The IRCv3 efforts are excellent and I think there's a place for them. In fact, it's used in a few places (Twitch chat is IRCv3-powered for example). But… rant incoming. It's too late for IRC. I...
Exemplary
The IRCv3 efforts are excellent and I think there's a place for them. In fact, it's used in a few places (Twitch chat is IRCv3-powered for example). But… rant incoming.
It's too late for IRC. I say this having spent a decade and a half on the medium.
Freenode was one of the last great IRC "features" so to say, and it's just chok full of spam.
I run an IRC gateway for one of my Discord servers, but even there I had to make IRC registration-required and turn on a bunch of user-hostile security settings because it just wouldn't stop.
IRC has failed because too few people wanted to acknowledge its flaws. When Slack came along, there were those that complained that "Oh but Slack isn't an open protocol, it has this and that problem, blah blah", and there were those that switched.
Discord then came along, fixed a bunch of Slack's flaws for a huge amount of IRC users (gamers and open source projects), and now the medium is virtually unused.
So many open technologies die because people are unwilling to acknowledge their flaws in the face of better proprietary tech. This is one of those things where Stallman has IMO taught a lot of people the wrong lesson, that "proprietary is always worse". That mindset leads to free & open tech being systematically practically worse, because it's "inherently better".
This goes for everything, not just IRC. I've seen it so much in FOSS. It's one of those things I really want to work on and improve; teach people how to acknowledge and accept our flaws so that we always strive for better. Instead, I see this kind of attitude:
Why do you use Chrome instead of Firefox?
I tried Firefox but I can't play Netflix with it.
Oh that's DRM! Netflix is evil! It's a GOOD thing you can't play that in the browser! Besides you should be using OpenFlix instead, where every movie and series is free and open source; you have to run your own instance of it, but that's only a few hours to set it up… you're on Linux right? Wait, what, Windows?! Your preferences and life choices are all wrong!
… yes, exaggerating, but not by that much. I've seen people readily dismiss persistent IRC backlogs because "if you need that you can just run a bouncer" aaaaaaand that's why IRC's dead now.
IRCv3 is an example of the kind of good efforts that happen when we do acknowledge flaws, but the problem is that it's too little, too late. I would actually rather let IRC die at this point. Matrix is probably the best shot we have at a modern, open communication protocol (which I think is one of technology's most important goals to achieve for this decade…). The problem is always adoption. Messaging protocols don't exist in a vacuum, they usually require adoption in order to function.
I never get any spam on Freenode. I keep Hexchat open 24/7. Currently on Freenode: #C has 912 users #emacs has 627 users #linux has 2217 users IRC may not be as popular as Slack and other...
I never get any spam on Freenode. I keep Hexchat open 24/7. Currently on Freenode:
#C has 912 users
#emacs has 627 users
#linux has 2217 users
IRC may not be as popular as Slack and other platforms, but it is frequently useful and far from dead in my view. It's lightweight and straight to the point. Sometimes I get to talk to the devs themselves, which is awesome.
To be clear: I'm not saying IRC doesn't need to change, I'm saying it is far from dead.
Yeah I have a premium irccloud.com subscription, I keep it open all the time in a dozen channels still. I'm in some 1k+ channels. The idle rate is something like 95% if not higher and while it's...
Yeah I have a premium irccloud.com subscription, I keep it open all the time in a dozen channels still. I'm in some 1k+ channels. The idle rate is something like 95% if not higher and while it's possible to get answers to queries in there, I usually have more luck over something like Twitter.
I mean think about it. 2217 users for linux on freenode. That is crazy low. Discord's more popular servers approach 100k users per server.
I saw it because one of the open source communities I started was initially on IRC, and capped out at about 20 people before I moved it to Discord (keeping the IRC gateway I mentioned thanks to Matterbridge), where it got to ~200 people in half the time.
Its a very very slow death. Its kind of in zombie mode right now with a bunch of dedicated users who will never leave until something replicates the features they care about (light weight, open...
Its a very very slow death. Its kind of in zombie mode right now with a bunch of dedicated users who will never leave until something replicates the features they care about (light weight, open source, decentralized) Matrix does 2 of those but until it becomes lightweight and fast the rest of the users just wont move.
