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Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately o

Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like emoji reactions or reaction gifs, comment threads, code snippets, plug-and-play third party integrations and web hooks, profile pictures, voice/video chat, screen sharing, or any number of a plethora of other features that BOTH Slack and Discord have. If you want people to use an open source alternative to Slack or Discord, then people need to build that alternative. IRC, unfortunately, is not it (at least not in its current aged state).

cnst 7y ago
> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There's literally web-clients available where all you gotta do is click a link and write a name that hasn't been taken by anyone yet, and you're in. No email address, no password. History is even more straightforward — anonymous access to all IRC history is frequently provided by most projects. How do you get history for Slack without having an account?
- oefrha 7y ago
  > History is even more straightforward — anonymous access to all IRC history is frequently provided by most projects. Most projects? Really? I'd say at most 20% of IRC channels for open source projects I've been on have published history. Shopping around for a log bot and figuring out a publishing channel is not straightforward. In fact nothing is more straightforward than builtin. While I'm not a big fan of using Slack for open source collaboration, saying IRC history is straightforward and provided by most projects is indeed delusional.
ddevault 7y ago
Emojis, reaction gifs, ugh. https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IRC.html https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IR...
- kick 7y ago
  Why'd you change your Hacker News username?
- CameronNemo 7y ago
  Code fences, sane identity management.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    The linked post explicitly mentions that code fences are downgraded to a "long message" link. Note that I've used a word "downgrade", because I don't think it is a good solution. Anything unable to tie additional data for a message to the message itself is not good, in my opinion.
  - ddevault 7y ago
    I don't understand why people bring up identity management in IRC like it's a problem. No one has issues with this.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly. After reading the article I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said. The author lists a number of problems with Slack that in his opinion renders it "not a tool built for open source projects to use for communication with their userbase", and instead Slack is "a tool built for teams". The author stresses that communicating with a community leads to entirely different usecases, and that "Slack has gone on record as saying that it cannot support this sort of use-case". Afterwards, the author proposes IRC as a technology that mitigates some of the design problems that render Slack ill-suited for communicating with the userbase of open source projects. The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said There's literally a section called 'Problems with IRC that Slack solves'. And there's no 'but...' at the end of that section. It's just a list of things Slack solves. Maybe that's why people want to use it? It solves their problems? > The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all. I think you've misread my comment or the thread. I wasn't providing a critique of their points... I was responding to the idea that they were equating them. They weren't - as you said, they have a list of ways they thinks IRC is better, and a list of ways they think Slack is better. So they weren't equating them.
SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
On the free slack plan, you don't get history beyond its 10k message limit (or whatever the number is), unless you start paying per head. Even on small teams, that limit is hit surprisingly quickly. For the medium-to-large sized open source project slacks -- the history is basically completely useless. Free slack is on par with IRC here -- you need someone nerdy enough to run a chat history bot to get a full searchable history.
- freefal 7y ago
  That's not necessarily true. If you're a certified non-profit, you can get free Slack with unlimited message history for up to 250 users (https://slack.com/help/articles/204368833 https://slack.com/help/articles/204368833).
  - SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know about that. What happens if you get 251 users though? EDIT: Answered my own question: up to 85% discount, which is very nice, but still might be infeasible for many projects/communities.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > Answered my own question: up to 85% discount Isn't Slack's cheapest plan around 8$ per user per month?
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > for up to 250 users The thesis defended in the article is that Slack is not suited to communicate with the userbase of open source projects. Capping a basic feature such as collecting message history at 250 users is a limitation that supports the author's thesis, as clearly it demonstrate that Slack is unable to handle the communication needs of a moderately popular open source project.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. How the fuck did people come to think of this as a negative? One of the stupidest things about "modern" IT services is that the public interface is a user interface instead of a machine readable iterface, so you can't build a user interface that fits your needs or preferences, you can't innovate features independently, and you can't use software to process the data, you have to interface everything with a human (or go to great length to scrape stuff 'n shit ... just the point of using information technology!).
