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As a routine user of IRC: This scares – nay, terrifies – me. London Trust Media is colossal. They seem to have control over freenode and Snoonet, two networks

As a routine user of IRC: This scares – nay, terrifies – me. London Trust Media is colossal. They seem to have control over freenode and Snoonet, two networks basically unchallenged in their niche. Snoonet hasn't been doing so well since Discord, but that's another story. They also seem to own Private Internet Access. If a player becomes too big, they'll change the rules of the game. Just look at the state of Internet advertising: A few corporations probably know a lot more about most better than you wish they did. Re "IRC University": Practically every non-trivial network has its own software stack of some sort. Trying to teach people every kind of IRCd/services combination is more or less doomed to fail. Mainly because people usually just don't want to know. Re "IRC Ventures": There's no money to be made on IRC, at least in its current form. Slack, Discord, etc. gained traction because IRC is fundamentally inaccessible. It does not meet any of the common needs of today: server-side storage of history, mobile-friendly data usage and session management, built-in uploading, profiles and profile pictures, first class support for emoji. Though whether addressing them is correct is another story. However, these would all need to be addressed to try and make IRC competitive on any kind of market. The IRCv3 team, which does have a decently broad amount of adoption, has had issues pushing through much more trivial issues. Hell, we don't even have everybody on the same page about TLS – QuakeNet and UnderNet are still plaintext only. QuakeNet undeniably intentionally so[1]. Mark me highly skeptical of this undertaking. [1] https://www.quakenet.org/articles/99-trust-is-not-transitive-or-why-irc-over-ssl-is-pointless https://www.quakenet.org/articles/99-trust-is-not-transitive... EDIT: Seems I misunderstood some points, see also neatnosleep's response to this comment.

