Does Gitter have federated servers using a standard protocol and a vast array of programmable extensions? None of these hosted solutions are even in the same league as IRC, and we are worse off for it.
As someone who has written an IRC server implementation, there is no standard protocol. There is an RFC, but no one implements it. Instead, each server uses its own mix of poorly documented pseudo-standards.
IRCv3 FTW. I don't think they'll achieve their goals before IRC completely dies, though.
Last I checked, IRCv3 had also given up standardizing the server-to-server protocol.
IRC isn't federated either, FWIW.
IRC is federated. It's just a closed federation of fully trusted servers, whereas you probably took me to mean an open federation which it is not.