Are there any policies regarding IRC use, and is there an infrastructure participation in setting on an IRC channel for a project, or do we just go do something? Several ASF projects use IRC, including tomcat, mod_perl, Struts, Jelly, and others. It appears that at least those hosted by Werken maintain IRC archives to supplement the mail archives (I suspect that all do).
My own views on this:
1) People should not be any more upset about the use of IRC than they should if two committers on a project happen to bump into each other at an ApacheCon and take the opportunity to discuss a problem that they are working on.
2) This being said, no *DECISIONS* should be made on behalf of projects in this manner. In particular, VOTES should be on mailing list unless there is consensus by all the participants otherwise.
- Sam Ruby
