IRC is underrated and will always be more important than people realize when it comes to communities growing and creating off of it. It felt so addictive back in the early 2000s . I remember feeling addicted to constantly checking it while idling in a bunch of CS 1.6 channels looking for news or getting scrims seeing roster moves, creating new teams, getting cut because I was bad but snaked my way into another good team because networking was more important than skill. The good ol days
IRC bring back so many good memories,from when I first started out working for Silicon Graphics in the early 90. Over the past 30 years I can honestly say it is where I have learned the most from in tech. It is unfortunately also one of the places where I have met the most elite wannabees who could ruin a channel.
CI$ cb... what crap. Delphi... groan. Gimme an ircd daemon and I will annoy the world! Most hated sequence for all time: "LOL" with a close second "ASL" Breeding ground for authoritarian BOFHs /me hey turkey, stfu!
I had lot of memories with IRC and I was a long time member in Freenode and Espernet since 2007 until our channels moved to Slack and now recently Discord. A lot of memories. That's where people helped me grow as a programmer, allowed me to widen my horizon and understand the international communities, and all that. It was fun writing my own bots. For the backscrolling issue, I started a bot on a server to keep collecting everything they said. A couple of us even tried to go the AI route by training a custom bot using member's messages there. Sad to see this happening with Freenode, a community I've been part of for nearly a decade.
I'm sad to see Freenode rot away, but I'll never abandon IRC. /slap will always be a part of my youth. If we can use IRC over decentralized like Matrix, I'll self host until the heat death of the universe.
Thanks for the insight on the drama. I started on IRC about 28(?) years ago... and was a heavy contributor to some channels for many years. I'm not crazy about the proprietary IM replacements... but IRC really died when message board platforms, like social media networks, were born. Before then, there was 1000x the activity.
I loved IRC. I use to live on Undernet for programming homework help, chat, books, music and trivia in the late 1990s, and then for “live streams” of tennis and cricket. Lots of memories. MIRC was my favourite client, then later on Opera.
IRC isn't going down. Freenode's downfall is the rebirth of IRC. IRC is talked about more than ever, and IRC, in general, is growing more than it has done in the last 5 years.
(outside observer just having read a bunch in the last week...) Unfortunately, I think this kind of thing was inevitable when it seemed that the volunteers admining Freenode intentionally decided not to have a formal structure around Freenode operations. At some point, someone would exploit their openness/goodwill, take ownership of the core assets (domain and server infra), and enforce some unpopular edicts. I'm shocked it took this long, really. I hope these large community projects don't all centralize around the same platform again. They could even go crazy and self-host their own chat servers (independent, but federated networks like Matrix would seem to be a good choice).
It was actually only the domain name that Andrew Lee got hold of; all the server infrastructure was either controlled by the volunteers (who left) or by sponsors who moved along with them. This is why Lee ended up rebadging his IRC.com infrastructure (and some other more questionable stuff) as "the new Freenode" - there _was_ no Freenode infastructure left. For all intents and purposes, the 'real' Freenode just renamed and moved to a new domain.
Thanks for the heads up. I'm permanently logged in to Freenode, but haven't actually looked at my IRSSI window in a while. Whew! What a lot of activity! Added Libera.Chat, RIP FreeNode, thanks for all the fish.
IRC will always be around in some form. Many services use IRC-based communication services. Heck, Both Twitch & Discord were originally based on IRC too.
This makes me a sad puppy. I haven't been on IRC in well over 15 years, but that's mostly because I just don't really have the inclination for live chat stuff anymore. That said, I still hope IRC doesn't drop off the Earth.
I am a long time avid IRC user, I programmed my own IRCd from scratch when I was 10 years old, (1994.) IRC will never completely die but I have to admit, I myself have been using Discord, Steam and other community services more than IRC over the last 5 or so years.
Same, I wrote my own client to learn Java. And I transitioned to Discord and Steam as well. I was still using Textual on a Mac for some freenode channels, but I stopped.
i am on Dalnet because some buddies, from a website, have been meeting there since 2002. 20 years this September. Now only four remain. It was 10 when we began 20 years ago. New guys arrived in 2008. We are across the country so we chat on weekends and some evenings. But some left.
IRC has certainly come a long way.. reminds me of the first shell account I had, used to dail in on HyperTerminal to a local ISP 🤦♂️ I miss those days.
Yeah, no, it hasn't. IRC is the same as it was back in the 90's. However, that is what makes it great in my opinion. It is perfect for its purpose and isn't bogged down by junk like everything else is and was. It is sad that it isn't as popular as it used to be. I think the major thing that has hurt IRC is mobile computing. Young people today would probably still use IRC if their only devices were not phones and tablets, but rather desktops.
I used to be on Undernet and Dalnet a lot from the late 90's onward. I actually kind of miss it nowadays as we moved on to other messenger apps and whatnot. Once you learn the protocols for IRC, you never forget.😉 I created several different types of bots and had a small part in a customized mIRC client that streamlined a lot of the operations and had some pretty cool features. Getting stuff like that to work properly while working in WinXP was a real test of patience!!🤣
I understand that many people have warm feelings for something that's been around that long, but your point of a high barrier to entry and the very outdated feature set are very important, I think. It's all too common for people in tech to have a kind of "git gud" mentality towards new people, and we could be doing better. Something like Matrix or Diaspora isn't the easiest thing in the world to set up either, but I think they offer a better set of features while still being Open.
IRC has had a slow decline since the early 2000s. Freenode basically killed my linux support channel on efnet. We went from 400 active users to none in just a few years. I hope libera chat figures things out and manages to remain relevant.
@@andrewcool4587 this happened over 20 years ago. When high speed internet was first offered locally. I get why they did it. Back then, it was usually hackers that had routers. It was a security measure for the era.
