Hacker News Reader

Comment by phzbOx | Hacker News Reader

"When you're paying developers $$$, you don't want them to be setting up IRC servers."

Fair enough but still if it takes 1 hour to set it up vs paying 50$*12. (But I get your point, that's why I said I found it a bit risky in another post.. that's the developers mentality vs the CEO's one.)

View on HN

I don't think you can realistically setup an IRC server in an hour, at least not your first time, not with SSL, NickServ, ChanServ, etc. It will probably take more than an hour just to pick an IRC server and find the documentation. Almost all IRC servers were designed to run public IRC networks, each public IRC network has forked and re-forked the original IRCd from 1988. They tend to lack features that are expected of online services these days, e.g., user accounts and access controls. You can usually set a server-wide password, and channel keywords, but that's different than having individual usernames and passwords, with individual access control to channels. So then you need a NickServ and ChanServ, which are separate from the IRC daemon. Then the logging bot, and the web archive of the logging, and access control to the web archive. And a web client so you can easily invite first-timers into a discussion. It's way more than an hours work. Then you are paying $20/month to Linode, and someone has to maintain it with security updates, and backups, and documentation on how to redo all the configuration. That's a lot of time when you could just pay $50/month to Grove. $50/month is one regular coffee a day, it's not much money.

I'm not saying that Grove is not a good idea (It is actually!), I'm just a little afraid how the product targets a niche that are used to hack/configure things themselves. And, don't forget that developers enjoy hacking or setting up these kinds of server.

But yeah, I do agree with you that from a CEO point of view, it's not worth to waste time on this as there are already existing solutions.

FWIW, Hipchat's pricing is $2/month/user (so $16 for our 8 people), and Grove's is $25/month for up to 10 people. Not sure where you're getting $50. And yeah, for what we need, it'd take a lot more than an hour to set up. Not to mention explaining to our non-technical staff members how to set up an IRC client. That's why we picked Hipchat.

You are forgetting to factor in maintenance costs, so yes, absolutely the developers perspective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com