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

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.

Comments

It's one of the criteria my company used...

[OrangeTide]

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.

Re:It's one of the criteria my company used...

[rnturn]

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?

TLDR;

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Thats the point of the gateway....

[mtmra70]

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.

Obligatory xkcd

[plloi]

https://xkcd.com/1782/

Is it still a resource hog?

[tlhIngan]

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.

Feature not a bug

[RonVNX]

Yeah, most of us consider lack of emoji support a feature not a bug.

Since when do Electron apps not hog RAM.

[tepples]

Discord offers similar features, and yet happily consumes barely any processor and memory.

Since when? Discord's downloadable client is an Electron application, and last time I tried it (on Debian), its three Chromium processes combined took 365 MB. Skype's downloadable client for Linux also uses Electron and also takes hundreds of megabytes of RAM.

Self-Host. Problem solved.

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

At the risk of committing heresy in public: I actually kind of like the Slack-style chat functionality.

I hate the idea of letting some third party proprietary host (like Slack) decide how and when it should work for me, though.

Personally, I'm running a Rocket.Chat instance - very Slack-like (and "Slack-compatible" if you have any bots you've developed for Slack's API that you want to use). Mattermost is another, similar option.