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If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Sitting here pretending everyone just doesn't know ab

If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Sitting here pretending everyone just doesn't know about a 20+ year old technology is comical. The "IRC Features" section bugs me, too. Unless you run a private IRC server IRC has a long, tortured history of design-based security difficulties. Gone are the days of netsplits permanently owning channels, but the so called "distributed" design of IRC makes it very brittle and easy to deny service. Oh, and did you know that with modest, low volume channels (>200 <1000, some networks tolerate more) you can make IRC networks struggle? Turns out that their lousy distributed design hurts more than helps when single channels get heavy. Slack also offers a logging service that, for what it's worth, is configured correctly and secured by default. For organizations with 1-3 technical staff, maintaining and securing a reasonable approximation of Slack's feature is probably time better spent working on your product. IRC is a classic example of the "it's broke but we don't fix it because it's familiar" mentality of old school services. While it may be a good choice for running low-volume (<500 users) public communication. Most tooling around it is woefully inadequate and often tedious to use for small software-oriented teams where Slack thrives. But if you're genuinely concerned about security, HipChat will sell you a whitelabel product you can host and monitor and its setup is quite good for what it is.

tormeh 11y ago
But I like the Emacs shortcuts! And "buffer" is a sensible way to describe an opened file. It has worked for decades and will continue to work for decades more! Get off my lawn, whippersnappers!
- jarek 11y ago
  I, for one, think that reinventing the wheel is a totally great idea and that we should have more npms and less apts
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    I, for one, think that the march of technological experimentation and progress should stop unless we can convince specifically jarek of the value of any given project, as jarek has demonstrated that they want to become the arbiters of all value judgments.
    - jarek 11y ago
      Yes. My first verdict: outlawing files and having VC land come up with a replacement product with better UX. Then HTTP.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The ICB people thought the same thing about IRC.
    - jarek 11y ago
      The HTTP people thought the same thing about AOL.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        No, they didn't.
    - pvg 11y ago
      This is more truthy than actually true.
astazangasta 11y ago
>Unless you run a private IRC server IRC has a long, tortured history of design-based security difficulties. So run a private IRC server? This is a weird caveat, like complaining that angelfire is an insufficient web platform and you have to run your own http server to do well. There are a billion IRC clients, libraries, and bots out there. There are IRC servers in most distros. There are JS servers in NPM. Why not use them?
- res0nat0r 11y ago
  Companies are using Slack because they explicitly don't want to have to deal with this and would rather someone else take care of their chat infrastructure, and with more features.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    Absolutely. My company uses it (among other things) for handling production issues. We'd rather not manage that ourselves. It's just one more thing we can screw up. This is different than the FOSS subject of the article, but it true that convenience is compelling.
    - vacri 11y ago
      If it's just infra management you want, then use Hipchat. It does the same things Slack does, at $2/user/mo instead of $8. Slack is ridiculously expensive.
      - jsmeaton 11y ago
        It's only expensive compared to HipChat which is a subsidised gateway service that leads to Jira. Our company used HipChat for about a year before moving to Slack. Honestly, the differences are not many and any reasonable team could choose either. I think we migrated to Slack for connectivity reasons, fonts and general user interface, and the bigger list of integrations. Are these worth $6 per user per month? If you've got the money then maybe. But it's by no means a given.
rando289 11y ago
> If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough? You go on as if your first sentence stands up on it's own. It makes no sense at all.
- randomsearch 11y ago
  > Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough? Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more. Everyone I know working in academia or on a startup that uses any kind of instant chat uses Slack. None of them previously used IRC for the same purpose. And it's just _obvious_ why, once you've used Slack for a while. They're quite different -- IRC is a protocol for real-time discussion on the internet. Slack is a business tool that incorporates real-time discussion.
