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There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about switching from the IRC platform QuakeNet to another platform for instant messaging. I've listened to a few people and the main reason for moving off QuakeNet would be the lack of TLS encryption. Recent discussion: https://irclogs.wildfiregames.com/%230ad/2024/08/2024-08-14-QuakeNet-%230ad.log https://irclogs.wildfiregames.com/%230ad-dev/2024/08/2024-08-07-QuakeNet-%230ad-dev.log There are a few requirements other than TLS. The solution should: be open source be libre, be free, ideally not be self hosted or at least part of something we already host. provide a web chat, for people not willing to install extra software. should allow logging the channels for posterity be accessible for maintainers Which basically leaves us three big families of solutions XMPP, Matrix, and obviously IRC. There is also Revolt, but it's not mature enough yet, and our test server seems to have been deleted. This also defacto forbids things like Discord. There is also Mattermost, but we would need to self-host it. Same thing for Rocket.Chat used by Godot: https://chat.godotengine.org/home You can read their reasons there. XMPP has the advantage that we're already hosting a server for the lobby, and that could open with interesting synergies if linked with the game. Matrix is a good contender, although there seem to be a preference for XMPP in the opensource world for some reason. There is already a semi-official matrix channel see https://linktr.ee/wildfire_games Something nice is it seems to offer VOIP chat recently, which could help for hard or complex discussions which can go quickly off rails with chat. Zulip: is another option. I haven't really heard of it, so might be nice for our usage, but maybe nice to test it out. IRC has my vote. We have all the tooling for it, it's lightweight and simple, and you can use bridges if you really want to connect to it from somewhere else. I'm currently using a XMPP bridge to connect there. There are three main servers we could use: Oftc https://oftc.net/: The server debian uses and other project such as https://legacy.dotslashplay.it/ Libera.Chat https://libera.chat/, The server most people went to after the Freenode debacle. Everybody is there, which also means should the reason it was created occur again, we'd have to move away form it. Freegamedev https://freegamedev.net/ : A server made for open source games, which has invited us over. There does not seem to be a lot of people there, so we might be isolating ourselves, we might meet new devs though. I'd like to hear your opinions and will enrich the posts as I go. Feel free to suggest other discussions from the forums or IRC that might be relevant. EDIT1: Added Zulip