Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
No persistent presence, no true source-of-truth logging, bad authentiation - I mean, there's really nothing good about IRC unless you have a fetish for late '90s tech.
Isn't the authentication fine now? SSL?
Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
21–30 of 219 posts
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#22Why move away from IRC at all? If it ain't broken why "fix" it.
Lately I've been thinking about how amazingly successful IRC has been. I mean, it survived the "web" and smartphones as long as it did.
Up until slack appeared on the scene. I was a heavy IRCer from '96 to '13, and then switched almost immediately to slack.
Slack sucks in a lot of ways but it happens to hit the sweet point of convenience. It allows me to be a purely 'casual' chatter, I can close and open slack anytime. I don't have to keep irssi running in a screen in the background. I don't have to have a bouncer.
Anyways I think that if a new version of IRC came out with extra convenience for the pure 'casual' user, then we'd all go back to IRC.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#23Write the server you wish you had, in Rust. Everyone will help. It will be great. Open source all the way.
If I'm not mistaken, there's a fully functional Matrix server written in Rust already (for example): https://github.com/ruma/ruma Implementing a protocol in Rust is one thing, the choice in protocol is another. I for one hope they choose a standard that's backed by the OSS community (not slack), so we can all have fun with Rust implementations in peace.
It's not fully functional yet, would love to see more contributors hack on it though.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#24[deleted]
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#25Maybe Mozilla can put its weight behind Matrix and create a decent client that grandparents can use.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#26I have full faith that, if I had left a computer running, in the corner of my home, with an IRC client open, it would have been able to maintain a connection to Freenode (not continuously, but just work) for fifteen or more years.
Personally I don't think IRC will ever be replaced. Well, it will, but it'll happen when my generation dies and gets fully replaced with the New Shiny.
I _hope_ that some sort of real, proper standard, that doesn't endlessly reinvent itself, that isn't subject to some for-profit bollocks, that on a very basic level, has like, a standard, has _clients_ (not just one wanky proprietary web frontend) that just sits and gets the job done like TCP, comes out of all of this.
Meanwhile, I'm fairly sure IRC will still be there in another fifteen.
Hell, at this point, IRC has been a constant in my life for longer than everything other than family. It actually feels like a friend. A portal to another quirky world, just as it did all those years ago.
I think it's almost two decades now since I first logged in. My my. The years are short, indeed.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
No persistent presence, no true source-of-truth logging, bad authentiation - I mean, there's really nothing good about IRC unless you have a fetish for late '90s tech.
Isn't the authentication fine now? SSL?
It supports encryption but navigating what your client supports vs what the server supports is sufficiently finnicky that it can easily eat 5-10 minutes trying to set up, vs. plaintext which is easy. If someone non-technical had to get in, I'm not sure they could figure out enabling encryption on IRC in e.g. Pidgin which I've found to be a great client.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#28Write the server you wish you had, in Rust. Everyone will help. It will be great. Open source all the way.
If I'm not mistaken, there's a fully functional Matrix server written in Rust already (for example): https://github.com/ruma/ruma Implementing a protocol in Rust is one thing, the choice in protocol is another. I for one hope they choose a standard that's backed by the OSS community (not slack), so we can all have fun with Rust implementations in peace.
GNOME also has a Matrix client written in Rust: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/fractal
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#29Why move away from IRC at all? If it ain't broken why "fix" it.
My experiences as an infrequent IRC user over many years: - hmm, I have to download a client? maybe I can access a web interface? - okay, I have this connection string/url - how do I join a channel? - how do I set my nickname? is this persistent? - oh someone else is using my name? is this for the channel or the server?? - what's the etiquette of this particular channel? (I realize this is probably the case for any c…
Requiring a browser and requiring social media credentials are both misfeatures in my book. Browsers are excellent tools.. for spying on users. And for as benign as github in particular may seem, we shouldn't be replacing standard internet protocols with products that promote and further normalize the expectation that people have a social media account.
Re: Candidates for Mozilla's IRC Successor
#30Why move away from IRC at all? If it ain't broken why "fix" it.
My experiences as an infrequent IRC user over many years: - hmm, I have to download a client? maybe I can access a web interface? - okay, I have this connection string/url - how do I join a channel? - how do I set my nickname? is this persistent? - oh someone else is using my name? is this for the channel or the server?? - what's the etiquette of this particular channel? (I realize this is probably the case for any c…
Nothing prevents a nearly identical frontend to IRC.