  - rando289 11y ago
    > Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more. Wow, going off the deep end here. Unless you are a time traveler, there is no way to not use IRC because of slack, 'prior to slack existing.'
  - rando289 11y ago
    > it's just _obvious_ why Uh, nope. Most people use communication platforms due to network effects: because they were invited to use it, because their friends/coleagues use it. Slack is no different.
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      Considering Slack is a per-organization service with minimal cross talk between organizations, your premise seems flawed. I mean, Slack appeared on scene after many other technologies existed. People recommend it for their friends because it works well. There is no global network effect at play.
simias 11y ago
IRC is used by many projects small and big and I've used it in a few companies as well, it's not like it's an absurd concept. I don't know if Slack is better or worse (I've never used it, I thought the title was talking about Slackware linux which seemed odd) but you draw a much bleaker portrait of IRC than what I experience day to day using it extensively. Now if you want to talk about mailing lists I might side with you...
- KirinDave 11y ago
  > but you draw a much bleaker portrait of IRC I'm being brutally real. IRC is a brittle, aged, poorly designed protocol even by the standards of 1988 academia. You could design a more robust centralized service just by using off the shelf components today. Seriously. Use off the shelf Google Container Engine stuff along with some modest websocket work and even relative neophyte will end up with a more robust service with better scaling characteristics. Really, that's why stuff like Slack and Hipchat exist. Becuase it's not really all that hard to do a much better implementation than what IRC can feasibly do.
  - hueving 11y ago
    No, the point was that your description was entirely inaccurate. It's not brutally real because I also use IRC extensively every day on freenode and have almost never encountered the issues you are referring to. I think I've seen one netsplit in the last 2 years.
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      Okay, well I am sorry your experience and mine differ. Fortunately you can continue to use your solution without regard to my criticism. But I think if we asked your IRC network how ma you nets plots they experienced in the last 2 years the number would be >1.
      - vacri 11y ago
        Ah, yes, IRC has netsplits. Slack, on the other hand, has "reconnecting...", which I encounter a dozen times a day on it. I guess it's down to personal preference whether you prefer being able to talk with a partial group knowing that some people are absent, and not being able to communicate at all.
vjeux 11y ago
IRC usage stats are really bad. Steady decline from 1 million users in 2003 to 400k in 2012. In a time where we're talking about communication apps with hundreds of millions of users, not even having a million is pretty telling to me. http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-irc/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-ir...
- upofadown 11y ago
  A lot of IRC usage used to be purely social. So the fact that that are lots less users isn't really indicative of anything in the context of FOSS development.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Indeed, in the same time period I think Freenode actually grew.
  - sonthonax 11y ago
    Good point, usage for gaming has also died completely. Old networks like QuakeNet existed to allow gamers to co-ordinate match making. Now who needs that?.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Things decreasing doesn't necessary tell anything worthy. IRC is less used, but it's still used, and used a lot, and guess what, one can find a lot and lot of very rare and interesting people and data there. All of this without heavy hardware nor software requirements, or even psychological, it's still the same old IRC system, no change required.
- chipsy 11y ago
  IRC population has also become harder to track because more people now set up cottage networks that have one server and only host a few channels. There was an article a few years ago discussing this exodus from big networks which I'm having trouble bringing up now. The worst that can happen to IRC is something like Usenet's death - growing too popular to scale. But scaling isn't of primary importance because a network hosting 100,000 channels is only mildly more convenient than 100 networks hosting 1,000 channels each. Nobody wants a chat stream that looks like a popular Twitch channel, because there is no longer any signal when that happens, so big channels are outliers. (And Twitch chat is IRC-based itself - demonstrating how much this technology is a commodity.) IRC isn't going to stagnate completely until people decide to give up on text-based chat. The main thing it has trouble with is new client features like inline images.
