IRC turns 30

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turns 30 years old. Born at Oulu University's Department of Computer Sciences in 1988, Jarkko Oikarinen developed one of the Internet's first real-time messaging services as a summer job side project. It has played a pivotal role in the birth of the Internet's chat culture. Today, 30 years after launch, IRC still has a devoted user base. Here's to wishing IRC another 30 years!

For those feeling nostalgic, the DareNET Archives contains a lot of historical IRC software and documentation -- including some of the very first releases of ircd.