HexChat 2.16.2, the Final Release

Oh my. Discord is still too bloated compared to IRC to idle on forever the same way many of us would on IRC and occasionally offer tech suppoprt.

Ah, I remember using IRC when I was young. Occasionally I've used hexchat to lurk on efnet.

Feels like discord killed off IRC for good. Any reason I should switch to an alternative client for the yearly IRC log-on?

Maybe I can find my ancient mIRC client lying around...

I've been happily using irssi for several years now, but I know a lot of people who used HexChat, and I used it in the past, along with XChat before it. IRC is pretty simple, so I imagine HexChat will keep working fine for years to come. It may just miss out on some IRCv3 features, and in the worst case some vulnerabilities could go unfixed.

Hopefully a new group of developers joins the project to continue it.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

The license seems to be GPL 2.0.

It is an interesting decision to finish the project like this.

I would, in their place, use the chance to free the code into a more permissive license such as MIT, CC0 or the like, but in any event the author is already generous enough to offer it as copyleft; kudos to them.