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> Unfortunately some are also moving to entirely closed source platforms like Discord From an openness point of view, yes, that's unfortunate. But discord chan

> Unfortunately some are also moving to entirely closed source platforms like Discord From an openness point of view, yes, that's unfortunate. But discord channels are arguably way more useful than IRC nowadays. The mere message persistence is something that tips the scale in favour of Discord.

foobar33333 5y ago
Matrix is still far ahead of IRC while still being open.
- anthk 5y ago
  You can run an IRC client in really limited machines. You can have a client even with Netcat and SH.
  - curryst 5y ago
    Machines that can't run Matrix is a pretty small subset. There's a Matrix plugin for Weechat, so you should be able to connect from anything with roughly the power of a Raspberry Pi. Probably slightly less than that; but yeah, you're probably not going to have a good time trying to use an ESP32 as a client. I don't see that as a huge drawback.
    - progval 5y ago
      > There's a Matrix plugin for Weechat There are two: * https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix is in maintenance mode, and in beta according to https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix/ https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix/ * https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs is a "work in progress and doesn't do much yet"
      - c22 5y ago
        There's also an older Lua version: https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script
  - SSLy 5y ago
    But we shouldn't held UX ransom by such hardware. Martix has TUI clients too.
    - welterde 5y ago
      Currently playing with Matrix a bit and I have to say that most of the TUI clients are pretty terrible still. The desktop clients are not much better, they either have mobile UI but on desktop or are quite buggy still. And what they all have in common is that they are quite slow as well, despite local homeserver running off an nvme ssd. None of the ones I have tried come even close to UX of pretty much any desktop IRC client.
      - Arathorn 5y ago
        weechat-matrix should be pretty great, given the TUI is... well, weechat, which is a pretty great IRC TUI?
        welterde 5y ago
        That had some weird interactions with some of the other scripts I was running. There were some known incompatibilities that were still being worked on - and now it's being rewritten in rust? In any case, I wasn't having a great time with the python version of it. So went with a more native TUI application (gomuks) and didn't really enjoy that either (scrolling broken, weird mouse behavior, unread messages got stuck on some channels and in other rooms it didn't show any unread messages at all, stuck room that I already left and some other issues that annoyed me). Then I thought I give some desktop applications a go (quaternion, spectral, nheko, mirage and last I tried was neochat) and they fell into roughly two categories: ok-ish UX but too buggy to be usable or work but have UI designed for mobile but on desktop (which is a no-go for me). That's where I am with my quest for a decent matrix client. I haven't tried _all_ desktop clients yet, but there are not that many non-electron/browser based ones left I think.
        anthk 5y ago
        >which is a pretty great IRC TUI? Catgirl, or some patched mpu irc.
  - na85 5y ago
    I like IRC a lot but I don't see this as an advantage of IRC. To a first approximation, zero people are connecting to IRC via netcat.
    - anthk 5y ago
      It's an example on the trivialness on using it, you can get a client anywhere, like gopher. SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again. You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on.
      - na85 5y ago
        >SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again. >You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on. I understood what you meant. But when would any of those scenarios occur and you don't have your phone, and thus access to Matrix/Discord/whatever? IRC has awful UX on a phone, and I say this as a guy with a sophisticated weechat+Pushbullet setup going on. The benefits of being able to get on IRC from your NetBSD toaster aren't really benefits at all because you always have a phone. Users want slack/discord-like presence. They want push notifications on hilights. They don't want to have to futz about with znc or tmux+irssi. IRC failed to keep up with the tastes of modern users and that's why it's been slowly hemorrhaging users for 15 years.
        welterde 5y ago
        > They want push notifications on hilights. Huh? Pretty much all mobile irc clients have that though? And if you are running weechat anyway, something like weechat-android might be an better option for you? That connects back to weechat using the weechat relay protocol.
        5y ago
Zababa 5y ago
I think Zulip is a good alternative. It's FOSS and has persistance and threading. I do dislike the fact that you have to sign up and can't see the discussions without it.
robjan 5y ago
That's great until discord changes their business model and reduces or removes the free plan.
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
  This is what I fear will happen, as it seems to be the cycle. I do however need to give some credit for not selling out to Micro$oft.
- anticensor 5y ago
  The past and recent changes show they have been adding more paid features, rather than moving features to paid plans.
gowld 5y ago
Message persistence is provided by irc log services.
- Zak 5y ago
  Kids these days, who should get off our lawns, do not like that user experience. If I was starting a new chat channel for a project, I'd use Matrix, not IRC. Matrix is more decentralized than IRC due to federation, and Element offers a user experience that should be familiar and comfortable to users of Slack and Discord.
  - welterde 5y ago
    Maybe I am alone in this, but not everyone likes the UX of slack or discord and might prefer a more information focused/less distracting desktop application and prefer a native desktop application over something electron/browser based. And for those people the current options for Matrix are all very much a work in progress to put it mildly.
    - Zak 5y ago
      I've been using nheko (well, the fork of it that's actually maintained). There are a couple areas in which it's a bit of a WIP, but it's a pretty good experience so far.
      - welterde 5y ago
        Giving Nheko a spin right now and while it is somewhat better than some of the other matrix clients I have tried, the UI is still much too close to discord/slack for my taste. And doesn't have enough knobs to disable features I don't want(*) (hopefully that will change over time). It feels quite a lot snappier than the other clients, which is good. It wastes quite a bit of vertical space per message, but it's still somehow hard to see for me which lines were said by which person. Something with relative placement of avatar, nick and message is throwing me off. (*) Granted, it may be a bit odd that I simply want to disable _all_ matrix features (avatars, replies, displaying images, honoring redactions, large multiline messages/embedded texts, typing notifications, etc.).
_jal 5y ago
Moving away from IRC means a lot of more casual open source types will not follow. I not going to install some random chat app I'm never going to use again and go through signup bullshit just to see if there's someone who can give me a hand on something - to big of a barrier.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  Discord works perfectly fine as a simple webpage with a basic email/password user account. In that sense it's actually significantly more accessible than IRC, which is not web-native and does require the use of either a client or some web bridge.
  - _jal 5y ago
    It is friction. No matter how little you think it matters, adding friction always loses people. In this case, they're the old-hands types; if you think your project would benefit from losing those in favor of newbies, sure, you can make that choice. Like I said, messing around with someone's email verification nonsense probably with a captcha and stupid questions on top is likely more than I want to spend on seeing if someone who might help me with a transient issue is even available, so I am unlikely to do so.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    > Discord works perfectly fine as a simple webpage It has a webapp, but it does not work "perfectly fine" in my experience. The UX is bewilderingly complex; it took me several minutes to figure out how to make it stop ringing more bells and whistles than a las vegas casino. I had a hard time even figuring out what symbols were meant to be buttons that get clicked; even finding the settings screen was a pain in the ass. It's truly awful.
    - gerikson 5y ago
      Out of curiosity, what IRC client do you use?
lokedhs 5y ago
If they need that, they can use Matrix. There is really no reason to move to a closed ecosystem.

