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I think all of this conflict will just cause most users to abandon IRC altogether for Slack or Discord. Points of prolonged disruption are where people start to

I think all of this conflict will just cause most users to abandon IRC altogether for Slack or Discord. Points of prolonged disruption are where people start to seriously evaluate jumping to different platforms, even if they were previously interested in mission or tech of IRC.

twelvechairs 5y ago
Element/matrix I'm sure will get a boost. Many IRC users are wary of Slack and Discord
- jeltz 5y ago
  Libera's Matrix bridge seems to already work better than Freenode's.
  - gpanders 5y ago
    Indeed, joining a Libera channel from Matrix is as simple as joining #channel:libera.chat. It’s much simpler and cleaner than the Freenode bridge.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  What’s wrong with discord? It’s not a lot different from irc if you are using it for chatting in channels. Edit: okay I get it.
  - abestic9 5y ago
    It's not FOSS (neither client nor server), you can't control any of the infrastructure (and therefore guarantee any level of privacy), sovereignty of the data, the data itself, and policies for use which may not align with your own. All before you get into the technical differences in applications and protocols - good and bad.
  - spystath 5y ago
    The problem with proprietary chat services is that if, for instance, Discord pulls a Freenode you need to look for an entirely different app to migrate. With IRC or any federated network for that matter you point to a different server and its business as usual. See how fast everything moved over to Libera over the past few weeks.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    The biggest issue I personally have with Discord is that everyone has a "server". And that server has 42 highly specific channels on it. And it has as many bots as Snow White had dwarves. ...and it has less users than channels. Discord should have a "lobby" server where every small group could have a (private, invite only by default) channel. After they have enough people they could upgrade that to a full server. But it's too late now and I already have 50 Discord servers on my client, of those maybe 4-5 have over 50 people on them. The rest have more channels than members.
geofft 5y ago
In my experience, it feels like 90% of Freenode channels have moved to Libera, 5% have moved to OFTC, and 5% have moved to something else like Discord or "just use GitHub issues" or whatever. Certainly the number of moves to Libera is high enough that in practice the Freenode community/userbase is more or less also on Libera (turns out IRC clients can connect to multiple networks easily). So if you want the old community it's there; if you happen to want to target a different community anyway (and perhaps you were experimenting with these options already), Discord and Slack and so forth are there.
- floatboth 5y ago
  Hm, with the channels I'm in, it's more 50/50 for libera vs OFTC. OFTC now has Asahi, Meson, and the whole graphics stack (dri-devel, intel-gfx, radeon, wayland…)
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    OFTC already had a significant kernel dev presence, so a lot of us in this niche gravitated towards there. The broader open source community definitely skewed more towards Libera, though. Which is fine, diversity is good!
diath 5y ago
One could put a tinfoil hat on and argue that it was a deliberate move precisely to force people onto platforms that collaborate with 3 letter agencies.
- kaba0 5y ago
  As opposed to the well-secured IRC? Though, one can also migrate to Matrix.
  - diath 5y ago
    > As opposed to the well-secured IRC? It's less about the protocol itself and more about the community/culture, I trust tech savvy people more to care about privacy than profit-driven platforms like Discord.
    - ferdowsi 5y ago
      I'm sure that the culture is very privacy/tech savvy, but Freenode even couldn't be bothered to enforce TLS on all connections. There's no need for overt collaboration at that point since communication is just wide-open for spying. It appeals primarily to a subset of Web 1.0 enthusiasts.
    - wernercd 5y ago
      You mean like the tech savvy people that ran the encrypted platform Anom? https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-sting-using-anom-platform-leads-to-global-roundup-of-suspects-11623165556 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-sting-using-anom-platform-l...
      - diath 5y ago
        I have never stated that things run by tech savvy people make things inherently secure; they make things *more likely* to be secure/privacy oriented, especially if you consider the fact that somebody would be more likely to speak up about potential foul play if they're a volunteering enthusiast rather than if they're working for a for-profit company that would just tell them to shut up or get fired and deal with the legal consequences.

twelvechairs 5y ago

Element/matrix I'm sure will get a boost. Many IRC users are wary of Slack and Discord

jeltz 5y ago
Libera's Matrix bridge seems to already work better than Freenode's.
- gpanders 5y ago
  Indeed, joining a Libera channel from Matrix is as simple as joining #channel:libera.chat. It’s much simpler and cleaner than the Freenode bridge.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
What’s wrong with discord? It’s not a lot different from irc if you are using it for chatting in channels. Edit: okay I get it.
- abestic9 5y ago
  It's not FOSS (neither client nor server), you can't control any of the infrastructure (and therefore guarantee any level of privacy), sovereignty of the data, the data itself, and policies for use which may not align with your own. All before you get into the technical differences in applications and protocols - good and bad.
- spystath 5y ago
  The problem with proprietary chat services is that if, for instance, Discord pulls a Freenode you need to look for an entirely different app to migrate. With IRC or any federated network for that matter you point to a different server and its business as usual. See how fast everything moved over to Libera over the past few weeks.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  The biggest issue I personally have with Discord is that everyone has a "server". And that server has 42 highly specific channels on it. And it has as many bots as Snow White had dwarves. ...and it has less users than channels. Discord should have a "lobby" server where every small group could have a (private, invite only by default) channel. After they have enough people they could upgrade that to a full server. But it's too late now and I already have 50 Discord servers on my client, of those maybe 4-5 have over 50 people on them. The rest have more channels than members.

geofft 5y ago

In my experience, it feels like 90% of Freenode channels have moved to Libera, 5% have moved to OFTC, and 5% have moved to something else like Discord or "just use GitHub issues" or whatever. Certainly the number of moves to Libera is high enough that in practice the Freenode community/userbase is more or less also on Libera (turns out IRC clients can connect to multiple networks easily). So if you want the old community it's there; if you happen to want to target a different community anyway (and perhaps you were experimenting with these options already), Discord and Slack and so forth are there.

floatboth 5y ago
Hm, with the channels I'm in, it's more 50/50 for libera vs OFTC. OFTC now has Asahi, Meson, and the whole graphics stack (dri-devel, intel-gfx, radeon, wayland…)
- marcan_42 5y ago
  OFTC already had a significant kernel dev presence, so a lot of us in this niche gravitated towards there. The broader open source community definitely skewed more towards Libera, though. Which is fine, diversity is good!

diath 5y ago

One could put a tinfoil hat on and argue that it was a deliberate move precisely to force people onto platforms that collaborate with 3 letter agencies.

kaba0 5y ago
As opposed to the well-secured IRC? Though, one can also migrate to Matrix.
- diath 5y ago
  > As opposed to the well-secured IRC? It's less about the protocol itself and more about the community/culture, I trust tech savvy people more to care about privacy than profit-driven platforms like Discord.
  - ferdowsi 5y ago
    I'm sure that the culture is very privacy/tech savvy, but Freenode even couldn't be bothered to enforce TLS on all connections. There's no need for overt collaboration at that point since communication is just wide-open for spying. It appeals primarily to a subset of Web 1.0 enthusiasts.
  - wernercd 5y ago
    You mean like the tech savvy people that ran the encrypted platform Anom? https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-sting-using-anom-platform-leads-to-global-roundup-of-suspects-11623165556 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-sting-using-anom-platform-l...
    - diath 5y ago
      I have never stated that things run by tech savvy people make things inherently secure; they make things *more likely* to be secure/privacy oriented, especially if you consider the fact that somebody would be more likely to speak up about potential foul play if they're a volunteering enthusiast rather than if they're working for a for-profit company that would just tell them to shut up or get fired and deal with the legal consequences.