[shanemhansen]

Every week I have to use a Cisco jabber client, Hipchat, Slack, and Hangouts within the same company.

I know it's got less of a "cool" factor because it wasn't invented last week, but I soooo wish everyone would just use IRC. Use irccloud if you want some nice apps and picture embedding.

[rikkus]

Is it possible to get what Slack provides using IRC? I mean the whole package, not just the text chat. Consider enterprise-friendliness, excellent mobile clients, zero-setup required (no separate keep-you-online relays), really easy integrations, etc.? We are adopting Slack because it's great and I'd have loved to make a case for IRC but I wouldn't know what server to recommend (we don't really want to install it, but we don't want to use a public server), where I can get commercial support, if there's a nice client (like irccloud is) for mobiles - there's a long list, unfortunately.

[inopinatus]

Also in-client searchable archives, media handling, history editing. All require going outside the IRC protocols.

IRC was designed by hackers, for hackers and it shows. Twenty years ago, IRC was my talk destination of choice and I operated a server within a major IRC network; these days my startup uses Slack which I determined to be the "least irritating" of the 21st century options.

I had high hopes for Google Wave but it was sadly stillborn.

[e12e]

Much of that can be had with a IRC bot. That doesn't include media handling, but you could do search via 1-on-1 /msg (query) with a bot. Then it'd truly be "in client" search.

Most would probably prefer a web ui, with search -- but recording chat could still be done via a bot.

I wouldn't say you could get most of the whole slack experience with just IRC, and you'd probably have to do some work (if only configuring channels/bots/find a web ui etc).

[inopinatus]

This doesn't resolve the multifarious issues with identity, reliability, scalability, federation, standardisation &c &c that further rule IRC out from being the universal panacea.

[voltagex_]

It doesn't have to be. Go help with IRCv3 - http://ircv3.net/. Almost everything that's in Slack and Zulip would just be a capability extension.

[inopinatus]

I stopped reading when the charter said "we are not working on the server protocol". The server protocol is the limiting factor in IRC's architecture.

My interest is in federated, reliable, ad-hoc messaging and IRC's acyclic forwarding graph and lack of any inherent identity model make that impossible.

[e12e]

It depends on the context. You can't federate with Google, Microsoft, Facebook anyway -- and you won't convert the world to use your favourite new protocol (most likely).

So that just leaves you with an easier problem: how can I host conversations etc for my team/org/my friends? And I think a single, isolated irc server should work fine for that use case, and work fine with many different irc clients?

So no, it's not a universial solution -- I just think it's strange when people bring up slack as somehow "better". Sure it's "better" in that it's a product with backing from some fine people -- but if you wanted a solution based on open standard, Free code that you could self-host without worrying about license costs etc ... then a battle-tested IRC server still seems like a half-decent option?

Or put it a different way: if you have 100s of users, could you get many of the features with IRC, and some bots? (Or maybe a slightly tweaked IRC server etc etc)?

[ed: Not that I claim there aren't problems with IRC -- and I've yet to run a personal ircd, so I don't know a) how much work it is to force TLS+SASL[1] and disable plain IRC, or b) if there are other solutions that might be better, that are available right now.

[1] https://freenode.net/sasl/ ]

[inopinatus]

That is not an "easier problem" - that is repeating the problem: yet another venue/client/service we all have to be logged into to find one another.

Moreover, I'm really not interested in spending any time whatsoever on configuring and maintaining an IRC server and a fleet of bots, nor on teaching non-technical users in how to use the resulting heath-robinson system. Really, no. A world of no. I have run both a private IRC service and a public node of a very large network. It's a huge time sink. I've moved on.

As I see it, the only problem in this domain worth burning hours on is developing a protocol (and interoperable implementations thereof) that achieves everything the likes of Slack and Hipchat can do, only in a decentralized and federated manner.

[ara4n]

Matrix.org is heavily inspired by Wave, albeit using HTTP rather than XMPp, for those searching a more alive option :)

[bjeanes]

> I had high hopes for Google Wave but it was sadly stillborn.

Yeah me too. Google really effed that one up. RIP

[scrollaway]

The closest you can get is a foss slack alternative such as Mattermost, and push for an IRC bridge (Mattermost is working on it it seems: https://github.com/mattermost/platform/issues/650).

But it's not possible to get what you're asking without breaking the IRC protocol - it's not easily extended and the formatting rules are icky mIRC crap.

[voltagex_]

Go help with IRCv3 - you're talking about capabilities, which are part of the v3 protocol.

http://ircv3.net/specs/core/capability-negotiation-3.2.html

[XorNot]

The trick with capabilities is you need them to be reasonably standard. Which means the go to IRCv3 server should ship with them turned on, and the reference client should be capable of using them.

[bjeanes]

Slack's IRC bridge is actually pretty good. I know that's not quite what you're asking, but at least you personally could still interface using IRC.

[jwheare2]

Any reason you rejected IRCCloud? (disclosure: my company). We host private servers for teams and do the majority of what you're asking for.

[rikkus]

I didn't make the decision. Slack started to appear and I didn't know that IRCCloud had apps (which seem to have great reviews). If I had known, I would have suggested it as an alternative. As it was, I just kept quiet as Slack seemed great - even better than HipChat, which I used to use for the same purpose.

Perhaps IRCCloud could be sold as a rebranded Enterprise app as an alternative to Slack? I'd love to see some competition as it looks like only HipChat and Slack are getting talked about.

[hermanradtke]

I don't use it because I want to use my own irc client and not a web interface. I want ZNC as a service.

[bsimpson]

That sounds like a problem with the company. I can understand Slack and Hangouts (at least until Slack adds voice chat), but all that other stuff sounds like poor organization on the company's part.

[voltagex_]

What I posted in another thread still stands - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10256943. Things were better when everything was brought under one client. I know iMessage is almost impossible to reverse-engineer (due to Apple kicking non-iClients off) but I wish there was more effort going into reversing Hangouts. Someone's emulated the JS client from GMail but that's about as far as it's got

[CydeWeys]

IRC's lack of scrollback alone kills it for these considerations, unfortunately. If there's an incident or discussion in progress and you only join the room partway through you have no way of catching up to speed.

[epsylon]

That's what bouncers are for.

[anentropic]

you wish everyone would use the worse option?