foobar33333 5y ago

Matrix is still far ahead of IRC while still being open.

anthk 5y ago
You can run an IRC client in really limited machines. You can have a client even with Netcat and SH.
- curryst 5y ago
  Machines that can't run Matrix is a pretty small subset. There's a Matrix plugin for Weechat, so you should be able to connect from anything with roughly the power of a Raspberry Pi. Probably slightly less than that; but yeah, you're probably not going to have a good time trying to use an ESP32 as a client. I don't see that as a huge drawback.
  - progval 5y ago
    > There's a Matrix plugin for Weechat There are two: * https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix is in maintenance mode, and in beta according to https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix/ https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/weechat-matrix/ * https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs is a "work in progress and doesn't do much yet"
    - c22 5y ago
      There's also an older Lua version: https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script https://github.com/torhve/weechat-matrix-protocol-script
- SSLy 5y ago
  But we shouldn't held UX ransom by such hardware. Martix has TUI clients too.
  - welterde 5y ago
    Currently playing with Matrix a bit and I have to say that most of the TUI clients are pretty terrible still. The desktop clients are not much better, they either have mobile UI but on desktop or are quite buggy still. And what they all have in common is that they are quite slow as well, despite local homeserver running off an nvme ssd. None of the ones I have tried come even close to UX of pretty much any desktop IRC client.
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      weechat-matrix should be pretty great, given the TUI is... well, weechat, which is a pretty great IRC TUI?
      - welterde 5y ago
        That had some weird interactions with some of the other scripts I was running. There were some known incompatibilities that were still being worked on - and now it's being rewritten in rust? In any case, I wasn't having a great time with the python version of it. So went with a more native TUI application (gomuks) and didn't really enjoy that either (scrolling broken, weird mouse behavior, unread messages got stuck on some channels and in other rooms it didn't show any unread messages at all, stuck room that I already left and some other issues that annoyed me). Then I thought I give some desktop applications a go (quaternion, spectral, nheko, mirage and last I tried was neochat) and they fell into roughly two categories: ok-ish UX but too buggy to be usable or work but have UI designed for mobile but on desktop (which is a no-go for me). That's where I am with my quest for a decent matrix client. I haven't tried _all_ desktop clients yet, but there are not that many non-electron/browser based ones left I think.
      - anthk 5y ago
        >which is a pretty great IRC TUI? Catgirl, or some patched mpu irc.
- na85 5y ago
  I like IRC a lot but I don't see this as an advantage of IRC. To a first approximation, zero people are connecting to IRC via netcat.
  - anthk 5y ago
    It's an example on the trivialness on using it, you can get a client anywhere, like gopher. SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again. You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on.
    - na85 5y ago
      >SSL/TLS is broken and you need help over IRC? No problem. Your main PC broke and all you have is a 486/Amiga/Atari or even some PDA connected to the router with a gateway? No issues again. >You just have a installed base, your pkg manager is broken and all you have is netcat, a shell and Unix utilities? Go on. I understood what you meant. But when would any of those scenarios occur and you don't have your phone, and thus access to Matrix/Discord/whatever? IRC has awful UX on a phone, and I say this as a guy with a sophisticated weechat+Pushbullet setup going on. The benefits of being able to get on IRC from your NetBSD toaster aren't really benefits at all because you always have a phone. Users want slack/discord-like presence. They want push notifications on hilights. They don't want to have to futz about with znc or tmux+irssi. IRC failed to keep up with the tastes of modern users and that's why it's been slowly hemorrhaging users for 15 years.
      - welterde 5y ago
        > They want push notifications on hilights. Huh? Pretty much all mobile irc clients have that though? And if you are running weechat anyway, something like weechat-android might be an better option for you? That connects back to weechat using the weechat relay protocol.
        5y ago

