[mjevans]

The last time I looked at IRCv3 I was disappointed by how much was an optional extension.

My opinion is that a strong 'minimum' protocol is critical to interoperability and opportunities for federated protocols to function well across providers. I recall that was the main, non XML, reason that XMPP failed. Of course I also dislike XML as a data storage / transmission format.

[badsectoracula]

IRCv3 is written to be backwards compatible so it makes sense to have a ton of optional stuff - considering it is backwards compatible, everything is optional :-P.

And it makes sense, IRC is already out there and has a ton of servers and clients working, you can't split that community based on the client they're using otherwise you're just creating yet another isolated chat protocol like a ton others before it.