@mcc To be fair, IRC was made in 1988. I doubt they intended for it to last this long, but wow does it ever keep on kicking. It's so simple, open, and minimal that it's easy for any random person or company to keep a server going. It's absolutely lacking in practically every single amenity, so in the end, as one might expect, the only thing it truly has going for it is that sheer, utter, absolute reliability.
It's kind of sad that we don't have a modern equivalent: something reliable, minimal, and simple like that. I wonder if partially we have the whole move to centralization to blame.
(I do really wish that could be something like Matrix, but I know that it just isn't going to get there as things stand. Not even that specifically, just... something...)