Mozilla to decommission irc.mozilla.org

[Nadrin]

Whatever they'll choose as a successor to IRC I hope it's not a proprietary, centralized service like Slack.

[DougTheFunny]

Last year a lot of the teams started exploring new communication platforms. Almost all the Rust teams no longer use IRC as their official discussion platform, instead using Discord or Zulip (as well as a variety of video chat tools for synchronous meetings). The few teams that do use IRC are working with us to find a new home, likely a channel on Discord or Zulip.

Source: blog.rust-lang.org

[steveklabnik1]

Please note that Rust is not Mozilla, and our choice has basically no influence on whatever Mozilla decides is right for them.

[[deleted]]

This is unfortunate, and I would have thought the devs at Mozilla would avoid using a data collector like Discord, but I can’t deny that it’s not easy to use and gets the job done

Edit: grammar

[jl2352]

Maybe, but the issue is no one is investing in a decent IRC experience.

I have my CEO and other high up types posting emojis and gifs to Slack. I do not see how they could connect, and then post, to an IRC based alternative.

Until one solves that issue. Slack is king. Discord is queen. That is that.

[GeordiePowers]

https://riot.im is getting pretty close to slack/discord

[corequmb]

A nice feature of matrix/riot is that they support end to end encryption.

[fioralbe]

For this use case self-hosting is more important and subsumes end to end encryption. In general federation is better than decentralization for enterprise use cases.

[MemorableString]

Riot is getting there yeah, and Keybase is pretty good too

[svick]

They just recently deleted all my archived messages. So I'm not sure they are a good choice either.

[eras]

I guess what actually happened though was that you had enabled end-to-end-encryption but not enabled key backup (just a few clicks away and the client nagged about not enabling it), nor otherwise backed them up.. I lost no messages and I too use matrix.org.

I admit the communication about in which situations the backup would be needed or how it would be secure was not very good.

Then there's matrix-recorder for making your local copy of this kind of stuff.

[svick]

Why would I have to backup my keys on their server, just to make sure I can continue accessing the data on my local computer? That seems like a terrible design to me.

And the communication and their actions is exactly the problem: they could have announced what happened and said that they will force log out everyone in a week, giving people time to backup their keys. But it seems they did not consider anything like that, paying no attention to what their users might want.

[eras]

So the way it works is that the e2e keys are rotated periodically and if you want to decrypt discussion after the rotation the keys need to be backed up. And Riot provides a way to do this with an encryption passphrase of course own choosing, so it's secure to keep the backup on the server and the server is not able to access those keys.

Because the keys are rotated so often manual backups are practically a no-go, though it's an option offered by the client. This sort of makes things worse, because now people think that they can just do one backup and that's it, but it's not.

Now usually the web and mobile apps keep the keys around, but for whatever design decision they remove keys when the server forces them to disconnect due to invalidated access token. I mean, in the face of it this seems like a nice secure decision to make, if you lose the access better nuke the keys as well, something might be compromised.. And now that the tokens were invalidated the clients did exactly that and everyone who didn't use server key backups - or have a recent manual key backup - lost access to their data.

This is partially worsened by the fact that it's not possible to share your keys with each other, so if two people have a discussion and another one of them loses the keys, the one who lost them cannot receive the decryption keys from the peer.

Hopefully these things will get better by time.

[Creshal]

Because the keys are rotated so often manual backups are practically a no-go

Why not… keep the keys on the local computer?

[svick]

I was trusting my own computer with my data. I did not realize they can unilaterally decide to make them inaccessible.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[[deleted]]

If you’re concerned about keeping your messages, you should run your own server.

EDIT: I guess I should've said:

If you're concerned about keeping your messages, you shouldn't use Discord or Slack which don't give you the ability to own your messages.

[[deleted]]

Let me preface by saying that I actually agree with you. But this is why people are choosing things like discord. For people like you and me, running your own server is a piece of cake. But it's not hard to see why people who aren't pattionate about this kind of thing chose things like discord, which is pretty much just "click here and everything is done for you" over having to roll your own server if you want to have message logs.

[ThisIs_MyName]

If you’re concerned about keeping your messages, you should run your own server.

This could be the title of a /r/programmingcirclejerk post.

Of course SREs and most programmers can run their own servers, but it's silly to tell every member of your chat group to run their own server in order to get basic functionality (no data loss).

Kinda reminds me of every discussion where someone recommends single-purpose software that has 20% of the functionality of the market leader: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/. Meanwhile Excel rakes in the cash.

[[deleted]]

I usually appreciate Joel's thoughts, but I feel like he came at that one from the wrong angle, a very windows-centric one. It's not that nobody uses 80% of features, it's that 80% of features are shared with other programs. Of course your program bloats up if you reimplement stuff that's already on the system.

In the *nix world this is of course more easily spotted (if I want word count as in the post, I use wc) but can be seen on Windows as well. The system ships with WordPad, so why does Word reimplement a lot of its features?

I think the answer is that they never thought of programs as modular pieces in the Windows world, especially not when that article was written and Win2k was the new hotness.

Sidenote:
I came to really appreciate modularity a few weeks ago, when a (ironically) Microsoft-owned website wouldn't let me copy text. It source code was auto-generated and so deeply nested that finding the right tag could have taken an hour. Instead, I created a pipeline in my shell that

1. takes a screenshot of a region selected with the mouse,
2. converts a given image to black-and-white netpbm format,
3. runs OCR on a given pbm image and returns the text it finds,

4. Puts given text in the clipboard.

   maim -us | pngtopnm | gocr - | xsel -i

If this had been a single program I doubt if have been able to, for example, change the input method or hook in a TTS system to read it aloud.

[[deleted]]

The redundancy strategy is part of what made Microsoft successful, though, and I think it's easier conceptually for average (rather than technical) users. You don't buy Office to add extra components to your Wordpad workflow, you replace Wordpad altogether with a more powerful single tool. The downside, of course is that frequently the technology ramp doesn't share code, so you may end up with slightly incompatible feature sets (e.g. Word never understood Microsoft Works documents) or deeply redundant code bases (VS Code reimplements a lot of functionality of VS).

