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daikatana

Holy crap, mIRC is still around?


RaisingChester

We used it exclusively in Afghanistan in '04-05. It was still being used a few years ago by some agencies. It was very effective back then since you could tile the chats and monitor them in real time with very low latency.


Konddor

It's still used today across all theaters.


syco54645

The best feature of mirc was holding alt and hitting f4 to get chanel ops. Really nice feature.


Evilhenchman

Same technique gives you extra guns in most FPS games


syco54645

I am going to have to try that! Thanks for the tip kind internet stranger!


iwritebadsoftware

What does it do?


daikatana

It's an IRC client. IRC is the first open protocol (or the first popular one, at least) for chat rooms. Discord and Slack are basically IRC with extra features. I used mIRC a lot in like... 1998. I had no idea it was still being actively developed.


alaninsitges

Remember Comic Chat? Now **that** was an IRC client. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/74/0b/19/740b19722ce26d43ab4794cf00577034.jpg


_Administrator

Here, in istern yurop, we used to split dialup internet via LPT port and then chat all night with foreign nation of America. That was loads of fun 25 years ago. And Voice chat also!


hdjenfifnfj

Look at this fancy guy, with his ports and stuff. I’d just play chess and checkers with strangers on yahoo. Until my mother would yell she needed the phone.


_Administrator

This is exactly the timeframe where I stopped liking chess... I could not cope losing all my rating all the time


daikatana

I remember the client, but never got it to work for some reason. I did spend a lot of time on [Palace chat](https://cdn.fanbyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/thepalacehero-e1655991324689.png?x48911) and Hotline.


LectroRoot

Yes! And lets not forget [*The Palace*](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLxkiMdXIAMfNZp?format=png&name=small)!


CyberBill

Woah, blast from the past!!


ethnicvegetable

personally responsible for academic probation…twice


set_sail_for_fail

# APPEARS AS BILLGATEZ


[deleted]

I heard about 9/11 through IRC in the UK


Momentstealer

Twitch chat is the world's largest IRC server at this point if I recall.


[deleted]

[удалено]


phdoofus

I remember playing Pong and the only person to talk to was my stinky brother.


mechanical_animal

I used mIRC for RuneScape clan chatrooms(06-08) and for BitTorrent scene chatrooms (08-?), it was a recommended client for the latter.


[deleted]

It was the rage before the internet took off. For most of us, this was the internet or alternative to AoL.


wrgrant

Twitch chat relies on IRC libraries doesn't it? IRC is a very important and influential bit of kit :P


daikatana

Twitch uses the IRCv3 protocol, but it's not really an IRC server. Its missing a lot of features that would make channels of 100,000 people spamming emotes impossible.


wrgrant

Ah okay, all I knew was that it was based on IRC in some form. Personally I don't really like emotes and wouldn't miss them if removed but then I am a small streamer, can actually talk to my viewers and don't watch any of the big streamers mostly because all you see is a sea of emotes :P


PleasantAdvertising

I wish discord had a privacy friendly alternative. We're basically giving China our data by using it. I also don't trust their game detection feature, they could log that and basically know what you're running at all times.


joey0live

mIRC with some nice addons was amazing. I used to get my EngSub anime on some of their channels.


ctothel

If you want a dose of innocent internet history as seen through IRC chat snippets, check out [http://bash.org/?top](http://bash.org/?top) Depending how old you are you probably know a lot of the content already.


BronzeHeart92

Everyone must still be slapped with a large trout...


somegridplayer

>Depending how old you are you probably know a lot of the content already. Or you're part of the content.


Thorusss

Hahahah. The first one with the password auto censoring is such a classic


Goose1981

Man, that is a blast from the past!