j45 8y ago
Slack is today's version of a modern accessible IRC client. It doesn't preclude from the issues of slack being solved by another group. edit: For the IRC uninitiated who enjoy drive-by downvoting: Slack is IRC-inspired - the concept of channels, usernames, private messaging and bots.... in slack is almost all directly inherited from IRC.
- ihuman 8y ago
  Slack deprecated their IRC and XMPP gateways, so its no longer an IRC client.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    And it never was an IRC client, there was just a somewhat limited bridge you could use to connect your IRC client into Slack network, but never vice-versa.
    - j45 8y ago
      Slack is inspired by irc and uses irc's core approach of channels, usernames, messaging, bots, and more.
      - seba_dos1 8y ago
        And how exactly does that make it an IRC client?
        orf 8y ago
        It doesn't, nobody said it was. Re-read the comment.
        seba_dos1 8y ago
        "its no longer an IRC client" definitely implies that it was an IRC client in the past.
        j45 8y ago
        Didn't say it was an irc client, but that it's today's (equivalent) of an irc client. It's kind of laid out like some irc clients, have you used an irc client before?
  - j45 8y ago
    I'm well aware they are deprecated. Besides taking my comment literally (I now have clarified), lets look at it from a higher level: The concept of channels, usernames, private messaging in Slack is almost all directly inherited from IRC. There is some great new functionality on top of this core, IRC inspired experience.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  I'm not sure why everyone is downvoting this. To repeat myself from another thread: give people generous readings. Slack isn't literally a modern accessible IRC client, no, but it's "today's version," i.e., today's equivalent. Slack is absolutely IRC-inspired, and services like IRCCloud[1] suggest that it'd be possible to build most of what Slack "adds" to IRC on top of IRC's existing protocols. [1]: https://www.irccloud.com https://www.irccloud.com In a lot of ways, I think Slack's biggest advantage has just been ease of use in modern times: you don't need to know anything about downloading a client and configuring it -- even the friendliest IRC clients I've found are still pretty fiddly compared to "enter your team name, your email address, and your password, boom, done." But this seems like it'd be a relatively easy problem to solve.
  - j45 8y ago
    Slack wins in ease of use. Although strangely their sign up process is cumbersome in their own way. I suspect downvotes are from people who aren't comfortable with the idea of what's new... Is actually old and improving.
prawnsalad 8y ago
I'm part of LTM and starting to build up irc.com, along with founding kiwiirc.com. I can say that London Trust Media does not impact freenode in any way - they purely fund it to keep it running so that they can focus on other areas. As for the issues with IRC - I agree. Major improvements has happened already but it has a long way to go and that's why were putting money into it to boost these efforts. We have open source projects and fund open source projects, each one focussing on what the project communities and developers believe in. What really is needed IMO is a place that can work on these things full time, prove that IRC can in fact work at scale and solve these problems, then others may hopefully follow. We fully intend on growing the IRC community as a whole - not just ourselves.
- wencha 8y ago
  I’d rather see irc dead than turned into something else
  - Twirrim 8y ago
    How could any of this kill IRC? It's an open standard.
    - matthberg 8y ago
      Embrace Extend Extinguish, the root of Electronic Evils. Hopefully it doesn't happen with IRC as it has with other lovely parts of electronic history. Microsoft was the origin of the term with their browser and OS products of old, yet it has been unfortunately more and more relevant with Google, particularly email and android openness (gmail only features and Google play services, respectively).
      - spookthesunset 8y ago
        That didn't really answer the question that was asked. IRC is an open protocol. Whats your fear? There are some seriously paranoid people on HN these days, and it is rather disenchanting to have to sift through all the negativity. Failure to embrace new things and new ways of doing things is a surefire way to irrelevancy.
noeatnosleep 8y ago
Heyo, I'm the head of snoonet. LTM provides servers for us, with no asks or meddling. Andrew is passionate about IRC and has been for a very long time. This is just another outflowing of his vision and gratitude, not some kind of cash grab. Re: University: It's a 'University' ON IRC, not ABOUT IRC. There will be partnered educators and developers teaching classes about many topics, likely a good portion development focused. Re: Ventures: This isn't ventures FOR IRC, it's an incubator. The communication, application, and interaction will be centered on IRC, but the ventures will be varied. The team working on irc.com has extensive experience of IRC communities and networks and will be opening the door to collaborations with others within the IRC environments, whether network operators or ircd developers and seeks to work closely with the wider community on these endeavors. I know most of the people involved personally, feel free to ask questions if you want!
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Since you offered, I'll ask. What's the down low on IRCv3? Is it actually going to ever have any sort of impact? It feels like too little too late. Far too late to ever have support in most clients. IRCCloud implements it but servers don't, and IRCCloud feels kind of dead development wise. And it doesn't really solve the problems that Discord solves, for example. The dream of instant messaging being built on top of open protocols, just like email, doesn't feel terribly far out of reach but it also doesn't feel like we're making progress towards it and the efforts spent on keeping IRC alive feel, at least to me, kind of futile compared to say, efforts spent on Matrix. I don't think it's crazy to leave IRC behind, and most people who mourn it will either do so out of nostalgia, or because of the loss of an open protocol. I'd rather centralize on something that has a future though.
  - noeatnosleep 8y ago
    >What's the down low on IRCv3? Well, it is, but it's slow. IRCCloud and KiwiIRC both use it, and IRC.com will support it as well. There are some exciting new plans surrounding encrypted voice and video on the Kiwi side, for example. >doesn't really solve the problems that Discord solves What specifically? Hard to address that one without more granular discussion points. >it also doesn't feel like we're making progress towards it It could be argued that IRC.com is going to be a major step toward more rapid progress, between the foundation funding development, and the likelihood that it will be an enormous network that's V3 compatible.
bandrami 8y ago
> first class support for emoji I'm sorry. Even in 2018 I cannot take seriously any claim that "support for emoji" is being used to make business case decisions.
- wumpus 8y ago
  Having used slack at a business, emoji reactions to comments are an extremely valuable business feature -- they allow people to react without having to make a full-sized comment, which helps keep conversations compact.
  - sincerely 8y ago
