Ircv3defense

IRC for Human Beings

Our team at IRCNow wants to make IRC better today without changing the IRC protocol.

We are committed to writing open, transparent software ?.

Why IRC?

We all love IRC because it is simple to code for and easy to understand. It supports a huge number of clients, has a large and mature ecosystem, and has over 100,000 users from all over the globe. IRC is the home of the free and open source community.

Fixing IRC

But IRC hasn't improved much since it was first invented in 1988. As of 2019, IRC is still incredibly hard for average people to use. It's for this reason that the IRC community has lost over 95% of its users to proprietary chat networks like Facebook, Discord, and Slack.

IRCv3, however, is not fixing any of the major flaws with IRC. As of 2019, IRCv3 **still**:

  - Does **not** provide an easy way to upload a file in-band to a public channel (you can't share code snippets, photos, or videos with your irc client, you need to use a web browser)
  - Does **not** sync messages properly on phones (messages are often lost or repeated)
  - Does **not** provide recipient confirmations for when a message is delivered (echo-message only provides server confirmations, not recipient confirmations)
  - Does **not** provide buddy lists
  - Does **not** provide HTTP tunneling to bypass firewalls
  - **Cannot** handle frequent disconnects from mobile clients
  - **Cannot** handle audio/video calls
  - Does **not** provide a standardized registration interface

We plan to add these necessary features while still maintaining backwards compatibility with all existing irc clients and servers.

If you are interested, please join our network at irc.ircnow.org.

IRCv3 F.A.Q.

Aspects of IRC that IRCv3 (supposedly) is not addressing/did not address:

Does not provide an easy way to upload a file in-band to a public channel (you can't share code snippets, photos, or videos with your irc client, you need to use a web browser) https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/341 <--- might be able to also include file uploads, WIP

Does not sync messages properly on phones (messages are often lost or repeated) Elaboration needed as to what exactly is meant; IRC session on phone A is 100% independent of IRC session on device B. Bouncer relaying? if that, then statement is true

Does not provide recipient confirmations for when a message is delivered (echo-message only provides server confirmations, not recipient confirmations) https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/346 <--- WIP

Does not provide buddy lists MONITOR (similiar to WATCH) as possibility?

Does not provide HTTP tunneling to bypass firewalls Outside of their scope likely, networking issues created by ISP's, which IRCv3 does not work with in an official capacity

Cannot handle frequent disconnects from mobile clients Has to do with mobile connections frequently "dialing into" the next available "post"/source and apple shuts down background processes of non-apple apps after 3 minutes; beyond the scope of IRCv3 and perhaps not fixable at all

Cannot handle audio/video calls https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/341 <--- could be used with Jitsi Meet

Does not provide a standardized registration interface https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/276 <--- resubmitted and still considered non-deployable; grounds for IRCNow to work and improve (requires client authors to integrate a good GUI though)