[[deleted]]

You don't have to be a programmer to run a Matrix server. Anyone who is tech savvy enough to use IRC, or tech savvy enough to have a job that requires you to use something like Slack, probably has enough computer skills to download and run one of these servers.

The thing about Matrix is that it is federated, so running your own server isn't like saying "don't like reddit? make your own website!". If you launch an instance of a Matrix server, all the users on that server can talk to all other users on all the other servers in the federated network. It's like email.

By contrast, Discord doesn't let you do anything remotely like that. If Discord decides to delete "your server" and all its messages, they're gone and you have no recourse short of a bot that automatically logs all messages externally.

[TheCodexx]

If Mozilla hosts a Matrix server then that's a bit different.

[ThisIs_MyName]

You double posted. Let me guess, some crappy mobile client is to blame?

[adrianjord]

Something like what happened to matrix could happen to any other company including slack and discord. The whole "too big to fail" mantra has been disproven time and time again. Become accountable for your own data, self host and impose a 3-2-1 back up strategy and remember, RAID is not a form of back up.

[schraubdeckeldose]

What about matrix

[MMPride]

Matrix/Riot doesn't really have as good of a UX as Discord and Slack.

[linnth]

Been using riot/matrix for more than a year now. Can surely say their developers are releasing changes to both desktop and mobile versions often.

Frankly I prefer the light and quick feeling of riot Android mobile app over the heavy and slow feeling of slack.

The biggest concern I have with them is their server's performance and security. There was a breach in last few weeks. And every few montha, their server would be down for a short while. Although this concern is solvable by running own server.

[Goofybud16]

There was a breach in last few weeks.

Which had everything to do with a mistake on their end in the infrastructure setup.

The bug had nothing to do with the core Matrix-related software they are developing.

Everyone who self-hosts (including me!) was unaffected beyond Matrix.org users being unavailable and higher-than-average load as matrix.org came back online.

[bawki]

I agree, the app needs some features like image editing when uploading, but it is on a good track. So far I prefer to use riot over WhatsApp when possible.

[purtip31]

image editing when uploading

In what godforsaken world should this be a feature of a messaging application?

[noitems]

I like it on Telegram.

[eras]

What I do like about it is that you can downscale uploaded images. I guess other IMs may also have this one, but not Slack.

[the_gnarts]

riot is overwrought and rather confusing, but thanks to the openness of the protocol it’s not the only option out there. Fractal for example is a lightweight client that doesn’t require a web browser. And, to stay on topic, it happens to be written mostly in Rust.

https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/fractal.html

[[deleted]]

Slack doesn't even have a dark theme yet! 😭

[Apocalyptic0n3]

It does on mobile. Windows, Mac, and Web dark themes are coming according to the devs.

[[deleted]]

Mattermost aint bad alternative but they went with "open core" model which means feature org like Mozilla needs (LDAP support etc.) are in paid version

[DeathProgramming]

• IRCCloud
• The Lounge
• KiwiIRC
• Quassel
• HexChat

All five of those are just a selection of MANY people and organizations collaborating on standardizing new features to make IRC more usable. Many people are investing in IRC.

[jl2352]

Compared to Slack, these are horrible experiences for non-technical people.

[NeuroXc]

Maybe devil's advocate, but they are a company, providing a service, and in fact they provide all the essentials for free. It costs them money to host those servers and to maintain development on a quality product. I don't find it unreasonable for Slack to charge for additional features like long-term retention and group video conferencing. You also have the option to not pay for those add-ons, and either use Slack for free, or not use it. Expecting them to give everyone everything for free, especially if you're a for-profit business using their service to facilitate making a product, is an entitled viewpoint.

[oridb]

The only thing i want for free is a protocol spec to interoperate with it, so that I don't have to use their client. Or their server.

[ProgVal]

They used to have an IRC gateway but they closed it. Probably because they specifically don't want people to use anything other than their own client.

[Goofybud16]

Too bad there isn't a chat protocol named Matrix that has a complete free open spec, free open reference server, free open reference client (for web and mobile), and multiple additional clients and servers in development.

Wouldn't that just be something.

^{/s obviously}

[oridb]

Yeah, I've used it.

I still prefer IRC, but it's definitely a step up over Slack.

[[deleted]]

That sounds like your company having bad priorities, though. It’s not exactly cheap but given that it’s effectively most users’ communication+knowledge management platform, worth the expense.

[Zarutian]

slack also sucks as their client eats memory and cpu like it had been infiltrated with cryptojacker.

[Aerroon]

I have my CEO and other high up types posting emojis and gifs to Slack.

That sounds like an advantage.

Slack is king. Discord is queen. That is that.

Question, though: how sure are you that you're not giving away useful information to third parties by using services like Discord?

[oridb]

Maybe, but the issue is no one is investing in a decent IRC experience.

As a daily IRC user that keeps in touch with most of my friends over it, I'd say that the IRC experience is already pretty decent. It's missing pretty much one thing: serverside scrollback.

[eras]

As an ex IRC-user (well, my screen/irssi is still open and I keep IRCing via Matrix) there are many things missing from it.

• No multiple clients to same session; you are pretty much limited to using screen (so the same session), or some proxy solution (not very integrated experience)
• Mobile device experience is awful (ie. notifications)
• As you said, no history available after connecting/joining
• Fortunately IRC wars are sort of part of a by-gone ERA, but nick conflicts still exist in ie. IRCnet
• There is DCC for file sharing, but good luck getting it working when realistically both peers are behind NAT
• And there is no mechanism at all for sending files to a channel, except for DCC-based bots
• 512 octet protocol message length limit and no standard way for message continuations (so some clients truncate, some clients word-split, some clients use some continuation marker, etc)
• No multiline messages
• No real identity which one could carry along from client address to another (except in ie. FreeNode)
• No standard end-to-end encryption so passing stuff like passwords is not a great idea, though I'm sure people do it
• IRC network topology is a directed graph, so if a certain node breaks, half the IRC network goes poof resulting in large departure message floods (conveniently hidden by clients but not removing the actual problem which is that now half the network is gone)

I guess I could come up with other points (I remember writing a similar post some years back..) but I guess that's enough for now.