I've found that for more niche issues/projects. IRC is the only place I can actually talk an issue through with someone. Even if it's just talking into the void and hoping for a reply. Sometimes...
I've found that for more niche issues/projects. IRC is the only place I can actually talk an issue through with someone. Even if it's just talking into the void and hoping for a reply.
Sometimes I'm not exactly sure what I need to google, what the term for this is, or if X is an error message or just a warning, and google isn't always helpful when it comes to niche things so I just hop onto irc and go fishing.
If I'm lucky I'll find my way with the help of some dude I can't help but picture having the grayest of beards and I'll wind up with tonnes of insight into things that are even just tangentially related. I love IRC for that, but the last few attempts have been unfruitful shouts into the void personally.
There is a practical limit to how many users can be on one irc channel at once. At some point the rate of chat gets too fast to read anything. Thats why I mainly use an different linux irc channel...
There is a practical limit to how many users can be on one irc channel at once. At some point the rate of chat gets too fast to read anything. Thats why I mainly use an different linux irc channel that has less users but you can actually talk in it and get to know people.
IRC's lack of text history and metadata support have caused its death. It's too late to save the current implementation. I don't understand why you're so happy to throw away IRC. The bulk of your...
IRC's lack of text history and metadata support have caused its death. It's too late to save the current implementation. I don't understand why you're so happy to throw away IRC. The bulk of your comment is about abandoning FOSS for Proprietary when it's convenient, but really all you're saying is: IRC no, Matrix yes.
Just like how for normal internet users IRC isn't an acceptable alternative to Slack/Discord, I believe that Slack/Discord are not an acceptable alternative for many of IRC's users. I personally use all three, but it would be hypocritical for software developers for FOSS (a large portion of freenode's users) to use a Proprietary communication tool for development and communication.
The problem I always see with FOSS alternatives is that they are evangelized by people who use them on the basis of personal conviction, and then try to appeal to the same convictions in order to...
The problem I always see with FOSS alternatives is that they are evangelized by people who use them on the basis of personal conviction, and then try to appeal to the same convictions in order to promote it, regardless of whether these convictions are shared. The sad truth is that that will always limit you to a very select group of people.
If you aren't concerned about privacy, open access, or FOSS then these things just come laden with more difficulties and less value, and you might as well be using the proprietary solution.
I agree that it's too late for IRC. Its usage will only decline further. Closed platforms are unfortunately winning. I really hope matrix.org will become a thing because it looks really promising...
I agree that it's too late for IRC. Its usage will only decline further. Closed platforms are unfortunately winning. I really hope matrix.org will become a thing because it looks really promising from technological point of view and it has interest from community.
With all that there are still very valid use cases for IRC so it won't die completely. IRC is very, very simple. It's well know, has many server and client implementations and is stable and reliable. Because of that it's good as for example backup method of communication. Eg. Google has internal use case 1 where it's used as communication platform for incident response. When eg. hangouts is down, and you are dependency of hangouts, it's good to have a backup communication channel that works.
Stallman preaches that FOSS is better morally, not necessarily technically. I suppirt that. There are big successes in FOSS, and big failures, and a big gradient in between. I don't think it is as...
Stallman preaches that FOSS is better morally, not necessarily technically. I suppirt that.
There are big successes in FOSS, and big failures, and a big gradient in between. I don't think it is as straightforward as you put it when you extend your thoughts on IRC's obsolescence to the entire ecosystem. First of all, popularity is not necessarily a measure of success. And even when it is, it is not the only one. There are stuff that serves a smaller populus well. For me, FOSS is such, software by hackers for hackers. If the focus is on that, and the success is measured with that in mind, we can have a better measure of success. Wrt IRC, I used it a couple times in the last decade and a half which I spent as a FOSS user, and I got aswers to questions that I asked. The chatrooms did not have many people (I don't recall what #group it was), but people that were there were contributors and heavy users, so it had value, and was successful, in my little experience, as a hacker to hacker tool. I used Discord once too I think, but I read chat logs in a few occasions, and I don't think it is fundamentally superior to IRC from a lurkers perspective. Both are totally inferior to email for these purposes anyways.
Out of this "hacker2hacker" space, Discord seems more popular. They apparently cater to an intersecting but differing set of communities. I don't see why relative popularity of one, then, would indicate the death or obsolescence of the other. Why can't they coexist? One smaller, one big.