- briandear 7y ago
  Instead of re-inventing the wheel building your own interface, why not just spend that time working on the FOSS project in question? FOSS dogma seems to frequently get in the way of FOSS development. If you aren’t pure and blessed, somehow you are less worthy.
  - kick 7y ago
    GNOME is an example of a free software project that is actively hostile to suggestions, critiques and code to improve it from outside.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    > Instead of re-inventing the wheel building your own interface, why not just spend that time working on the FOSS project in question? Hu? Because they won't take my contribution that rips out all of the web interface and replaces it with EMACS? I mean, what does this even have to do with FOSS? Developing stuff as protocols instead of as user interfaces does not in any way prevent FOSS, very much to the contrary. There are FOSS IRC clients in all shapes and forms: Web interfaces, X GUIs, Windows GUIs, mobile clients, terminal UIs, EMACS modes, XMPP bridges, Matrix bridges ... how is any of that "reinventing the wheel", and how would we be better off if all those clients had to be part of one "IRC FOSS project" rather than independent projects with standards-based interoperability?
- flukus 7y ago
termau 7y ago
Are you a Mac user?
- t0mbstone 7y ago
  I use OSX and Linux machines all day at work, and typically use Windows 10 at home (where I do more gaming, but also occasional software development). I'm comfortable on all the major operating systems. Why do you ask?
  - termau 7y ago
    some of what you're complaining about the lack off do work, znc as a proxy allows playback, emoji's do work on some clients, figured you wouldnt be aware of this if you were on mac.
c22 7y ago
I hate when my experience differs from others. I like to have the same experiences as everyone else because we are all the same.
charlesdaniels 7y ago
> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There are many solutions available to do this. Many channels publish chat logs publicly, which can be downloaded and searched using grep or your tool of choice. And there are web clients that can do this. > Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. That’s rather the point of a protocol, no? IRC isn’t a platform, it’s a standardized way in which various clients and servers can communicate. Much like email, different clients support features useful for different users. > IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like emoji reactions or reaction gifs, comment threads, code snippets, plug-and-play third party integrations and web hooks, profile pictures, voice/video chat, screen sharing, or any number of a plethora of other features that BOTH Slack and Discord have. I consider this a feature. I expect many others would. Constant reaction gifs / emojis / etc seem to be a distraction. I don’t believe I’ve seen these used in a way that had a positive impact on productivity, or effectiveness of communication. > If you want people to use an open source alternative to Slack or Discord, then people need to build that alternative. IRC, unfortunately, is not it (at least not in its current aged state). matrix.org / riot.im is what you want. The matrix protocol supports all of these features. Riot is an open source web client for it. I use it regularly and would recommend.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  All of the things you listed are true, and you and I and most other people on HN can respect why (at least to us) these reasons stand out from slack. But a middle manager who doesn't even know what IRC stands for isn't going to want to learn the syntax for grep. They're not even going to know why they have to write \" instead of ". They want something where you can scroll up, and then your messages from two months ago are there. And that's what slack is.
  - oytis 7y ago
    Yeah, but the original point was about FOSS projects. Just don't let managers into your FOSS project.
edoceo 7y ago
It's built, it's called Mattermost and it's awesome, super flexible, full API, full control and very easy maintenance/upgrade path.
- unicornporn 7y ago
  I much prefer https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Mattermost is "open core".
unicornporn 7y ago
> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. +1. But the solution is not to succumb to Slack. Matrix and https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ is what we should be looking at.
pmoriarty 7y ago
Then let's work on making IRC better instead of eagerly jumping on a closed, corporate-controlled walled garden.
flingo 7y ago
IRC works with emoji just fine. As long as your server/client supports UTF-8 (or another encoding)

cnst 7y ago

> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There's literally web-clients available where all you gotta do is click a link and write a name that hasn't been taken by anyone yet, and you're in. No email address, no password. History is even more straightforward — anonymous access to all IRC history is frequently provided by most projects. How do you get history for Slack without having an account?

