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You just described the Matrix riot client:

Love matrix, but the OP just described the big adoption problem. Non-programmer wants to set it up for his company. How do you do that with a matrix server? Slack makes it pretty damn easy for non-techies to get set up and invite people. Matrix currently does not do that.

Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly, but with Riot.im you can just sign in, create a room, and then invite people to that room.

It gets a bit more complex if you want to run your own server, but that's not something you can do at all with Slack.

It's very possible I'm misunderstanding as well, but when you create a room on the Matrix homeserver, the only option you have is to make it so users on another homeserver cannot join that room, which means your only security is other matrix users not knowing your room name.

For a small corporate team that wants to pilot a chat program, like in the original comment, the gulf between Slack setting up your own private workspace with a few clicks and a room that has all of your chat history exposed to any user that knows the room name is pretty large.

I would love to see riot or matrix give you a few click options to have them host your own private matrix server, as that's a big obstacle for corporate customers who don't have the resources (human) to spin up their own servers (domains, adding ssl certs, adding nginx, etc.) just for trialing a chat program.

This is indeed a massive misunderstanding: rooms in Matrix can either be publicly joinable by default or be invite-only (just like in IRC). There's also a separate question of whether a room is locked to a given server (i.e. made unfederatable), but this is an extreme measure taken if you know the room will contain stuff you never want to ever leave that server. You can now also create communities to group your company/project's rooms together even if you're primarily using someone else's homeserver.

Separately: we're working on providing a "one-click" homeserver hosting option with a free trial precisely of the kind you're asking for.

Great, thank you very much for clarifying!

Like just about any IT service you call your ops team? Slack offers value in being hosted for sure but if you're worried install difficulty then we're in the world of on-prem services. Matrix is easy compared to some paid products I've used.

I've worked for a few small startups and smaller IT teams in larger corps, so the option of "call your ops team" isn't really feasible, so in that sense Slack wins because it's easy enough for the business owners to set it up, send out the email invites, and feel that it's relatively secure. I think Matrix is an all around better option, but just believe that they are missing why small companies or strapped teams pick Slack in the first place.

A few projects exist that try to be "modern" UIs for IRC (bias: I contribute to Lounge)

TheLounge - https://thelounge.chat (FOSS, self-hosted)

IRCCloud - https://irccloud.com (mobile clients OS, hosted)

Let me add Glowing Bear, a project I contribute to that builds on top of WeeChat: https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear

they don't look "modern"..

Yeah, there isn't enough low contrast text and excessive white space.

TheLounge has full support for themes and custom CSS on the client

Did you actually look at them? The Lounge looks like a less image-heavy Slack. It's definitely following most modern design trends like flat UIs.

At the very least it looks and feels far more modern than, for instance, mIRC.

I just played with The Lounge a bit and it actually looks really nice.

No way to edit a message I've already sent.

I'll stick with Slack.

You can't do that in IRC at all, so it would be impossible for a UI to offer that feature. ;)

It's on the horizon, though: https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/304

It is almost seems like you are saying there are technical reasons for them dropping IRC....

Besides that, if slack had IRC enabled and e2e you would be able to connect via IRC and actually verify that e2e is doing its job (ie. connect via irc and see scrambled texts).

One problem with all these closed client apps slack (with this update)/whatsapp/telegram is that there is no way to verify/audit it is actually doing proper e2e.

Users must trust the X company that they are really doing proper e2e.

These apps should allow users to download a plugin and use that to produce the e2e. Then the user would be able to download an open sourced audited plugin that encrypts the messages before they hit the whatsapp/slack/telegram company servers.

So for instance, if this was possible, everyone on a group would download and install the plugin that runs on top of whatsapp/slack/telegram and share an encryption key that only they know about. And do the same for conversations between 2 people.

There must be some point of trust, however with the current situation, it is hard to trust e2e code no one is able to audit.

Or just open the protocol so everyone can use and create their own clients and their own e2e mechanisms. Which is what IRC is.

Telegram's client is open-source.

Telegram's E2E is also crap and shouldn't be used[0]

0: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802

The two things IRC is actually missing for most people is push notifications and "offline" history. Yes you can get these if you run your own bouncer, or whatever, but it's not native to the technology. I think Matrix is ahead of IRC for solving both of those issues.

IRC is the protocol. There are myriad services which use the IRC protocol. Some of these do include push notifications and offline history, such as irccloud (and others).

The freedom to choose is one of the reasons people wish slack would open source their protocol.

Non power users might have trouble using IRC with the usual clients (mIRC/irssi/bitchx).

I've never used Slack but these name drops are all familiar.

Back in the good 'oldays of Eggdrop? It's amazing that Slack was "backwards" compatible with IRC for so long.

But honestly, their API is mature. No need to be backwards compatible. Easier to sell when you are in control of access and client.

Some have already mentioned similar clients, but also check out Convos[1]. Recently I had a very similar need for what you described and stumbled upon it.

[1] https://convos.by/

It has ALWAYS been time to move back to IRC!

(Arghh... I'll probably be downvoted to hell for a flippant, drive-by comment, but what the fuck... We all know that HN hates comedy.)

is it true what I've heard about irc and how it completely ignores stuff like encoding?