On its 10th anniversary, Signal’s president wants to remind you that the world’s most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It’s free. It doesn’t track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it’s a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.
Hmm, ok, thanks. But I’m kind of tired of version churn: who needs to keep changing a chat program? IRC has been around since the 1980s or so and still works fine.
some people like texting their family who doesn’t use IRC, and they’d rather not send messages in plain text for one reason or another.
I get that IRC is old school and encryption is important. My question is why the program has to keep changing. If the task is simple enough, there shouldn’t be incompatible changes required if there are new versions at all.
With new possibilities due to new tech user demands rise, too. People asked for features like group or video chats or coupled devices (not trivial with E2EE) and since good companies listen, they developed those and still do.
Also, I don’t think there’s a single IRC client still in use that hasn’t been updated since the 80s. I wouldn’t be surprised if your favorite client got an update in the last couple of months - and that despite it being a trivial protocol.
https://media.ccc.de/v/3e0a51f5-f60a-4a90-a78a-3a311c6ffe41 here the author explains why and it all sounds like a bucket of bullshit
Thanks, I might try to watch some of that.