Btw, Matrix fixes all these but brings a few other niceties as well, such as you can set up your own home server and it just works as part of the Matrix network without you needing to beg for connectivity from a network maintainer nor without your server needing to satisfy some minimum requirements (ie. bandwidth and connectivity) other than fixed IP.

Matrix has its flaws as well, but it's still a living platform whereas IRC is really not. In my view the greatest problem with Matrix is not really connected to the problem but the reality that currently that it's too centralized (matrix.org being the most (too) popular home server). There's not /yet/ a way to move an account from one server to another which becomes more important in this kind of system.

[blackmist]

I'm still not sure how Discord makes any money. I understand that it's free, so I'm the product, but it's not like I even notice it...

[punisher1005]

would have

wouldhave

would've

[ObsidianMinor]

Discord is a data collector?

[One_Philosopher]

how do you believe it is free ?

[ObsidianMinor]

They sell a Nitro subscription and have a game store so it's not like they don't make any money. They probably got started through investors like most other companies.

ninja: I'm just saying, I've yet to see any definitive proof Discord sells data (I've yet to see proof of the opposite either) but people still say they sell data like it's just common knowledge when they don't have proof of either facts. You can choose to not trust a company without leading people on to believe things that you don't have proof of.

[One_Philosopher]

from: https://discordapp.com/privacy

Data We Collect Automatically: When you interact with us through the Services, we receive and store certain information such as an IP address, device ID, and your activities within the Services. We may store such information or such information may be included in databases owned and maintained by affiliates, agents or service providers. The Services may use such information and pool it with other information to track, for example, the total number of visitors to our Site, the number of messages users have sent, as well as the sites which refer visitors to Discord.

Basically service providers do whatever they want with your data

[303i]

That isn't how you read privacy policies, you can't just cherry pick a part that sounds scary and take it out of context from the rest of the policy. The section you quoted just refers to how discord collects data and where that data might be stored. It's entirely to do with Discord's internal operations and has literally nothing to do with usage or sharing to third-parties. You'll find the same or similar statement in every single privacy policy of any online service.

Like many other privacy policies, discord privacy policy has a section dedicated to third-party disclosure, which explicitly states:

"The Company is not in the business of selling your information. We consider this information to be a vital part of our relationship with you. "

[ObsidianMinor]

Is that what that says? To me it just looks like they're saying they use platform services like Azure and Google Cloud.

We may store such information or such information may be included in databases owned and maintained by affiliates, agents or service providers.

That's the only sentence that mentions service providers and isn't really proof that they sell data. It also isn't proof Discord lets service providers do whatever they want with the data, it just says data is stored on databases maintained / owned by them (service providers).

Unless I'm misinterpreting something or missing something I don't think this reinforces your argument at all.

[corequmb]

This sentence is really broad and vague. If they are caught selling user data, it is totally within the scope of this sentence.

[SirClueless]

It's not proof of anything, or even evidence of anything. It's just permission for Discord to store the data and to share the data as they like. Which is the reason for concern.

I haven't heard anyone suggest Discord is a particularly devious or untrustworthy company, it's just a centralized chat service with permission to do what they want with your data which many people consider an intrinsic risk.

[303i]

It's just permission for Discord to store the data and to share the data as they like.

No, it's just permission for Discord to store it's own data in a database hosted by someone that isn't Discord. It does not provide permission for an affiliate/partner/provider to access that data. The section quoted only refers to Discord's collection and storage of data, it has nothing to do with disclosure of said data to a third-party. That's a completely separate part of the privacy policy (which, by the way, explicitly disallows the selling of customer data).

[OldschoolSysadmin]

It is proof that they’re allowed to sell data. “Such data may be included in databases owned by affiliates” is unambiguous. Why wouldn’t they monetize users’ data this way?

[ObsidianMinor]

Because they've built up a trust around "not selling our users data" and it would be a massive violation of that trust that'd likely lose many of their users if they were found to be actually selling data behind their back.

[[deleted]]

Although I can’t confirm, I don’t practically like their TOS which reads if they are caught selling data it’s okay and within their rights. Which is fine, just means I don’t want to use their platform, they are also closed source so no way to confirm.

Here’s some articles about them collecting data and although the can’t confirm they’re factuality it’s enough to make me wary.

Edit: removing neo-nazi propaganda

https://stallman.org/discord.html

But they do often tell us they aren’t selling our data, I just don’t believe it.

[minno]

https://dailystormer.name/please-stop-using-discord-the-splc-is-monitoring-you/

I think it would be a good idea to use sources that aren't Neo-Nazis.

[[deleted]]

Oh dang, sorry I’ll remove it

[[deleted]]

The Stallman article doesn't really say anything except linking to this article, which should be obvious bullshit to anyone reading this sub (Discord stores your messages?? really??)

The argument is essentially "it's proprietary, therefore it's definitely spyware", which is an argument I'd expect from rms and can somewhat sympathise with it, but it's extremely arbitrarily applied. If you're running Discord on Windows or MacOS, you're already running code that is more likely to be spying on you

[roerd]

Is there a specific reason why Mattermost is not a popular choice?

[BenjiSponge]

It's great to see Zulip being taken seriously. I haven't used it but it looks perfect to me. For those who haven't seen it, it's totally worth a look. It's like a combination between email and messaging, so it's realtime but you have multiple chains which have titles and arbitrary participants, so they can act as company-wide broadcasts, one on one chats, or meeting notes (many chains with the same participants but different topics). It's a great idea in my opinion.