"connected to a router"? o_O it sounds more like you were running or going via an open unsecured proxy.. clonebots frequently used those to generate floods of text on IRC from many bot users (with unique IPs), so IRC servers started checking for open proxies on connect
@@MarksGoneWicked I was running a server on DALnet then (dragons). It definitely sounds like your ISP provided router came misconfigured with an open proxy server as stock, accessible and abusable from the internet. Security was a lot more lax back then and it wouldn't surprise me if this was their first foray into a broadband service or such. There's never been any blanket ban on DALnet against broadband connections in general, it wouldn't make any sense. So I think you just got unlucky with your ISP
RvnPhnx here... I haven't bothered with Freenode for quite a while. I'm glad to hear that there's a presumed successor, but I'm also sad and disturbed that Lee has apparently gone the way of lilo from the OPN (and earlier) days. ...and yes, I did start out in #LinPeople on EFnet, only to find out most everything had already moved (granted, there was some fun to be had there, but we all moved on eventually).
IRC is a protocol and it will last as a result. Services like Discord, Twitch and Slack are all proprietary and usually have limits. It is for the same reason that LKML and Emacs use mailing lists and why Git came into existence. Open protocols endure.
Freenode is just one server of multiple. I have 8 servers in my list and freenode was maybe 10% of the channels i was in, so this isn't anywhere near the end for IRC. It just shows how easy it is to migrate, which on Slack or Discord isn't even possible. If Discord or Slack cancels you, they will and can make sure you won't use their services ever again. This kind of outcome is impossible on IRC, which is why it will never die.
I used to get on a lot of IRC Chats back in the day. I learned about John Titor back in the day on the Artbell Forums as a kid and thought it was cool.
sad to see to see freenode go. started when it was openprojects. Freenode actually saved my life and gave me a career, i learned allot there over the years. I don't buy IRC is confusing for developers. I started when i was homeless using an old thinkpad i pulled out of a uni dumpster. no X working slackware install from floppies over dial up.. cmon please. if a dysfunctional homeless hacker can figure it out anyone can. lol . while i use discord it's a horrid replacement. servers go unchecked for months as it's very clunky to use and logging years of chats to archive and search is just not going to happen. i still search 20 years of freenode logs to this day. some knowledge is timeless especially when learning operating system development. anyways much respect for freenode. it changed my life.
I'm still using IRC (I think I'm younger then most people of this community, because I'm a teenager) and developing stuff for it. For example Twitch and IRC bots. Yes, Twitch uses IRC for their chats. Also, I love using it, like Matrix.
I am a registered mIRC user, not many people can say this! I loved IRC but in the end, a handful of powertripping admins abusing their rights to KLINE is what killed it for me. Thanks for the memories Jeff. As for why my community moved from ventrilo/teamspeak to discord.. to get away from another power tripping admin ... :|
@@JeffGeerling IMHO; The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I remember the efforts in cracking down on child porn on IRC and then efforts in cutting down stalkers / doxers, and then the cracking down on piracy channels, and then the crackdown on hacking communities ... all these people had good 'for a better world' intentions... but like any good wills, the easiest way out was to stop being inclusive ... so then what's the point of a public server if you can't be joined/discovered ... With discord and it's opaque structure it's easier to find a little place to 'hide' and have 'private discussions' with other 'like minded' individuals. ... until they enforce some more policies ... and the rats will go to another boat to let this one sink on it's own.
Not that it necessarily matters, but Twitch's chat feature is implemented using the IRC protocol. Ultimately, it's a useful and easy to implement open protocol, so I doubt it'll die any time soon. At worst, it'll become like ham radio.
This is indeed not the first time ego's have taken down an IRC network, those around since its inception know that it will outlive Freenode and many naysayers.
I wish there were more services like irccloud that would build upon IRC letting users be able to connect with terminal applications as well as have synced mobile and desktop clients along with drag and drop file sharing, images, some type of emoji/reactions (visible to those who care). Discord Bots help with this but they’re clunky.
I used to use IRC in the late 1990's and early 2000's. It's been years since I've logged on and used it... I think I used to use the ICQ client??? Maybe I'm confusing those two things? Man, that was a couple decades ago!
Why not as a community create your own IRC network and servers? Why move away from it? I still Use IRC still to this day for communicating with others in the rest of the world.
Do you have any videos on IRC? I've always wanted to learn more just never could see the point, nobody i know uses it.
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Sad. I used iRC first in 1995, some bigger communities in our country used to organize IRL meetups of bigger channels etc. Also IM / chat world is a disaster today. Something like iRC requires almost no client to use (some can write a client in just few lines of code to do the minimum). Currently, famous chat services however requires clients allocating even a Gbyte of RAM, and you violate the terms of usage if you try to even create and/or use a non-official (but efficient and small) client which does not require a power-plant to send some damn text messages only, which worked on a C64 was well with merely 64Kbytes of RAM. OK, still there are some open stuff, like Matrix protocol, that's true. Oh, and of course everybody uses different services, each needs its own client (usually closed source one, not so much even legal to write a client for), and because of the problem there are not so much more a solution like "multi-IM clients" which could use several IM/chat service within one app (thus being consistent interface, easy to use, not wasting Gbytes of RAM, etc). I often need Skype, Discord, FB Messenger, Viber at the same time, since all of my friends and/or project members use different solution. Just these alone uses about 2Gbytes of RAM constantly if summed up (running on a desktop computer now, not as apps on mobile devices or such). And I need just text messages, nothing more! Which iRC would be perfect, but nobody uses it. Ah, sorry for the long "cry". And for my bad English ...
Jeff, I'm a web developer and I've been on IRC since the mid-1990's. I tend to agree that I'm afraid the loser of this debacle will be IRC itself and not Andrew Lee or Freenode. I love irssi and I hang out in a lot of the FOSS-related IRC channels. But irssi is not exactly user friendly software (as you pointed out). On networks like Slack, Discord, or Twitch, it's a simple process to sign up, configure, and get running. I feel like IRC is slowly becoming a relic of the good old days of the internet.
I remember when freenode came on the scene. Never liked it, never liked having to register, the leadership seemed much more self-promoting compared to whoever was running other IRC networks. I never knew how other IRC networks were run or who did, on freenode I could see efforts to get their faces out there. Not surprised that the people in charge started bickering, it's my understanding that one of them made running freenode into his job as if it wasn't something other network operators just did in their free time.
