Then you have to pay for a server and you have to admin that.
> or you could use Matrix
Sure. I wish Matrix well, and I hope they one day reach the point where they can beat Slack or Discord on the polish front.
> It feels like dropping IRC entirely is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
What baby are you throwing out? I appreciate that these services are proprietary but there's so little lockin in practice that I struggle to care. My gang already switched from Axon to Skype to Mumble to Discord, if and when Discord becomes onerous then we'll move again. Perhaps even to IRC. But for the time being, UX matters and IRC's remains extremely poor.
Then you have to pay for a server and you have to admin that.
> or you could use Matrix
Sure. I wish Matrix well, and I hope they one day reach the point where they can beat Slack or Discord on the polish front.
> It feels like dropping IRC entirely is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
What baby are you throwing out? I appreciate that these services are proprietary but there's so little lockin in practice that I struggle to care. My gang already switched from Axon to Skype to Mumble to Discord, if and when Discord becomes onerous then we'll move again. Perhaps even to IRC. But for the time being, UX matters and IRC's remains extremely poor.