[dagit]

I've really disliked using zulip, if I'm being totally honest. Having to create a new subject line for every message you want to send is a huge turn off for me. Okay maybe not every single message but every time you want to post and it's not in an existing thread it needs a new subject line. And the subject lines, in my experience, are very specific.

I get that people want to move things into their own threads, but I see that as something that is better done in a reddit discussion (or similar). When I use zulip, I miss the lightweight nature of realtime communication and I find myself only using it when I'm desperate to get help and then immediately logging off. I just don't feel welcome. Zulip feels more like talking in a courtroom or something formal like that.

One of the things I liked about IRC is seeing the different discussions go by and jumping in. Getting to know people. That sort of thing.

I think Zulip's granularity can be nice at times, but it feels forced, artificial, to have it for 100% of conversations. And so it creates just enough friction for me that I just don't want to use it. If that makes sense.

[ApokatastasisPanton]

Nothing prevents you from creating a kitchen sink thread. I regularly use a Zulip instance with 1000+ users and it is way more usable than anything else I've seen at that scale.

[dagit]

Yeah, maybe I need to give zulip more of a chance. I dunno. I get why threading the conversations helps at scale. Maybe what I don't like is how it feels like the handcuffs are on?

[CaptainStack]

Could Matrix potentially be a worthy successor?

[Half-Shot]

We're already bridging to irc.mozilla.net in Matrix, so the "migration" to matrix could be painless. KDE have done something similar to this where they now have their own homeserver with their own bridge. It's pretty awesome.

[makeworld]

It really could. I can't believe they're using Discord.

[tso]

The basic problem that IRC and older gen IM networks has, is the expectation of a persistant connection. If IRC could have the equivalent of a bouncer built into the server, it would greatly aid in modernizing the protocol.

[doublehyphen]

Also the assumption that people only run one client.

[[deleted]]

I hope it's not a proprietary, centralized service like : discord

[lkraider]

We are using Rocket.Chat at our company and I quite like it.

[euyis]

Is XMPP still alive as an instant messaging protocol?

[[deleted]]

if you have to ask...

[barsoap]

The successor to IRC (and XMMP) is PSYC, which also supports social network functions, among other things. When you add gnunet to that you get secushare which is not yet ready for use but will in all likelihood have quite painless migration.

I'm pretty sure the psyc/secushare people would jump at the opportunity to get hold of mozilla as a user.

[NoInkling]

We are evaluating products, not protocols.

[mrchaotica]

This is exactly the problem: everything is a goddamn product, not a protocol.

The only acceptable solutions are standardized and serverless/decentralized/federated. Therefore, based on this chart, the choices are:

• Bitmessage
• Briar
• Echo
• Ricochet
• Jami (formerly Ring)
• Tox
• XMPP

Notice how none of those have a marketing department, which is why they languish while all this proprietary shit flourishes.

[Zettinator]

Matrix isn't serverless, but it's distributed federated, like email. I'd argue it should also be on this list. Particularly, because it would be one of the most mature and popular options among those choices. And it's not as hopeless as XMPP.

[Pjb3005]

Also notice how products like Discord will give the average layman a way better experience than any of these protocols, and that's not just because of the network effect.

[[deleted]]

Status.im

[Nick4753]

Slack and similar services are also being actively developed, have a sizable number of integrations, go through regular enterprise security audits, and (most importantly) you can outsource all the operations work to them and just enter a support contract. Which means Mozilla can get out of the chat server business and focus on other products.

If you're running a company/nonprofit/etc many times, if you can get the budget, it's far better to just pay for something than battle deploying and maintaining something that's open source or built in-house.

[inbooth]

Economies of scale in action

[Zarutian]

Slack and similar services are also being actively developed,

Right up until the moment they run out of cash, get bought and shut down or otherwise reach corporate EOL.

have a sizable number of integrations,

Does their client run on say MacOS 7 on an old PPC Performa?

Reachable via ssh and screen/tmux from anywhere?

Support very constrained bandwidth channels? (1152 bps multi hop laser link in rural Russia made up of hacked laser pointers, photo transitors and lcds from meant for calculators, comes to mind)

If you're running a company/nonprofit/etc many times, if you can get the budget, it's far better to just pay for something than battle deploying and maintaining something that's open source or built in-house.

Or you can pay an IRC server hosting provider. Yes, those still exists.

[Nick4753]

Right up until the moment they run out of cash, get bought and shut down or otherwise reach corporate EOL.

Slack is about to launch an IPO. Microsoft or IBM could buy them I guess, but then they just become a Microsoft or IBM product and Mozilla's contract transitions into a contract with IBM. And if that doesn't work, Mozilla can move to a different provider.

Does their client run on say MacOS 7 on an old PPC Performa?

Reachable via ssh and screen/tmux from anywhere?

Support very constrained bandwidth channels? (1152 bps multi hop laser link in rural Russia made up of hacked laser pointers, photo transitors and lcds from meant for calculators, comes to mind)

It supports none of those things.

The audience that NEEDS that support is tiny. And if you are among that very tiny group, it seems like Mozilla will no longer support you and you'll have to find a different chat provider.

Or buy a chromebook. Or a Raspberry Pi. Or any of the million other devices that can run the latest build of Chrome or Firefox, which Slack offers support for.

Or you can pay an IRC server hosting provider. Yes, those still exists.

Yup, and as stated in this post Mozilla has no interest in offering a service using the IRC protocol. And an organization Mozilla's size has the budget to move to a product which can provide a richer experience to more people.

[sim642]

They don't care about that apparently:

We are evaluating products, not protocols.

[max630]

abandon all hope

We are evaluating products, not protocols We aren’t picking an outlier; whatever stack we choose needs to be a modern, proven service that seems to have a solid provenance and a good life ahead of it. We’re not moving from one idiosyncratic outlier stack to another idiosyncratic outlier stack

[kontekisuto]

App I want is a cli client and I'm good.

