On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 08:20:24PM -0800, Ryan Lackey wrote:
> The main competition for gale is:
> * IRC
> IRC is used by perhaps 100 000 users worldwide. IRC affords
> no message encryption, minimal authentication (identd is
> sometimes used, which is almost worse than nothing at all),
> and has a culture built around "/kick", banning users, channel
> takeovers, and general childishness; the public networks are
> not really suited for professional use. IRC is a perfect example
> of why security should be designed into network protocols rather
> than relying on social pressure.
This is off by at least an order of magnitude, probably two. The four
largest IRC networks sums up to twice this number of users -
simulatenously, all the time.
Eivind.
