Well said. I have been trying out ZNC for a few days. It wasn't really a fun to setup ZNC. There are things that I just don't understand. ZNC comes with a bunch of modules that you could use to extend its functionality. It is really hard for me to understand those when I am new to both Bouncers and IRC. Then there are no standards. ZNC uses a username but IRC doesn't really have a concept of username. It is usually Channel, Nick, and password. IRC also has concepts like Ident which are hard for general users to understand. I have setup ZNC but the setup is not complete yet.
I am not well aware of history of XMPP and IRC. I wonder if lack of interest in the organizations that control these protocols have lead to numerous versions of them that there are today. Slack has an IRC gateway and Facebook uses XMPP. Both of these protocols are widely used but have becomes too different from the core concept.
You should try using Quassel — it's the perfect solution for an IRC Bouncer/Client-combo, it feels like any modern solution (aka infinite scroll to read previous messages, clients for the bouncer on every platform, etc).
It's an amazing solution. So amazing, that I actually started commuting to the Quassel Android client, just because I want to give something back to this community.
Actually chat secure on android makes facebook chat almost plesant (and those "in the know" can enable otr). Such a shame fb doesn't do federation and google pretty much killed xmpp altogether. I was this close to having a chat platform other than sms that I enjoyed and could share with non-technical friends without hassle. I loje IRC - but so far not on mobile. Anyone have a favorite (preferably Free as in freedom) cliebt for Android?
Conversations is a nice XMPP client for Android. It's under GPLv3, is in F-Droid and Google Play (costs 1$ in Google Play, though) and is probably the best XMPP client for Android :)
I am not well aware of history of XMPP and IRC. I wonder if lack of interest in the organizations that control these protocols have lead to numerous versions of them that there are today. Slack has an IRC gateway and Facebook uses XMPP. Both of these protocols are widely used but have becomes too different from the core concept.