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IRC Will Never Die (2021)

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Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#91

Post by cassianoleal »

theshrike79 wrote: post #60
cassianoleal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be whole websites dedicated to archiving IRC channels. Last time I tried to find one, I couldn't. It's a shame, really. It used to work as a forum you could go back to and find answers.

Yea all major channels used to run logger bots for themselves at least. Then there were a few "unofficial" ones that just came in and lurked without telling anyone they were logging everything and publishing it on the internet. A bit of a breach of trust IMO.

These had always been public channels. Saying it's a breach of trust that an unofficial archive exists feels a bit heavy-handed. It's like complaining about the web archive.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#92

Post by cowboylowrez »

op00to wrote: post #8
bsima wrote: post #7

IRC is still my favorite chat system even if my close friends have moved on to fancier systems like discord and Zulip and slack. If I could set technical direction in a company we’d use only IRC and email. Maybe mumble.

IRC is terrible for work collaboration. I say this as a long time IRC user. Conversations are not searchable, and if you're offline you are unable to follow along with what's going on with your colleagues. To make it anywhere near usable, you need to run IRC bouncers, chat loggers, search indexers .. at that point, just use something made for collaboration.

IRC is brilliant for text minded development tho. Hanging out in an irc channel, you're likely to see most people just idle their clients with screen or whatever. I've seen project channels simply publish logs of the chat, and every client I used could log text. Private channel creation is trivial as is messaging.

I have only been able to load a discord "page" or whatever maybe once or twice so I don't know if discord style chat is better or not. IRC I can run on a potato lol

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#93

Post by cowboylowrez »

userbinator wrote: post #15
bsima wrote: post #7

IRC is still my favorite chat system even if my close friends have moved on to fancier systems like discord and Zulip and slack. If I could set technical direction in a company we’d use only IRC and email. Maybe mumble.

Worked at a few places that did just that. One used SIP phones for actual voice chat. Liked it very much. To respond to the sibling comment: we had text files on a share that we could actually grep. Far better than the inexact, incomplete search functionality that seems to have become normal these days.

being able to just brute force text searches including using custom scripts is awesome. especially with the trend of search engines going south.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#94

Post by cowboylowrez »

outime wrote: post #53

I began using IRC before the age of 10, creating fond memories along the way. But let's face the harsh reality: IRC has largely become obsolete for most purposes. The alternatives available now are not only more user-friendly but also offer superior functionality for the general population, so I highly doubt IRC will become popular once again anytime. While it is sad, why would anyone choose to use outdated 90s techn…

I think things like discord leave users like me behind. I have 3rd world level internet and computing resources to the extent that I can't use things like discord because I can't afford memory and bandwidth. It does cause me discomfort to see posts like yours, I mean yeah good internet should be available to all but all I have is very limitted phone access. IRC can run on potatos so its like it makes me feel still connected a bit.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#95

Post by tombert »

gorjusborg wrote: post #88
tombert wrote: post #23

Meh. I got into IRC multiple times, but I really have no desire to go back to it. The fact that I have to set up a ZNC bouncer if I want messages to show up on multiple devices kind of feels like, well, something from the 90's. I feel like Matrix is considerably less annoying, while being federated and relatively easy to set up. I'm happy enough with IRC dying.

I thought Matrix was hot garbage last time I tried it. Modern software tries to do too much and as a result often fails to perform its main function. IRC is pretty much the simplest solution that works. It wont be going anywhere.

Sorry, what does Matrix fail at? IRC is a huge pain in the ass if you want to use more than one device. This was fine in the 90's when people only had one computer, but now pretty much everyone has at least two, and usually more. ZNC is a pain in the ass.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#96

Post by progval »

LinuxBender wrote: post #87
Meekro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ngIRCd looks good! To be honest, these days I'm surprised that ChanServ/NickServ type stuff isn't integrated directly into the IRCd. I guess it gets complicated if you have multiple servers and they have to decide who controls services, but would simplify single-server arrangements.