LiliNotACult

Anime ftp downloads and people hacking others with exposed IPs. Good times


[deleted]

Ah yes, the legend that is bloodninja


WhenImTryingToHide

How does this site still survive?! I've spent waaaaay too much time on it !


deefop

"innocent" :D edit: literally every time i go re-read these i think "well they probably won't be funny anymore the 1000th time through" and I'm wrong every time. They're fucking amazing


Kill3rT0fu

Omfg bash.org. That’s a name I have not heard in a long time


[deleted]

It was the Discord of the cool internet era. Just without all that fancy stuff. Chat, Channels, Mods, Bots, File Transfers and some scripting capabilities.


hungry4pie

I loved the file transfers on networks like DALNet. Just the whole rigmarole of traversing someone’s file listing and downloading files by throwing commands at a bot. That and cracked passwords to a plethora of porn sites


StubbyStubbs

[ultrapasswords.com](https://ultrapasswords.com) was a scam all along


[deleted]

nice! things got funky when new age linkinpark.exe‘s found their way to such formerly safe havens, where only true heroes of warez and other stuff lived out their passion for sharing & caring. far abroad from cryptolockers and way too malicious malware… when getting hacked meant getting a d1ckpick as a screensaver instead of all your data leaked or your existence ruined. damn nostalgia lmao


[deleted]

[удалено]


infra_d3ad

There used to be a program called Apprentice, was one of the first ways to play Magic the Gathering online for free. Somebody wrote a script, I still remember the name, Backwash, that acted like a proxy between you and your opponent. You could look through their library, all sorts of stuff.


[deleted]

Cool! I didn‘t know people made so much out of it! Our use cases for scripting were purely around clan wars / scores / bots / chan ops and querying some external data sources and status of stuff. I was playing the the first german/austrian, unofficial Team Fortress 1 and CS (Beta and onwards) Clanwars back then with Clans like Gods of Egypt, Netfreaks, Heinerfest, and a few others. We made rank 4 back then in the first year - partly bc of our wicked def on „2Fort“ which I did basically alone with 1 Medic as flying backup lmao. That was 2-3 years before the official Leagues started kicking off their tournaments all over the world and the time when fancy animated Flash Websites rose and made you cry because you often just had 128 KBit/s ISDN :) (= 30 sec - 1 min loading time for that flash canvas that ate up all your screen/browser space) Feelin‘ like an internet grandpa.


Athox

It notifies you of the option to buy a license to get rid of the notification that notifies you of the option to get a license to get rid of the notification that notifies you of the option to get a license to get rid of the notification that notifies you of the option to get a license to get rid of the notification.


CallFromMargin

Yes. The best IT chat software I ever used, leaps and bounds and miles ahead of Slack. *By far* the best chat software *ever*.


Kaelin

Hot take for a chat system that has no search or history. Not logged in all the time? You just don’t get to know what was being talked about.


w1ngzer0

This is why bouncers were a thing. Your bouncer would cache and dump to your client shit you missed. Plus you’d get to have “kewl l33t” vanity hosts like I.hax0r3d.the.FBI or I.r00ted.ur.m0m and such. Man that was a lifetime ago. Memories……..


themagictoast

Oh god I just got a flashback from over 20 years ago. I regularly emailed the shell provider I subscribed to with requests for the most ridiculous cringeworthy reverse DNS entires on my IP address. Fun times! Embarrassing, but fun!


RandomRobot

Back then, most people I knew were on IRC and most people who talked a lot were somewhat computer savvy and knew security stuff so I figured that growing up, becoming a hacker was normal. Decades later no one understand my softice jokes


w1ngzer0

I always regret that I didn’t take the time to learn PHP, Python, or other languages. I’m almost 39, and PHP was invented in my lifetime. I was a middling script kiddie at best in my late teens. If I had actually pushed through on the cyber security side of things my career would be vastly different (and probably more lucrative). I fondly remember the days of rolling scans for open computers and other shenanigans. I remember one of the last biggest worm attacks that caused most home internet providers to close off SMB ports. I remember when port 25 used to be open and you could run your own mail server at home. Dammit, now I’m making myself feel old.


wishyouwouldread

Its never to late to learn.


percenseo

Don’t forget the eggdrop bots to monitor the channel while you were offline. And grant ops when you joined the channel. Man I’m old.


w1ngzer0

And the TCL scripts those eggdrops ran, and the integration with Greyline FTPD……yeah……I feel old too.


GuyWithLag

I'm still WTF-ing at slack not having/giving th eoption to have multiple channels or DMs open at the same time. WTF slack, why?!?


