IRC over MSN?

[devondashla]

I've always been a long-term MSN user. I always see IRC come up, and I just have to ask, what's the deal with it? What advantages does it have over MSN? Also, if you use other protocols, list them and I may make a poll.

[phrostbyte]

Really, it's not so much the protocol. It's the people who are on IRC that matters. IRC is huge in the FOSS/hacker community, MSN predictably is not.

I personally like that IRC doesn't have all the pointless fluff of other protocols - it's a bit like the Unix philosophy, it does one thing and does it [pretty] well.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

IRC is about rooms on dedicated servers. A whole bunch of anonymous people who don't know each other can connect to a specific room and communicate through it.

It's a considerably different protocol from MSN ;)

For the more one-on-one type of communication you know MSN for, lots of free software people like XMPP (with Jabber being a popular service) since it's a sophisticated, decentralized open protocol with support for all kinds of fancy colourful stuff.

[Dustin2128]

really, it's not so much the protocol. It's the people who are on irc that matters. Irc is huge in the foss/hacker community, msn predictably is not.

I personally like that irc doesn't have all the pointless fluff of other protocols - it's a bit like the unix philosophy, it does one thing and does it [pretty] well.
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