network (even if it's just picking a nickname).

some of this could be worked around in the client if the client has an uptodate list of irc networks so that sending a message to embee@freenode would automatically connect your client to freenode, make you pick a nickname and send the message.

hmm, that's an interresting thought experiment.

how could this be made seamless without inviting spam.

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