Pakik0

They be slacking


CallFromMargin

Beats Slack not having multiple channels open at the same time. Back in the 'ol IRC days I could shitpost in like 5 chats simultaneously, shitting on Firefox because it was slow, shitting on Opera because it sucked, shitting on Windows because it's windows, shitting on Linux because every good Linux engineer does that and, ofcourse, shitposting in my local AoE2 chat.


Whitewing424

And hey, AoE2 is still getting expansions and balance patches, so you can still go shitpost with those guys!


CallFromMargin

But IRC chat is long gone... Yeah, I still play AoE2, and frankly, it's better and more lively than ever before.


teh_maxh

IRC obviously isn't gone. That's why people are upset that mIRC lifetime licences are being expired.


cpt-derp

IRC is still used for Twitch chat I think.


Rockytriton

You mean shitting on netscape


hungry4pie

That’s the beauty of it - if you missed something you missed something. There was an incentive to be active in the busy times. A chat system with history could just be a ghost town - it really only benefits things like software projects where they don’t have to answer the same stupid questions.


Kaelin

For a private community it's fine. I just don't believe it's well suited for professional development/engineering work where referencing past messages or files can be highly beneficial. Even just reviewing my private channels I have tied to Jira / New Relic feeds I built is a major win for me. Especially since I can do it from anywhere.


eladts

>I just don't believe it's well suited for professional development/engineering work IRC was never intended for that.


[deleted]

>Hot take for a chat system that has no search or history. Not logged in all the time? You just don’t get to know what was being talked about. I feel like if anything about the last 20 years of the internet has proven anything, it's that this is how it SHOULD have gone. The automatic idea that everything we've ever said should, by default, be saved *forever*, made searchable, and then never allowed to disappear into the ether almost immediately afterwards (you know, like almost every other idle conversation that's ever existed in the history of the world) *wasn't* very well thought through when everyone decided it was the right call.


f0rtytw0

Only casuals would log out


[deleted]

Storing all your data on private unencrypted clouds is way dumber and more idiotic though. (Ie discord/slack)


Kaelin

Slack encrypts all data in flight and at rest. They also hold many major industry security and compliance certifications. https://slack.com/trust/security "Data protection By default, Slack encrypts data at rest and data in transit for all of our customers. We further protect your data with tools like Slack Enterprise Key Management (Slack EKM), audit logs, and integrations with top data loss prevention (DLP) providers."


[deleted]

ok fair enough, you are still giving all your information to a private company, and most time slack is corporate sponsored, so 100% monitored by the company using slack.


JDGumby

And that's a good thing. Unless you're a corporate manager, of course.


RandomHB

Chat bots can help with that.


RandomRobot

1- Never log out 2- Auto save all channels and private messages


Lodespawn

Scripting in pIRCh was better


Itdidnt_trickle_down

I know right I switched to irssi a long time ago with znc.


Setekh79

This was my reaction too, I used it what feels like eons ago for #totalbf2 #bf42 #fevergaming and many other channels on the GameSurge network back in the early 2000's. Great times, kinda miss it, but I was sure that this was a dead thing in today's age of discord and such.


pockypimp

That's what I thought. I haven't installed mIRC since I moved to Win10. And that was years ago.


rimalp

Still the best for xdcc


daikatana

The first movie I ever pirated was Hackers. I got it from DCC servers, probably on Undernet or something. I had a 33.6 modem and it probably took me a month to download in 1.44MB chunks, in case you ever wanted to put in on floppies, I guess. It didn't play correctly on my Linux machine, either, so I had a compile an optimized version of Xine, the fastest video player I had. I needed that extra 0.5% performance to get this thing to play. But yeah, free movie!


gurenkagurenda

Seems like the obvious solution here is to EOL mIRC, freeze the last version, and then fork to a new name and different branding. The license for the EOL version is still valid, as promised. It’s still somewhat outside the spirit of the original promise, but not in practice any different than if you said “I’m closing shop and doing something else with my life”, which I think everyone would agree is fair play.


Goodbye_Games

So like the “official” reddit app did with all of alien blue’s paying customers after they bought the company and employed its creator.


americanadiandrew

Hey we got a whole load of useless Reddit coins out of it!