    for instance: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/30/metoo/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/30/metoo/
    - jwilk 8y ago
      There is nothing about emoji in this article.
      - greglindahl 8y ago
        The article is very relevant, it's using "reactions" instead of a full "me too" comment or email. Slack just happens to express reactions using emoji.
      - djhworld 8y ago
        I wish email had this feature. Sometimes I might ask someone to do something, and when they reply like "Done", it would be nice to just react with a thumbs up or something rather than continuing the chain of emails with a "Thank you" etc
        wikibob 8y ago
        Surprisingly, Office 365 Exchange + Outlook has this now. https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/like-an-email-message-in-outlook-on-the-web-for-business-cfd919a9-7c3e-40ed-a6e6-aabd7d2d2acb https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/like-an-email-messa...
igetspam 8y ago
So... you want to rebuild Slack? Why not just use Slack. I don't imagine the vast majority of people still using IRC want or need any of the things you listed as "common needs of today." I've been using IRC almost daily for a couple decades now and can't think of a single instance of someone saying "you know what we need? persistent logging and profile pictures and a graphical picture of poop!" Don't do this. You're making a mistake. IRC isn't a product for a market. It's a standard protocol that is so simple that it can be used via telnet. Don't ruin that.
- always_good 8y ago
  You don't hear people saying things like "I want to be able to send/receive messages while offline on IRC" because they just use something else. Just like you don't hear me wishing that PHP or Fortran had certain features. It's not very good evidence.
  - Nadya 8y ago
    >You don't hear people saying things like "I want to be able to send/receive messages while offline on IRC" because they just use something else. Almost. They still use IRC - but they extend functionality "outside of IRC" with bots. You don't hear this because people make bots with .tell commands that supplement this functionality. The next time a user logs in the bot will /msg them something like "You have 1 message. Use .read list to see a list of unread messages" then they ".read 1" they can then .reply or send their own .tell Anything IRC "needs" gets supplemented by a bot that takes care of the functionality.
    - damnyou 8y ago
      I hope you're aware of how convoluted that sounds in 2018 :)
  - igetspam 8y ago
    Except the opposite is true. I know plenty of people who intentionally use IRC because it _doesn't_ do those things. It hasn't been the victim of feature creep. Hell, even networks with services (chanserv, nickserv, etc) are often looked down upon. There's no walled garden, a very low barrier to entry and everyone speaks the same protocol. Think of the mess of incompatibilities you'll end up with, when someone's using ircII and someone else is using mIRC and yet another person is using shiny-new-feature-laden-client. If you'd like to see what that looks like, go back in time six months and connect to a slack IRC gateway. It was a mess (but it was the only way to get /ignore). IRC is fine.
Merem 8y ago
> first class support for emoji If you look at Twitch, as an example, I say that emoji support is absolutely fine. Though, I guess you somehow excluded that when you said: "[...]in its current form"? Nevertheless, it does show that implementing such a thing is not that much of a problem.
blibble 8y ago
he seems to be purchasing influence/control by offering "jobs" to the people in charge of various IRC projects, publicly: freenode[1], kiwiirc[2] (and presumably snoonet) -- I've been told there are others (not public info) he's also brought on board the disgraced mt. gox CEO as CTO -- what on earth is he up to? [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn: "Some of you might also find yourselves dealing with me in my new role as Director of Sponsorship and Events at Private Internet Access" [2] https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI... [3] https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/04/19/disgraced-ceo-of-mt-gox-appointed-cto-at-london-trust-media/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/04/19/disgraced-ceo-of-mt-gox-a...
- kuschku 8y ago
  I’ve heard a lot of that, too – client devs getting approached and offered jobs with PIA. I’ve gotten an "offer" once, too, inofficially, but I assume it was just a joke from them.
  - noeatnosleep 8y ago
    What was the offer?
    - kuschku 8y ago
      It never got that far. They asked if I’d be interested in a job with them, I said no, never, and it stopped there. As said, I assume they didn’t mean it seriously.
- prawnsalad 8y ago
  Kiwi IRC developer here that was sponsored and hired by LTM back in November, so I can give you a first hand account of how things are playing out. Andrew is very passionate about IRC as you can see from the post. Most people developing IRC projects do it in their spare time which makes progressing them difficult. This was my personal position back in November. Since I was hired, I have been able to work on Kiwi IRC, introduce many new features and grow the project, all while the project is still open source. The biggest part - Andrew/LTM does not own kiwiirc. That is purely a separate project that he wanted to grow and he did so without taking ownership of it. I have always been pushing for open sourcing projects - especially in the IRC community as it needs projects to flourish to compete with alternative and closed sourced messaging systems. I am now starting irc.com with funding from Andrew and London Trust Media with the exact same mindset. Hopefully we can combine and push IRC standards with the existing IRC community - that is, existing IRC server and client developers that may not have anything to do with irc.com. For the IRC networks such as freenode, they are a vital network for open source developers and communities which I think we can all agree would be very upsetting if that was to be interrupted. London Trust Media has had no interference with the running of the network and does not plan to, other than providing sponsor support to keep the servers running.
progval 8y ago
> 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?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Though setting up an IRC bouncer is not exactly a trivial task. (It's one of the things on my summer to-do list.)
  - hestefisk 8y ago
    znc is apt install ... And a few edits in a config file.
  - progval 8y ago
    Aren't there services that offer bouncer hosting, with some default config?
  - crtasm 8y ago
    I recommend also trying Weechat running in screen/tmux on your server, connect to it over SSH. Znc+mirc did work for me but things like scrollback and access from multiple devices are much nicer now with just my Weechat instance.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      I used znc for a bit, but I'm trying to get weechat up and running (but, of course, using Emacs' ERC as my client) on a Rpi.
- TheCycoONE 8y ago
  It's not mobile friendly because it requires a persistent connection and eats a lot of battery. That could be fixed with the right bouncer/client combination, but I haven't found it yet.
nbsd4life 8y ago
IRC has fine support for emojis, works for me on a CLI IRC client. it's up for your input method to allow inputting them, and up for your fonts to display them, and up for you to not force a stupid encoding.

