Kurt, I occasionally watch the IRC channel, and I am not a particularly competent user. Things I like about continuing to use IRC vs "service z" 1. IRC is not proprietary 2. IRC can be accessed using a client of your choosing 3. I like that it isn't logged. People may be more willing to allow their personality to be on display. 4. IRC permits private side-bands for private conversations. 5. My experience with IRC is when I need assistance with infrastructure issues the key person/people have been readily available. That may/may not translate to "service z". In addition, do we really need to permanently record "The CI server doesn't seem to be working." ? 6. IRC doesn't collect data about me. 7. Freenode could disappear tomorrow, and the community would not be impacted for long. -- Johnathan Mantey Senior Software Engineer *azad te**chnology partners* Contributing to Technology Innovation since 1992 Phone: (503) 712-6764 Email: johnathanx.mantey@intel.com