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Poll

Is IRC still a thing?

Definitely, using it almost every day/week.
[ 0 ] (0%)
Went there a few times, it was not for me.
[ 0 ] (0%)
There are now much better alternatives around, such as ... (specify)
[ 0 ] (0%)
What is IRC?
[ 0 ] (0%)
:beer:
[ 0 ] (0%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Topic: Is IRC still a thing? (Read 25923 times)

Is IRC still a thing?

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an application layer protocol that facilitates communication in the form of text. The chat process works on a client/server networking model.
Does not sound like much, but it has history,

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988 to replace a program called MUT (MultiUser Talk) on a BBS called OuluBox at the University of Oulu in Finland, where he was working at the Department of Information Processing Science. Jarkko intended to extend the BBS software he administered, to allow news in the Usenet style, real time discussions and similar BBS features. The first part he implemented was the chat part...
and has users too.

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
As of April 2011, the top 100 IRC networks served more than half a million users at a time,[7] with hundreds of thousands of channels[7] operating on a total of roughly 1,500 servers[7] out of roughly 3,200 servers worldwide.
During my history of using IRC, I have noticed some political turmoil on the free and tech networks, strict party lines kept on similarly named channels (e.g. #politics for consies only and #political for libtards only) and actual wars over channel mod and server op status. Those have been interesting to observe and teach occasionally a lot how power games work in society in general.

The most recent war involves the network called Freenode. Volunteer staff and many (tech) channel maintainers say that the owner (or main equipment contributor and financial donor) performed a hostile takeover, so the affected members created a new network called Libera.

Quote from: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/26/freenode_irc_takeover/
Following the Freenode schism last week that saw most of the IRC network's volunteer staff leave to form rival network Libera Chat, Freenode on Tuesday commandeered hundreds of channels used by various open source software projects and fiddled with their permissions.
As a result, we can stare at numbers.

https://isfreenodedeadyet.com/

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #1 –
That reminds me, I should update my Otter channel in Hexchat.

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #2 –
Last night freenode server settings were changed so that my old configuration does not connect to the server anymore. It might work with some reconfiguration but I am not going to bother. All channels that were important to me there have moved over to libera.

Edit: The hostile takeover was led by a dude called Crown Prince of Korea. He teamed up with Mark Karpeles. I think that as a result freenode will soon become part of darkweb or almost.

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Libera
[Global Notice] Good Morning All! Following our Annual General Meeting that took place last night (31st), we have decided that Libera will be pivoting to a Discord server ( https://discord.gg/4QNt6VjT )! We feel this is the best way forward for our various communities. Please let us know what you think in #libera-discord
This is near-death of IRC :( Can't they sync the content flows somehow?

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #4 –
Nice April Fool's :)

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #5 –
On an IRC network where there are political channels, the conservative/Republican one where I used to be a regular member, just observing, never saying a word, has kicked me (and other lurkers) out and is now invitation-only. Trumpism is a closed cult and they are behaving accordingly.

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #6 –
Which client do you use? I haven't started an IRC client in quite a while.

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #7 –
My ordinary client has been irssi. Recently I have also been launching 'erc', a component in Emacs.

Edit: For 'erc' I have this bit of code in M-: history: 
(erc :nick "mynick" :full-name "mynick" :port "6667" :server "irc.servername.org")

Re: Is IRC still a thing?

Reply #8 –
At libera network in #emacs there are over 800 nicks and in #neovim there are almost 600. IRC is not dead and editors are doing great :)