j45 8y ago

Slack is today's version of a modern accessible IRC client. It doesn't preclude from the issues of slack being solved by another group. edit: For the IRC uninitiated who enjoy drive-by downvoting: Slack is IRC-inspired - the concept of channels, usernames, private messaging and bots.... in slack is almost all directly inherited from IRC.

ihuman 8y ago
Slack deprecated their IRC and XMPP gateways, so its no longer an IRC client.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  And it never was an IRC client, there was just a somewhat limited bridge you could use to connect your IRC client into Slack network, but never vice-versa.
  - j45 8y ago
    Slack is inspired by irc and uses irc's core approach of channels, usernames, messaging, bots, and more.
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      And how exactly does that make it an IRC client?
      - orf 8y ago
        It doesn't, nobody said it was. Re-read the comment.
        seba_dos1 8y ago
        "its no longer an IRC client" definitely implies that it was an IRC client in the past.
      - j45 8y ago
        Didn't say it was an irc client, but that it's today's (equivalent) of an irc client. It's kind of laid out like some irc clients, have you used an irc client before?
- j45 8y ago
  I'm well aware they are deprecated. Besides taking my comment literally (I now have clarified), lets look at it from a higher level: The concept of channels, usernames, private messaging in Slack is almost all directly inherited from IRC. There is some great new functionality on top of this core, IRC inspired experience.
chipotle_coyote 8y ago
I'm not sure why everyone is downvoting this. To repeat myself from another thread: give people generous readings. Slack isn't literally a modern accessible IRC client, no, but it's "today's version," i.e., today's equivalent. Slack is absolutely IRC-inspired, and services like IRCCloud[1] suggest that it'd be possible to build most of what Slack "adds" to IRC on top of IRC's existing protocols. [1]: https://www.irccloud.com https://www.irccloud.com In a lot of ways, I think Slack's biggest advantage has just been ease of use in modern times: you don't need to know anything about downloading a client and configuring it -- even the friendliest IRC clients I've found are still pretty fiddly compared to "enter your team name, your email address, and your password, boom, done." But this seems like it'd be a relatively easy problem to solve.
- j45 8y ago
  Slack wins in ease of use. Although strangely their sign up process is cumbersome in their own way. I suspect downvotes are from people who aren't comfortable with the idea of what's new... Is actually old and improving.

prawnsalad 8y ago

I'm part of LTM and starting to build up irc.com, along with founding kiwiirc.com. I can say that London Trust Media does not impact freenode in any way - they purely fund it to keep it running so that they can focus on other areas. As for the issues with IRC - I agree. Major improvements has happened already but it has a long way to go and that's why were putting money into it to boost these efforts. We have open source projects and fund open source projects, each one focussing on what the project communities and developers believe in. What really is needed IMO is a place that can work on these things full time, prove that IRC can in fact work at scale and solve these problems, then others may hopefully follow. We fully intend on growing the IRC community as a whole - not just ourselves.

wencha 8y ago
I’d rather see irc dead than turned into something else
- Twirrim 8y ago
  How could any of this kill IRC? It's an open standard.
  - matthberg 8y ago
    Embrace Extend Extinguish, the root of Electronic Evils. Hopefully it doesn't happen with IRC as it has with other lovely parts of electronic history. Microsoft was the origin of the term with their browser and OS products of old, yet it has been unfortunately more and more relevant with Google, particularly email and android openness (gmail only features and Google play services, respectively).
    - spookthesunset 8y ago
      That didn't really answer the question that was asked. IRC is an open protocol. Whats your fear? There are some seriously paranoid people on HN these days, and it is rather disenchanting to have to sift through all the negativity. Failure to embrace new things and new ways of doing things is a surefire way to irrelevancy.