People taking a stance for their privacy and freedom and counting that a feature is quite understandable IMO. Apart from that, differing needs. No need for one size fits all. That some folks have an intrusive attitude or that the founder of the Free Software Movement has a sweet spot for such software (quite understandably) come after that. I like to have package management, unix tools, privacy, control and longevity when it comes to software, so I use (mainly) Emacs + Firefox + GNU / Linux. That people like me are a minority has not disallowed the development of these software, and as long as such minority can produce the software they use and maintain it, the relative size of the community in comparison with the rest of the world is not really all that important.
Have a quote for that? Stallman makes it clear that his stance is that it doesn't matter whether proprietary software is good or not - the fact is it's unethical, therefore shouldn't be used....
This is one of those things where Stallman has IMO taught a lot of people the wrong lesson, that "proprietary is always worse
Have a quote for that? Stallman makes it clear that his stance is that it doesn't matter whether proprietary software is good or not - the fact is it's unethical, therefore shouldn't be used. Simple as that.
People read what they read, and what they read is that "Stallman says it's bad so I say it's bad". Few people can make the distinction you're making here and it shouldn't be implied that people...
People read what they read, and what they read is that "Stallman says it's bad so I say it's bad". Few people can make the distinction you're making here and it shouldn't be implied that people will or would have to. /cc @cadadr
Stallman's general attitude and "aura" has bred smugness and contempt, kind of like Linus' has bread assholishness (even though Linus really isn't as much of an asshole as people say he is, he's pretty chill generally). You can be right and still do damage. The world is complex and politics are important if you want to get a message across.
Someone as fervent and dedicated as Stallman who knew how to play politics (and by that I mean: how to talk to people, be pragmatic, know where the flaws and limits are, etc) wouldn't just have an obscure creepy cultish following, they'd be a massive role model for free software. Convictions don't have to change, the message just has to speak to people.
I think it's fair to say that Stallman isn't the most... social adept creature. But nobody else has championed the cause - or spurred as much motion - as he has. If it's marketing and politics...
I think it's fair to say that Stallman isn't the most... social adept creature. But nobody else has championed the cause - or spurred as much motion - as he has.
Stallman's general attitude and "aura" has bred smugness and contempt
If it's marketing and politics that are the problem, the free software movement is well aware of their lacking in those departments, generally speaking. I suggest that his aura has bred neither smugness nor contempt. That interpretation comes from Stallman as a person, but what is true is that it reflects poorly on the whole movement at times.
I have a great deal of respect for him, but I agree generally that someone as pure and fervent as Stallman with a more... suave? personality would probably be better for the movement, but I'm not sure you can be politically talented and maintain the granularity required for leading such a nuanced subject.
Anyway this turned into a little bit of a tangent. tldr I agree with the meaning of what you're saying but not some of the specifics. /shrug
I've been hearing about IRCv3 for years - has anything actually progressed? I used IRC for years and years, but now every community I'm a part of has moved to Discord. I miss IRC sometimes, but...
I've been hearing about IRCv3 for years - has anything actually progressed? I used IRC for years and years, but now every community I'm a part of has moved to Discord. I miss IRC sometimes, but not that often.
The IRCv3 efforts are excellent and I think there's a place for them. In fact, it's used in a few places (Twitch chat is IRCv3-powered for example). But… rant incoming.
It's too late for IRC. I say this having spent a decade and a half on the medium.
Freenode was one of the last great IRC "features" so to say, and it's just chok full of spam.
I run an IRC gateway for one of my Discord servers, but even there I had to make IRC registration-required and turn on a bunch of user-hostile security settings because it just wouldn't stop.
IRC has failed because too few people wanted to acknowledge its flaws. When Slack came along, there were those that complained that "Oh but Slack isn't an open protocol, it has this and that problem, blah blah", and there were those that switched.
Discord then came along, fixed a bunch of Slack's flaws for a huge amount of IRC users (gamers and open source projects), and now the medium is virtually unused.
So many open technologies die because people are unwilling to acknowledge their flaws in the face of better proprietary tech. This is one of those things where Stallman has IMO taught a lot of people the wrong lesson, that "proprietary is always worse". That mindset leads to free & open tech being systematically practically worse, because it's "inherently better".
