I've often wondered about this too. IRC was amazing and then it stagnated. Perhaps not ambitious enough governance / leadership over the project? Lack of (finan

I've often wondered about this too. IRC was amazing and then it stagnated. Perhaps not ambitious enough governance / leadership over the project? Lack of (financial) incentives? I don't really know the structure/contributors of the project except for the beginning (not when it stagnated later on), but perhaps if Jarkko Oikarinen had been as driven as Linus Torvalds, we would live in a different reality when it comes to instant messaging