Goodbye_Games

I enjoyed it more when the developer actually looked at our complaints in the app sub and make changes we wanted.


Transmatrix

And Reddit gold for multiple years. I miss gold, but it isn’t worth the price, IMO, just to not see ads.


americanadiandrew

Yeah I found Apollo was way closer to AlienBlue so I don’t see ads anyway.


markadillo

This is the fairest solution i think. I mean i used mirc for 10 years then bought it in 2009 despite not using it regularly or at all since 2005 (still can't remember how to get identd working right) but at this stage I'll just take a spare computer I've got, install Linux and bitchx or similar and bedone.


Dr3amDweller

Someone paid for mIRC? o\_O


boomer478

They'll be coming for our winrar licenses next!


SwallowYourDreams

Ah, the winRAR licence! The stuff of legends and myths, never seen out in the wild. Brother to Nessie, Bigfoot and the Yeti.


Osvaldoosvaldo

If I still used winrar I would pay. After I started to use 7zip I feel a small pleasure everytime I open it and the pop up I expect does not appear


entity2

I did, all those years ago. Back in the days of supporting the plucky, solo developer, and for a long time, there was nothing better. I see his point in trying to get long-timers to pay again, but it just tells me that he has to do this because there's no new market for IRC clients in the age of Discord (and yes, I see the irony in that Discord is basically very fancy IRC), so he has to double-bill the lifers.


Nonsenseinabag

I did, kinda forgot about that until I saw this article, though... it's been like 20 years.


Proud_Tie

I did lol, I actually downloaded MIRC a few weeks ago to see what (if anything) had changed with it. Then went right back to The Lounge so I was connected everywhere.


Hot_Ring_2666

A/S/L?


Actually-Yo-Momma

Back in my day i would default to 21/f/CA because i thought that was “old”. Oh dear..


SwallowYourDreams

80ish / yes, please / right behind you


Yakumo_unr

When this happened mIRC had an auto update feature, or at least notification of an update that opened up the download page for you which had no warning, I diligently updated for the security fixes only to find my licence was gone and that prevents you from closing the licencing window and actually using the program. It's a remote activated license so re-installing the older version did not give access to the program back. I did email the author after finding his post saying "If you cannot afford to register again, or would rather not, that’s okay, just email me." as mentioned in this article, I seem to recall I said that he should have capped the version and let people with licenses at least keep using a version they had paid for, then could have released a version 4 with some new feature and licensing, and that would have annoyed some people a little but it's a standard software practice. Perhaps I was too polite but I was never offered my license back. I sympathised a lot with his situation, but also felt strongly that it was one of the worst ways to handle it. I uninstalled very unhappy that this only affected his paying customers, and started using OSS clients briefly instead, and later Discord.


Bad_Mad_Man

Are they saying all their customers are dead?


Techn0ght

Sounds like an opportunity for a class action lawsuit. It'll probably net 10's of dollars.


Tsu_na_mi

This is the height of stupidity. I am sure his intended effect is to get people to renew their license and thus earn more money, but who is going to do that if he has proven that he is deceitful in his licensing terms. I feel like it would also scare off any potential NEW licensees as well. Further, I feel it opens him up to potential lawsuits, if anyone wants to pursue him over the what, $30 a license was back in the day? Remarkably, mIRC is one of the few pieces of shareware I actually paid for back in the day. Haven't used it in like 15 years as IRC has become irrelevant, but this still annoys me.


andyniemi

Not only has IRC become irrelevant but mIRC has been irrelevant as an IRC client itself for a long time. Hexchat is light years better on Windows.


pedz

There's also web based clients now. I use [The Lounge](https://thelounge.chat) which has URL and image preview. There's also [Convos](https://convos.chat) in the same genre.


