[ryandv]

The particular point about protocols is that IRC is dead-simple to implement. It's all ASCII/UTF-8, CRLF-delimited messages of space-separated tokens. You can get a working implementation with the stdlib of most languages in about 200 lines. The protocol hasn't really changed much over the years.

Contrast with HTTP and other related web technologies, whose specifications are so complex that only the largest tech firms can even dream of building their own implementations, let alone achieving full standards compliance. Moreover, those standards are also often driven by those same corporate interests who own significant usage share in the browser space.

To the extent that corporate interests will advocate for standards in their own self-interest (recent example: Google WEI), I would say that the protocol has been commercialized.