This goes for everything, not just IRC. I've seen it so much in FOSS. It's one of those things I really want to work on and improve; teach people how to acknowledge and accept our flaws so that we always strive for better. Instead, I see this kind of attitude:
… yes, exaggerating, but not by that much. I've seen people readily dismiss persistent IRC backlogs because "if you need that you can just run a bouncer" aaaaaaand that's why IRC's dead now.
IRCv3 is an example of the kind of good efforts that happen when we do acknowledge flaws, but the problem is that it's too little, too late. I would actually rather let IRC die at this point. Matrix is probably the best shot we have at a modern, open communication protocol (which I think is one of technology's most important goals to achieve for this decade…). The problem is always adoption. Messaging protocols don't exist in a vacuum, they usually require adoption in order to function.
I never get any spam on Freenode. I keep Hexchat open 24/7. Currently on Freenode:
#Chas 912 users#emacshas 627 users#linuxhas 2217 usersIRC may not be as popular as Slack and other platforms, but it is frequently useful and far from dead in my view. It's lightweight and straight to the point. Sometimes I get to talk to the devs themselves, which is awesome.
To be clear: I'm not saying IRC doesn't need to change, I'm saying it is far from dead.
Yeah I have a premium irccloud.com subscription, I keep it open all the time in a dozen channels still. I'm in some 1k+ channels. The idle rate is something like 95% if not higher and while it's possible to get answers to queries in there, I usually have more luck over something like Twitter.
I mean think about it. 2217 users for linux on freenode. That is crazy low. Discord's more popular servers approach 100k users per server.
I saw it because one of the open source communities I started was initially on IRC, and capped out at about 20 people before I moved it to Discord (keeping the IRC gateway I mentioned thanks to Matterbridge), where it got to ~200 people in half the time.
I don't dispute any of that. IRC is probably dying, but it is not dead. I still get quality answers on IRC on a regular basis.
Its a very very slow death. Its kind of in zombie mode right now with a bunch of dedicated users who will never leave until something replicates the features they care about (light weight, open source, decentralized) Matrix does 2 of those but until it becomes lightweight and fast the rest of the users just wont move.
Is it really important as long as those that stay are getting what they want from the software and / or the community?
I've found that for more niche issues/projects. IRC is the only place I can actually talk an issue through with someone. Even if it's just talking into the void and hoping for a reply.
Sometimes I'm not exactly sure what I need to google, what the term for this is, or if X is an error message or just a warning, and google isn't always helpful when it comes to niche things so I just hop onto irc and go fishing.
If I'm lucky I'll find my way with the help of some dude I can't help but picture having the grayest of beards and I'll wind up with tonnes of insight into things that are even just tangentially related. I love IRC for that, but the last few attempts have been unfruitful shouts into the void personally.
That said, if either Discord or Gitter had Electron-free apps for Linux I'd probably be using those a lot more. My machine doesn't have much memory.
There is a practical limit to how many users can be on one irc channel at once. At some point the rate of chat gets too fast to read anything. Thats why I mainly use an different linux irc channel that has less users but you can actually talk in it and get to know people.
IRC's lack of text history and metadata support have caused its death. It's too late to save the current implementation. I don't understand why you're so happy to throw away IRC. The bulk of your comment is about abandoning FOSS for Proprietary when it's convenient, but really all you're saying is: IRC no, Matrix yes.
Just like how for normal internet users IRC isn't an acceptable alternative to Slack/Discord, I believe that Slack/Discord are not an acceptable alternative for many of IRC's users. I personally use all three, but it would be hypocritical for software developers for FOSS (a large portion of freenode's users) to use a Proprietary communication tool for development and communication.
The problem I always see with FOSS alternatives is that they are evangelized by people who use them on the basis of personal conviction, and then try to appeal to the same convictions in order to promote it, regardless of whether these convictions are shared. The sad truth is that that will always limit you to a very select group of people.
If you aren't concerned about privacy, open access, or FOSS then these things just come laden with more difficulties and less value, and you might as well be using the proprietary solution.
I agree that it's too late for IRC. Its usage will only decline further. Closed platforms are unfortunately winning. I really hope matrix.org will become a thing because it looks really promising from technological point of view and it has interest from community.