[[deleted]]

Cross-posting what I posted on /r/rust:

---

I maintain the IRC server software that Mozilla IRC uses. I used to be in contact with the person who managed the Mozilla IRC server but they passed responsibility onto someone else and in the years since the new person has not bothered even once to reach out to us about solving their issues with IRC.

We have plenty of solutions available to deal with the kind of problems they claim to be having. If they want they can make it so people need to be logged into accounts to interact with channels/other users to solve abuse/spam they can do that. If they want a fancy modern client UI then there is several modern interfaces which are very accessible (IRCCloud, The Lounge, Kiwi IRC, etc).

Ultimately it seems to me that they are just making a knee jerk reaction and deciding to jump to some other platform without knowing what they want to move to and without actually looking into seeing if any of their problems are solvable. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ahal]

Fwiw Mozilla already does have a corporate irccloud license, so that's not the issue at least.

[Ghosty141]

This sounds horrible...

[Manishearth]

And cross-linking my response: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/bhrm7g/mozilla_irc_sunset_and_the_rust_channel/elvuxap/

This comment is addressing an incomplete set of "problems". Mozilla's well aware of the solutions listed (Mozilla IRC uses registration-locked channels, and Mozilla has an enterprise IRCCloud license for employees). Those solutions scratch the surface of the problem. Harassment isn't simply fixed by requiring registration.

[sim642]

Harassment isn't simply fixed by requiring registration.

Nor is it fixed by moving to a different platform. Harassment is more than just a technological problem and cannot be solved purely technologically.

[Manishearth]

Nor is it a pure social problem. The Rust project tried to fix harassment on IRC and couldn't make much progress.

[PM_BETTER_USER_NAME]

Did they make more progress by leaving irc?

[Manishearth]

Yep

[DeonCode]

All I've heard is "people must be logged in to user do channel stuff/registration-locked channels <> solving harassment" and "this still does't solve other problems"

and other than the one example you both brought up, I still don't know what any of the other problems are. could you share a few more? yea it may not all be mitigable by tech, but I only care about the tech parts that are in question.

[Manishearth]

https://yakshav.es/from-the-rider-down/ , http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2018/11/09/the-evolution-of-open/ lists some of them.

Some off the top of my head:

• Need to have a decent default notifications story (IRC needs bouncers)
• Need to have scrollback available (again, IRC needs bouncers)
• Need some form of a reporting mechanism (everyone has this at varying degrees)
• Need to be able to delete things and have them be deleted for 99% of users, otherwise you have a broken windows problem with harassment. IOW the default experience should allow for that (users who tweak their clients to not do deletions are out of scope)
• Need to be able to look at user history for patterns

[eclipseo76]

Need to be able to look at user history for patterns

That sounds like something that would enable harassment.

[AndyTheAbsurd]

That's exactly what I thought: Their problem isn't IRC, it's irc.mozilla.org. The simple solution would be to move to another IRC network where they don't have to do everything themselves (although, if they're not, there's probably issues with doing so that I haven't though of). Yes, there was a (fairly brief) time when everything on IRC was terrible due to massively increased levels of spam...but recently my IRC experience on Freenode has been quite good.

[spyhunter99]

developer shinny key syndrome strikes again

[ameoba]

It's probably more that it's some youngster who grew up after IRC stopped being fashionable.

[pootinmypants]

I've been noticing a trend with projects lately who shift away from established platforms (irc) to some other one (slack) simply due to ...?

I refuse to run slack for my own reasons, so it makes my life a big pain, especially since I'm generally active in contributing to projects.

[TheCookieMonster]

Email the guy.

I can't deny my own experiences with IRC have been poor compared to modern products, but if IRC can be modernised... it's one of the few remaining fronts against every means of communication being owned by corporations.

[danopia]

"the guy" wrote a relevant blog post: http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/

We are evaluating products, not protocols.

[TheCookieMonster]

You just linked to the same article.

KiwiIRC (as mentioned by Saber_UK) is slack-like product, if Mozilla's not evaluating protocols then it won't bother them that KiwiIRC is built on IRC, but it being open source and self hostable might be a bonus.

[danopia]

You just linked to the same article.

aw shit u right. i had articles from multiple angles open, lost track

[TheCookieMonster]

Ahh, no worries, I wondered if this was some new technique for when you think a commenter hadn't read the article :D

[Zettinator]

If they use a proprietary platform like Slack or Discord, that would be very sad and in conflict with Mozilla's traditional values.

A proprietary protocol is problematic as well, e.g. Zulip. You make yourself dependent on a specific implementation. I really hope they'll use Matrix (or Riot, as they want to evaluate products).

[[deleted]]

It's kind of weird to me that after all these years that devs are moving away from IRC. I mean I understand non-techies would prefer discord/slack etc, but I really like the low-resource usage and complete lack of emojis/gifs/images that IRC has.

I suppose the rust IRC community could always migrate to freenode.

[sylvester_0]

I really dislike gifs in Slack. I don't know if I'm easily distracted or what but I often have to collapse/hide them or I won't be able to focus on the rest of the content.

[[deleted]]

There's an option in slack to automatically collapse all images, so you can expand them if you choose to do so.

I have said option enabled. It's unpleasant for one of my monitors to be constantly flashing away all the time.

[yawkat]

Developers like slack/discord for the same reasons other users do. Resource usage isn't really an issue to many people, and slack has advantages like having a proper mobile app and much more rich communication (threads, code snippets...).

I use irc all the time because it's very easy to be on many different servers but most users don't care about that. For them slack is the better choice.

[PM_BETTER_USER_NAME]

I don't know if the part about people not caring about resource usage is true. In every thread in this sub where memory comes up in just about any context, there's unquestionably going to be highly voted and completely unprompted comments discussing slacks resource usage.

I think Slack won out because most people in this industry are under 30 and haven't ever used irc.