noeatnosleep 8y ago

Heyo, I'm the head of snoonet. LTM provides servers for us, with no asks or meddling. Andrew is passionate about IRC and has been for a very long time. This is just another outflowing of his vision and gratitude, not some kind of cash grab. Re: University: It's a 'University' ON IRC, not ABOUT IRC. There will be partnered educators and developers teaching classes about many topics, likely a good portion development focused. Re: Ventures: This isn't ventures FOR IRC, it's an incubator. The communication, application, and interaction will be centered on IRC, but the ventures will be varied. The team working on irc.com has extensive experience of IRC communities and networks and will be opening the door to collaborations with others within the IRC environments, whether network operators or ircd developers and seeks to work closely with the wider community on these endeavors. I know most of the people involved personally, feel free to ask questions if you want!

scrollaway 8y ago
Since you offered, I'll ask. What's the down low on IRCv3? Is it actually going to ever have any sort of impact? It feels like too little too late. Far too late to ever have support in most clients. IRCCloud implements it but servers don't, and IRCCloud feels kind of dead development wise. And it doesn't really solve the problems that Discord solves, for example. The dream of instant messaging being built on top of open protocols, just like email, doesn't feel terribly far out of reach but it also doesn't feel like we're making progress towards it and the efforts spent on keeping IRC alive feel, at least to me, kind of futile compared to say, efforts spent on Matrix. I don't think it's crazy to leave IRC behind, and most people who mourn it will either do so out of nostalgia, or because of the loss of an open protocol. I'd rather centralize on something that has a future though.
- noeatnosleep 8y ago
  >What's the down low on IRCv3? Well, it is, but it's slow. IRCCloud and KiwiIRC both use it, and IRC.com will support it as well. There are some exciting new plans surrounding encrypted voice and video on the Kiwi side, for example. >doesn't really solve the problems that Discord solves What specifically? Hard to address that one without more granular discussion points. >it also doesn't feel like we're making progress towards it It could be argued that IRC.com is going to be a major step toward more rapid progress, between the foundation funding development, and the likelihood that it will be an enormous network that's V3 compatible.

bandrami 8y ago

> first class support for emoji I'm sorry. Even in 2018 I cannot take seriously any claim that "support for emoji" is being used to make business case decisions.

wumpus 8y ago
Having used slack at a business, emoji reactions to comments are an extremely valuable business feature -- they allow people to react without having to make a full-sized comment, which helps keep conversations compact.
- sincerely 8y ago
  for instance: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/30/metoo/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/30/metoo/
  - jwilk 8y ago
    There is nothing about emoji in this article.
    - greglindahl 8y ago
      The article is very relevant, it's using "reactions" instead of a full "me too" comment or email. Slack just happens to express reactions using emoji.
    - djhworld 8y ago
      I wish email had this feature. Sometimes I might ask someone to do something, and when they reply like "Done", it would be nice to just react with a thumbs up or something rather than continuing the chain of emails with a "Thank you" etc
      - wikibob 8y ago
        Surprisingly, Office 365 Exchange + Outlook has this now. https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/like-an-email-message-in-outlook-on-the-web-for-business-cfd919a9-7c3e-40ed-a6e6-aabd7d2d2acb https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/like-an-email-messa...

igetspam 8y ago

So... you want to rebuild Slack? Why not just use Slack. I don't imagine the vast majority of people still using IRC want or need any of the things you listed as "common needs of today." I've been using IRC almost daily for a couple decades now and can't think of a single instance of someone saying "you know what we need? persistent logging and profile pictures and a graphical picture of poop!" Don't do this. You're making a mistake. IRC isn't a product for a market. It's a standard protocol that is so simple that it can be used via telnet. Don't ruin that.

