Every big open source project has a dedicated IRC channel on Freenode, still alive and kicking.

Slack is not an alternative.

> Every big open source project has a dedicated IRC channel on Freenode, still alive and kicking. > Slack is not an alternative.

A lot of large open-source projects have Slack communities, often alongside IRC ones. Take Clojure for example, with its 14k-members “Clojurians” Slack project.

Do Slack give free access to open source communities like that? Otherwise the price to have search of over 10k messages would be over £70k/mo which I'm guessing they're not paying. Slack's pricing model seems horrific for communities like that.

> Do Slack give free access to open source communities like that?

Yes. It’s free for non-profit orgs.

Not at all. Clojurians Slack does not keeps history for more than a few days because the community does not pay, and it's the major PITA. Slack does not offer any special treatment to large open source communities, other than tolerating their existence.

> Not at all. (…) Slack does not offer any special treatment to large open source communities, other than tolerating their existence.

I wasn’t clear. It’s free for non-profit orgs. Open-source communities that aren’t registered organizations are by definition not non-profit orgs.

IRC is niche these days but I'd be interested to hear your methodology to reach the conclusion that "No serious, innovative community is still on IRC".

I've heard Amazon uses IRC internally?

Amazon uses Chime (https://aws.amazon.com/chime/) internally.

Some teams on Amazon still stubbornly remain with IRC.

Source: worked on one such team at Amazon in 2017.