Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a wonderful protocol with a 34-year history of helping free software, there at every step alongside the rise of the internet. Many real-time chat empires have risen and fallen during its tenure, some of them leaving behind lessons IRC might learn from. But even in its original form, IRC is a simple and beautiful protocol on top of which many independent, federated networks have been built, from simple line-oriented plain-text messages (mostly) adhering to open sta...
