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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

IRC (current version) works fine for me. The trick is to front it with ZNC or similar software.

Anyway, why isn't this being done through the IETF?

For you. What about the millions of nontechnical people that need an open communication platform? We use IRC at my employer, and the complexity of getting a bouncer set up means that for cross time zone teams, most people miss any conversations that don't happen in their business hours. This has huge effects on collaboration.

"most people miss any conversations that don't happen in their business hours. This has huge effects on collaboration."

Why don't you send them logs of the conversations?

Suddenly it's my job to bring everyone else up to speed on what happened in their off hours? I have a job to do. Slack and Rocket.Chat (and matrix and ...) both solve that problem and a lot of others without the legacy bullshit that IRC slops down the road. I'm sick of spending time working around what is an outdated and inadequate protocol because of momentum in my office.

You realize logging IRC and distributing said logs can be completely automatic, right? Anyone can set that up. It's honestly kind of humorous that you find this to be such a mountain to climb.

Sure. I'll send you logs. Jump onto Slack, and scroll back. Easy.

I support open protocols and not proprietary products that make you pay to simply keep chat history (Slack deletes messages after +10,000 messages). To be against IRC is to be against e-mail. IRC has been around at least since the 80s.

The working group seems to have formed in 2012, first under Atheme. They do want to work with IETF: https://github.com/kaniini/ircv3-harmony https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/issues/132

What's the advantages by doing it through the IETF?

> IRC (current version) works fine for me. The trick is to front it with ZNC or similar software.

But ZNC actually uses a bunch of IRCv3 features.

You see that computer in front of you with its internet connection?

All the things you don't think about, and most of the ones you do, work together the way they do because of the IETF.

You see those other things that don't work together? Those are the ones the IETF didn't do.

I am more than well aware what the IETF is and what it has done. However, your response providers absolutely no answer to my question and is quite frankly patronising and rude.

I asked why this should be done under the IETF? What are the benefits, specific to the IRC protocol, of doing this under the banner of the IETF versus not? What do you believe will be gained by doing this under the IETF?

There's plenty of protocols and technologies that we use today that don't fall under the IETF banner and are plenty successful. The W3C is an organisation that comes to mind for example.

It is simpler for us to work on stuff by ourselves rather than getting the bureaucratic nightmare which is the IETF involved. IRC has never followed the RFCs strictly (even RFC 1459 describes a specific protocol which has never existed) so it is not too much of a problem.

There are plans to contribute an updated base RFC to the IETF in due course though.

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