Hello71 11y ago
> Oh, and did you know that with modest, low volume channels (>200 <1000, some networks tolerate more) you can make IRC networks struggle? Turns out that their lousy distributed design hurts more than helps when single channels get heavy. source? or at least names of networks/IRCds? freenode at least has 19 channels with more than 1000 users currently, and one with just barely more than 2000. ##linux 2072 :It's official! 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Mi = mebi = (2^20). B = bytes. b = bits. | Vendor Help = #$vendor | pastebin iptables-save | Why aren't you using IPv6 yet? | IP address classes died in 1993 | VPNs were not designed for anonymity https://goo.gl/iLyXUP #vim 1050 :Can't Talk? Get Registered on freenode (HOWTO: http://ur1.ca/90niw) | Vim 7.4.900 http://www.vim.org | Don't ask to ask! | Use :help and :helpgrep | WIKI: http://vim.wikia.com | PASTE: http://vpaste.net/?ft=vim | DONATE: http://www.vim.org/sponsor #puppet 1000 :Puppet Enterprise 2015.2: http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/whats-new | Puppet 4: http://bit.ly/1fCLbPX | Help: http://{ask,docs}.puppetlabs.com | Beaker users read this! http://bit.ly/1zE2DYU | Bugs/Improvements: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/ | Logged http://bit.ly/11ifvbU | Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/1wTNy65 | PuppetConf Videos http://bit.ly/1NWiHQb now, the volume of chat may be too much to read for some people, but that's not an issue with the protocol.
scythe 11y ago
Are these limitations in the protocol, or just in the network, especially freenode? If someone were to run a paid, $5-a-month to run a channel with over 20 users IRC network, would they be able to address the difficulties of freenode and EFNet before it? Would SILC fix anything?
- KirinDave 11y ago
  Why would this even be desirable?
  - scythe 11y ago
    All of the complaints about IRC relate to service interruptions, channels with a high # of people slowing the server, security, etc. You can fix those things by running a private network, but not for free.
  - vzy74401 11y ago
    Maybe because it's even cheaper than paying the monthly subscription of a single slack user?
mbillie1 11y ago
> If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Sitting here pretending everyone just doesn't know about a 20+ year old technology is comical. I'd just like to point out that this argument ("if <x> were so great, everyone would already use/do <x>") is just a slightly different form of the ancient appeal to popularity argument and is entirely fallacious.
- spdustin 11y ago
  Respectfully, I disagree. In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. I'm a smart guy, have managed (and continue to manage) many, many UNIX-based services, and have run several IRC daemons in my life. I still use Slack for internal use, and for our students. What makes Slack (and its ilk, though the title of the post makes a bias against Slack clear) so great is that it's simple, easy, full-featured and has a low barrier to entry to the non-HN crowd that is being asked, in many cases, to use it. I can promise you, out of experience and out of just plain statistics, that Slack and IRC have different audiences, and those audiences will not likely prefer the other. Also, I'd guess that IRC is actually the more popular choice. But the majority of the IRC using audience is too busy getting work done in IRC to comment on an HN post.
  - mempko 11y ago
    > In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and popular. There is nothing inherent about IRC that would have prevented it to be just as easy as slack if the same resources were put for that work.
    - enraged_camel 11y ago
      This is like saying Apple products are popular because Apple has a great marketing team, as opposed to because said products are genuinely easier to use (they "just work") than their alternatives.
antidaily 11y ago
If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication No one's arguing against using it for your company. Ok, the article is for some reason, but that doesn't invalidate the main point.
michel-slm 11y ago
Since we're talking about FLOSS here, why HipChat? Might as well go with Zulip which Dropbox just open-sourced. https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a-dropbox-hack-week-project/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a...

tormeh 11y ago

But I like the Emacs shortcuts! And "buffer" is a sensible way to describe an opened file. It has worked for decades and will continue to work for decades more! Get off my lawn, whippersnappers!

jarek 11y ago
I, for one, think that reinventing the wheel is a totally great idea and that we should have more npms and less apts
- KirinDave 11y ago
  I, for one, think that the march of technological experimentation and progress should stop unless we can convince specifically jarek of the value of any given project, as jarek has demonstrated that they want to become the arbiters of all value judgments.
  - jarek 11y ago
    Yes. My first verdict: outlawing files and having VC land come up with a replacement product with better UX. Then HTTP.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The ICB people thought the same thing about IRC.
  - jarek 11y ago
    The HTTP people thought the same thing about AOL.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      No, they didn't.
  - pvg 11y ago
    This is more truthy than actually true.

astazangasta 11y ago

>Unless you run a private IRC server IRC has a long, tortured history of design-based security difficulties. So run a private IRC server? This is a weird caveat, like complaining that angelfire is an insufficient web platform and you have to run your own http server to do well. There are a billion IRC clients, libraries, and bots out there. There are IRC servers in most distros. There are JS servers in NPM. Why not use them?

res0nat0r 11y ago
Companies are using Slack because they explicitly don't want to have to deal with this and would rather someone else take care of their chat infrastructure, and with more features.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Absolutely. My company uses it (among other things) for handling production issues. We'd rather not manage that ourselves. It's just one more thing we can screw up. This is different than the FOSS subject of the article, but it true that convenience is compelling.
  - vacri 11y ago
    If it's just infra management you want, then use Hipchat. It does the same things Slack does, at $2/user/mo instead of $8. Slack is ridiculously expensive.
    - jsmeaton 11y ago
      It's only expensive compared to HipChat which is a subsidised gateway service that leads to Jira. Our company used HipChat for about a year before moving to Slack. Honestly, the differences are not many and any reasonable team could choose either. I think we migrated to Slack for connectivity reasons, fonts and general user interface, and the bigger list of integrations. Are these worth $6 per user per month? If you've got the money then maybe. But it's by no means a given.

rando289 11y ago

> If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough? You go on as if your first sentence stands up on it's own. It makes no sense at all.

randomsearch 11y ago
> Given A and B, if A were good enough, people would use A... What if B is better? What if both are good enough? Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more. Everyone I know working in academia or on a startup that uses any kind of instant chat uses Slack. None of them previously used IRC for the same purpose. And it's just _obvious_ why, once you've used Slack for a while. They're quite different -- IRC is a protocol for real-time discussion on the internet. Slack is a business tool that incorporates real-time discussion.
- rando289 11y ago
  > Prior to Slack existing, lots of people who now use Slack weren't using IRC, because Slack offers a lot more. Wow, going off the deep end here. Unless you are a time traveler, there is no way to not use IRC because of slack, 'prior to slack existing.'
- rando289 11y ago
  > it's just _obvious_ why Uh, nope. Most people use communication platforms due to network effects: because they were invited to use it, because their friends/coleagues use it. Slack is no different.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    Considering Slack is a per-organization service with minimal cross talk between organizations, your premise seems flawed. I mean, Slack appeared on scene after many other technologies existed. People recommend it for their friends because it works well. There is no global network effect at play.

simias 11y ago

IRC is used by many projects small and big and I've used it in a few companies as well, it's not like it's an absurd concept. I don't know if Slack is better or worse (I've never used it, I thought the title was talking about Slackware linux which seemed odd) but you draw a much bleaker portrait of IRC than what I experience day to day using it extensively. Now if you want to talk about mailing lists I might side with you...

KirinDave 11y ago
> but you draw a much bleaker portrait of IRC I'm being brutally real. IRC is a brittle, aged, poorly designed protocol even by the standards of 1988 academia. You could design a more robust centralized service just by using off the shelf components today. Seriously. Use off the shelf Google Container Engine stuff along with some modest websocket work and even relative neophyte will end up with a more robust service with better scaling characteristics. Really, that's why stuff like Slack and Hipchat exist. Becuase it's not really all that hard to do a much better implementation than what IRC can feasibly do.
- hueving 11y ago
  No, the point was that your description was entirely inaccurate. It's not brutally real because I also use IRC extensively every day on freenode and have almost never encountered the issues you are referring to. I think I've seen one netsplit in the last 2 years.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    Okay, well I am sorry your experience and mine differ. Fortunately you can continue to use your solution without regard to my criticism. But I think if we asked your IRC network how ma you nets plots they experienced in the last 2 years the number would be >1.
    - vacri 11y ago
      Ah, yes, IRC has netsplits. Slack, on the other hand, has "reconnecting...", which I encounter a dozen times a day on it. I guess it's down to personal preference whether you prefer being able to talk with a partial group knowing that some people are absent, and not being able to communicate at all.