It'll never be dead, but it won't be as interesting when networks eventually close their doors and it's relegated to small holdouts using it as a "Security through obscurity" protocol.
The communities I've been involved with moved to either libera.chat or OFTC. I was already on the OFTC network, because of several Debian related channels, so no big change for me. Got rid of Freenode and replaced with with libera.chat. The channel setup I had changed slightly, depending onto which network the given channels migrated. No big deal. Maybe I was just lucky. I think there's now a lot of talk to move to Slack, Discord, Matrix or other places, but the thing with IRC is there are die-hard IRC fans (including me), who'll never feel as comfortable with any of the proprietary networks as on IRC, so will stick with IRC. So these talks will settle down, as soon as there's a new status quo about who's where. I'm on IRC since the mid-90s. I've seen ICQ, MSN, AIM, or even Hipchat, and a bunch of other chat services rise to popularity and fall since. It's funny to argue with people about which chat service to use, who are younger than since I'm on IRC, and can't even remember half of these... I'm sure some of the now popular options will be long gone, but IRC, precisely because it's so "primitive" will be here to stay. It's like the cockroach of chat services. Some might find it disgusting and stinky, but I promise you, it will be the only one surviving a nuclear war. Or at least, live as long as our generation.
A huge number of tech conventions have come out of IRC (and it's ancestors); we take them for granted today but it's nice to know the history behind it all!
I remember using IRC back when dial-up internet was all I could get. Now I've seen people in the comments here saying that things like discord are better, but perhaps the issue of censorship would make IRC better. I don't think big tech has as much of a stranglehold on IRC as they do everywhere else. IRC might be the place to have a true free speech platform.
I disagree, this event has put IRC back into the tech headlines. Combine that with the ever increasing rebellion of younger tech savvy people away from proprietary systems such as Facebook, and you have the ingredients for a new generation of IRC users. Anyone tech savvy enough to use IRC can reconfigure their client to use libera.chat instead of Freenode. It won't mean everyone overnight moves their community from Discord to IRC, but I think it will mean awareness of IRC is higher than say in the 2016-2019 period.
I have been on IRC since 1995. I owe a lot to IRC where I met a lot of amazing people, including the co-founder, some of my ex employees, my first great love, and several other girls. It has been a great journey for me. But it's dead, unfortunate. In my native country it has been dead for almost two decades. Now we have Slack, Discord, and social networks. It's dead, full stop.
I think IRC will still live on, look at bulletin board systems (BBSes) they were a thing of the late 70s to late 90s, and most people have forgotten about them entirely. Well I can assure you all that BBSes are still popular. I run one, and there are a ton of great BBSes still running. IRC is still fairly infant compared to a BBS. Come check them out for some "real history". More social, less media. Words from one of my best friends who runs a BBS.
I think it would be good if you made a video about XMPP such as using an existing server (like Movim) for newbies, or even how to self-host an XMPP server (be it your own or a movim) on a pi3b and then adding IPFS to it (because blake2b is for quadcore), explaining how-to. That way people will continue using something like Pidgin-IM and will be able to change between IRC and XMPP in it. I would suggest encouraging such a pi3b be used not only at home but also a version as a battery powered handheld retropie made from a pi3b with a screen and qwerty chatpad but for games like supertuxkart and pioneer (not SNES emulation ROMs, etc.). Like the Wii-mod handhelds, they are about the size of a square doorstep sandwich or at most an AtariLynx2. Mention the word "fediverse". I think Gab and Mastadon are worth a mention, for their efforts. Then people can join in harmony as one big world rainbow to bond over highly offensive memes. #RedPillTheFediverse
I mainly use discord. There are limitations sure, but they never really get in the way. Would be great if it was a little more peer to peer or something so I could share videos/images directly rather than be subject to file size limits or whatever, but text, voice and video are all handled for 1v1 and groups. We're not sharing personal or private information, so it being hosted by a third party isn't really an issue either in the groups I'm in. I haven't used IRC in over a decade, and it's honestly a bit dated now, I get that a lot of people are attached to it as they have used it for so long, but I just never got the appeal, though for terminal purists IRC is probably the best. I spend more time in a GUI than a terminal though so, I like my bells and whistles, and quality of life features that come with modern solutions. Though I would love to have a self hosted option that functioned similar to discord.
I would hate to see IRC go the way of archie servers but proprietary slack, discord, and telegram are not the way to go. There's nothing wrong with a slight learning curve. If you're smart enough to code, you're smart enough to use "/join" to join a room. It's not rocket science.
Freenode and IRC has been sadly dead for quite a long time. Discord, while better in features shouldn't be a replacement due to its centralised nature.
Interesting, I’m definitely not up on the world of IRC. But I’m definitely familiar with new overlords doing odd things and pushing away their most ardent supporters. I’m surprised the FOSS projects didn’t migrate to open source Discord/Slack alternatives. There are numerous options. Gitlab even bundles Mattermost (if I recall correctly). Probably not as simple as jumping onto Discord. But also not commercial.
If the network(server) dies, you can just go somewhere else or start your own, which this freenode debacle has proven. People know that it's very easy to set up an IRC server, and thats the reason most of the people that deeply care about FOSS still use IRC. As a user, all you need to do is change one line in your config, essentially, and you switched from freenode to libera. Slack is total crap imo and Discord is a billion-dollar company that can spend millions on development, and they do well, but who knows what they do with the data they get, and thats a lot. Also they work together with Sony now.. let's see where that gets us :|
I think IRC will survive this. Said that, I work with IRC and I find it horrible. Even though I am also not happy with discord being centralized. Matrix just introduces spaces which I really hype. I hope they get Matrix to a feature set similar to discord. That would be a good alternative.
