Ariadne Conill on the history of IRC and how the fediverse is vulnerable to the 'free software reality distortion field'
https://lemmy.ml/post/957820
lemmy.mlAriadne Conill on the history of IRC and how the fediverse is vulnerable to the 'free software reality distortion field' - Lemmycross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/957811 [https://lemmy.ml/post/957811] >
Ariadne Conill 🐰 > @ariadne > EN > > i hate to say it, especially as the person
who started IRCv3 in the first place, but there is literally no world in which i
would deploy a new project on IRC. > > i can manage all moderation tasks on
discord with terraform. that is something impossible to realize with IRC. > >
any project to take back mindshare from Discord has to frame their strategy from
this perspective. > > with Discord, or any other SaaS, you are dealing with a
loss of software freedom, and that should be highlighted, but the solution is to
provide a libre alternative that is competitive. IRC (and frankly Matrix) isn’t
that. > > https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199185608729068
[https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199185608729068] > > Ariadne
Conill 🐰 > @ariadne > EN > > this has always been the problem i was trying to
solve. with atheme, with ircv3, with all of it. how do we provide community
plumbing that is usable and scalable? > > but IRC failed to evolve fast enough
despite all of those efforts, because people didn’t understand the real
evolutionary threats. > > the reality distortion field is a real threat to any
free software project: it is very easy to become complacent, because the product
is 70% of what is actually needed.
> > but as the world evolves, that 70% turns into 60% and then 50% and so on,
while people resist the concept that product fit and focus are slipping. > >
everything is Fine™️ because everything is Free™️, and instead of focusing on
the real threat (I have been saying that IRC would be eaten by proprietary
services since the 2000s), people, thinking that everything is fine, actually,
tend to focus on their little kingdoms rather than the big picture. > > and so
we slipped, and slipped, until eventually, IRC does 20% of what we want, and
IRCv3 brings that to maybe 25%, and then when a rich charlatan buys the largest
IRC network and ruins it, at least half the people still there who haven’t left
yet realize that, upon having their reality distortion field shattered, actually
25% of what is needed perhaps isn’t the right thing, and they too move their
projects to Discord or Slack. > > this is a problem, and it needs to be fought,
but any such fight needs to write IRC off as a loss and start over. this isn’t
about “how do we win over the 1990s chatroom user”, it’s about “how do we win
over the 2023 discord user.” > >
https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199267432776043
[https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199267432776043] > Ariadne Conill
🐰 > @ariadne > EN > > like, seriously, you have no idea how frustrating it was
to try to mold IRC into a competitive product. i tried for a decade. i even
worked on this as a full-time SRE for a while (Ustream really needed UnrealIRCd
to be rewritten). > > we even had some wins, for a while: the decline of IRC’s
userbase was reversed and it even grew for a while. > > but for the most part i
had the pleasure of advocating that IRC developers do not do stupid shit, like
add spying features (looking at you InspIRCd m_invisible.so). > > at the
ecosystem level, the strong desire of IRC developers to do stupid shit for
short-term gains in users, outpaced the desire to promote the health of the
ecosystem, and add new competitive features that end-users would care about. > >
this is because projects cared far more about admin mindshare than user
mindshare, and basically shows how the whole IRC mentality is doomed to failure.
> > community infrastructure projects have to be community focused, not admin
focused. Rob Levin (the founder of freenode) used to derisively refer to the
people who didn’t get this point as “traditional IRC users.” > > >
https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199317380320492
[https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199317380320492] > Ariadne Conill
🐰 > @ariadne@treehouse.systems > > incidentally, the fediverse is in a similar
position, where it is threatened by the free software reality distortion field.
> > Mastodon isn’t good enough for the long run. we laugh at BlueSky, but it is
a legitimate threat, and it could very easily wind up eating the fediverse. all
they have to do is make it more palatable to the mainstream. > > >
https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199369743497066
[https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199369743497066] > Ariadne Conill
🐰 > @ariadne > EN > > one last thing. the people who are suggesting FOSS chat
alternatives to me. > > you miss my point. you’re offering me oranges when
Discord has offered me an apple. > > Discord is not “just a chat platform.” I
would describe it as an “integrated community management platform.” > > It
combines chat with other forms of community media: forums, for example, and a
rich suite of AV capabilities. > > this is also a symptom of the free software
reality distortion field: the alternatives suggested may be sufficient for some
usecases, but that doesn’t mean they cover the same niche as the product they
are proposed as a replacement to. > > it’s the concision of experience that has
allowed Discord to have such great success in their efforts to eat IRC’s
userbase.