vjeux 11y ago

IRC usage stats are really bad. Steady decline from 1 million users in 2003 to 400k in 2012. In a time where we're talking about communication apps with hundreds of millions of users, not even having a million is pretty telling to me. http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-irc/ http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/24/irc-is-dead-long-live-ir...

upofadown 11y ago
A lot of IRC usage used to be purely social. So the fact that that are lots less users isn't really indicative of anything in the context of FOSS development.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Indeed, in the same time period I think Freenode actually grew.
- sonthonax 11y ago
  Good point, usage for gaming has also died completely. Old networks like QuakeNet existed to allow gamers to co-ordinate match making. Now who needs that?.
agumonkey 11y ago
Things decreasing doesn't necessary tell anything worthy. IRC is less used, but it's still used, and used a lot, and guess what, one can find a lot and lot of very rare and interesting people and data there. All of this without heavy hardware nor software requirements, or even psychological, it's still the same old IRC system, no change required.
chipsy 11y ago
IRC population has also become harder to track because more people now set up cottage networks that have one server and only host a few channels. There was an article a few years ago discussing this exodus from big networks which I'm having trouble bringing up now. The worst that can happen to IRC is something like Usenet's death - growing too popular to scale. But scaling isn't of primary importance because a network hosting 100,000 channels is only mildly more convenient than 100 networks hosting 1,000 channels each. Nobody wants a chat stream that looks like a popular Twitch channel, because there is no longer any signal when that happens, so big channels are outliers. (And Twitch chat is IRC-based itself - demonstrating how much this technology is a commodity.) IRC isn't going to stagnate completely until people decide to give up on text-based chat. The main thing it has trouble with is new client features like inline images.

