Keyword: most. So: not all of them. So, there will be a mismatch and a mish-mash between features.

Lets' talk about search and history. How about synchronised history and search across devices? Mobile? Available to new clients that just connected?

At this point someone on HN suggests IRCCloud... which is exactly the same as Slack (proprietary chat-as-a-service).

> Keyword: most. So: not all of them. So, there will be a mismatch and a mish-mash between features.

You can't judge a protocol by the subset of UI features supported by all of its clients. That's unfair to all open protocols.

If you want to talk about UI, you should evaluate each client independently.

> At this point someone on HN suggests IRCCloud... which is exactly the same as Slack (proprietary chat-as-a-service).

Except IRCCloud still uses the open protocol, so it's easier for users to switch to a different client. (Which, hopefully, is also an insentive for IRCCloud to not fuck up things too much in the future.)

That's the main reason IRC and XMPP more-or-less lost the chat wars (and they lost the mobile specifically due to protocols).