Not having to manage a server, better history searching, better ux for less technical users, better user metadata, voice and video calling, and lots of other things. I prefer IRC, but the benefits for a business should be pretty clear for anyone not extremely stuck on seeming like the cool IRC guy in the office.
Better multi-device support is huge. And history existing when you come back from not being connected.
There are IRC solutions to this but IIRC it's something silly like a client that stays connected 24/7 to manage your user, then another client that connects to that client for your actual interface.
Yes, Quassel and IRCCloud are exactly such solutions.
But that always has to happen in such distributed systems, Matrix has the same – your home node actually connects to the Matrix network, and you connect to that.
Even on XMPP you end up running an XMPP server somewhere which connects via federation to the actual network, and your clients just connect to that server.
Seems odd you would want to have you're internal company discussions hosted on a server outside your control. It's especially relevant to companies outside the USA who might not want to have their data under US law.
I wouldn't recommend IRC for office communication. XMPP is probably the better tool.
Most companies operate on systems outside of their control. Windows, MacOS, mobile platforms, etc. Why limit it to discussions if that's a concern? If my company makes iOS applications, having to use MacOS and having to live with the possibility that everything that I type is being sent back to some server somewhere that way is just as bad, right?
- chat search, including messages sent while your client is offline
- pretty code formatting
- pretty text formatting
- file uploads
- user management
I know that IRC accomplishes something like 95% of what a team needs to communicate, but Slack absolutely shines at that last 5%. We currently use Hipchat, and it supports a lot of what I mentioned above, but it supports it badly and it hurts to use by comparison, when I'm in slack for other non-work teams.
We need to stop pretending that IRC is a good solution, and admit that it's only a "good enough" solution. It's an MVP you ship to prove to your customers or investors that you've got something, it's not a product you'd spend money to market.
IRC is a technical detail like SMTP or TLS 1.2 (or XMPP), and should be treated as such. That there are numerous pre-existing clients is beneficial for those who already have a preference, but as evidenced by Slack, the number of client programs available is far from the most important feature.
It would be really neat to create a IRC server that bundled supported web, desktop, and mobile (ios and android) clients with first-class support for that last 5% of features, but I'm doubtful of how much money there really is to be made. People are cheap, and Slack is "free" - I mean, it's actually not free for the organization, but users don't pay a monetary price to download the client to use the system, so I see charging users money for high quality IRC clients as an uphill battle.
> It becomes an alerting system, task tracker, logging system, code review system and I could go on...
I haven't had this problem at all. We do have certain notifications trigger Hipchat alerts, but they also send out emails, etc. - Hipchat is just a convenience for that.
Maybe it's a Slack problem but not a Hipchat problem?
I was a huge proponent of IRC but the lack of developments the past... decades has killed it for me. Discord is straight up better. Yes it's proprietary, but no, IRC is just not a good alternative at this point, it hasn't kept up.
And I love to death what the IRCCloud guys are doing but it's just not good enough to use as a proper communication tool especially in a company.
Admitting this is the first step to fixing it. If you want open source alternatives to win, you can't get stuck telling people the things they like aren't worth supporting. I like the fact that I can do text, voice and video in the same tool; that I have a searchable message history; that I don't have to manage the server myself; that I can make interesting bots with a webhook system and a websocket API; that I can interact with people programmatically over an OAuth2 API; that I can use markdown in messages, embed files and youtube videos, pin messages; that I can manage large communities using a thorough group and permission system (I'm managing a Discord server that has 20k+ people on it, this is stuff that can't be done over IRC quite simply).
And you know what, I like the custom emojis too.
Quassel isn't good enough (speaking as someone who loves quassel). IRCCloud isn't good enough (speaking as someone who loves IRCCloud and heartily recommend everyone here to support them by buying a subscription).
I used to say: Our best chance is that Hangouts is open sourced. Nowadays, I'm rooting for Matrix but I think our best chance is that Discord is open sourced. These protocols, they get developed with very little awareness of what people actually want -- they copy features left and right, try to either support everything and end up a bloated or unusable plugin mess (XMPP) or support nothing and end up unpopular. Most of them are toys. In the end, we need serious players, passionate about creating not just protocols but good interfaces to them. This is hard to find in open source.
None of the features you mention are useful for actually communicating and getting work done.
Your concept of "better" is distinctly different from mine. In my world, software without completely useless and unnecessary features is better than bloatware. irssi + tmux + logging + grep works great for 100% of actual not-embedding-useless-cat-videos-to-avoid-having-to-actually-get-work-done use cases.
In the interest of adopting your own borderline-uncivil tone: Stop assuming objectivity in your notion of evolution and improvement being the same as everyone else. It's not. Just stop. Please.
> None of the features you mention are useful for actually communicating and getting work done.
I respectfully disagree. It's incredibly helpful to be able to video/voice call a coworker instead of typing back and forth. It's also incredibly helpful to be able to quickly past a screenshot of an issue you're seeing, or to paste a quick snippet of code, or log, with nice formatting.
Yes, I could use my phone or another app, and I could paste my image to imgur and share a link, or point them to github - but that's another step, another roadblock on the road to communication and understanding.
> It's incredibly helpful to be able to video/voice call a coworker [...]
In my experience it is pretty rare in software development to have the need for a voice/video call. There are use-cases but they are rare and better handled by a specific software.
> It's also incredibly helpful to be able to quickly past a screenshot of an issue you're seeing [...]
And also painful. Sometimes I get screenshots from terminal screens showing error messages and have to retype them when e.g. grepping for keywords in source.
> [...] quick snippet of code, or log, with nice formatting [...]
If it's short just blob it into the chat window. If it's long then please use some paste service, as screenshots of logs are a nightmare (see previous point).
> [...] but that's another step, another roadblock on the road to communication and understanding.
Why is there another step? You can have multiple programs, tabs, terminals, shells, sessions, etc. open at the same time.
At the end of 2014, I was in a solid ~40 irc channels and active in maybe 15 of them.
Today, I'm in 10 and active in none. All the channels I left, even some of the ones I'm still in now, have switched to Discord, Slack or Matrix. The two only channels I care about are actually both mirrored on Discord using the excellent Matterbridge (https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge/).
You need to do this on slack unless you pay for it. Comparatively IRC is free and it's actually easier to make a logging IRC bot than it is to make one on slack.
The time it would take me to research a logging bot, set up a server, add monitoring to make sure it stays up would cost more of my time than purchasing Slack for several years for my small team. I don't see how you claim it can be easier than Slack since Slack by definition has everything stored already, you just have to pay for it.