IRC and firewalls (was Re: [vtk-developers] IRC boycott?)

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

>>>>> "AC" == Andy Cedilnik <andy.cedilnik at kitware.com> writes:

    AC> I understand that people using MS Windows believe that
    AC> everybody has access to some MS Windows computer with MS
    AC> Office and all other stuff.  The reality is that there are
    AC> several non-MS solutions out there and constraining ourself to
    AC> something like netMeeting is "wrong". Please for the sake of
    AC> the portion of vtk-developers that use the non MS part of
    AC> computer world, to reconsider.

    AC> If real time collaboration is such an important issue, I would
    AC> suggest we install some Web based IRC on a public computer and
    AC> use that.

Thanks Andy!  I agree completely.  I for one do not have easy access
to Windows machines.  Sounds crazy but is true.  Its most convenient
if there were a cross platform solution.  Netmeeting is definitely
out.  

One possibility would be to use something like jabber.  However jabber
and friends require getting a new account at some jabber server.  This
is easy to get but I'm not sure all of us would want that.  Jabber can
run via a proxy and can do group chats.  However, AFAIK, irc is much
nicer (when it works) for realtime chat with multiple people.

So if Charl is able to get the www-irc gateway up there would be
nothing like it.  OTOH if that is difficult maybe we could try out
jabber.

Thanks Charl!

prabhu