IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival

Post by arbuge » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 11:41 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #129

nopacience wrote: post #76

Long live IRC There will always be new platforms like slack, discord, gitter, and whatever. IRC was and still is great. IRC is simple, its text, its stable. Its simple to program on and a lot can be done above it. IRC is open. The basis of old internet protocols are simple, open and powerful Email, IRC, HTML, FTP And as the article points out, irc has no face. IRC was a time people had to ask for a picture. Different…

I resent that you resent "average people". I'm an average person (with 17 years of professional programming career behind me). I wouldn't give two craps about IRC in 2018. Yes, I really enjoy having a smooth cross-platform experience with inline media, public and private chat rooms, search, file transfers etc. without having to set anything up and without having to deal with half-baked poorly implemented clients who…

Post by neoromantique » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 11:44 AM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #307

csomar wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people want IRC for the lack of functionality. I think they miss IRC because they see in Slack a real threat to decentralization, privacy and openness. I don't use IRC. But I'd never use Slack either in a project I maintain/lead. We need a better alternative.

Also, slack is like a dumbed down version of IRC. As an example, on IRC you could run an auction or a 10000 person university lecture because there is a +m channel mode (moderation). +m quiets all users in the channel and only allows you to speak if you receive the channel-user mode +v (voice) or have +o (operator status). Some ircds also have a +h etc. You can setup bots like “RaiseYourHand” for people who want to a…

Post by fulafel » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 11:46 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #174

nopacience wrote: post #76

Long live IRC There will always be new platforms like slack, discord, gitter, and whatever. IRC was and still is great. IRC is simple, its text, its stable. Its simple to program on and a lot can be done above it. IRC is open. The basis of old internet protocols are simple, open and powerful Email, IRC, HTML, FTP And as the article points out, irc has no face. IRC was a time people had to ask for a picture. Different…

I used command line IRC clients in the 1990s. I wrote IRC clients in the 1990s. I'm not interested in going back to IRC, an "open" 7-bit effectively-centralized protocol with line-length limits and lowest-common-denominator clients that can't even show an image. I don't use Mutt to get access to my email, anymore, either. I guess that makes me "average". IRC, FTP, and, yes, SMTP are all bad protocols from the 1980s e…

Post by Avamander » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 11:48 AM UTC

progval wrote: post #183

xf86alsa wrote: post #84

https://matrix.org is essentially a modern IRC, but federated and completely FOSS. I suggest people drawn to an IRC-like experience without the proprietary nature of Slack and Discord [give it a shot]( https://riot.im ).

Riot is the only stable client officially recommended on Matrix's website, and it's in-browser. So it's not really a viable alternative for a lot of IRC users.

Post by crtasm » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 11:57 AM UTC

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #196

progval wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> server-side storage of history You can do that with a bouncer. Slack and Discord are essentially a chat server with an integrated bouncer. > mobile-friendly data usage How is IRC not mobile-friendly? It only transports the raw text, not even "X is writing a message" notifications. > first class support for emoji Most clients support UTF-8, isn't it only a matter of fonts?

Though setting up an IRC bouncer is not exactly a trivial task. (It's one of the things on my summer to-do list.)