Ergo IRC server | Hugonweb Annotated Link Bibliography

As in my entry on open chat protocols, I've been following discussions on what open chat should look like, wondering what my friends/colleagues should do if Discord or Slack become too annoying or expensive to use. Note that I don't have experience with any open chat protocol besides XMPP, and little with that.

Since Matrix and XMPP both seem to have complexity and compatibility downsides, I wondered if the solution is to go with IRC. The Ergo server seems the way to go for a private IRC server, because it integrates history as well as nick and channel registration in one simple program.

After spending a little time trying to use it, I've changed my mind. If I think it's a pain to setup and use a client with it, then how am I going to convince anybody else to use it! It also requires the sacrifice of GIFs, Markdown formatting, and even Emojis (it's ASCII and terminal-ish control codes only).