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Slack Is Shutting Down Its IRC Gateway (slack.help)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-road dept.

Slack, a team collaboration communication service, has updated its IRC support page to note that it is ending support for IRC on its platform: Unfortunately, support for gateways is ending. Starting on May 15th, it will no longer be possible to connect to Slack using the IRC and XMPP gateways. In another support page, which requires you to log in to one of your Slack groups, the company elaborates: As Slack has evolved over the years, we've built features and capabilities -- like Shared Channels, Threads, and emoji reactions (to name a few) -- that the IRC and XMPP gateways aren't able to handle. Our priority is to provide a secure and high-quality experience across all platforms, and so the time has come to close the gateways.

Please note that the gateways will be closed according to the following schedule: March 6, 2018: No longer available to newly-created workspaces; April 3, 2018: Removed from workspaces where they're not in use; May 15, 2018: Closed for all remaining workspaces.

5 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. It's one of the criteria my company used... by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole IRC and XMPP compatibility of Slack was used as an argument to placate the old timers at my company.

    Mostly I've found that people waste too much time making custom emoji and spend too little time working out real business due to the security and retention policies inherent in the Slack services.

    Hopefully this can trigger some businesses to walk away from this seemingly useless tool.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:It's one of the criteria my company used... by rnturn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another garden being walled off.

      I've been pushing for a return to mailing lists (listserv-type applications like Mailman, etc.) because of garbage like this. They ain't as fancy but the bells and whistles that Slack/Hipchat/etc. bring aren't really all that useful, are they? Emojis? Who gives a crap? You can't figure out what ":^)" or ":^(" means? Really?

      --
      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  2. TLDR; by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We want to support more superfluous shiny garbage and supporting IRC might remind people they don't need this bullshit.

  3. Thats the point of the gateway.... by mtmra70 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are shutting down the gateway because their system is more advanced than IRC and other XMPP clients? The entire point of the gateway is to allow two disparate systems to work with each other, even with limited features.

  4. Is it still a resource hog? by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One of the big reasons to use the gateway was simple - the web client, the node.js "app" and all that were resource hogs. Probably one of the few chat things that needs an i7 with 32GB of RAM just to use it.

    Had one project where I was forced to use it, and was so dismayed when it seemed to consume half of one processor core and a ton of RAM. OF course, the IRC client takes 0% most of the time and barely any memory at all

    It doesn't have to be this way, since Discord offers similar features, and yet happily consumes barely any processor and memory.