FWIW I was mostly coming in from the community perspective. 
While I'm sure most can do proxies/vpn's/etc Im more curious about lowering the barrier from people like me writing 3rd party tools that will have quick project related questions such as:

 * is this a bug
 * where do i put in a ticket
 * is this code wrong

It would be nice to just be able to load up slack (the new unofficial standard) and be able to chat quickly with others without a ton of barriers. As far as for the full project there are a ton of other issues at play, but theres tons to gain from being able to meet/greet/etc with devs on the project.

Gitter also seems to be good for that, much more than slack for just being available, but Ive been on IRC and have asked, seen others ask, and havent really seen much back and forth, theyre mostly all dead channels (slack included)

On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Martin Sivak <msivak@redhat.com> wrote:
> "Not everyone can/will do it." It's a pain.

Why everyone? Someone at oVirt can prepare that for others and just
keep it running. The same we would have to do with Rocket for example.
The difference is that people can use their own client if they want,
that is not an option with Slack. Free tier Slack will become unusable
once more people join, the persistent history limit will be depleted
very quickly.

> How does a web-based client with archiving work with a private IRC server
> behind openvpn?

The same as Slack. It does not. But I am not talking about local web
based client. I am talking about public web based gateway that uses
irc/jabber internally.

> What if the archiver fails and you miss important messages? How do you know
> the archiver hasn't failed?

How do you know that with Slack? The guarantees are exactly the same..
none. Real time messaging is not meant for important messages. We have
email (well...) and bugzilla for that. You can get guarantees for
money I guess, but not in any free service.

> Does it integrate with other services that people use, like trello and jira?
> (Can edit cards / bugs right in the chat)

I was able to google couple of different projects, there definitely is
a JIRA irc notification plugin in use (#optaplanner-dev@freenode uses
it). But some setup is probably required..

> Does it let you post images in the chat, where everyone (no matter their
> client) can see them?

This is the biggest pain of all alternative solutions. You need
storage.. Jabber is better than IRC in this sense, firewall traversal
for direct data transfer is not one of irc's strongpoints.

> I just want to work. I don't want to spend (waste, imo) time on rolling my
> own chat technology when I can connect to a website and get on with my day.

And are you willing to have multiple different communication tools
open just because you are part of multiple communities? I already need
email (more than one), bugzilla, Trello, IRC and Slack (my Jabber
community kind of died..) and it is becoming too much sometimes..

Slack at least offers limited gateway to both IRC and Jabber:
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP

We can drop IRC, but we need adequate replacement for people who are
not purely web based and work on multiple different projects. I
currently have 15 open irc channels and I will prefer any
multi-protocol or federated solution over closed one any day.

Martin


On Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 4:38 PM, Greg Sheremeta <gshereme@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 4, 2017 at 4:54 AM, Martin Sivak <msivak@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Right, still it is an IRC technology, and every user must set it up in
>> > order
>> > to keep their presence (which you get out-of-the-box from
>> > above-mentioned).
>> > Not everyone can/will do it.
>>
>> Meaning it is federated, you can connect to any server you want and
>> the protocol is open and dead simple + there are hundreds of clients.
>> Including web based.. in case you did not look. The same applies to
>> archiver services for IRC.
>>
>> So just setup an archive, publish the irc information + a link to web
>> based client and you get the best of both worlds.
>
>
> "Not everyone can/will do it." It's a pain.
>
> How does a web-based client with archiving work with a private IRC server
> behind openvpn?
>
> What if the archiver fails and you miss important messages? How do you know
> the archiver hasn't failed?
>
> Does it let you post images in the chat, where everyone (no matter their
> client) can see them?
>
> Does it integrate with other services that people use, like trello and jira?
> (Can edit cards / bugs right in the chat)
>
> I just want to work. I don't want to spend (waste, imo) time on rolling my
> own chat technology when I can connect to a website and get on with my day.
>
> Just some random thoughts I had. I probably said the same stuff last time
> this came up.
>
> Best wishes,
> Greg
>
>>
>>
>> The only alternative that got close was Jabber (IM, groups and
>> supports file transfers), too bad the adoption there is stagnating.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 4, 2017 at 10:25 AM, Roy Golan <rgolan@redhat.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 at 11:14 Artyom Lukianov <alukiano@redhat.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Like an alternative to Slack or gitter, you can run ZNC server on some
>> >> VM,
>> >> that will save all messages for you.
>> >>
>> > Right, still it is an IRC technology, and every user must set it up in
>> > order
>> > to keep their presence (which you get out-of-the-box from
>> > above-mentioned).
>> > Not everyone can/will do it.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 5:31 AM, Marc Young <3vilpenguin@gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Is there hope for slack over IRC?
>> >>>
>> >>> The problem with IRC is all the connect/disconnect chatter (and
>> >>> offline
>> >>> being a black hole)
>> >>>
>> >>> _______________________________________________
>> >>> Devel mailing list
>> >>> Devel@ovirt.org
>> >>> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
>> >>
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