[kqr]

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing by spending several paragraphs on the problems with the out-of-the-box experience and only one on the fact that it is an open protocol so a sufficiently technical user can fix it.

An open protocol, free choice of clients, and decentralised infrastructure is a baseline. A change is not an improvement if it removes those. (You could argue you have valid reasons to remove any of them and you'd be wrong.)

I don't see why it would be much more exhausting to use a hosted IRC service like IRCCloud to solve your problems than pick a specific alternative protocol entirely.

[chubot]

I'm explaining to the parent why "I don't understand this world" isn't a reasonable response. If you've used Slack and IRC for 5 minutes, you should know why most users prefer Slack, even if you prefer IRC.

I don't use Slack regularly, but I have tried it, and it is instantly obvious what the difference is. If you don't see it, then you probably have never designed software for end users. (FWIW, I also agree that Slack is bloated and that's one of the reasons I don't use it.)

As far as contributing to free software and open protocols, I'm working on fixing Unix shell. It would be great if IRC developers would take some inspiration from Slack and other proprietary services and fold them into IRC. Although, as mentioned in this thread, some of that may be very difficult or impossible without a commonly accepted client.

And I understand it's not a one person job. It probably requires a more coordinated effort. Decentralization has drawbacks as well as benefits.

What is not OK is pretending that problems with IRC don't exist. If you have that view, and spread it, then you guarantee that open protocols won't win.

I prefer open protocols, and I lament what has happened to Usenet and e-mail (trying to set up a mailing list for my open source project has been frustrating; spam causes problems for mailman-type lists). But honestly the proprietary services have innovated. They're not better in all respects, but they are better in some.

Open source doesn't mean being ignorant of users and dismissive of their complaints.

(FWIW I didn't know about IRCCloud. It looks interesting and I may check it out.)

[derefr]

> A change is not an improvement if it removes those.

If you see Slack as a replacement for IRC, then sure, it's not an improvement.

If you see Slack (and other proprietary solutions) as a capitalism-incentivized R&D lab for features that can then be absorbed into the open ecosystem, then it's nice that it exists, isn't it?

[aidenn0]

If you want "An open protocol, free choice of clients, and decentralised infrastructure" then Jabber and Matrix are both much closer competitors to slack. IRCv3 is a step in the right direction for IRC, but is not as far along as either of those.

[ptman]

btw, you can also use matrix.org and their irc bridges to various irc networks in place of irccloud