oefrha 7y ago
> History is even more straightforward — anonymous access to all IRC history is frequently provided by most projects. Most projects? Really? I'd say at most 20% of IRC channels for open source projects I've been on have published history. Shopping around for a log bot and figuring out a publishing channel is not straightforward. In fact nothing is more straightforward than builtin. While I'm not a big fan of using Slack for open source collaboration, saying IRC history is straightforward and provided by most projects is indeed delusional.

ddevault 7y ago

Emojis, reaction gifs, ugh. https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IRC.html https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IR...

kick 7y ago
Why'd you change your Hacker News username?
CameronNemo 7y ago
Code fences, sane identity management.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  The linked post explicitly mentions that code fences are downgraded to a "long message" link. Note that I've used a word "downgrade", because I don't think it is a good solution. Anything unable to tie additional data for a message to the message itself is not good, in my opinion.
- ddevault 7y ago
  I don't understand why people bring up identity management in IRC like it's a problem. No one has issues with this.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly.

rumanator 7y ago
> The author doesn't equate them - they even list many critical things that Slack has that IRC doesn't. Which makes their conclusion even more silly. After reading the article I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said. The author lists a number of problems with Slack that in his opinion renders it "not a tool built for open source projects to use for communication with their userbase", and instead Slack is "a tool built for teams". The author stresses that communicating with a community leads to entirely different usecases, and that "Slack has gone on record as saying that it cannot support this sort of use-case". Afterwards, the author proposes IRC as a technology that mitigates some of the design problems that render Slack ill-suited for communicating with the userbase of open source projects. The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > I feel you're misrepresenting what the author actually said There's literally a section called 'Problems with IRC that Slack solves'. And there's no 'but...' at the end of that section. It's just a list of things Slack solves. Maybe that's why people want to use it? It solves their problems? > The author enumerates arguments (technical and not so technical) to support his thesis. You've ignored them all. I think you've misread my comment or the thread. I wasn't providing a critique of their points... I was responding to the idea that they were equating them. They weren't - as you said, they have a list of ways they thinks IRC is better, and a list of ways they think Slack is better. So they weren't equating them.

SmirkingRevenge 7y ago

On the free slack plan, you don't get history beyond its 10k message limit (or whatever the number is), unless you start paying per head. Even on small teams, that limit is hit surprisingly quickly. For the medium-to-large sized open source project slacks -- the history is basically completely useless. Free slack is on par with IRC here -- you need someone nerdy enough to run a chat history bot to get a full searchable history.

freefal 7y ago
That's not necessarily true. If you're a certified non-profit, you can get free Slack with unlimited message history for up to 250 users (https://slack.com/help/articles/204368833 https://slack.com/help/articles/204368833).
- SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know about that. What happens if you get 251 users though? EDIT: Answered my own question: up to 85% discount, which is very nice, but still might be infeasible for many projects/communities.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > Answered my own question: up to 85% discount Isn't Slack's cheapest plan around 8$ per user per month?
- rumanator 7y ago
  > for up to 250 users The thesis defended in the article is that Slack is not suited to communicate with the userbase of open source projects. Capping a basic feature such as collecting message history at 250 users is a limitation that supports the author's thesis, as clearly it demonstrate that Slack is unable to handle the communication needs of a moderately popular open source project.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

> Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. How the fuck did people come to think of this as a negative? One of the stupidest things about "modern" IT services is that the public interface is a user interface instead of a machine readable iterface, so you can't build a user interface that fits your needs or preferences, you can't innovate features independently, and you can't use software to process the data, you have to interface everything with a human (or go to great length to scrape stuff 'n shit ... just the point of using information technology!).

