Hi folk! If I recall correctly, one of the big pulls for having an IRC transport in the IM Gateway plugin was so that folks companies could point it at their internal IRC server and still communicate with IRC users. Also seemed to serve as a potential easy way to help folk transition from IRC to XMPP.
So I was kicking around an idea in my head and was wondering if it would have aided your efforts to migrate from IRC to XMPP. The concept is, a plugin for Openfire that answers on an IRC port and speaks IRC. It would have you logging into a real XMPP account and provide a subset of XMPP functionality based off what the IRC protocol supports. Kind of an IRC “interface” to Openfire. It seems like a fun project that I might look at but didn’t really want to put a lot of time into it if there was no interest.
So those with corporate IRC servers and such, if you would have rolled in an Openfire server with IRC support, would that have been a good thing? Is it moot? No point in it - you told people we’re moving and they moved? Let me know what your thoughts are! (don’t think this is limited to corporate folks, I’d love to hear from anyone who has an opinion on the subject =) )
I have seen a system before for bridging irc servers. It involved a bot that hung out in the channel, but other than that it was black magic as far as I’m concerned. I can’t think how the bot masqueraded as multiple users at both ends properly… seems rather tricky.
It’d sure be useful though I’d love to bridge #adium@irc.freenode.net with an xmpp server.
Nifty idea. Unfortunately, we never got IRC off the ground for more than a small group at our company, and simply waited until XMPP was mature enough for our needs.
My personal interest in IRC has to do with talking with a crufty old bunch of folks that apparently will never leave IRC… and worse, there are some that use one net, and others that use another, and still others that use a third. While you didn’t mention this, a server plugin that allowed Openfire to talk as an IRC server to other IRC servers would be interesting but only solve part of my problem.
I think Ive said this before, but for me, the xmppy IRC transport is the only thing I have found that takes are of most/all of my needs. It sure would be nice if the IM gateway plugin could do the same job – but I do understand that this is a considerable amount of effort.