Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by mlw8gNBXBYouyps on Saturday April 27, 2019 @06:21PM
(#19767987)
I wrote a spam filter for freenode in a week. Even if Mozilla can't afford a week of work, their IRCd already has one.
I'm kind of convinced that this change is culturally, rather than technically, motivated.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by obhmt on Saturday April 27, 2019 @04:31AM
(#19764525)
>But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people.
That's cool. I don't want to communicate with regular people, I want to communicate with hackers. If I wanted to communicate with regular people I would use Twitter.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by gtirloni on Saturday April 27, 2019 @07:01AM
(#19764919)
And you're not Mozilla (which does want to communicate with laypeople) so...
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by obhmt on Saturday April 27, 2019 @07:31AM
(#19765002)
If they wanted to communicate with laypeople they'd offer support over the channels laypeople expect support nowadays, namely Facebook. Instead they are going to choose some middle ground that will displease everybody; they will botch it, as they like to do.
They are already working on botching it, since they've moved the Rust channel to a closed source alternative with no expectations of privacy: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/04/26/Mozilla-IRC-Sunset-and...
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by steveklabnik on Saturday April 27, 2019 @10:14AM
(#19765639)
Mozilla did not move the Rust channels. We did.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by neiman on Saturday April 27, 2019 @01:08PM
(#19766493)
Are there really no good open source forum alternatives?
-- asking for a friend :-)
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by steveklabnik on Saturday April 27, 2019 @01:28PM
(#19766596)
We already use an open source forum: discourse.
If you mean real-time chat, in my personal opinion, Discord is the best choice. Zulip is good, if you can deal with it being a bit weird. The other options are fine, but not great. You may have different opinions than me personally.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by naiveai on Sunday April 28, 2019 @04:21AM
(#19769996)
You mean the same Discord that's now majority-owned by Tencent, right?
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by steveklabnik on Sunday April 28, 2019 @09:37AM
(#19771092)
I don’t know anything about their ownership, but I also don’t think you’re actually asking that question.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by naiveai on Sunday April 28, 2019 @11:48PM
(#19775696)
Sure, it may be a bad-faith question, but I think the point still stands. IRC, as an open communications protocol, will always, always, always be better than private companies with the potential to be controlled by anything. Richard Stallman would be rolling in his grave.
Christ, you scared me there. Stallman is not dead.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by naiveai on Monday April 29, 2019 @01:15PM
(#19780345)
He's pretty old, I was making a statement about the future. Bit sloppy nevertheless.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by rmtgk on Saturday April 27, 2019 @02:05PM
(#19766796)
It's simply pathetic that the handlers of one of the most important parts of Mozilla unilaterally decided to move the community to a closed source service and Mozilla didn't have teeth to do anything about it.
Re:Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
by steveklabnik on Saturday April 27, 2019 @02:51PM
(#19767015)
If Mozilla were able to do that, people would be upset by a company controlling open source. You can’t have it both ways.
But I agree with the post, "irc is not fine", and never was fine if you want to communicate with "regular" people.
It doesn't have spam filters, easy GUI or easy registration process. You could build all of those on top of IRC, and I'm sure that some people did, but there's no "standard" and most people just can't be bothered.
As the post said, often "IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls".
Besides, when was there a time in the history of the internet that irc was used to communicate with laypersons? If that's Mozilla's goal, they're right to switch.
That said, irc is fine, or even the best, for some communities. Especially communities of internet-savvy people.
It's decentralized, open, easy to access and inclusive. Such communities rarely meet the need for spam filters, and each of their members possess a well-distilled taste for personalized tools for irc.
That's why cryptocurrencies or hackerspaces channles are great on irc. That's why #rust channel is fantastic.
I still didn't find any modern substitution as good as irc for those communities. And yes Matrix, I'm looking at you! You're just not there yet.