Re: jabber.gnome.org's future

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me>]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:47 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:

On Mon, 2013-03-04 at 22:11 -0800, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:

> I have a hard time though thinking it is a superior chat system
> compared to IRC.  Mostly because, we have bots, we have just added
> some new IRC services.  Plus some of us run irc under screen, giving
> us 24/7 access to chat so we don't miss conversations.
>
>
> I think XMPP has a place, but chatting isn't one of them.

I wouldn't hold up IRC as a shining example of, well, anything.
We use it because we've always used it, since before some smart
folks came along and designed a protocol that isn't awful. And
we'll keep using it as long as nobody makes an effort not to.

True enough, I don't find IRC the pinnacle.  But from my limited use of MUC, I didn't see anything totally awesome about MUC that had an edge over IRC.
 

Honestly, I think we already use less IRC. A lot of people are
doing stuff over Google hangouts these days. It would be nice if
we could make something like that work with open standards and
free software. I don't think IRC is the right starting point.

Sure..  it's not a good fit for a free software project though since it isn't free software.  In fact, I would say it clearly indicates a gap in our platform that we don't have something similar.
 

None of the IRC benefits you mentioned are exclusive to IRC. You
can have Jabber bots. There are command-line Jabber clients, so
you can run it under screen. Plus, Jabber MUCs can actually send
history to connecting clients, so you can see what just happened
even if you didn't have the foresight to geek out your chat.

I don't mind being wrong, I can be convinced to use something else as long as it has a similar feature set.  I just don't think we need two chat systems.  If we can do the same with MUC, then so be it.

sri
 

--
Shaun