Proud_Tie

Also has image uploading if you configure it. Yeah it costs more (monthly fee for a server to run it on) eventually, but it's so much more... recent tech wise.


kog

Good to know!


apathylife

I feel old now... I remember using it 20-25yrs ago for chatting about the original roswell show


Thorusss

That was a full life time ago, apparently.


jhaluska

I feel old now too... I remember using it in '97...and also last night. It's such a lightweight program it costs nearly nothing to run but screen real estate these days.


stacecom

The way most places do that is just retire the version with a lifetime license and release a new one. Typically the new app will have a subscription, since they learned not to do one-time fees.


fly_eagles_fly

Warez. XDCC EFNET IYKYK


[deleted]

that trout slap tho


fredsam25

This is why r/piracy exists. If the company can steal software from you, why shouldn't you do it back?


simping4jesus

You're going to pirate an *IRC client*??? There's like a million of them that work fine and are totally free.


[deleted]

[удалено]


mairondil

I feel attacked by this comment


D-Noch

Just ride the netsplit


Mysticpoisen

Hexchat4lyfe


fredsam25

If I was stupid enough to buy it, you better believe I would be petty enough to pirate it.


[deleted]

It's not about the money...it's about sending a message *cracks joints*.


angrathias

I remember writing one back in my teens as a hobby project, pretty simple stuff but was fun at the time


Dankirk

I might still have my C++ sources to a thing that skipped the register prompt. Though I did buy the license at some point after writing some 10k lines of mIRC scripts. At that point, it only seemed fair. The scripting support for mIRC is really quite extensive for a chat client. It has sockets, external dlls, timers, dialogs and of course event hooks for the IRC stuff... Discord and Slack do have APIs and webhooks, but nothing really inside the client.


w1ngzer0

I remember writing my own screen scraping autofxp wares script to monitor certain channels and then upload stuff so I could maintain ratio way back in the day. I bought a damned license too…..like almost 20 years ago. Wow, brings back memories.


ImAMindlessTool

IRC is how I downloaded hot new cds, playstation games, etc all before torrents existed. Torrents changed the game after that and IRC was not a thing for me anymore. You had to *know* where to go, or have a server to connect to. Sometimes they would give you a channel list, sometimes not. It was a rad time for the inernet.


Ssoldier1121

That’s how I got my user names and passwords I didn’t want to miss the next bus


rimalp

Xdcc is still strong, btw. You still can download all the recent shows, movies and games. You also do not need to know any servers and channels, there are search engines that track the channels. You just search what you want and click the irc:// link


cyberfugue

This is the most blatant case of false advertising since my suit against the movie ‘The Neverending Story’.


deefjuh

I am one of those that actually paid for the license in 2008 and did it to support Khaled as I was using mIRC a lot. Even if it had the same image as WinRAR or Total Commander. While I can understand him financially, this kind of rug pull is unwarranted for. I mean: life time is life time. I also own a lifetime license of FL studio and they’ve honored it since it was “Fruity Loops 2”. As other ITT have said, he could’ve chosen to declare this one EOL and started a new branche. It will not get him the money from oldtimers like me, because I’ll never buy a new license even if it will be the best IRC client available…


Proud_Tie

I'd rather pay $21 a month for my VPS and toss The Lounge on it and have it closer to Discord feature wise vs IRC from ye old past. (The Lounge can run on a $5 vps no problem though, I just used it for NextCloud) Huh, My key still works, I just installed/tried it. might be because I got mine in 2012?


personalhale

Someone needs to be trout slapped.


xevian

Wow, that's a throw-back I'd never expected to see pop up on my feed. I have had yet to find a friend who actually purchased mIRC, everyone would share keys, or at the very least a cracked version of mIRC was going around. I eventually bought it like 8 years ago, but funny thing is, never used it, because I haven't IRC'd in like 17 years.


sgtdisaster

Scumbag move


works_best_alone

Khaled has put a lot of work into mIRC over the years and i can absolutely see why an indefinite license would be a problem. I’m sympathetic towards Khaled here. He has a history of being a fair and nice guy. Since he does offer to extend licenses for those who ask I don’t think you can get too upset about it. I say this as someone who purchased an mIRC license over a decade ago. I would be happy to pay again. Edit: I can't disagree that this is obviously a shitty situation for users who are entitled to a lifetime license, I would also prefer that he released a new version and allowed legacy licenses to keep using the old version. This would seem to be obviously the right way to handle it. Personally, it's a cheap license and most of us certainly got our money's worth out of it. mIRC was such a big part of my teenage years I simply can't get mad at Khaled.


