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What's the "IRC Foundation"? As a long-time IRC user, this sounds like a scam after reading through the the 'article', I don't know what exactly they are doing

What's the "IRC Foundation"? As a long-time IRC user, this sounds like a scam after reading through the the 'article', I don't know what exactly they are doing besides throwing all the buzzwords and trendy web design out there. On the other hand, I want to give the benefit of the doubt that they are somehow improving the IRC protocol in some meaningful way.

ekc 8y ago
The IRC Foundation, as it says on the linked page, doesn't exist yet. That's a goal of irc.com to do. irc.com is a domain purchased by Andrew Lee of Private Internet Access last year. Formerly, irc.com had a letter written from him about his goals hosted on it: https://web.archive.org/web/20180622180151/https://irc.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180622180151/https://irc.com/
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Ah! Thanks for the additional info. I found the current site to be hard to parse for someone who has never heard of this foundation.
- usr1106 8y ago
  The letter is still on the site, click on "Let's take IRC further" in the upper right corner. At the bottom of the page opening there is a link to "London Trust Media Holdings": Some of the brands listed: * Private Internet Access * Linux Journal * freenode * snoonet and others
  - 80386 8y ago
    Went there to check if Twitch was listed. Twitch chat runs on IRC, or at least can be connected to with an IRC client - are they involved with the ecosystem?
    - prawnsalad 8y ago
      Twitch have their own custom IRC servers and not part of IRC.com/London trust media. They have been watching out on the IRCv3 group to ensure they implement IRC correctly though in the past.
danieloaks 8y ago
For the most part, the Foundation's just a project to support existing projects and developers who use the IRC protocol. This can mean providing financial support, access to more business-oriented resources like designers/legal/etc, as well as simply improving the quality of protocol documentation out there (the part I'm handling). In terms of strict protocol improvements, the IRCv3 WG is the real place where that's going on, the most authoritative thing in terms of introducing new stuff across the IRC infrastructure these days: https://ircv3.net/ https://ircv3.net/ But, for new developers looking to get into IRC today, the resources aren't as available as they could be. Sure, there's a bunch of code to look at, libraries you can use to get started that seem to work fine. But when you wanna start digging into the wire protocol, how particular commands or functions work, how to actually approach writing a client/server from scratch, all you have are either the RFCs, some newer resources like the ircdocs/IRCv3, or stuff spread across 20+ year-old textfiles and pages all across the net. My intention for the documentation side of the Foundation is to build up information on how to use/parse commands and numerics, how widely they're used (in terms of software support), and how to really dig into and approach development with the protocol – since that feels like the more valuable information to be out there right now for new devs. It'll be linked to and public sometime soon, it's just that building up a swathe of documentation large enough to show we're serious about it takes some time (if you want those docs to be decent-quality, at least). For what it's worth, I'm both the primary writer/maintainer of the Foundation's developer docs work, and the maintainer of the more community effort https://ircdocs.horse/ https://ircdocs.horse/ , so hopefully I'm on the right track with supporting devs in the protocol documentation sense. If there's any questions or suggestions for directions to take on this (stuff that you, as a dev, would find useful for writing IRC software), please let me know! Even if it's not there for initial launch there's a fair backlog of stuff I'm looking to make up with this project.

ekc 8y ago

The IRC Foundation, as it says on the linked page, doesn't exist yet. That's a goal of irc.com to do. irc.com is a domain purchased by Andrew Lee of Private Internet Access last year. Formerly, irc.com had a letter written from him about his goals hosted on it: https://web.archive.org/web/20180622180151/https://irc.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180622180151/https://irc.com/

craftyguy 8y ago
Ah! Thanks for the additional info. I found the current site to be hard to parse for someone who has never heard of this foundation.
usr1106 8y ago
The letter is still on the site, click on "Let's take IRC further" in the upper right corner. At the bottom of the page opening there is a link to "London Trust Media Holdings": Some of the brands listed: * Private Internet Access * Linux Journal * freenode * snoonet and others
- 80386 8y ago
  Went there to check if Twitch was listed. Twitch chat runs on IRC, or at least can be connected to with an IRC client - are they involved with the ecosystem?
  - prawnsalad 8y ago
    Twitch have their own custom IRC servers and not part of IRC.com/London trust media. They have been watching out on the IRCv3 group to ensure they implement IRC correctly though in the past.

danieloaks 8y ago

For the most part, the Foundation's just a project to support existing projects and developers who use the IRC protocol. This can mean providing financial support, access to more business-oriented resources like designers/legal/etc, as well as simply improving the quality of protocol documentation out there (the part I'm handling). In terms of strict protocol improvements, the IRCv3 WG is the real place where that's going on, the most authoritative thing in terms of introducing new stuff across the IRC infrastructure these days: https://ircv3.net/ https://ircv3.net/ But, for new developers looking to get into IRC today, the resources aren't as available as they could be. Sure, there's a bunch of code to look at, libraries you can use to get started that seem to work fine. But when you wanna start digging into the wire protocol, how particular commands or functions work, how to actually approach writing a client/server from scratch, all you have are either the RFCs, some newer resources like the ircdocs/IRCv3, or stuff spread across 20+ year-old textfiles and pages all across the net. My intention for the documentation side of the Foundation is to build up information on how to use/parse commands and numerics, how widely they're used (in terms of software support), and how to really dig into and approach development with the protocol – since that feels like the more valuable information to be out there right now for new devs. It'll be linked to and public sometime soon, it's just that building up a swathe of documentation large enough to show we're serious about it takes some time (if you want those docs to be decent-quality, at least). For what it's worth, I'm both the primary writer/maintainer of the Foundation's developer docs work, and the maintainer of the more community effort https://ircdocs.horse/ https://ircdocs.horse/ , so hopefully I'm on the right track with supporting devs in the protocol documentation sense. If there's any questions or suggestions for directions to take on this (stuff that you, as a dev, would find useful for writing IRC software), please let me know! Even if it's not there for initial launch there's a fair backlog of stuff I'm looking to make up with this project.