Why Do Open‑Source Gurus Still Rely on IRC? The Surprising Reasons

What is IRC?

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text‑based, globally‑available instant‑messaging system that originated in 1988 and has long been used by programmers for communication.

Why do open‑source developers still use IRC?

Large IRC networks are distributed; you can connect to a nearby server, and if one server fails you can use another, avoiding single‑point failures.

Servers can be private, and many companies run their own IRC networks.

Rooms can be kept in a seminar‑like style by requiring private messages, allowing participants to chat privately—a feature many modern IM tools lack.

Rooms can be made non‑public.

Most networks let you assign room administrators with invite/kick privileges.

IRC has extremely low bandwidth requirements and high network fault tolerance, working when web or email is down.

It runs on any operating system, even those without a graphical interface.

There is a rich ecosystem of bots and plugins.

Additional reasons developers stick with IRC

No instant‑messaging tool is truly global (e.g., Facebook is blocked in some regions).

Many other IM tools lack Linux support, while many developers use Linux.

Open‑source communication cannot be controlled by any single company, so an open‑source solution is preferred.

IRC is old enough that veterans use it, and newcomers learn it to interact with them.