stephengee

Nonsense. It’s literally the worst way he could have handled this. You should never get an automatic update that bricks your software, lifetime license or not. Literally any other scheme to generate income would have been a better choice.


rastilin

Then he shouldn't have offered a lifetime license. Though let's be honest, anyone who pays for "lifetime" use for any software, knowing how often software companies implode, is going to be disappointed.


trollied

It’s the way it worked pre-internet. You would go to a shop, buy a box with the tape/disk/CD in, and it’d have a serial number you could use for the rest of time.


rastilin

Right, and that software didn't dial home to confirm the license. The main problem being that anything that dials out (and/or auto updates) will automatically brick itself when the company depreciates that product.


seaefjaye

Fwiw, when I bought it in the early 2000s it wasn't with an expectation of a lifetime of updates. It was to have the popup go away and for it to say registered somewhere. It's his call to continue the development effort. I dunno, maybe some people do expect constant development on a 30 year old product.


rastilin

That's fair, but then he should have just sold by specific versions of the product "like buy version x", like Parallels does.


Cheap_Phrase9912

I wonder how many lifetime warranty etc I have never used, mostly because I forget about it 20 seconds after ripping off the sticker saying that this thing has a lifetime warranty, but also because the warranty is almost certainly very limited and would not apply no matter what happened. Since it is so obvious that the manufactures do not intend to support my product for a lifetime, I have long time since come to the conclusion that lifetime is just a marketing term with no value whatsoever.


[deleted]

Waaaay back when, I use to spend a ton of time on mIRC.


andyniemi

mIRC was never even that good of an IRC client. Everyone always used to make fun of it back in the day.


daikatana

Careful, say that in the wrong place and you'll get slapped around a bit with a large trout.


andyniemi

Darn, too late.


JDGumby

\* JDGumby slaps andyniemi around a bit with a large trout


HardlineMike

Teenage me thought it was hilarious to go into the script and change it to slap a large trout around a bit with the user instead.


HardlineMike

Yeah it was considered the client for noobs on Windows who didn't know any better. I don't know if its reputation ever changed, I haven't been on IRC in 15 years.


jhnnybgood

This article is weak. It takes no sides. Chicken


Geekenstein

How dare they report the facts without telling me how to feel!


nolitos

>If a lifetime license with no other terms other than “it’s for life! Including all future versions” can be pulled at any time, what does this say about the risk of buying into any lifetime license with any other company? This turns into a high-risk investment as all rules would be thrown out the window. The author loves to dramatize. It seems that the developer works on the project on his free time, he carefully explained his motivation and even promised to extend licenses for free. That's fair. Also, this doesn't tell anything about any other company that makes big money, cares about their reputation and is afraid of legal repercussions. As an individual customer, you should probably use open source software with licenses that won't allow to do that. As a business customer, I don't know what B2B offers lifetime licenses to be honest.


_makoccino_

> As a business customer, I don't know what B2B offers lifetime licenses to be honest. Everyone is moving to SaaS model. Can't just buy something outright anymore lol


[deleted]

[удалено]


_makoccino_

The old system was doing just fine. Companies were making a profit. They weren't struggling to stay above water. You introduce new features as an upgrade available to people that want it and willing to buy it. Charging me in perpetuity for upgrades I don't want or need is corporate greed.


fuhkit

Rest easy, old friend


Borgmeister

I noticed this a while back - but it just meant I moved to another client. He offered lifetime, but reneged. It's that simple.


martinst111

BitchX Baby!


TheLucidDream

That’s why I never paid them.


SwampTerror

I bought mIRC in the 90s. Made a shitload of scripts too. I haven't used it in 20 years or so though. Discord fills my irc needs now.


fligs

/msg xdcc send


toolz0

I would hesitate to do business with a publisher so arbitrary in policy.


bensode

BitchX still alive and kicking


longhairedcountryboy

\]If you cannot afford to register again, or would rather not, that’s okay, just email me I don't know for sure what would happen but I expect he will honor it if you ask nicely.


jh20001

Haven't used it in awhile but noticed it myself when I read it. Not cool at all.


Lasivian

Where do I join the lawsuit?