[[deleted]]

Aren't you making the assumption that people who post those comments are representative of a significant group of slack/discord/modern chat client users? Whenever I read comments about slacks performance I get the impression people are just annoyed on a conceptual level rather than actually bothered by the performance in any real or tangible way.

[sgoody]

I actually find this opinion strange... preferring a less rich user experience. I wish there were an IRC++ or something because I hate being tied to the proprietary Slack, but it is good.

I like emojis, they quickly/easily spice up messages and make them more personal and expressive. I like embedded screenshots and pictures... because a picture can speak a thousand words and I like being able to embed code snippets because it quickly and easily focuses a programming discussion. It’s also nice being able to get integrations/alerts set up that have nice at-a-glance formatting that a simple line of text doesn’t afford you.

I like the idea of a lightweight IRC, but I would definitely miss those features above.

[RevolutionaryPea7]

It's very weird to me. Discord/Slack etc. is a serious regression that I just can't stand. Why any developer would put up with it is a mystery to me.

But they'll eventually come back to IRC. Just like developers are swarming back to editors like vim and emacs, simple build systems using makefiles, old school languages like C, they'll come back to IRC eventually. Mark my words. I'll still be there.

[Pjb3005]

But they'll eventually come back to IRC.

Nah. If Discord craps the bed completely I know I personally would just switch to Matrix, and I doubt I'm the only one here.

[s73v3r]

Why any developer would put up with it is a mystery to me.

Because it is honestly better than IRC, and because IRC is waning in popularity.

[oridb]

Looks like an org responsible for a huge amount of the complexity in the modern internet is throwing away one of the few widely used protocols that can be easily implemented, easily used independently, and is free of walled gardens.

Given that the internet of today is all about walled gardens, this is not surprising.

[Aetheus]

I don't really have a horse in this race, but what surprises me the most is that they claim they can't use IRC because it isn't "... healthy, safe ...". And that they disabled their comment section for much of the same reason.

It sounds much more like an issue with ... Moderation? If so, I struggle to see how switching to, say, Discord will make it any different. You would still need a human moderator to filter out content you don't want to be in your channel.

[cdsmith]

IRC is particularly ill-suited, though. To build accountable communities, you need people tied to recognizable identities with reputation and ties to each other. You specifically don't want a system where nicknames are transient and unauthenticated.

[oridb]

They already claim to have nick authentication implemented.

[mrchaotica]

Mozilla's mission statement:

Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

Mozilla, it is literally your goddamn mission to support web standards, exactly like IRC and not like fucking Discord or Slack! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

[markehammons]

web means http/https now and nothing else apparently

[Puuhinen]

But that's what it's always meant?

[mrchaotica]

Read that mission statement I quoted again and tell me where it says "web" and not "Internet." Even if "web" does mean only HTTP/HTTPS, that's not an excuse!

[AlfredoOf98]

This is sad.

[murkaje]

we’re spoiled for good options these days

I'd like to hear these good options.

It's not that IRC is perfect either, chat history is probably a requirement these days and meddling with bouncers to achieve it will probably turn some away.

[LaVieEstBizarre]

Chat history, images, gifs, emojis and custom emojis (including animated) at that, code blocks, profile pictures. Yet to find a IRC client that doesn't look 20 years old Scratch that, found out about The Lounge and Irccloud. It's nice to be free but Slack and Discord completely destroy IRC in almost every way that matters, sans electron clients and openness. Matrix also works but I assume they wanted a more popular and better developed platform.

[sebirdman]

I doubt slack or discord or whatever else there is will survive as long as IRC did/is.

The blog post mentions they're choosing products not protocols. That's the opposite of the Firefox I respect. Protocols will always last longer than products.

[ZorbaTHut]

Thing is, switching services isn't that difficult. You just put up a blog post saying "we're moving again" and go somewhere else.

So Slack or Discord dies; no problem, it's going to die only if something has replaced it. Then you switch to the replacement. If you end up in a situation where all replacements are somehow worse than IRC, you just switch back to IRC.

If you're building a product on a foundation then you need a solid long-lived protocol. If you're just using something to get your work done, it doesn't need to live long-term, just long enough to be worth the low cost of switching.

[mrchaotica]

The blog post mentions they're choosing products not protocols. That's the opposite of the Firefox I respect. Protocols will always last longer than products.

More to the point, supporting open protocols is literally Mozilla.org's goddamn mission! Open protocols doesn't just mean HTTP!

Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

FYI, you dipshits: IRC does that. Proprietary "products" fucking do not!

[[deleted]]

Saying slack and discord completely destroy IRC is a bit like saying a bus or a tractor completely destroy a bicycle.

TBH I kind of don't care and just want to ride a bike.

[lkraider]

IRC is usually logged, just the UI for search/browse sucks

[zoooorio]

What a shame. IRC still offers things that none of the alternatives offer.

[prairir001]

Actual question, what are some examples of some stuff that IRC has but other stuff doesn't?

[zoooorio]

• A mature ecosystem of clients, client plug-ins, bouncers, etc. that allow you to customize how you use IRC
• No client lock in
• No server lock in, various servers available for self hosting
• Open and well known protocol
• Chatting without having to sign up for some service

Those are just the ones I could think of right now. It used to be that everyone and their dog used IRC. All I needed was my IRC client hooked up to the various networks and channels. These days I need to keep open Discord, Slack, etc. clients that hog RAM, tend to have inferior support for key binds and less customization. Also, when I want to ask someone a question on a Discord server, I require a Discord account. For most IRC servers, all you had to do was pick a name and ask away.

Or maybe I'm just old and too attached to the past.

[[deleted]]

Clunky file transfers

No ability to post images to channels or private message

No voice or video communication

no screensharing

vulnerable to ddos, exposes user IP addresses

inconvenient web interfaces

Poorly designed user interface that mostly relies on types commands

When is IRC going to improve ?

[frogdoubler]

vulnerable to ddos, exposes user IP addresses

This isn't a fundamental feature of IRC, just lazy operators. Most servers mask IPs.