Zababa 5y ago

I think Zulip is a good alternative. It's FOSS and has persistance and threading. I do dislike the fact that you have to sign up and can't see the discussions without it.

robjan 5y ago

That's great until discord changes their business model and reduces or removes the free plan.

b0tzzzzzzman 5y ago
This is what I fear will happen, as it seems to be the cycle. I do however need to give some credit for not selling out to Micro$oft.
anticensor 5y ago
The past and recent changes show they have been adding more paid features, rather than moving features to paid plans.

gowld 5y ago

Message persistence is provided by irc log services.

Zak 5y ago
Kids these days, who should get off our lawns, do not like that user experience. If I was starting a new chat channel for a project, I'd use Matrix, not IRC. Matrix is more decentralized than IRC due to federation, and Element offers a user experience that should be familiar and comfortable to users of Slack and Discord.
- welterde 5y ago
  Maybe I am alone in this, but not everyone likes the UX of slack or discord and might prefer a more information focused/less distracting desktop application and prefer a native desktop application over something electron/browser based. And for those people the current options for Matrix are all very much a work in progress to put it mildly.
  - Zak 5y ago
    I've been using nheko (well, the fork of it that's actually maintained). There are a couple areas in which it's a bit of a WIP, but it's a pretty good experience so far.
    - welterde 5y ago
      Giving Nheko a spin right now and while it is somewhat better than some of the other matrix clients I have tried, the UI is still much too close to discord/slack for my taste. And doesn't have enough knobs to disable features I don't want(*) (hopefully that will change over time). It feels quite a lot snappier than the other clients, which is good. It wastes quite a bit of vertical space per message, but it's still somehow hard to see for me which lines were said by which person. Something with relative placement of avatar, nick and message is throwing me off. (*) Granted, it may be a bit odd that I simply want to disable _all_ matrix features (avatars, replies, displaying images, honoring redactions, large multiline messages/embedded texts, typing notifications, etc.).

_jal 5y ago

Moving away from IRC means a lot of more casual open source types will not follow. I not going to install some random chat app I'm never going to use again and go through signup bullshit just to see if there's someone who can give me a hand on something - to big of a barrier.

CydeWeys 5y ago
Discord works perfectly fine as a simple webpage with a basic email/password user account. In that sense it's actually significantly more accessible than IRC, which is not web-native and does require the use of either a client or some web bridge.
- _jal 5y ago
  It is friction. No matter how little you think it matters, adding friction always loses people. In this case, they're the old-hands types; if you think your project would benefit from losing those in favor of newbies, sure, you can make that choice. Like I said, messing around with someone's email verification nonsense probably with a captcha and stupid questions on top is likely more than I want to spend on seeing if someone who might help me with a transient issue is even available, so I am unlikely to do so.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  > Discord works perfectly fine as a simple webpage It has a webapp, but it does not work "perfectly fine" in my experience. The UX is bewilderingly complex; it took me several minutes to figure out how to make it stop ringing more bells and whistles than a las vegas casino. I had a hard time even figuring out what symbols were meant to be buttons that get clicked; even finding the settings screen was a pain in the ass. It's truly awful.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what IRC client do you use?

lokedhs 5y ago

If they need that, they can use Matrix. There is really no reason to move to a closed ecosystem.