Why not XMPP though? Why hang onto IRC? I mean sure this is cool but it's client specific features with no standardisation of the protocol (correct me if i'm wrong).

If I have to install a special client (quassel) to access these features how is that any better than installing a XMPP client?

Only thing IRC has going for it is the existing userbase, most of who run clients that won't support these new features.

Actually, all these features are being standardized into the IRC protocol. That's the good part.

And we've got all the developers of all the major IRCds and cloents together, working on these things. In contrast to XMPP, where support for an XEP between clients is spotty, and in contrast to Matrix, where a single dev team runs the server with ~50% of global users, builds the clients, and servers.

I agree that XMPP is a better protocol, but with the people we have, we can, long term, change the IRC protocol, too.

Is it IRCv3? http://ircv3.net/ Is the plan to update RFC 2813 and RFC 1459?

Either way neat, and good luck. Like it or not, IRC is certainly going to be around for a long long time. It's going to be a long time before you get project devel/help channels to move elsewhere!

> All this is coming.

And when it gets here, then IRCCloud and Quassel would be a good answer to my original comment. But now, those clients don't provide those features, while Slack does.

I’m writing on these things right now. They’re going to be in Quassel at least before the end of the year, on desktop and mobile. In developer builds they’ll already be in in a few weeks or a month.

And almost all functionality already is there anyway, as said.

> And when it gets here, then IRCCloud and Quassel would be a good answer to my original comment. But now, those clients don't provide those features, while Slack does.

Then help implement it. There’s so many companies and communities that are paying millions for slack, but never paid a cent on developing for IRC.

The only company that ever funded anything for Quassel for example was Nokia. And that obviously ended ages ago, it’s all volunteers now.

Except it's not going to be part of the standard, and there's no way that I can guarantee that the other people in the chat room are using the same thing.

It doesn’t have to be. You just need copy-paste to a pastebin or upload site, and need clients to support embedding content.

Then it doesn’t matter how each client does it.

This already works between Textual, IRCCloud, QuasselWebserver, and a handful more.

So now I need yet another service, which may not be accessible to the other people.

I'm going to stick with the one that does the things that I want it to do now, and doesn't require me to hope that the other person can see what I'm trying to post.

You mean, you’re going to stick with the one where you rely on a central authority, all your data is accessible to them and the intelligence agencies of their country?

There’s a major tradeoff to be made there.