I'm also on IRC, Discord, and Telegram.
This isn't a zero-sum game.
In prior years those communities would've chosen IRC. But nowdays everything has to be pretty hand hold your hand for you (ie, host your images, assume you know nothing of how to participate on the 'net by yourself).
It is a zero-sum game. And Slack has done the embrace, they done the extend, and they've started the extinguish (by cutting off IRC bridges).
Why not? Organizations can host their own IRC server(s). Won't that be better than relying on a third-party's services?
And if needed, they can write their own bots, clients, or even their own specific extensions to the protocol.
> And no, we're not locked into anything. How so?
Kind of like HN. When someone is commenting on HN I automatically have more interest than eg Facebook vs. Twitter as the primitive experience of HN (Which I personally love) filters out a lot of "noise".
There's great communities out there on IRC.
Just head to #postgres on freenode and see how helpful they are over there.