always_good 8y ago
You don't hear people saying things like "I want to be able to send/receive messages while offline on IRC" because they just use something else. Just like you don't hear me wishing that PHP or Fortran had certain features. It's not very good evidence.
- Nadya 8y ago
  >You don't hear people saying things like "I want to be able to send/receive messages while offline on IRC" because they just use something else. Almost. They still use IRC - but they extend functionality "outside of IRC" with bots. You don't hear this because people make bots with .tell commands that supplement this functionality. The next time a user logs in the bot will /msg them something like "You have 1 message. Use .read list to see a list of unread messages" then they ".read 1" they can then .reply or send their own .tell Anything IRC "needs" gets supplemented by a bot that takes care of the functionality.
  - damnyou 8y ago
    I hope you're aware of how convoluted that sounds in 2018 :)
- igetspam 8y ago
  Except the opposite is true. I know plenty of people who intentionally use IRC because it _doesn't_ do those things. It hasn't been the victim of feature creep. Hell, even networks with services (chanserv, nickserv, etc) are often looked down upon. There's no walled garden, a very low barrier to entry and everyone speaks the same protocol. Think of the mess of incompatibilities you'll end up with, when someone's using ircII and someone else is using mIRC and yet another person is using shiny-new-feature-laden-client. If you'd like to see what that looks like, go back in time six months and connect to a slack IRC gateway. It was a mess (but it was the only way to get /ignore). IRC is fine.

Merem 8y ago

> first class support for emoji If you look at Twitch, as an example, I say that emoji support is absolutely fine. Though, I guess you somehow excluded that when you said: "[...]in its current form"? Nevertheless, it does show that implementing such a thing is not that much of a problem.

blibble 8y ago

he seems to be purchasing influence/control by offering "jobs" to the people in charge of various IRC projects, publicly: freenode[1], kiwiirc[2] (and presumably snoonet) -- I've been told there are others (not public info) he's also brought on board the disgraced mt. gox CEO as CTO -- what on earth is he up to? [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn: "Some of you might also find yourselves dealing with me in my new role as Director of Sponsorship and Events at Private Internet Access" [2] https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI... [3] https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/04/19/disgraced-ceo-of-mt-gox-appointed-cto-at-london-trust-media/ https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/04/19/disgraced-ceo-of-mt-gox-a...

kuschku 8y ago
I’ve heard a lot of that, too – client devs getting approached and offered jobs with PIA. I’ve gotten an "offer" once, too, inofficially, but I assume it was just a joke from them.
- noeatnosleep 8y ago
  What was the offer?
  - kuschku 8y ago
    It never got that far. They asked if I’d be interested in a job with them, I said no, never, and it stopped there. As said, I assume they didn’t mean it seriously.
prawnsalad 8y ago
Kiwi IRC developer here that was sponsored and hired by LTM back in November, so I can give you a first hand account of how things are playing out. Andrew is very passionate about IRC as you can see from the post. Most people developing IRC projects do it in their spare time which makes progressing them difficult. This was my personal position back in November. Since I was hired, I have been able to work on Kiwi IRC, introduce many new features and grow the project, all while the project is still open source. The biggest part - Andrew/LTM does not own kiwiirc. That is purely a separate project that he wanted to grow and he did so without taking ownership of it. I have always been pushing for open sourcing projects - especially in the IRC community as it needs projects to flourish to compete with alternative and closed sourced messaging systems. I am now starting irc.com with funding from Andrew and London Trust Media with the exact same mindset. Hopefully we can combine and push IRC standards with the existing IRC community - that is, existing IRC server and client developers that may not have anything to do with irc.com. For the IRC networks such as freenode, they are a vital network for open source developers and communities which I think we can all agree would be very upsetting if that was to be interrupted. London Trust Media has had no interference with the running of the network and does not plan to, other than providing sponsor support to keep the servers running.

progval 8y ago

> 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?

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Though setting up an IRC bouncer is not exactly a trivial task. (It's one of the things on my summer to-do list.)
- hestefisk 8y ago
  znc is apt install ... And a few edits in a config file.
- progval 8y ago
  Aren't there services that offer bouncer hosting, with some default config?
- crtasm 8y ago
  I recommend also trying Weechat running in screen/tmux on your server, connect to it over SSH. Znc+mirc did work for me but things like scrollback and access from multiple devices are much nicer now with just my Weechat instance.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    I used znc for a bit, but I'm trying to get weechat up and running (but, of course, using Emacs' ERC as my client) on a Rpi.
TheCycoONE 8y ago
It's not mobile friendly because it requires a persistent connection and eats a lot of battery. That could be fixed with the right bouncer/client combination, but I haven't found it yet.

nbsd4life 8y ago

IRC has fine support for emojis, works for me on a CLI IRC client. it's up for your input method to allow inputting them, and up for your fonts to display them, and up for you to not force a stupid encoding.