Hello71 11y ago

> Oh, and did you know that with modest, low volume channels (>200 <1000, some networks tolerate more) you can make IRC networks struggle? Turns out that their lousy distributed design hurts more than helps when single channels get heavy. source? or at least names of networks/IRCds? freenode at least has 19 channels with more than 1000 users currently, and one with just barely more than 2000. ##linux 2072 :It's official! We're now Linux.Chat! | Channel website: http://linux.chat | Pastebin: http://paste.linux.chat | Spammers or trolls? use !ops <troll's nick> <reason>". | For op assistance, join ##linux-ops | Feel at home and enjoy your stay #ubuntu 1798 :Official Ubuntu Support Channel | IRC Guidelines: http://ubottu.com/y/gl | IRC info: http://ubottu.com/y/irc | Pastes to http://paste.ubuntu.com/ | Download: http://ubottu.com/y/dl | Currently supported: 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 15.04, 15.10 #python 1763 :Don't paste, use https://bpaste.net/+python | http://bit.ly/psf-coc | NO LOL | Tutorial: http://bit.ly/MCAhYx | New programmer? http://goo.gl/c170V | Specify 2.x or 3.x in your question | Find your local User Group: http://goo.gl/S1Zsq | #python-fr #python.de #python-es #python.tw #python.pl #python-br #python-nl #python-ir #python.it #python-ro #python-india #python-hu #python-dev #debian 1707 :Debian 8 Jessie released! /msg dpkg jessie ; /msg dpkg wheezy->jessie ; /msg dpkg install jessie | current point releases: /msg dpkg 8.2; /msg dpkg 7.9 | NO FLOOD: /msg dpkg paste | /msg bots NOT people | offtopic: #debian-offtopic | testing/unstable: #debian-next (irc.oftc.net) | chanlogs: /msg dpkg irclog #archlinux 1655 :Welcome to Arch Linux World Domination, Inc. <+> Be kind to the people who are helping you. Be kind to the people you are trying to help. <+> FOSDEM 2016 participation! https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-events/2015-October/000544.html <+> Yes we know about Twitch #freenode 1566 :Welcome to #freenode | tor-sasl is offline until further notice | Staff are voiced; some may also be on /stats p -- you can /msg us at any time | FAQ: https://freenode.net/faq.shtml | Channel guidelines: https://freenode.net/poundfreenode.shtml | Blog: https://blog.freenode.net | Be nice! #haskell 1505 :http://www.haskell.org/ | https://wiki.haskell.org/IRC_channel | Paste code/errors: http://lpaste.net/new/haskell | Logs: http://tunes.org/~nef/logs/haskell/?C=M;O=D http://ircbrowse.net/day/haskell/today?mode=recent | http://reddit.com/r/haskell | Administrative issues: #haskell-ops | Hackage status? http://status.haskell.org | http://downloads.haskell.org #Node.js 1252 :Can't talk? Get registered on freenode (http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup ) | Current Stable v5.0.0 (LTS: Argon v4.2.1) | Mission Statement: http://bit.ly/node-irc-mission-statement | Info: http://nodeirc.info | Logs: http://logs.nodejs.org/node.js/index | On codes of conduct: http://j.mp/1RFlyvr http://blog.izs.me/post/30036893703/policy-on-trolling #go-nuts 1242 :isgo1point5.outyet.org | golang.org | known issues: golang.org/issue | channel log: botbot.me/5/log | don't ask to ask; just ask | ʕ◔ϖ◔ʔ | gophercon2015 videos: https://goo.gl/vKWB3Q ##javascript 1207 :Can't talk? Get registered on freenode (HOWTO: http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup ). | ECMAScript, JavaScript. JS *not* Java. | Say "!help" (or ask and wait). | Say "!mdn abc" for docs on "abc". | Don't paste code in the channel. #git 1169 :We use git, but don't be a git. Help given and wanted, or just gorge on candy | Current stable version: 2.6.2 | Start here: http://jk.gs/git | Getting "cannot send to channel"? /msg gitinfo .voice | Beware the git-reaper this Hallow's Eve: he comes for your rebases ##security 1152 :Computer & Physical Security http://fnsecurity.org/ http://ow.ly/gsVTo | Type !op to summon staff - Be nice or GTFO. -- Toothe is seeking his stalker from a security presentation on Oct 27! #bitcoin 1126 :Current v0.11.1 | DO NOT POST ADDRESSES | uPnP vuln: https://bitcoin.org/upnp-vulnerability | https://bitcoin.org/ | bitcoin.com is SCAMMY | https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Faq | No pricetalk (#bitcoin-pricetalk), ads, trading (#bitcoin-otc), begging, altcoins | Web wallets will probably steal your money | URLs are often MALWARE #ansible 1123 :Ansible - http://docs.ansible.com *** 1.9.4-1 has been released - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-announce/r_uNM1lWlAE *** Ansible 2.0.0 beta 2 is ready for testing - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ansible-project/krpeTwi3mpo #gentoo 1103 : Gentoo Linux Support | Can't speak? /j #gentoo-ops | long pastes: dpaste.org | masked by license? http://x.vu/WgxYLs | | Unworking hibernate and suspend? emerge -1 upower-pm-utils | firmware not loading? http://goo.gl/MzVLBN | perl conflicts? http://goo.gl/n1FMk8 | Be nice! http://xrl.us/kftd #bash 1082 :FAQ: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ | Guide: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide | Ref: http://gnu.org/s/bash/manual | http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/ | http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes | Check your script: http://www.shellcheck.net/ | Mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-bash | Devel: http://xrl.us/bmodjy ##networking 1074 :Computer Networking | If you have a question, just ask it! | Please don't paste - http://paste.debian.net | M = mega = (10^6). m = milli = (10^-3). Mi = mebi = (2^20). B = bytes. b = bits. | Vendor Help = #$vendor | pastebin iptables-save | Why aren't you using IPv6 yet? | IP address classes died in 1993 | VPNs were not designed for anonymity https://goo.gl/iLyXUP #vim 1050 :Can't Talk? Get Registered on freenode (HOWTO: http://ur1.ca/90niw) | Vim 7.4.900 http://www.vim.org | Don't ask to ask! | Use :help and :helpgrep | WIKI: http://vim.wikia.com | PASTE: http://vpaste.net/?ft=vim | DONATE: http://www.vim.org/sponsor #puppet 1000 :Puppet Enterprise 2015.2: http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/whats-new | Puppet 4: http://bit.ly/1fCLbPX | Help: http://{ask,docs}.puppetlabs.com | Beaker users read this! http://bit.ly/1zE2DYU | Bugs/Improvements: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/ | Logged http://bit.ly/11ifvbU | Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/1wTNy65 | PuppetConf Videos http://bit.ly/1NWiHQb now, the volume of chat may be too much to read for some people, but that's not an issue with the protocol.