I remember all the series downloads from IRC channels. I remember there were bots which held the libraries... I would never believe such thing as Netflix will exist ;)
Oh man, Drupal is where I got my start and I'm sure I was in their irc. I gave tons of free support in Ubuntu when I was a teen. But honestly, I cringe at some of the IRC love. IRC is... Limited. Many communities are moving to Matrix. It has been, might I say, a wild success for the NixOS community. I don't have stats but the traffic is more than I'd even seen in any of our IRC. Fedora also moving to Matrix... I can't take OSS communities on Slack seriously. At least most of them offer... A f#$&king IRC bridge, lol. The writing on the wall is clear, Matrix is freaking exploding right now. Id have bet serious money on it two years ago when I started playing and I'd HAPPILY double down now. Between Cactus comments, the p2p, alternative servers, bridges, a PSTN bridge, I mean... I'm already way more excited about Matrix's future than I _ever_ had hopes for IRC to get to.
Can you make a video on what happened to Sourceforge? Literally no one else has and I'm too lazy to read some ancient articles and comb through forums :P.
I don't think distributed solutions like IRC MUST necessarily go the way of the dinosaurs. I think the difference is that proprietary systems invest strongly in UX that makes life easier. There's no reason that distributed solutions couldn't also do this, but it just hasn't happened as much.
Funny thing: I was introduced to irc by an electrician. There was a time, maybe still, that non-techies used it. And yea, I witnessed a dev the other day ask how to install Python on my new mac, these folks are out there.
@@jgurtz I admit that when I got started with Drupal and wanted to get into their IRC community, it was plenty confusing trying to figure out a client, how to register my nick and identify myself, etc. That was a looong time ago, and I'm glad I did it, but I don't begrudge someone who learned on Slack and Discord (those things didn't exist back then... maybe AOL Instant Messenger is the closest equivalent?) being a bit turned off by the difference with IRC. And that's before even thinking about how there are more IRC clients than text editors, and every single one has a completely different interface!
@@JeffGeerling Yea for sure there is a bit of a learning curve with all the statuses and commands and netsplits and .... I hear ya on the client front, too. This reminds me I still want to investigate if irssi can run on a mac. Seems like Slack is taking over a lot, but maybe there's still hope!
I don't have something against text commands, but normal users do. And well, I don't like using multiple different chat systems (especially not in ONE community). I want one system for all.
Freenode is not IRC.. I use IRC for decades and never even used freenode. ...its around 500 networks left operating and probably dozens private IRCD servers...so defo IRCD wont die...its just the certain network that you happen to be most active to .
Discord and Slack as a replacement for IRC? No, fucking, thanks. And other FOSS devs should raise an eyebrow about a project that migrates to some proprietary bullshit.
I feel that it's not really IRC as whole who is losing in this one. There are still plenty IRC networks that are doing alright and I personally always preferred IRCNet called IRCNet over other networks anyway. However it looks like it's Open Source community that is losing in this fight if anything especially if developers start going for walled gardens such as Slack, Discord and Teams instead of something like Matrix if they don't still stick around with IRC :-/
![Host a Deep Web IRC Server for More Anonymous Chatting Online [Tutorial]](/img/n.gif)
IRC will long outlive Freenode
Agreed, Efnet was always busier.
@@newsmashups5989 very true
LibraIRC
I just changed over to irc👍. Using voirc as well! Voice over irc
@@newsmashups5989 efnet is still around? holly shit
I remember the 90s where IRC was the only way to chat over the Internet. Who uses and hosts IRC will change over time, but I doubt it will ever die.
My entire youth was spent on IRC but haven’t used it for many years.
Yeah, me too. Started with mIRC on Windows and eventually moved to irssi. I don't use IRC since maybe 2010...
Same! IRC was my first social interaction online.
Wow... haven't used IRC in years. I remember using mIRC and scripts to customize it. I should dive back into it on my Linux workstation.
same, maybe 20 years
IRC is underrated and will always be more important than people realize when it comes to communities growing and creating off of it. It felt so addictive back in the early 2000s . I remember feeling addicted to constantly checking it while idling in a bunch of CS 1.6 channels looking for news or getting scrims seeing roster moves, creating new teams, getting cut because I was bad but snaked my way into another good team because networking was more important than skill. The good ol days
1.3 was better
Long live Red Shirt Jeff!
IRC bring back so many good memories,from when I first started out working for Silicon Graphics in the early 90. Over the past 30 years I can honestly say it is where I have learned the most from in tech. It is unfortunately also one of the places where I have met the most elite wannabees who could ruin a channel.
This is the way :(
CI$ cb... what crap. Delphi... groan. Gimme an ircd daemon and I will annoy the world!
Most hated sequence for all time: "LOL" with a close second "ASL"
Breeding ground for authoritarian BOFHs
/me hey turkey, stfu!
I think IRC Undernet network is probably the worst. EfNet is where I started using IRC.
@@JeffGeerling May you let me know which platform is best for opensource community spcially for FFmpeg , Linux ?
Same here! That is how I got launched into IT industry, running linux servers!
even though i know nothing about Freenode, This video kept me in the loop.
Amazing video as always Jeff Geerling!
I had lot of memories with IRC and I was a long time member in Freenode and Espernet since 2007 until our channels moved to Slack and now recently Discord. A lot of memories. That's where people helped me grow as a programmer, allowed me to widen my horizon and understand the international communities, and all that. It was fun writing my own bots. For the backscrolling issue, I started a bot on a server to keep collecting everything they said. A couple of us even tried to go the AI route by training a custom bot using member's messages there. Sad to see this happening with Freenode, a community I've been part of for nearly a decade.
IRC was my dating service in the mid 1990's and the T-Mobile Sidekick was like a mobile pimp lol . Life was so simple once lol
A/S/L?
@@JamesBos 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
respect from a Chinese zoomer
I'm sad to see Freenode rot away, but I'll never abandon IRC. /slap will always be a part of my youth. If we can use IRC over decentralized like Matrix, I'll self host until the heat death of the universe.
Thanks for the insight on the drama. I started on IRC about 28(?) years ago... and was a heavy contributor to some channels for many years. I'm not crazy about the proprietary IM replacements... but IRC really died when message board platforms, like social media networks, were born. Before then, there was 1000x the activity.
