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This comes up every time, and as usual you have totally missed the point. IRC is difficult to configure, difficult to host, difficult to use, and does not offe

This comes up every time, and as usual you have totally missed the point. IRC is difficult to configure, difficult to host, difficult to use, and does not offer the same feature set as Slack. There is an obvious use case for something like Slack (obviously, because otherwise it would not have millions of users!) and covering one's ears while yelling "IRC! IRC! IRC!" is sort of wilfully ignoring that if it were a suitable solution, Slack would never have taken off.

levemi 11y ago
Doesn't matter, article should mention IRC given the breadth of the introduction, especially when talking about chat from an open source perspective.
tribaal 11y ago
Maybe slack gets enough momentum to overtake IRC. Right now it looks a lot like Google Wave to me.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  You are seriously out of touch if you really believe that.
  - whitegrape 11y ago
    Yeah, comparing it to Google Wave probably is a bit too much. In my neck of the tech woods HipChat is still pretty hip. I suspect that by the time we discover Slack, something else will have taken Slack's place as the new wave. Meanwhile I'll just keep visiting the same IRC channels outside of work that I have been frequenting for a decade. Will Slack be around in 10 years? Maybe. Will it be the poster-boy of internal chat? Unlikely.
- monkey88 11y ago
  Completely a Google Wave derivative.
DeepYogurt 11y ago
It really isn't hard to use. Firefox has a great extension called Chatzilla that makes it wonderfully easy to use. Maybe it's hard to host, but you can just claim a channel on freenode if you need to.
- lotyrin 11y ago
  It's easier to host (at least on the scale that most teams would, few nodes, few tens of users, no need for services -- basically `apt-get install ircd-of-choice`) than to use, but I disagree that it's easy to use. I can tell anyone in any kind of role (senior to junior, technical to non-technical) on my team to "Download (the/a) client for X and join #channel #channel2" "Follow the directions to set it up so changes on this Trello board are posted to #channel" and reasonably expect they will succeed if X is Slack, but not if X is IRC.
  - groovy2shoes 11y ago
    Are you fucking kidding me? I've been using IRC since I was 10. If a 10-year-old can figure it out, I think a professional engineer can figure it out. Using your typical IRC client to join a channel is just 4 steps: 1. Download IRC client. 2. Pick a nickname. 3. Pick a server. 4. Join a channel. With something like kiwiirc, you can even omit steps 1, 3, and 4: you can give someone a URL to a particular channel on a particular server. Just pick a nickname and click "join". It's really simple.
    - minitech 11y ago
      > Follow the directions to set it up so changes on this Trello board are posted to #channel
      - ubernostrum 11y ago
        Yeah, nobody's ever written things that can respond to events by posting messages in an IRC channel. Shame, really.
bluedino 11y ago
A distributable VM or docker container, or even ball of scripts fixes the configure/host package. And there are plenty of easy to use IRC clients, perhaps make and even dumber/simpler one. Easy problem to solve.
chc4 11y ago
I honestly don't get this. I've been using IRC for a few years, but I don't think nearly enough for blind eye nostalgia to take hold. It's not like you're stuck with ugly terminal only clients anymore. There is KiwiIRC, IRCCloud, and several other great web clients that not only let you connect to any server but provide bouncer services and backlog. There are also plenty of easy to use native clients that don't require any configuration. There are some benefits of Slack, but the ones you mention aren't them. In fact, seeing how you CANT host your own Slack server I would say "difficult to host" is a flat lie against IRC.
- op00to 11y ago
  I don't want "backlog" (read: see what happened when I was gone). I want full-text searching of the entire channel history. I already log my IRC conversations, and it's a pain in the goddamned ass to ssh to my bouncer, grep through the logs, and try to find what I was looking for. I want to type in the same client that I'm chatting in, and be able to reference this message to other people. IRC doesn't do that.
  - anonymoushn 11y ago
    grep works way better than Slack's search, which makes you wait several seconds per tiny page of search results. I look forward to the day when Slack catches up to grep.
chris_wot 11y ago
What features is it missing? IRCCloud seem to be doing pretty well in making it super easy to use.
bazingatossr77 11y ago
https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ (No I don't work for them. Self-hosted their AMI at last job, found them to be friendly, easy to deal with folks)
smadge 11y ago
I think the point is that we should enhance IRC or XMPP, or create a new federated and open protocol that supports the features and easy setup Slack offers. Users suffer when we create proprietary protocols and walled gardens. Can you imagine if someone using Google Mail couldn't send an email to to someone using a university, government, or Yahoo email address? It would be unacceptable. However, this is the situation we are in with real time messaging protocols. It's infuriating to me that developers are content creating these systems. It's unethical, in my opinion.

levemi 11y ago

Doesn't matter, article should mention IRC given the breadth of the introduction, especially when talking about chat from an open source perspective.

tribaal 11y ago

Maybe slack gets enough momentum to overtake IRC. Right now it looks a lot like Google Wave to me.

