I hate to say this, but even as an old IRC diehard, I have to admit I gave up a year ago or so.
The new IRC is Matrix, or at least for now. For me at least, it fullfills the same needs:
- deploy your choice of server-software on your preferred server.
- use your preferred client to connect to your preferred server.
- allow communities to manage themselves in a decentralized manner, without any San Fransisco-based big-tech company imposing their CoC, ToS or view of "diversity" upon them.
And it does so in a way which is mobile-friendly and supports all the "modern" additions to IM which normal people have come to expect. I can't see how IRCv3, if it ever lands, can compete with this. It's years (decades?) behind at this point.
And if it lands a spec which is equally capable as Matrix, how can it ever be compatible with "the old IRC"? Myself, I'm still running my IRC network and servers, but they are bridged to Matrix and I encourage the community to move there too. And thus ends my interest in IRCv3.
All in all, this seems like a lot of spec-work going into a what is surely going to be a doomed venture.
> - use your preferred client to connect to your preferred server.
I want to like Matrix, but this is currently the most painful point, for me. There are very few mature clients, so they don't serve as many niches or specific tastes as IRC clients.
> I can't see how IRCv3, if it ever lands, can compete with this. It's years (decades?) behind at this point.
Not sure what you mean by "landing". Many specs are already implemented, deployed, and used in the wild.
> And if it lands a spec which is equally capable as Matrix, how can it ever be compatible with "the old IRC"?
Every IRCv3 spec is designed with backward compatibility in mind, so old clients are not left behind, they just don't benefit from the new features. The main mechanism for this is a capability negotiation when clients connect.
I tried Matrix a few months ago, but the clients were pretty horrible compared to irssi. The only functional one was the ugly GUI one with emojis and all that.
I've tried a lot of very functional clients. I suppose you think of Element? There's also Cinny, Hydrogen (both web), Fluffychat, Nheko, gomuks. Maybe quaternion is more to your taste? Not sure if it supports E2EE.
Weechat-matrix-rs[1] is the fix for that, but it's not currently usable (I tried it yesterday, hard crashes trying to log in to a local homeserver). Maybe in a few more years.........
>- allow communities to manage themselves in a decentralized manner, without any San Fransisco-based big-tech company imposing their CoC, ToS or view of "diversity" upon them.
the main matrix homeserver blocks you from federating with them if you violate their CoC and kicks all matrix users from your room
> the main matrix homeserver blocks you from federating with them if you violate their CoC and kicks all matrix users from your room
In my opinion that doesn't really matter. matrix.org is "just another homeserver" - it just happens to be one with a large amount of Spaces and rooms, and thankfully federation doesn't orbit around matrix.org nor does it depend on that.
There are plenty of other homeservers which federate with each other quite happily. I've seen some rooms which have a policy of not allowing users with a matrix.org account, because they disagree with the matrix.org CoC/policies/actions, and that's also fine, because the nature of the matrix protocol allows that freedom. If a person wishes to stick with matrix.org, well, they have that choice. If a person has a homeserver which gets booted from federating with matrix.org, that's also fine - the problem will eventually be routed around by federating with plenty of other homeservers. This happens already.
What is the user experience like when that happens?
If you use the main Matrix homeserver and you're in a room hosted on another server when this happens, does your client show a helpful message like: "Sorry, you're not allowed to be in this room any more, because the people hosting the room committed the following thoughtcrime: $REASON"?
I worry that it will instead just look like some generic network error message, with the remote server being tacitly deemed an un-place full of unpersons. Down the memoryhole it goes.
It gives you a generic error message and doesn't describe the block. And it happens quite frequently, whoever administrates the Matrix main homeserver is very ban happy.
And so users can move to another homeserver with different standards, or run their own. This isn't possible if Discord or Skype or Telegram block your users.
All those points apply to XMPP too, and it's way easier to set up Prosody on a server. Are there any specific reasons why you think Matrix is the next IRC and not XMPP?
Federating is one goal but is useless without mainstream adoption.
Success is adoption. Enough users to break the network effect.
Signal is currently a good example of roughly the amount of users you need to start breaking the effect. So that's what success looks like. A very low bar version of it.
I wonder if there is any impedance-mismatch between communicating on mobile and on desktop. On mobile it's kind of difficult to see more than the last few messages in a channel and quoting becomes somewhat more important to be able to follow the conversation.
But on desktop it's completely irrelevant and only distracts by showing the same message multiple times (since I can usually still see the first message).
Quoting to me is for fast running rooms to avoid confusion about which conversation a message is in response to. Or for context when replying to something hours old in a smaller room. It's not really a mobile/desktop distinction.
> - allow communities to manage themselves in a decentralized manner, without any San Fransisco-based big-tech company imposing their CoC, ToS or view of "diversity" upon them.
Darn hippies with their inclusivity and community standards!
People like you is why I long left this forum and IRC servers in general. You give the tech industry a bad name.
can we not be looking for fights please? We are assuming a lot from a fragment of prose and I think would be better if we afforded one another the kindest interpretation of their prose that we can.
not everyone has a positive relationship with the HR department of their work place. Ergo one can be cynical of any practices or policies they put forward thus leading towards a mistrust of the term.
You might be assuming everyone else has the same relationship with the words that you do and this could be a mistake.
How people dare to have different worldviews. People in other countries love so much when a Californian lands from heaven to tell them how they should behave, communicate and be offended.
The new IRC is Matrix, or at least for now. For me at least, it fullfills the same needs:
- deploy your choice of server-software on your preferred server.
- use your preferred client to connect to your preferred server.
- allow communities to manage themselves in a decentralized manner, without any San Fransisco-based big-tech company imposing their CoC, ToS or view of "diversity" upon them.
And it does so in a way which is mobile-friendly and supports all the "modern" additions to IM which normal people have come to expect. I can't see how IRCv3, if it ever lands, can compete with this. It's years (decades?) behind at this point.
And if it lands a spec which is equally capable as Matrix, how can it ever be compatible with "the old IRC"? Myself, I'm still running my IRC network and servers, but they are bridged to Matrix and I encourage the community to move there too. And thus ends my interest in IRCv3.
All in all, this seems like a lot of spec-work going into a what is surely going to be a doomed venture.