3 ms·

IRC was commercialized very successfully. It’s called Slack and Discord.

by kridsdale1 3y ago

cobertos 3y ago
Twitch chat also uses IRC
- mondobe 3y ago
  So does the online multiplayer for Worms: Armageddon, ChanServ and all.
  - puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
    IIRC the original Battlenet (Starcraft etc) also used it.
    - opello 3y ago
      Yes! We had Diablo 2 Battle.net bots that were IRC clients. :) Fond memories.
  - cmsj 3y ago
    random fun fact, the creator of Worms used to hang out on a #worms channel on IRCnet. It was a lot of fun for many years, but eventually Andy left and people slowly drifted away as the Amiga scene shrank, and now all that's left is me and a few people who weren't even there in the original era, in a #worms channel on ARCNet (I forget why we moved from IRCnet). Sadly, I have no logs from the old days, so all I have is memories of lots of CTCP SOUND shenanigans.
- PokemonNoGo 3y ago
  Can you connect to it with a regular client?
  - ericbarrett 3y ago
    You could back in the early days (I did it), not sure today.
    - themoonisachees 3y ago
      You still can, it's very useful for bots and game integrations because you just need an IRC lib in your language of choice. However, the servers aren't IRC anymore, they just have a compat shim that speaks IRC for those purposes.
  - fivre 3y ago
    yes, i use irssi to hold persistent sessions for all the twitch chats im in. doesn't require anything special beyond an oauth token sent as the server password
s3krit 3y ago
neither of those things use IRC. unless you're just referring to channel-based instant messaging.
- fivre 3y ago
  the original "protocol not commercialized" sentiment in the OP is a bit odd. nobody commercialized HTTP per se (okay, you could make an argument for SaaS CDN proxies, but i don't think that was the spirit of the original argument), they commercialized things you could deliver using it. the channel-based real time chat model is what mattered, not the intricate details of how the underlying bits are delivered functionally, Discord and Slack have commercialized that model, with clear and obvious effects for people that were using IRC. every community i was part of via IRC has migrated to those services, and i haven't encountered a new community on IRC in forever, but have encountered plenty of new Discord communities
  - ryandv 3y ago
    The particular point about protocols is that IRC is dead-simple to implement. It's all ASCII/UTF-8, CRLF-delimited messages of space-separated tokens. You can get a working implementation with the stdlib of most languages in about 200 lines. The protocol hasn't really changed much over the years. Contrast with HTTP and other related web technologies, whose specifications are so complex that only the largest tech firms can even dream of building their own implementations, let alone achieving full standards compliance. Moreover, those standards are also often driven by those same corporate interests who own significant usage share in the browser space. To the extent that corporate interests will advocate for standards in their own self-interest (recent example: Google WEI), I would say that the protocol has been commercialized.
- ascorbic 3y ago
  Even if Slack doesn't IRC it is absolutely based on it, down to slash commands and channel name syntax.
  - fernandotakai 3y ago

IRC was commercialized very successfully. It’s called Slack and Discord.

cobertos 3y ago

Twitch chat also uses IRC

mondobe 3y ago
So does the online multiplayer for Worms: Armageddon, ChanServ and all.
- puzzlingcaptcha 3y ago
  IIRC the original Battlenet (Starcraft etc) also used it.
  - opello 3y ago
    Yes! We had Diablo 2 Battle.net bots that were IRC clients. :) Fond memories.
- cmsj 3y ago
  random fun fact, the creator of Worms used to hang out on a #worms channel on IRCnet. It was a lot of fun for many years, but eventually Andy left and people slowly drifted away as the Amiga scene shrank, and now all that's left is me and a few people who weren't even there in the original era, in a #worms channel on ARCNet (I forget why we moved from IRCnet). Sadly, I have no logs from the old days, so all I have is memories of lots of CTCP SOUND shenanigans.
PokemonNoGo 3y ago
Can you connect to it with a regular client?
- ericbarrett 3y ago
  You could back in the early days (I did it), not sure today.
  - themoonisachees 3y ago
    You still can, it's very useful for bots and game integrations because you just need an IRC lib in your language of choice. However, the servers aren't IRC anymore, they just have a compat shim that speaks IRC for those purposes.
- fivre 3y ago
  yes, i use irssi to hold persistent sessions for all the twitch chats im in. doesn't require anything special beyond an oauth token sent as the server password

s3krit 3y ago

neither of those things use IRC. unless you're just referring to channel-based instant messaging.

fivre 3y ago
the original "protocol not commercialized" sentiment in the OP is a bit odd. nobody commercialized HTTP per se (okay, you could make an argument for SaaS CDN proxies, but i don't think that was the spirit of the original argument), they commercialized things you could deliver using it. the channel-based real time chat model is what mattered, not the intricate details of how the underlying bits are delivered functionally, Discord and Slack have commercialized that model, with clear and obvious effects for people that were using IRC. every community i was part of via IRC has migrated to those services, and i haven't encountered a new community on IRC in forever, but have encountered plenty of new Discord communities
- ryandv 3y ago
  The particular point about protocols is that IRC is dead-simple to implement. It's all ASCII/UTF-8, CRLF-delimited messages of space-separated tokens. You can get a working implementation with the stdlib of most languages in about 200 lines. The protocol hasn't really changed much over the years. Contrast with HTTP and other related web technologies, whose specifications are so complex that only the largest tech firms can even dream of building their own implementations, let alone achieving full standards compliance. Moreover, those standards are also often driven by those same corporate interests who own significant usage share in the browser space. To the extent that corporate interests will advocate for standards in their own self-interest (recent example: Google WEI), I would say that the protocol has been commercialized.
ascorbic 3y ago
Even if Slack doesn't IRC it is absolutely based on it, down to slash commands and channel name syntax.
- fernandotakai 3y ago