I loved IRC. I use to live on Undernet for programming homework help, chat, books, music and trivia in the late 1990s, and then for “live streams” of tennis and cricket. Lots of memories. MIRC was my favourite client, then later on Opera.
I haven't been on IRC since the early 2000's. But with the steady decline of other social chat platforms, I can see it's return is due!
everyone is on discord dude.
@@WeThrowPie XMPP is where it's at
Trout slappers unite!
lol... funny coincidence, last night I grilled trout for dinner. The kids loved it! Would've been funny if somebody got slapped by a fish.
isn't that just a mirc thing or do other clients have that emote?
@@woldemunster9244 lol
@@ikkuranus it was a macro. Almost any irc client can use macros
IRC isn't going down. Freenode's downfall is the rebirth of IRC.
IRC is talked about more than ever, and IRC, in general, is growing more than it has done in the last 5 years.
(outside observer just having read a bunch in the last week...)
Unfortunately, I think this kind of thing was inevitable when it seemed that the volunteers admining Freenode intentionally decided not to have a formal structure around Freenode operations. At some point, someone would exploit their openness/goodwill, take ownership of the core assets (domain and server infra), and enforce some unpopular edicts. I'm shocked it took this long, really. I hope these large community projects don't all centralize around the same platform again. They could even go crazy and self-host their own chat servers (independent, but federated networks like Matrix would seem to be a good choice).
It was actually only the domain name that Andrew Lee got hold of; all the server infrastructure was either controlled by the volunteers (who left) or by sponsors who moved along with them. This is why Lee ended up rebadging his IRC.com infrastructure (and some other more questionable stuff) as "the new Freenode" - there _was_ no Freenode infastructure left. For all intents and purposes, the 'real' Freenode just renamed and moved to a new domain.
Thanks for the heads up. I'm permanently logged in to Freenode, but haven't actually looked at my IRSSI window in a while. Whew! What a lot of activity! Added Libera.Chat, RIP FreeNode, thanks for all the fish.
When I was a teenager a used IRC a lot, specially to download subbed anime =P
Same!
IRC will always be around in some form. Many services use IRC-based communication services. Heck, Both Twitch & Discord were originally based on IRC too.
Twitch still is, somehow
it has to be coincidence that a ~20 year-old irc server of my country is up and running again after a decade of its initial shutdown
This makes me a sad puppy. I haven't been on IRC in well over 15 years, but that's mostly because I just don't really have the inclination for live chat stuff anymore.
That said, I still hope IRC doesn't drop off the Earth.
I am a long time avid IRC user, I programmed my own IRCd from scratch when I was 10 years old, (1994.) IRC will never completely die but I have to admit, I myself have been using Discord, Steam and other community services more than IRC over the last 5 or so years.
Same, I wrote my own client to learn Java. And I transitioned to Discord and Steam as well. I was still using Textual on a Mac for some freenode channels, but I stopped.
@@biomorphic I bet that's not all you transitioned into Mac Boi. #pwned #irssi /part "suckas!!1"
Would it be possible to create an IRCd now, if so, how?
i am on Dalnet because some buddies, from a website, have been meeting there since 2002. 20 years this September. Now only four remain. It was 10 when we began 20 years ago. New guys arrived in 2008. We are across the country so we chat on weekends and some evenings. But some left.
IRC has certainly come a long way.. reminds me of the first shell account I had, used to dail in on HyperTerminal to a local ISP 🤦♂️ I miss those days.
Yeah, no, it hasn't. IRC is the same as it was back in the 90's. However, that is what makes it great in my opinion. It is perfect for its purpose and isn't bogged down by junk like everything else is and was. It is sad that it isn't as popular as it used to be. I think the major thing that has hurt IRC is mobile computing. Young people today would probably still use IRC if their only devices were not phones and tablets, but rather desktops.
@@jeremywj YEAH, NO!
Hearing about IRC reminds me about the days of ventrilo when you had the Duke nukem troll... I feel old...
@Data Null Void exactly 😈
IRC existed before and after freenode, but it's very sad to see what came of freenode.
I used to be on Undernet and Dalnet a lot from the late 90's onward. I actually kind of miss it nowadays as we moved on to other messenger apps and whatnot. Once you learn the protocols for IRC, you never forget.😉 I created several different types of bots and had a small part in a customized mIRC client that streamlined a lot of the operations and had some pretty cool features. Getting stuff like that to work properly while working in WinXP was a real test of patience!!🤣
I understand that many people have warm feelings for something that's been around that long, but your point of a high barrier to entry and the very outdated feature set are very important, I think. It's all too common for people in tech to have a kind of "git gud" mentality towards new people, and we could be doing better. Something like Matrix or Diaspora isn't the easiest thing in the world to set up either, but I think they offer a better set of features while still being Open.
IRC has had a slow decline since the early 2000s. Freenode basically killed my linux support channel on efnet. We went from 400 active users to none in just a few years. I hope libera chat figures things out and manages to remain relevant.
I miss IRC. I got banned instantly on DALNET when I first tried to login while connected to a router.
There’s so man weird rules and jerky admins.
@@andrewcool4587 this happened over 20 years ago. When high speed internet was first offered locally. I get why they did it. Back then, it was usually hackers that had routers. It was a security measure for the era.
"connected to a router"? o_O it sounds more like you were running or going via an open unsecured proxy.. clonebots frequently used those to generate floods of text on IRC from many bot users (with unique IPs), so IRC servers started checking for open proxies on connect
@@Wagoo this was back in early 2000, I don't think I knew what a proxy was. I was hanging out on IRC networks in the late 90's.
@@MarksGoneWicked I was running a server on DALnet then (dragons). It definitely sounds like your ISP provided router came misconfigured with an open proxy server as stock, accessible and abusable from the internet. Security was a lot more lax back then and it wouldn't surprise me if this was their first foray into a broadband service or such. There's never been any blanket ban on DALnet against broadband connections in general, it wouldn't make any sense. So I think you just got unlucky with your ISP
RvnPhnx here... I haven't bothered with Freenode for quite a while. I'm glad to hear that there's a presumed successor, but I'm also sad and disturbed that Lee has apparently gone the way of lilo from the OPN (and earlier) days. ...and yes, I did start out in #LinPeople on EFnet, only to find out most everything had already moved (granted, there was some fun to be had there, but we all moved on eventually).