briandear 7y ago
Instead of re-inventing the wheel building your own interface, why not just spend that time working on the FOSS project in question? FOSS dogma seems to frequently get in the way of FOSS development. If you aren’t pure and blessed, somehow you are less worthy.
- kick 7y ago
  GNOME is an example of a free software project that is actively hostile to suggestions, critiques and code to improve it from outside.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  > Instead of re-inventing the wheel building your own interface, why not just spend that time working on the FOSS project in question? Hu? Because they won't take my contribution that rips out all of the web interface and replaces it with EMACS? I mean, what does this even have to do with FOSS? Developing stuff as protocols instead of as user interfaces does not in any way prevent FOSS, very much to the contrary. There are FOSS IRC clients in all shapes and forms: Web interfaces, X GUIs, Windows GUIs, mobile clients, terminal UIs, EMACS modes, XMPP bridges, Matrix bridges ... how is any of that "reinventing the wheel", and how would we be better off if all those clients had to be part of one "IRC FOSS project" rather than independent projects with standards-based interoperability?
flukus 7y ago

termau 7y ago

Are you a Mac user?

t0mbstone 7y ago
I use OSX and Linux machines all day at work, and typically use Windows 10 at home (where I do more gaming, but also occasional software development). I'm comfortable on all the major operating systems. Why do you ask?
- termau 7y ago
  some of what you're complaining about the lack off do work, znc as a proxy allows playback, emoji's do work on some clients, figured you wouldnt be aware of this if you were on mac.

c22 7y ago

I hate when my experience differs from others. I like to have the same experiences as everyone else because we are all the same.

charlesdaniels 7y ago

> One of the biggest problems with IRC is that there is no immediately obvious way to jump into a channel and browse or search the history. There are many solutions available to do this. Many channels publish chat logs publicly, which can be downloaded and searched using grep or your tool of choice. And there are web clients that can do this. > Also, because there are so many IRC clients, and so many servers out there, one person's IRC experience can vastly differ from another's. That’s rather the point of a protocol, no? IRC isn’t a platform, it’s a standardized way in which various clients and servers can communicate. Much like email, different clients support features useful for different users. > IRC also doesn't have any of the modern amenities like emoji reactions or reaction gifs, comment threads, code snippets, plug-and-play third party integrations and web hooks, profile pictures, voice/video chat, screen sharing, or any number of a plethora of other features that BOTH Slack and Discord have. I consider this a feature. I expect many others would. Constant reaction gifs / emojis / etc seem to be a distraction. I don’t believe I’ve seen these used in a way that had a positive impact on productivity, or effectiveness of communication. > If you want people to use an open source alternative to Slack or Discord, then people need to build that alternative. IRC, unfortunately, is not it (at least not in its current aged state). matrix.org / riot.im is what you want. The matrix protocol supports all of these features. Riot is an open source web client for it. I use it regularly and would recommend.

chipperyman573 7y ago
All of the things you listed are true, and you and I and most other people on HN can respect why (at least to us) these reasons stand out from slack. But a middle manager who doesn't even know what IRC stands for isn't going to want to learn the syntax for grep. They're not even going to know why they have to write \" instead of ". They want something where you can scroll up, and then your messages from two months ago are there. And that's what slack is.
- oytis 7y ago
  Yeah, but the original point was about FOSS projects. Just don't let managers into your FOSS project.

edoceo 7y ago

It's built, it's called Mattermost and it's awesome, super flexible, full API, full control and very easy maintenance/upgrade path.

unicornporn 7y ago
I much prefer https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/
ahartmetz 7y ago
Mattermost is "open core".

unicornporn 7y ago

> Acting like IRC is equal in functionality to Slack or Discord is straight up delusional. +1. But the solution is not to succumb to Slack. Matrix and https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ is what we should be looking at.

pmoriarty 7y ago

Then let's work on making IRC better instead of eagerly jumping on a closed, corporate-controlled walled garden.

flingo 7y ago

IRC works with emoji just fine. As long as your server/client supports UTF-8 (or another encoding)