A few years ago, I tried to convince my colleagues (they're more designers than programmers) to use IRC for informal communication. Using IRC was (and still is) a no-brainer for me. My desktop PC runs all day, so I'm in IRC all day. But for them, joining IRC meant opening their laptops, starting their client and then pinging out 15 minutes later when their laptop went to standby.
When they were in IRC, they had this urge to really be there in IRC. I.e. monitoring it, reading everything, responding in seconds, excusing themselves when they had to go to the bathroom, and finally, finding excuses to close their IRC client again.
I have a totally different mode of operation with IRC, where it's OK to have the client open and not respond for hours or at all if you don't fell like it. I guess it's something you have to learn.
Installing BNCs solved some of the issues, but not all. Also, installing a BNC is not something your average designer-type nerd today wants to deal with.
So we ended up with KickOff for a while, but it never really worked reliably. We're now on Slack and quite happy, but I still want to try some of the various IRC "cloud" services; mainly those for self hosting.
Well said. I have been trying out ZNC for a few days. It wasn't really a fun to setup ZNC. There are things that I just don't understand. ZNC comes with a bunch of modules that you could use to extend its functionality. It is really hard for me to understand those when I am new to both Bouncers and IRC. Then there are no standards. ZNC uses a username but IRC doesn't really have a concept of username. It is usually Channel, Nick, and password. IRC also has concepts like Ident which are hard for general users to understand. I have setup ZNC but the setup is not complete yet.
I am not well aware of history of XMPP and IRC. I wonder if lack of interest in the organizations that control these protocols have lead to numerous versions of them that there are today. Slack has an IRC gateway and Facebook uses XMPP. Both of these protocols are widely used but have becomes too different from the core concept.
You should try using Quassel — it's the perfect solution for an IRC Bouncer/Client-combo, it feels like any modern solution (aka infinite scroll to read previous messages, clients for the bouncer on every platform, etc).
It's an amazing solution. So amazing, that I actually started commuting to the Quassel Android client, just because I want to give something back to this community.
Actually chat secure on android makes facebook chat almost plesant (and those "in the know" can enable otr). Such a shame fb doesn't do federation and google pretty much killed xmpp altogether. I was this close to having a chat platform other than sms that I enjoyed and could share with non-technical friends without hassle. I loje IRC - but so far not on mobile. Anyone have a favorite (preferably Free as in freedom) cliebt for Android?
Conversations is a nice XMPP client for Android. It's under GPLv3, is in F-Droid and Google Play (costs 1$ in Google Play, though) and is probably the best XMPP client for Android :)
Also, lack of addressability. IRC is primarily targeted towards channels while all the needs of current IM systems are targeted towards one-to-one messaging. Possible with IRC, but you have to jump through hoops.
A few years ago, I tried to convince my colleagues (they're more designers than programmers) to use IRC for informal communication. Using IRC was (and still is) a no-brainer for me. My desktop PC runs all day, so I'm in IRC all day. But for them, joining IRC meant opening their laptops, starting their client and then pinging out 15 minutes later when their laptop went to standby.
When they were in IRC, they had this urge to really be there in IRC. I.e. monitoring it, reading everything, responding in seconds, excusing themselves when they had to go to the bathroom, and finally, finding excuses to close their IRC client again.
I have a totally different mode of operation with IRC, where it's OK to have the client open and not respond for hours or at all if you don't fell like it. I guess it's something you have to learn.
Installing BNCs solved some of the issues, but not all. Also, installing a BNC is not something your average designer-type nerd today wants to deal with.
So we ended up with KickOff for a while, but it never really worked reliably. We're now on Slack and quite happy, but I still want to try some of the various IRC "cloud" services; mainly those for self hosting.