I was one of LinProple founders back in pre OPN days. Nicknamed LinuxGold. I miss those days!
I Remember getting into MIRC once or twice back in the day. but sadly I never took advantage of that social section of the internet.
Yeah.. I left freenode years ago. Have been kicking around starting my own ircd again.
I should probably mention, ircd death throws do sadden me, as I met my wife on EfNet.
IRC is a protocol and it will last as a result. Services like Discord, Twitch and Slack are all proprietary and usually have limits.
It is for the same reason that LKML and Emacs use mailing lists and why Git came into existence.
Open protocols endure.
Freenode is just one server of multiple. I have 8 servers in my list and freenode was maybe 10% of the channels i was in, so this isn't anywhere near the end for IRC. It just shows how easy it is to migrate, which on Slack or Discord isn't even possible. If Discord or Slack cancels you, they will and can make sure you won't use their services ever again. This kind of outcome is impossible on IRC, which is why it will never die.
I used to get on a lot of IRC Chats back in the day. I learned about John Titor back in the day on the Artbell Forums as a kid and thought it was cool.
sad to see to see freenode go. started when it was openprojects. Freenode actually saved my life and gave me a career, i learned allot there over the years. I don't buy IRC is confusing for developers. I started when i was homeless using an old thinkpad i pulled out of a uni dumpster. no X working slackware install from floppies over dial up.. cmon please. if a dysfunctional homeless hacker can figure it out anyone can. lol . while i use discord it's a horrid replacement. servers go unchecked for months as it's very clunky to use and logging years of chats to archive and search is just not going to happen. i still search 20 years of freenode logs to this day. some knowledge is timeless especially when learning operating system development. anyways much respect for freenode. it changed my life.
I'm still using IRC (I think I'm younger then most people of this community, because I'm a teenager) and developing stuff for it. For example Twitch and IRC bots. Yes, Twitch uses IRC for their chats. Also, I love using it, like Matrix.
I used to chat with friends in college on the IRC and LambdaMOO in 1992.
I am a registered mIRC user, not many people can say this!
I loved IRC but in the end, a handful of powertripping admins abusing their rights to KLINE is what killed it for me.
Thanks for the memories Jeff.
As for why my community moved from ventrilo/teamspeak to discord.. to get away from another power tripping admin ... :|
Why do admins/ops always have to ruin everything??
@@JeffGeerling IMHO; The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I remember the efforts in cracking down on child porn on IRC and then efforts in cutting down stalkers / doxers, and then the cracking down on piracy channels, and then the crackdown on hacking communities ... all these people had good 'for a better world' intentions... but like any good wills, the easiest way out was to stop being inclusive ... so then what's the point of a public server if you can't be joined/discovered ...
With discord and it's opaque structure it's easier to find a little place to 'hide' and have 'private discussions' with other 'like minded' individuals. ... until they enforce some more policies ... and the rats will go to another boat to let this one sink on it's own.
Not that it necessarily matters, but Twitch's chat feature is implemented using the IRC protocol. Ultimately, it's a useful and easy to implement open protocol, so I doubt it'll die any time soon. At worst, it'll become like ham radio.
They butchered it though. Have you ever connected to the twitch irc using a standard irc client?
I hit the like button as soon as I heard Mr. Robot.
This is indeed not the first time ego's have taken down an IRC network, those around since its inception know that it will outlive Freenode and many naysayers.
I wish there were more services like irccloud that would build upon IRC letting users be able to connect with terminal applications as well as have synced mobile and desktop clients along with drag and drop file sharing, images, some type of emoji/reactions (visible to those who care). Discord Bots help with this but they’re clunky.
I used to use IRC in the late 1990's and early 2000's. It's been years since I've logged on and used it... I think I used to use the ICQ client??? Maybe I'm confusing those two things? Man, that was a couple decades ago!
ICQ was an entity of it's own, nothing to do with IRC. It was even more restrictive than some of the IRC networks though (I've had both)
Why not as a community create your own IRC network and servers? Why move away from it? I still Use IRC still to this day for communicating with others in the rest of the world.
Would love to see irc and Usenet have a resurgence but probably won’t happen
Same, I'd love to see both of them make a comeback.
Haven't touched IRC since the early days of mIRC. Probably back when I was compiling my own Slackware Linux kernels, etc.
Long live IRC!
Long live IRC!
Do you have any videos on IRC? I've always wanted to learn more just never could see the point, nobody i know uses it.
Sad. I used iRC first in 1995, some bigger communities in our country used to organize IRL meetups of bigger channels etc. Also IM / chat world is a disaster today. Something like iRC requires almost no client to use (some can write a client in just few lines of code to do the minimum). Currently, famous chat services however requires clients allocating even a Gbyte of RAM, and you violate the terms of usage if you try to even create and/or use a non-official (but efficient and small) client which does not require a power-plant to send some damn text messages only, which worked on a C64 was well with merely 64Kbytes of RAM. OK, still there are some open stuff, like Matrix protocol, that's true. Oh, and of course everybody uses different services, each needs its own client (usually closed source one, not so much even legal to write a client for), and because of the problem there are not so much more a solution like "multi-IM clients" which could use several IM/chat service within one app (thus being consistent interface, easy to use, not wasting Gbytes of RAM, etc). I often need Skype, Discord, FB Messenger, Viber at the same time, since all of my friends and/or project members use different solution. Just these alone uses about 2Gbytes of RAM constantly if summed up (running on a desktop computer now, not as apps on mobile devices or such). And I need just text messages, nothing more! Which iRC would be perfect, but nobody uses it. Ah, sorry for the long "cry". And for my bad English ...
Jeff, I'm a web developer and I've been on IRC since the mid-1990's. I tend to agree that I'm afraid the loser of this debacle will be IRC itself and not Andrew Lee or Freenode. I love irssi and I hang out in a lot of the FOSS-related IRC channels. But irssi is not exactly user friendly software (as you pointed out). On networks like Slack, Discord, or Twitch, it's a simple process to sign up, configure, and get running. I feel like IRC is slowly becoming a relic of the good old days of the internet.