With all that there are still very valid use cases for IRC so it won't die completely. IRC is very, very simple. It's well know, has many server and client implementations and is stable and reliable. Because of that it's good as for example backup method of communication. Eg. Google has internal use case 1 where it's used as communication platform for incident response. When eg. hangouts is down, and you are dependency of hangouts, it's good to have a backup communication channel that works.
Stallman preaches that FOSS is better morally, not necessarily technically. I suppirt that.
There are big successes in FOSS, and big failures, and a big gradient in between. I don't think it is as straightforward as you put it when you extend your thoughts on IRC's obsolescence to the entire ecosystem. First of all, popularity is not necessarily a measure of success. And even when it is, it is not the only one. There are stuff that serves a smaller populus well. For me, FOSS is such, software by hackers for hackers. If the focus is on that, and the success is measured with that in mind, we can have a better measure of success. Wrt IRC, I used it a couple times in the last decade and a half which I spent as a FOSS user, and I got aswers to questions that I asked. The chatrooms did not have many people (I don't recall what #group it was), but people that were there were contributors and heavy users, so it had value, and was successful, in my little experience, as a hacker to hacker tool. I used Discord once too I think, but I read chat logs in a few occasions, and I don't think it is fundamentally superior to IRC from a lurkers perspective. Both are totally inferior to email for these purposes anyways.
Out of this "hacker2hacker" space, Discord seems more popular. They apparently cater to an intersecting but differing set of communities. I don't see why relative popularity of one, then, would indicate the death or obsolescence of the other. Why can't they coexist? One smaller, one big.
People taking a stance for their privacy and freedom and counting that a feature is quite understandable IMO. Apart from that, differing needs. No need for one size fits all. That some folks have an intrusive attitude or that the founder of the Free Software Movement has a sweet spot for such software (quite understandably) come after that. I like to have package management, unix tools, privacy, control and longevity when it comes to software, so I use (mainly) Emacs + Firefox + GNU / Linux. That people like me are a minority has not disallowed the development of these software, and as long as such minority can produce the software they use and maintain it, the relative size of the community in comparison with the rest of the world is not really all that important.
Have a quote for that? Stallman makes it clear that his stance is that it doesn't matter whether proprietary software is good or not - the fact is it's unethical, therefore shouldn't be used. Simple as that.
People read what they read, and what they read is that "Stallman says it's bad so I say it's bad". Few people can make the distinction you're making here and it shouldn't be implied that people will or would have to. /cc @cadadr
Stallman's general attitude and "aura" has bred smugness and contempt, kind of like Linus' has bread assholishness (even though Linus really isn't as much of an asshole as people say he is, he's pretty chill generally). You can be right and still do damage. The world is complex and politics are important if you want to get a message across.
Someone as fervent and dedicated as Stallman who knew how to play politics (and by that I mean: how to talk to people, be pragmatic, know where the flaws and limits are, etc) wouldn't just have an obscure creepy cultish following, they'd be a massive role model for free software. Convictions don't have to change, the message just has to speak to people.
I think it's fair to say that Stallman isn't the most... social adept creature. But nobody else has championed the cause - or spurred as much motion - as he has.
If it's marketing and politics that are the problem, the free software movement is well aware of their lacking in those departments, generally speaking. I suggest that his aura has bred neither smugness nor contempt. That interpretation comes from Stallman as a person, but what is true is that it reflects poorly on the whole movement at times.
I have a great deal of respect for him, but I agree generally that someone as pure and fervent as Stallman with a more... suave? personality would probably be better for the movement, but I'm not sure you can be politically talented and maintain the granularity required for leading such a nuanced subject.
Anyway this turned into a little bit of a tangent. tldr I agree with the meaning of what you're saying but not some of the specifics. /shrug
Why? I've been using Netflix with Firefox on Linux for more than 2 years without any problems.
DRM content is probably not enabled in their Firefox options. They should be able to enable that and it should work.
It asks if you want to the first time you browse a site that requires it. Totally optionally and totally just a single click either way.
It's pretty clear and unmistakable.
Yes, Firefox eventually did include DRM (can be disabled). Mozilla is pragmatic, unlike some.
I've been hearing about IRCv3 for years - has anything actually progressed? I used IRC for years and years, but now every community I'm a part of has moved to Discord. I miss IRC sometimes, but not that often.
Obligatory xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1782/
Meme doesn't work so well because slack killed the irc gateway.