Klathmon 11y ago
You are seriously out of touch if you really believe that.
- whitegrape 11y ago
  Yeah, comparing it to Google Wave probably is a bit too much. In my neck of the tech woods HipChat is still pretty hip. I suspect that by the time we discover Slack, something else will have taken Slack's place as the new wave. Meanwhile I'll just keep visiting the same IRC channels outside of work that I have been frequenting for a decade. Will Slack be around in 10 years? Maybe. Will it be the poster-boy of internal chat? Unlikely.
monkey88 11y ago
Completely a Google Wave derivative.

DeepYogurt 11y ago

It really isn't hard to use. Firefox has a great extension called Chatzilla that makes it wonderfully easy to use. Maybe it's hard to host, but you can just claim a channel on freenode if you need to.

lotyrin 11y ago
It's easier to host (at least on the scale that most teams would, few nodes, few tens of users, no need for services -- basically `apt-get install ircd-of-choice`) than to use, but I disagree that it's easy to use. I can tell anyone in any kind of role (senior to junior, technical to non-technical) on my team to "Download (the/a) client for X and join #channel #channel2" "Follow the directions to set it up so changes on this Trello board are posted to #channel" and reasonably expect they will succeed if X is Slack, but not if X is IRC.
- groovy2shoes 11y ago
  Are you fucking kidding me? I've been using IRC since I was 10. If a 10-year-old can figure it out, I think a professional engineer can figure it out. Using your typical IRC client to join a channel is just 4 steps: 1. Download IRC client. 2. Pick a nickname. 3. Pick a server. 4. Join a channel. With something like kiwiirc, you can even omit steps 1, 3, and 4: you can give someone a URL to a particular channel on a particular server. Just pick a nickname and click "join". It's really simple.
  - minitech 11y ago
    > Follow the directions to set it up so changes on this Trello board are posted to #channel
    - ubernostrum 11y ago
      Yeah, nobody's ever written things that can respond to events by posting messages in an IRC channel. Shame, really.

bluedino 11y ago

A distributable VM or docker container, or even ball of scripts fixes the configure/host package. And there are plenty of easy to use IRC clients, perhaps make and even dumber/simpler one. Easy problem to solve.

chc4 11y ago

I honestly don't get this. I've been using IRC for a few years, but I don't think nearly enough for blind eye nostalgia to take hold. It's not like you're stuck with ugly terminal only clients anymore. There is KiwiIRC, IRCCloud, and several other great web clients that not only let you connect to any server but provide bouncer services and backlog. There are also plenty of easy to use native clients that don't require any configuration. There are some benefits of Slack, but the ones you mention aren't them. In fact, seeing how you CANT host your own Slack server I would say "difficult to host" is a flat lie against IRC.

op00to 11y ago
I don't want "backlog" (read: see what happened when I was gone). I want full-text searching of the entire channel history. I already log my IRC conversations, and it's a pain in the goddamned ass to ssh to my bouncer, grep through the logs, and try to find what I was looking for. I want to type in the same client that I'm chatting in, and be able to reference this message to other people. IRC doesn't do that.
- anonymoushn 11y ago
  grep works way better than Slack's search, which makes you wait several seconds per tiny page of search results. I look forward to the day when Slack catches up to grep.

chris_wot 11y ago

What features is it missing? IRCCloud seem to be doing pretty well in making it super easy to use.

bazingatossr77 11y ago

https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ (No I don't work for them. Self-hosted their AMI at last job, found them to be friendly, easy to deal with folks)

smadge 11y ago

I think the point is that we should enhance IRC or XMPP, or create a new federated and open protocol that supports the features and easy setup Slack offers. Users suffer when we create proprietary protocols and walled gardens. Can you imagine if someone using Google Mail couldn't send an email to to someone using a university, government, or Yahoo email address? It would be unacceptable. However, this is the situation we are in with real time messaging protocols. It's infuriating to me that developers are content creating these systems. It's unethical, in my opinion.