IRC isn't dead yet, Twitch's chat is built on it ;-)
lol irc in general isn't even.
Some Servers is still active.
Even Discord's backend is IRC-based. It may change, but it'll never really die.
I remember when freenode came on the scene. Never liked it, never liked having to register, the leadership seemed much more self-promoting compared to whoever was running other IRC networks. I never knew how other IRC networks were run or who did, on freenode I could see efforts to get their faces out there. Not surprised that the people in charge started bickering, it's my understanding that one of them made running freenode into his job as if it wasn't something other network operators just did in their free time.
Mattermost is a really good FOSS alternative to Slack
I kind of grew up on IRC and still connected 24/7 on IRCNet. Would be sad to see IRC as a protocol go.
It'll never be dead, but it won't be as interesting when networks eventually close their doors and it's relegated to small holdouts using it as a "Security through obscurity" protocol.
IRC is the vi of chat. Other things come and go.
The communities I've been involved with moved to either libera.chat or OFTC. I was already on the OFTC network, because of several Debian related channels, so no big change for me. Got rid of Freenode and replaced with with libera.chat. The channel setup I had changed slightly, depending onto which network the given channels migrated. No big deal. Maybe I was just lucky. I think there's now a lot of talk to move to Slack, Discord, Matrix or other places, but the thing with IRC is there are die-hard IRC fans (including me), who'll never feel as comfortable with any of the proprietary networks as on IRC, so will stick with IRC. So these talks will settle down, as soon as there's a new status quo about who's where.
I'm on IRC since the mid-90s. I've seen ICQ, MSN, AIM, or even Hipchat, and a bunch of other chat services rise to popularity and fall since. It's funny to argue with people about which chat service to use, who are younger than since I'm on IRC, and can't even remember half of these... I'm sure some of the now popular options will be long gone, but IRC, precisely because it's so "primitive" will be here to stay. It's like the cockroach of chat services. Some might find it disgusting and stinky, but I promise you, it will be the only one surviving a nuclear war. Or at least, live as long as our generation.
I spent so much time on IRC in college after migrating from BITNET relay, it’s surprising that I graduated at all. #RiskyBus forever.
I used IRC already back in 1992 in my Uni. Fun facts: it is Finnish invention and was first "social media" to use #hastags and @addresses, etc.
A huge number of tech conventions have come out of IRC (and it's ancestors); we take them for granted today but it's nice to know the history behind it all!
TIL you can log in to twitch chat with IRC, I actually used it for the first time today!
I remember using IRC back when dial-up internet was all I could get. Now I've seen people in the comments here saying that things like discord are better, but perhaps the issue of censorship would make IRC better. I don't think big tech has as much of a stranglehold on IRC as they do everywhere else. IRC might be the place to have a true free speech platform.
I disagree, this event has put IRC back into the tech headlines. Combine that with the ever increasing rebellion of younger tech savvy people away from proprietary systems such as Facebook, and you have the ingredients for a new generation of IRC users. Anyone tech savvy enough to use IRC can reconfigure their client to use libera.chat instead of Freenode.
It won't mean everyone overnight moves their community from Discord to IRC, but I think it will mean awareness of IRC is higher than say in the 2016-2019 period.
I love your optimism, sir. I feel like I fit your description of the new generation of IRC users.
I have been on IRC since 1995. I owe a lot to IRC where I met a lot of amazing people, including the co-founder, some of my ex employees, my first great love, and several other girls. It has been a great journey for me. But it's dead, unfortunate. In my native country it has been dead for almost two decades. Now we have Slack, Discord, and social networks. It's dead, full stop.
IRC will not die 😊
I think IRC will still live on, look at bulletin board systems (BBSes) they were a thing of the late 70s to late 90s, and most people have forgotten about them entirely. Well I can assure you all that BBSes are still popular. I run one, and there are a ton of great BBSes still running. IRC is still fairly infant compared to a BBS. Come check them out for some "real history". More social, less media. Words from one of my best friends who runs a BBS.
Maybe it means Mattermost finally matures to add some much needed features
I'm on IRC right now, boy!!!
undernet is still alive... I know, I'm still there 26 years later. yeah, it's on its death bed though...
off topic but jeff's beard looks like some sort of mesmerizing AI upscale in this video
Long live Libera!
I think it would be good if you made a video about XMPP such as using an existing server (like Movim) for newbies, or even how to self-host an XMPP server (be it your own or a movim) on a pi3b and then adding IPFS to it (because blake2b is for quadcore), explaining how-to. That way people will continue using something like Pidgin-IM and will be able to change between IRC and XMPP in it. I would suggest encouraging such a pi3b be used not only at home but also a version as a battery powered handheld retropie made from a pi3b with a screen and qwerty chatpad but for games like supertuxkart and pioneer (not SNES emulation ROMs, etc.). Like the Wii-mod handhelds, they are about the size of a square doorstep sandwich or at most an AtariLynx2. Mention the word "fediverse". I think Gab and Mastadon are worth a mention, for their efforts.
Then people can join in harmony as one big world rainbow to bond over highly offensive memes.
#RedPillTheFediverse
mainly only used espernet, but its sad to see such a network go
IRC is not going anywhere. In 30 years from now, people will still use IRC.
@@scality4309 those who want to use it will find means to keep using it
LiberaChat is the new IRC forum
I mainly use discord. There are limitations sure, but they never really get in the way. Would be great if it was a little more peer to peer or something so I could share videos/images directly rather than be subject to file size limits or whatever, but text, voice and video are all handled for 1v1 and groups. We're not sharing personal or private information, so it being hosted by a third party isn't really an issue either in the groups I'm in. I haven't used IRC in over a decade, and it's honestly a bit dated now, I get that a lot of people are attached to it as they have used it for so long, but I just never got the appeal, though for terminal purists IRC is probably the best.
