8 ms·

Even under the charitable interpretation, he "cares about IRC" in a way very different from how any of the projects that use Freenode care about IRC. Ask Gento

by geofft 5y ago

Even under the charitable interpretation, he "cares about IRC" in a way very different from how any of the projects that use Freenode care about IRC. Ask Gentoo or Ubuntu or Wikipedia what they want out of an IRC network, and they'll probably say, hm, more stability and less spam, I guess. Ask Andrew Lee what he wants abut IRC and this is what he says (from https://irc.com/ https://irc.com/): > Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect.

vfclists 5y ago
> Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect. i.e. he wants to evolve/transmogrify IRC into a system that is more amenable to centralization, data collection and monetization.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Hmm, sounds like he wants to make another WhatsApp, and probably expecting a few billion Zuckdollars buy-out. Hah, with all the users (the reason Zuck pays billions) abandoning the sinking ship, Lee's dream is evaporating in front of his very eyes. Say bye-bye to that superyacht, Mr. Prince!
  - mercer 5y ago
    I imagine either Freenode will still end up doing fine, or he'll just conclude that us nerds don't understand the concept of ownership and threw him under the bus after all his donations and hard work, and then he'll move on to the next plaything. He'll probably get his superyacht eventually.
daenney 5y ago
I personally wouldn't mind IRC (also) having some of those features, and a client with a more Discord-like UX for those that want it. But I doubt you'll achieve that by single-handedly destroying one of the biggest IRC networks out there and basically guaranteeing folks won't want to work with you.
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
  To offer a different point of view: If I were to create my own chat protocol, I would actively try to make it next to impossible to implement it on mobile and consider this a feature. Nothing is gained by mobile users. From the features/interfaces they expect, the kind of communication people are accustomed to on mobile, and to them just being idlers 24/7 anyways. Let people who want smileys, gifs, fancy UI, backlogs upon reconnect, reply features, friend lists, voice features use discord and whatever, and please let IRC be a stream of text messages and old school and a haven from this modern shiny crappy world.
  - AlexAndScripts 5y ago
    I agree with you, with the exception of backlogs.
    - Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
      I am not denying they can be useful, I am questioning how this should be achieved. You are connected, you receive the messages, you aren't, you don't. You don't want to miss anything, how about making sure you stay connected? Is this really something that has to be built into the chat protocol, massively increasing its complexity and just giving headaches, security issues, debug problems, wasting developers' time? I don't consider IRC a replacement for online boards / stackexchange. Even stopped logging completely, don't use a bouncer. If I am online, I'm there. Actually think it's an improvement.
    - welterde 5y ago
      That's being worked on and there are already irc daemons that support it (but it's all a bit bolted on until the standard for that is ratified). However it is also a feature that has to be enabled by the server operator and here you may run into different opinions if this should be a thing or not.
  - daenney 5y ago
    > To offer a different point of view: If I were to create my own chat protocol, I would actively try to make it next to impossible to implement it on mobile and consider this a feature. Nothing is gained by mobile users. I can understand where you're coming from, but it's also important to note that a huge part of this planets population doesn't have access to a computer. Many folks, if they have internet access at all, only have access to it through (cheap) mobile devices. A protocol that's explicitly designed to be impractical/hard/impossible to support on mobile would exclude large swaths of people from ever being able to participate.
pmlnr 5y ago
> Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect. So... XMPP?
ashtonkem 5y ago
Yeah, he didn’t need to buy and wreck FreeNode to do that. I do not buy this explanation.

by geofft 5y ago

vfclists 5y ago

> Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect. i.e. he wants to evolve/transmogrify IRC into a system that is more amenable to centralization, data collection and monetization.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Hmm, sounds like he wants to make another WhatsApp, and probably expecting a few billion Zuckdollars buy-out. Hah, with all the users (the reason Zuck pays billions) abandoning the sinking ship, Lee's dream is evaporating in front of his very eyes. Say bye-bye to that superyacht, Mr. Prince!
- mercer 5y ago
  I imagine either Freenode will still end up doing fine, or he'll just conclude that us nerds don't understand the concept of ownership and threw him under the bus after all his donations and hard work, and then he'll move on to the next plaything. He'll probably get his superyacht eventually.

daenney 5y ago

I personally wouldn't mind IRC (also) having some of those features, and a client with a more Discord-like UX for those that want it. But I doubt you'll achieve that by single-handedly destroying one of the biggest IRC networks out there and basically guaranteeing folks won't want to work with you.

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
To offer a different point of view: If I were to create my own chat protocol, I would actively try to make it next to impossible to implement it on mobile and consider this a feature. Nothing is gained by mobile users. From the features/interfaces they expect, the kind of communication people are accustomed to on mobile, and to them just being idlers 24/7 anyways. Let people who want smileys, gifs, fancy UI, backlogs upon reconnect, reply features, friend lists, voice features use discord and whatever, and please let IRC be a stream of text messages and old school and a haven from this modern shiny crappy world.
- AlexAndScripts 5y ago
  I agree with you, with the exception of backlogs.
  - Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
    I am not denying they can be useful, I am questioning how this should be achieved. You are connected, you receive the messages, you aren't, you don't. You don't want to miss anything, how about making sure you stay connected? Is this really something that has to be built into the chat protocol, massively increasing its complexity and just giving headaches, security issues, debug problems, wasting developers' time? I don't consider IRC a replacement for online boards / stackexchange. Even stopped logging completely, don't use a bouncer. If I am online, I'm there. Actually think it's an improvement.
  - welterde 5y ago
    That's being worked on and there are already irc daemons that support it (but it's all a bit bolted on until the standard for that is ratified). However it is also a feature that has to be enabled by the server operator and here you may run into different opinions if this should be a thing or not.
- daenney 5y ago
  > To offer a different point of view: If I were to create my own chat protocol, I would actively try to make it next to impossible to implement it on mobile and consider this a feature. Nothing is gained by mobile users. I can understand where you're coming from, but it's also important to note that a huge part of this planets population doesn't have access to a computer. Many folks, if they have internet access at all, only have access to it through (cheap) mobile devices. A protocol that's explicitly designed to be impractical/hard/impossible to support on mobile would exclude large swaths of people from ever being able to participate.

pmlnr 5y ago

> Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect. So... XMPP?

ashtonkem 5y ago

Yeah, he didn’t need to buy and wreck FreeNode to do that. I do not buy this explanation.