IRC ? Re: Wiki page about Free Software for remote working

[Sandro Santilli]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2020 at 11:30:54AM +0200, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> Am Dienstag 31 März 2020 17:30:12 schrieb Sandro Santilli:
> > > https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/FreeSoftware4RemoteWorking
> >
> > Under the Chat/InstantMessaging app IRC is completely missing, while
> > still being the most stable and ubiquitous system for instant
> > messaging ?
> 
> Can you back that statement up?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
> has 
>   IRC usage has been declining steadily since 2003, losing 60% of its users 
>   (from 1 million to about 400,000 in 2012) and half of its channels (from 
>   half a million in 2003).

Makes it even more stable (less traffic!)

By "stable" I mean that I started using it in ~1995 and I'm still
using it today. Can you say the same about any other chat system ?

By "ubiquitous" I mean it's accessible in very many ways, from desktop
clients to console clients, to proxies, to gateways. Even many
"modern" proprietary chat systems expose an IRC protocol for those
already setup to use IRC clients.

> the technical standards and usual deployed privacy support seem
> to be of less quality than XMPP. Again from the wikipedia entry above:
> 
>   As of 2016, a new standardization effort is under way under a working group
>   called IRCv3, which focuses on more advanced client features like instant 
>   notifications, better history support and improved security. As of 2019, 
>   no major IRC networks have fully adopted the proposed standard.

Yes, it's slow to catch up with adding new features.
Like SMTP which we use to deliver these mails ?

--strk;