I spend more time in a GUI than a terminal though so, I like my bells and whistles, and quality of life features that come with modern solutions. Though I would love to have a self hosted option that functioned similar to discord.
I would hate to see IRC go the way of archie servers but proprietary slack, discord, and telegram are not the way to go. There's nothing wrong with a slight learning curve. If you're smart enough to code, you're smart enough to use "/join" to join a room. It's not rocket science.
Freenode and IRC has been sadly dead for quite a long time. Discord, while better in features shouldn't be a replacement due to its centralised nature.
What about the OFTC network? I'm not familiar with its history, but couldn't it be used as replacement for freenode?
Hey Jeff, Andrew doesn’t own PIA anymore, he sold it some years ago and doesn’t only any part of it
Interesting, I’m definitely not up on the world of IRC. But I’m definitely familiar with new overlords doing odd things and pushing away their most ardent supporters.
I’m surprised the FOSS projects didn’t migrate to open source Discord/Slack alternatives. There are numerous options. Gitlab even bundles Mattermost (if I recall correctly). Probably not as simple as jumping onto Discord. But also not commercial.
If the network(server) dies, you can just go somewhere else or start your own, which this freenode debacle has proven. People know that it's very easy to set up an IRC server, and thats the reason most of the people that deeply care about FOSS still use IRC. As a user, all you need to do is change one line in your config, essentially, and you switched from freenode to libera.
Slack is total crap imo and Discord is a billion-dollar company that can spend millions on development, and they do well, but who knows what they do with the data they get, and thats a lot. Also they work together with Sony now.. let's see where that gets us :|
I think IRC will survive this. Said that, I work with IRC and I find it horrible. Even though I am also not happy with discord being centralized. Matrix just introduces spaces which I really hype. I hope they get Matrix to a feature set similar to discord. That would be a good alternative.
I remember all the series downloads from IRC channels. I remember there were bots which held the libraries... I would never believe such thing as Netflix will exist ;)
Oh man, Drupal is where I got my start and I'm sure I was in their irc. I gave tons of free support in Ubuntu when I was a teen. But honestly, I cringe at some of the IRC love. IRC is... Limited.
Many communities are moving to Matrix. It has been, might I say, a wild success for the NixOS community. I don't have stats but the traffic is more than I'd even seen in any of our IRC. Fedora also moving to Matrix...
I can't take OSS communities on Slack seriously. At least most of them offer... A f#$&king IRC bridge, lol.
The writing on the wall is clear, Matrix is freaking exploding right now. Id have bet serious money on it two years ago when I started playing and I'd HAPPILY double down now. Between Cactus comments, the p2p, alternative servers, bridges, a PSTN bridge, I mean... I'm already way more excited about Matrix's future than I _ever_ had hopes for IRC to get to.
Tech Republic calling out Sourceforge for being irrelevant? That's something.
Can you make a video on what happened to Sourceforge? Literally no one else has and I'm too lazy to read some ancient articles and comb through forums :P.
Drupal is the work of the devil. But, you're a cool guy and I like your channel!
Now I need to ask: which IRC servers/channels do you recommend for Raspberry Pi development?
I don't think distributed solutions like IRC MUST necessarily go the way of the dinosaurs. I think the difference is that proprietary systems invest strongly in UX that makes life easier. There's no reason that distributed solutions couldn't also do this, but it just hasn't happened as much.
I use IRCCloud mostly because I do enjoy some of the UX benefits they layer on top of IRC. Something like Matrix can also stand in well.
I just wonder how much of a developer someone is if he/she is turned away by a few text commands...
Funny thing: I was introduced to irc by an electrician. There was a time, maybe still, that non-techies used it. And yea, I witnessed a dev the other day ask how to install Python on my new mac, these folks are out there.
@@jgurtz I admit that when I got started with Drupal and wanted to get into their IRC community, it was plenty confusing trying to figure out a client, how to register my nick and identify myself, etc. That was a looong time ago, and I'm glad I did it, but I don't begrudge someone who learned on Slack and Discord (those things didn't exist back then... maybe AOL Instant Messenger is the closest equivalent?) being a bit turned off by the difference with IRC.
And that's before even thinking about how there are more IRC clients than text editors, and every single one has a completely different interface!
@@JeffGeerling Yea for sure there is a bit of a learning curve with all the statuses and commands and netsplits and .... I hear ya on the client front, too. This reminds me I still want to investigate if irssi can run on a mac. Seems like Slack is taking over a lot, but maybe there's still hope!
I don't have something against text commands, but normal users do.
And well, I don't like using multiple different chat systems (especially not in ONE community). I want one system for all.
@@kuhluhOG Such a mood! I miss dearly the times of one IM app running with all the messengers there: aim, yahoo!, msn, and irc chans!
Freenode is not IRC.. I use IRC for decades and never even used freenode. ...its around 500 networks left operating and probably dozens private IRCD servers...so defo IRCD wont die...its just the certain network that you happen to be most active to .
Long Live DATAPAC!
IRC had plenty of features but it’s what you’d call anti-approachable WRT discoverability or usability.
re-watching this video in 2022 is like returning to a crime scene where thousands of people were murdered
Indeed: netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2021
What about XMPP? people should switch to it instead!
The whole world would care if the programers made it possible for them to use.
Discord and Slack as a replacement for IRC? No, fucking, thanks. And other FOSS devs should raise an eyebrow about a project that migrates to some proprietary bullshit.
I feel that it's not really IRC as whole who is losing in this one. There are still plenty IRC networks that are doing alright and I personally always preferred IRCNet called IRCNet over other networks anyway. However it looks like it's Open Source community that is losing in this fight if anything especially if developers start going for walled gardens such as Slack, Discord and Teams instead of something like Matrix if they don't still stick around with IRC :-/
Long live mIRC
This is one of the most infuriating comments in this comment field :-) .... mIRC is a piece of software, used to access IRC :-)
@@eidodk I know exactly what it is. I have been using it since 1995. Unless you are being sarcastic not sure what your issue is.
Matrix and Mattermost instead of proprietary sounds like a better idea.