scythe 11y ago

Are these limitations in the protocol, or just in the network, especially freenode? If someone were to run a paid, $5-a-month to run a channel with over 20 users IRC network, would they be able to address the difficulties of freenode and EFNet before it? Would SILC fix anything?

KirinDave 11y ago
Why would this even be desirable?
- scythe 11y ago
  All of the complaints about IRC relate to service interruptions, channels with a high # of people slowing the server, security, etc. You can fix those things by running a private network, but not for free.
- vzy74401 11y ago
  Maybe because it's even cheaper than paying the monthly subscription of a single slack user?

mbillie1 11y ago

> If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication, people would use IRC. Sitting here pretending everyone just doesn't know about a 20+ year old technology is comical. I'd just like to point out that this argument ("if <x> were so great, everyone would already use/do <x>") is just a slightly different form of the ancient appeal to popularity argument and is entirely fallacious.

spdustin 11y ago
Respectfully, I disagree. In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. I'm a smart guy, have managed (and continue to manage) many, many UNIX-based services, and have run several IRC daemons in my life. I still use Slack for internal use, and for our students. What makes Slack (and its ilk, though the title of the post makes a bias against Slack clear) so great is that it's simple, easy, full-featured and has a low barrier to entry to the non-HN crowd that is being asked, in many cases, to use it. I can promise you, out of experience and out of just plain statistics, that Slack and IRC have different audiences, and those audiences will not likely prefer the other. Also, I'd guess that IRC is actually the more popular choice. But the majority of the IRC using audience is too busy getting work done in IRC to comment on an HN post.
- mempko 11y ago
  > In many cases, things are popular because they are better/easier for a given audience. Which is the horse and which is the cart? Slack is easy because it got resources to be easy. Those same resource could have invested time to make IRC just as easy. There is no inherent reason why IRC cannot be just as simple. The reason slack is popular is because it got pushed hard and lots of money went into making it easy and popular. There is nothing inherent about IRC that would have prevented it to be just as easy as slack if the same resources were put for that work.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    This is like saying Apple products are popular because Apple has a great marketing team, as opposed to because said products are genuinely easier to use (they "just work") than their alternatives.

antidaily 11y ago

If IRC were good enough to handle the needs of small software company communication No one's arguing against using it for your company. Ok, the article is for some reason, but that doesn't invalidate the main point.

michel-slm 11y ago

Since we're talking about FLOSS here, why HipChat? Might as well go with Zulip which Dropbox just open-sourced. https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a-dropbox-hack-week-project/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a...