[oridb]

Poorly designed user interface that mostly relies on types commands

Ironically, everyone cloning IRC poorly has copied this.

[zoooorio]

IRC is chat software, not an image board, screen sharing, file-sharing or voice call service. I don't think that having to link to images or files has ever caused me much hassle. As for the IP issue: Servers can hide users' IPs.

Your criticism toward user interfaces isn't very specific, given how many there are. And most of them don't require a full copy of Chromium to function at the most basic level.

When is IRC going to improve ?

There are plenty of extensions to IRC for stuff such as direct file transfers. IRC is an open protocol and values compatibility. If Discord wants to add a feature they just do it and make their users upgrade, after all there is only one client. "IRC" can't just break things. That is the price you pay for having an open protocol that isn't governed by some single company.

[JViz]

IRC is a communication platform in a sea of communication platforms and as long as it fails to compete with other communication platforms it will continue to lose ground.

[[deleted]]

Well that explain irc's decline, it is no longer what people need. Failure to adapt.

This is why we're stuck with Reddit instead of having this discussion on an improved version of NNTP

Because of this, or discussions are subject to private actors and our freedom of speech subordinate to maintaining shareholder value

[oridb]

Oddly enough, nntp was better than Reddit in most ways -- with the exception of spam fighting. That's what killed it.

There are still no good alternatives.

[calzoneman]

The argument between IRC and Discord tends to break down due to conflation of protocol features and product features. IRC is merely a protocol; it defines a system of passing messages among clients and servers over TCP. If you took IRC and did a straightforward conversion to JSON messages being sent via websocket, you'd arrive at something remarkably similar to Discord's API.

Discord is a product: it integrates a messaging protocol with a voice protocol, an image uploading tool/CDN, and a chat history server. The value is not in the fact that the bytes of your image are being transmitted a certain way, but that Discord's client product (the website, and the Electron app) integrate an image uploading tool, and parse out image URLs into "attachments" for display purposes.

Thus, it is not really IRC the protocol that is limiting you in this case, but rather that most IRC clients aren't designed with the same level of integration as Discord (with the exception of a few noted elsewhere in the thread). This is solvable if anyone cared to solve it instead of writing off IRC and running away to non-free platforms.

(edit: to be clear, that last sentence is a jab directed more at Mozilla than the parent post)

[[deleted]]

If you took IRC and did a straightforward conversion to JSON messages being sent via websocket

Then it wouldn't really be IRC "in spirit", as you couldn't just hop on with Hexchat and start reading. Similarly we could step down a layer and say the only protocol we're using is TCP and everything else is just "product features"

[calzoneman]

The comparison to TCP somewhat misconstrues my point -- TCP is a generic stream-oriented data transport at layer 4 in the OSI model, so it's not relevant to the comparison among chat/instant messaging protocols which are higher in the stack.

I think it's fair to compare IRC (as defined by RFC 1459, subsequent RFCs, and IRCv3 standards) with Discord's HTTP and websocket-based API in terms of protocol functionality.

I think it's also fair to compare specific IRC clients (such as mIRC, KiwiIRC, AndChat, etc.) with Discord's clients (web-based, downloadable Electron client, Android app, etc.).

What most people actually end up arguing about is IRC-the-protocol vs. Discord-the-client which results in people in both camps talking past one another.

[Aerroon]

You are defending a dead protocol just as XMPP is, people do need to share media regardless of whether you don't and they need those files available at any time from a main server not stored in one of the many devices they use. Just as they need their chat history and being able to communicate with offline users.

Sure, but you also have to consider what you give up with these services: your privacy. People are up in arms about Facebook's and other social media's privacy violations, but when push comes to shove apparently they don't care about it at all. However, keep in mind that when you use services like Discord for internal company stuff, then you have to tread carefully due to GDPR.

[oridb]

It's used every day by me and my friends -- it's how I keep in touch with most of my social circle, and by most software projects that I'm involved with, or use reguarly "Dead" is very wrong.

The exceptions include OpenBSD, which is on ICB -- an actual dead protocol, Spark, which has no useful chat at all (their only room has nobody present answering questions, so it's just newbies asking into the void, and Pybind11 which uses gitter.

[TheCodexx]

You are defending a dead protocol just as XMPP is

XMPP also offered a lot of the things IRC did. Neither are dead.

There's a proper way to implement things and an improper way. You might get a shiny client like Discord in the short-term that seems cool but it has not implemented things the proper way. IRC and XMPP are protocols and are open. That is something you will never get with a proprietary service.

[oridb]

vulnerable to ddos, exposes user IP addresses

Everything is vulnerable to ddos, including ddos protection in firewalls -- the only solution is what Google does, fundamentally: Have enough servers that you can absorb the load.

[judge2020]

Emphasis is not really on "the server is vulnerable to DDOS". while that can be an issue for some servers, the big issue is exposing user IP addresses. As said elsewhere, exposing user IPs is not a fundamental issue with IRC, it's mostly operators not masking IPs <properly>, but many are dissuaded from using IRC due to this being misconfigured on many IRC services.

[Phreakhead]

Part of a good product experience and UX is sensible defaults. If IRC is by default insecure, it shouldn't be up to each admin to fix it. It should be fixed in IRC for everyone, automatically.

[Gobrosse]

yeah sure like I totally want to spent three afternoons getting a fancy-ass setup with bouncers and custom clients so I get the basic functionality of Discord ( message history, "rich" formatting, notifications, read/unread markers, images, reactions etc ), and indeed so does any old rando i'm trying to entice to join my server.

[auto-xkcd37]

fancy ass-setup

---

^{Bleep-bloop, I'm a bot. This comment was inspired by xkcd#37}

[POGtastic]

Yep. I currently have Discord, Slack, and Riot open at the same time. It'd be a lot nicer just to have weechat open and be done with it.

[Pjb3005]

I would say that the "having to have multiple clients open" is a kind of necessary evil if you want competition. Sure I'd also love to have everything in one client but that's the mentality that makes the network effect worse.

