April 22, 2004
Group will work to deliver improved, open standards for direct connections
The DCC2 community, a group of leading IRC client developers, today announced an initiative to create standards that will make establishing direct connections between IRC clients easier. The group will also work to standardize the protocols used to transfer files and text messages between clients once a connection has been established, allowing for a simpler and more feature-rich user experience.
The DCC2 community is currently focused on connection negotiation and file transfers between clients. Future plans include standardized negotiation and formats for voice and video chat, whiteboards, and application sharing.
The DCC2 community will work through the Internet Engineering Task Force to create a widely-supported Internet standard. A draft standard has been submitted to the IETF.
About DCC2
The DCC2 community is a working group for software developers and interested parties who wish to ensure the compatibility of direct client connections across all IRC clients. The goals of DCC2 are to prevent fragmentation of direct IRC client protocols, and to advance the capabilities of IRC clients by incorporating new technologies.
Members of the DCC2 community currently include the companies and individuals behind the following chat programs: dIRC, Visual IRC, Ircle, KVirc, Klient, Bersirc, ChatZilla, and OrnateIRC.
Further information about DCC2 can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.dcc2.org/.
About the IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual. The actual technical work of the IETF is done in its working groups, which are organized by topic into several areas (e.g. routing, network management, security, etc.). Further information about the IETF can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://www.ietf.org.
