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Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. I still do. The AIMs and MSNs and Skypes came and went. Now it's the WhatsApps and

Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. I still do. The AIMs and MSNs and Skypes came and went. Now it's the WhatsApps and Discords. Every one of them trying to reinvent the wheel the should have just been fixed 20 years ago. But why has nobody sat down and said, "Here's a better IRC, here's a reference client, here's the source code, knock yourself out." It's still not too late you know. In fact, there has never been a better time (and need) to revamp those classic platforms for the modern era. With services like GitHub and AWS, it should be easier than ever to collaborate on building ever better clients and hosting servers etc. Here's my wishlist for improvements over what I can remember of IRC: • Mandatory encryption for client-to-server and direct peer-to-peer. • Server-side chat history, spam filtering and DOS resistance. • Ability to send binary data like images, audio, video and arbitrary files in public channels and private chats. • Message deletion and temporary messages. Basically a decentralized Discord (which is a centralized IRC to begin with.)

6581 7y ago
https://ircv3.net/ https://ircv3.net/
ObsoleteNerd 7y ago
> Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. Is being worked on now: https://irc.com/ https://irc.com/
HereBeBeasties 7y ago
It sounds like you are looking for Matrix.org (and Riot.im)
Marsymars 7y ago
Doesn't answer your protocol question, but Textual is a really fantastic IRC client for macOS with various modern capabilities.
tatersolid 7y ago
> Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. For the same reason SMTP hasn’t meaningfully improved in the last 25 or so years. It’s an ossified protocol because of all the competing implementations. Moxie is right about that bit. HTTP and HTML are slightly different because of the huge dollars backing implementers, but there are still significant features not in one or more if the major browsers, and adoption of HTML5 was actually pretty slow. Basically, open standards sound awesome, but they quickly get frozen in time due to compatibility constraints.
- Razengan 7y ago
  So we really have no one to blame but ourselves.

6581 7y ago

https://ircv3.net/ https://ircv3.net/

ObsoleteNerd 7y ago

> Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. Is being worked on now: https://irc.com/ https://irc.com/

HereBeBeasties 7y ago

It sounds like you are looking for Matrix.org (and Riot.im)

Marsymars 7y ago

Doesn't answer your protocol question, but Textual is a really fantastic IRC client for macOS with various modern capabilities.

tatersolid 7y ago

> Eons ago I wondered why the IRC and NNTP protocols weren't being improved. For the same reason SMTP hasn’t meaningfully improved in the last 25 or so years. It’s an ossified protocol because of all the competing implementations. Moxie is right about that bit. HTTP and HTML are slightly different because of the huge dollars backing implementers, but there are still significant features not in one or more if the major browsers, and adoption of HTML5 was actually pretty slow. Basically, open standards sound awesome, but they quickly get frozen in time due to compatibility constraints.

Razengan 7y ago
So we really have no one to blame but ourselves.