Part of IRCv3's roadmap [1] is to implement integrated services. Ergo apparently has done it never tested it and Unreal has apparently developed an addon which I was unaware of. I too would like to see more services integrated into the IRC daemon. [1] - https://ircv3.net/software/servers.html

We're also (slowly) working on a networked IRCd with mesh networking (instead of spanning trees, to avoid netsplits) and integrated services: https://github.com/Libera-Chat/sable

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#97

Post by progval »

op00to wrote: post #8
bsima wrote: post #7

IRC is still my favorite chat system even if my close friends have moved on to fancier systems like discord and Zulip and slack. If I could set technical direction in a company we’d use only IRC and email. Maybe mumble.

IRC is terrible for work collaboration. I say this as a long time IRC user. Conversations are not searchable, and if you're offline you are unable to follow along with what's going on with your colleagues. To make it anywhere near usable, you need to run IRC bouncers, chat loggers, search indexers .. at that point, just use something made for collaboration.

I find IRC to be easier to search than the alternatives. I can use standard grep and regexps on my logs, sometimes logs from multiple channels at once. While many other services only support substring or word search, with their custom dialect for time boundaries or author matching; and are slower due to scale.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#98

Post by theshrike79 »

cassianoleal wrote: post #91
theshrike79 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea all major channels used to run logger bots for themselves at least. Then there were a few "unofficial" ones that just came in and lurked without telling anyone they were logging everything and publishing it on the internet. A bit of a breach of trust IMO.

These had always been public channels. Saying it's a breach of trust that an unofficial archive exists feels a bit heavy-handed. It's like complaining about the web archive.

I'm not talking about a massive channel like #c++ or something, more like a ~40-50 person channel, where someone just joins and appears to lurk.

Unknown to everyone they're logging content, grabbing URLs and posting it all online.

It's like archive.org logging in to a private forum with an account and scraping the content for public sharing.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#99

Post by Meekro »

progval wrote: post #96
LinuxBender wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of IRCv3's roadmap [1] is to implement integrated services. Ergo apparently has done it never tested it and Unreal has apparently developed an addon which I was unaware of. I too would like to see more services integrated into the IRC daemon. [1] - https://ircv3.net/software/servers.html

We're also (slowly) working on a networked IRCd with mesh networking (instead of spanning trees, to avoid netsplits) and integrated services: https://github.com/Libera-Chat/sable

Pretty interesting! I find these attempts to remake IRC fairly intriguing. I've read your description, and it's really cool how you've re-invented server-to-server routing. Unfortunately, it wasn't clear how services operate, though. Just a couple thoughts:

1. Is there still a benefit to having more than one server? My understanding is that IRC networks had multiple servers partially because because having >50k open network sockets was difficult on 1995-era UNIX-like operating systems. That's not really a problem anymore. I guess multiple servers is a way to achieve load-balancing and fault-tolerance for servers going down, though. But then again, the services database still has to exist somewhere, right? That's probably still a single point of failure?

2. From a user perspective, an IRC replacement ought to compete with Discord. That means support for posting images and videos, audio/video chat, offline history, easy switching between desktop and phone, deep and granular admin controls, etc. I'd love for there to be an open source & open protocol option here, but I'm terrified to even imagine an RFC that implements all of this in a way that works in practice.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#100

Post by wkat4242 »

Meekro wrote: post #99
progval wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're also (slowly) working on a networked IRCd with mesh networking (instead of spanning trees, to avoid netsplits) and integrated services: https://github.com/Libera-Chat/sable

Pretty interesting! I find these attempts to remake IRC fairly intriguing. I've read your description, and it's really cool how you've re-invented server-to-server routing. Unfortunately, it wasn't clear how services operate, though. Just a couple thoughts: 1. Is there still a benefit to having more than one server? My understanding is that IRC networks had multiple servers partially because because having >50k open…

> 2. From a user perspective, an IRC replacement ought to compete with Discord. That means support for posting images and videos, audio/video chat, offline history, easy switching between desktop and phone, deep and granular admin controls, etc. I'd love for there to be an open source & open protocol option here, but I'm terrified to even imagine an RFC that implements all of this in a way that works in practice.

Ugh no.The reason I love IRC is precisely because it's not Discord. IRC with Quassel (and QuasselDroid on mobile) adds most of the mod cons already without being overly bloated.

Besides, if you want something like that you already have Matrix which is just what you're looking for and fully open and federated.

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