Hi all,
As you may have heard the Freenode IRC network, long the home of #ghc
and several other prominent Haskell channels, appears to be in the
middle of a rather nasty hostile takeover [1,2,3,4]. As a consequence,
it seems it will be necessary to migrate the #ghc community elsewhere.
The next question is, of course, where will this be. One option is
Liberachat, the spiritual successor of Freenode. However, in recent
years I have also heard an increasingly loud choir of users,
contributors, and potential-contributors note how archane IRC feels when
compared to other modern chat platforms. Using IRC effectively in a
collaborative environment essentially requires that all parties use a
bouncer; however, this is (understandably) isn't something that most users
are willing to do.
Consequently, I think it would be wise to expand our search space to
include other FOSS platforms. At the moment, I can see the following
options:
1. Remain on IRC and move to Liberachat, the spiritual successor of
Freenode
2. Remain on IRC and move to OFTC, another widely used network
3. Move to [Matrix]
4. Move to [Zulip]
My sense is that of the non-IRC options Matrix is the truest successor
to IRC, being a federated protocol with a wide array of (if somewhat
immature) clients. I know some of our contributors already use it and in
principle one could configure an IRC-to-Matrix bridge for those existing
contributors who would rather continue using IRC.
Zulip, while also being FOSS, is far more centralized than Matrix and
appears to be more of a chat web application than an open protocol.
Do you know of any other options? Thoughts?
Cheers,
- Ben
[Zulip]: