Right, I misunderstood your last line. I initially took you to mean, "We've had IRC since forever and Jabber since the early 00's..." Reading it again, I now understand you to mean, "Before you say 'IRC sucks', which I agree with, better protocols like Jabber have been around since the early 00's."
No, I like IRC, but IM has different uses. IRC is for technical/non-private/random connections to roam around, like going a public place IRL. IM it's for personal stuff, as talking between relatives, close friends, word colleagues and so on.
IRC can be used for private communication, in fact it was the protocol for private communication used by for example warez scene groups years ago.
IRC, because of its simplicity, can be layered, so adding encryption is trivial if we want to hide from the server (FISH). By default IRC servers show hostname of the user, but that depends on the network; for example LinkNet hides it.
Right, well, the project needed something like IRC / Discord / Slack, where random people could just show up, ask questions, hang out, whatever. You know, engage with the community.
"Lots of clients" -- that's actually a problem. "Oh, you want to have a quick chat with experts in our community? First, here's a list of 50 IRC clients, half of which haven't been updated since 2003, all of which have different advantages and disadvantages. Go through and choose one and go through all the configuration. Oh, and you wanted to be able to read something someone wrote while your laptop lid was shut? Like, maybe you're not in the same timezone as many of the contributors? You're going to need to find an always-on server and set up this IRC bouncer. Also, because of spam, we only allow registered users to post, so you're going to need to type these runes in the command-line and make yourself a certificate."
Matrix certainly had its warts when we switched, but it was still an immediate quality-of-life improvement, particularly for newcomers.
I mean, HAM radio is basically a chat room with an entrance exam; there's certainly something nice about having communities full of people with that sort of filter up front. And, for a charity designed to teach kids to code, maybe helping them munge around with IRC clients is a bonus. But for a normal community, IRC isn't the right tool for the job.