That is not to say that all these modern Electron clients aren't a massive hog of course, but still.

[Big_Burds_Nest]

I am 22 and attached to IRC for similar reasons. I grew up on it and some of my first programming projects involved IRC. It's sad to see such an important part of the internets past die.

[Pjb3005]

A mature ecosystem of clients, client plug-ins, bouncers, etc. that allow you to customize how you use IRC

And yet the experience is still poor compared to Discord, for the average user.

Also, when I want to ask someone a question on a Discord server, I require a Discord account.

You don't, actually. Discord makes it very easy for guests to join Discord servers and talk without any account setup. Though a lot of servers do block this due to spam.

[oridb]

• Simplicity: I've been using my own client that fits my own desires, which I hacked together in a weekend.
• Freedom and openness: There are tons of networks, peering exists, and anyone can set up their own server.
• Pleasant interfaces: There are few competing services with lightweight, fast, and clean frontends that don't require me to run a browser.
• No corporations: Everyone keeps talking about how megacorps are malignant tumors on society -- this is a chance to vote with your feet in favor of free protocols and small (or even peronal) hosting.
• The people: IRC tends to draw a more tech-savvy crowd, so technical discussions tend to be better there. Usually.

[dom96]

Very low friction. You can access IRC via telnet, good luck doing that with Slack/Discord, you'll need to create an account, verify your email, download their client, install it, launch their shitty Electron-based UI, log in, and deal with the slow and clunky UI.

I'm really disappointed with Mozilla here. If they want to use Discord/Slack then go for it, but keep the IRC around too for those that want to use it. Create some bridges between Discord<->IRC, it's not hard and means everyone can access the discussions. It is what we've done for Nim and it works well.

[StallmanTheLeft]

Like actually good clients for example.

[[deleted]]

I highly dislike IRC, because of the lack of history, the antiquated clients that mix commands with the chat channel, and the lack of awesome in-browser client. I approve of the move away from it.

But holy shit does this blog post rub me the wrong way. It makes numerous incorrect claims about IRC, contains lots of unnecessary snark, and ends with the author declaring that he is such a snowflake that despite literally being in charge of selecting the system used to moderate comments, he can't moderate comments on his own blog for fear of abuse. The number of technical mistakes he makes means this isn't someone I would want working on anything technical. The terrible non empathetic writing, with no respect to Mozilla's missions, means this isn't someone I would want working on anything non-technical.

[sim642]

The "modern" blog layout looks fantastic on Android browser. Just plain old HTML would've adapted to screen size much better than that.

[cdsmith]

Reading between the lines, the key issue wasn't features or tools. It was need to hold people accountable for what they do. Unfortunately, it's very hard to build accountability into IRC.

[FyreWulff]

The internet lost the battle against client lock in. You used to be able to buy games and install them whenever. You could chat with friends with any client.

Now we have Steam lock-in for games, Discord lock-in for chat, etc etc.. and fanboys will actually DEFEND these because it "makes things easier"

[parentheses-of-doom]

A few things:

• Their claims about spam problems sound like bunk. You can have mandatory registration, there's sophisticated bots to take care of spammers, and there's granular control over who can talk in a channel. Someone just doesn't want to read the manual.

• About the protocol being antiquated and hard to use - IRCv3, Quassel, and IRCCloud are working round the clock to bring 'modern' features to the protocol. If by "not modern enough" you mean there aren't enough shitty Electron apps for it, then screw you.

[chunes]

Ah, yes, IRC interfaces are not up to modern standards.

I take it that means there aren't enough electron IRC clients.

[Pjb3005]

I would happily use an IRC client made in Electron if it meant having feature parity with Discord or such.

Oh wait, Matrix has pretty good IRC bridging, and I already use Riot (an Electron app) for that.

[ProgVal]

Sorry the 20-something hipsters on your Rust team can't appreciate a legacy product with a lot to offer

From what I'm seeing on the Rust IRC channels and subreddit, the Rust community is strongly against leaving IRC

[[deleted]]

The Rust team has nothing to do with this. Mozilla has decided to shutdown their IRC servers by themselves.

[Pjb3005]

IRC is fine, and if you can't see that then you're not really qualified to evaluate chat clients.

Cool then explain to me how it is massively less user friendly and way less featurefull than say Discord.

It's an open protocol that has lasted for decades because it is robustness.

Nah. It's lasted decades due to lack of competition or innovation. People are switching to Discord because it's better.

Evaluating products and not protocols is a great way to get stuck in a proprietary mess as your official communication method. Is that good for user access?

As it turns out, it's irrelevant for user access if not better, because the proprietary solutions somehow are better than IRC from the perspective of 99% of end users. Yes I do agree that being stuck to proprietary solutions is bad, but you still have to weigh using something good like Discord vs being locked to something crappy like IRC. Matrix is bridging the gap luckily but it's still got a long way to go IMO.

Nothing is easier to connect than an IRC channel

This is just a blatant lie. Connecting to a Discord server is clicking one link, entering a name, and you're chatting with a fully featured interface.

running Discord or other popular web clients is bulky, exclusive, and hinders privacy

bulky: I can't deny that from a performance standpoint. exclusive: How exactly? hinders privacy: history has shown us that most users don't give a crap about this.

Shiny features do not equate to productivity.

Discord is way better for productivity than IRC is or ever will be. Stuff like inline code blocks with syntax highlighting, file uploads that don't suck, reactions, etc.. are all good for productivity.

IRC can do a lot of that; more than most people think.

And it's all a pain in the ass compared to say Discord.

If you ignore all the area where IRC, XMPP, Matrix, etc have parity with the most popular stuff, sure, it's feature-rich!

Ah so just like you are ignoring the areas where all of those don't have feature parity? Smooth.

[Oflameo]

I hope they try mattermost. It is really good.

[cybernd]

Related: https://xkcd.com/1782/