{"slug": "bitlbee", "name": "BitlBee", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 3.033, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-12-01", "latest": "2026-09-28", "why": "Bitlbee saved (and still saves) my ass with tons of the protocols available via IRC", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Bitlbee saved (and still saves) my ass with tons of the protocols available via IRC", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "bitlbee.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.bitlbee.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BitlBee", "Bitlbee", "bitlbee"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 798023840, "item_id": 49876490, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49876490", "by": "Athas", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It worked way better than you would expect", "excerpt": "I used Bitlbee until not that many earth rotations ago - it's an IRC daemon that provides bridging of various other chat protocols. It worked way better than you would expect, especially back in the day when you could use XMPP to connect to the various proprietary chat services. I didn't stop using it until I stopped caring about those chat services.", "context": "", "use_case": "bridging chat protocols to IRC", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC"}, {"id": 783049536, "item_id": 48940596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48940596", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Merge this with the public servers of https://bitlbee.org", "excerpt": "Merge this with the public servers of https://bitlbee.org to use Jabber or Mastodon servers (among others) with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source"}, {"id": 779916753, "item_id": 48744797, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744797", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "allowing you to use any IRC client (even the ones without TLS for DOS and Win9X) to connect to modern networks", "excerpt": "It's still there, at IRC/Usenet/some niche forums. Replace phreaking with maybe some mesh networks and ways to connect computers without calling an ISP. There are still niche blogs and even phlogs. And you can still use Pidgin and libpurple plugins to connect to a huge array of protocols. Ditto with core Biltbee or Bitlbee+libpurple allowing you to use any IRC client (even the ones without TLS for DOS and Win9X) to c", "context": "", "use_case": "bridging chat networks to IRC", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore"}, {"id": 768083778, "item_id": 48005236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005236", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "anything CLI shines such as SIC + Bitlbee to talk with chat platforms", "excerpt": "For accesibility edbrowse https://github.com/cmb/edbrowse and anything CLI shines such as SIC + Bitlbee to talk with chat platforms, and maybe pjsua for SIP. These can be combined wth yasr (terminal reader)+speech-dispatcher as a TTS.", "context": "", "use_case": "Chat gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility"}, {"id": 764872356, "item_id": 47804522, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804522", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Try free Biltbee servers over IRC too", "excerpt": "Salvage old free as in freedom distros. Learn about i2pd and tunneling Usenet/IRC and Email (even cool online Nethack/Wesnoth/FreeCiv gameplays over it, any turn based libre game will work). There are some Usenet servers (text content only, no binaries, all illegal crap it's cut down by design) listening under I2P servers. By design enforcing any cross-pond law it's impossible. Learn about NNCP in order to tunnel mes", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 744180738, "item_id": 46511296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511296", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I think Bitlbee itself listened on 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost", "excerpt": "You are right; it's a bit of a excuse. Tons of small services under Unix (by default) listen on several interfaces and networks. I think Bitlbee itself listened on 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost. Ditto with some UPNP/DLNA daemons. It takes very little to set up IPFS to just listen to tun0, disable routing (let ygg do its job) and throttle the bw a little so it doesn't hog the whole network. I would be surprised if the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anna's Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["bridging chat protocols to irc", "bridging chat networks to irc", "chat gateway", "irc chat gateway", "irc gateway for chat protocols"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390945", "title": "The 49MB Web Page", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49875913", "title": "Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48936426", "title": "Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744655", "title": "The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48002938", "title": "The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47801991", "title": "US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"warn": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 798023840, "item_id": 49876490, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49876490", "by": "Athas", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It worked way better than you would expect", "excerpt": "I used Bitlbee until not that many earth rotations ago - it's an IRC daemon that provides bridging of various other chat protocols. It worked way better than you would expect, especially back in the day when you could use XMPP to connect to the various proprietary chat services. I didn't stop using it until I stopped caring about those chat services.", "context": "", "use_case": "bridging chat protocols to IRC", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC"}, {"id": 783049536, "item_id": 48940596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48940596", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Merge this with the public servers of https://bitlbee.org", "excerpt": "Merge this with the public servers of https://bitlbee.org to use Jabber or Mastodon servers (among others) with it.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source"}, {"id": 779916753, "item_id": 48744797, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48744797", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "allowing you to use any IRC client (even the ones without TLS for DOS and Win9X) to connect to modern networks", "excerpt": "It's still there, at IRC/Usenet/some niche forums. Replace phreaking with maybe some mesh networks and ways to connect computers without calling an ISP. There are still niche blogs and even phlogs. And you can still use Pidgin and libpurple plugins to connect to a huge array of protocols. Ditto with core Biltbee or Bitlbee+libpurple allowing you to use any IRC client (even the ones without TLS for DOS and Win9X) to c", "context": "", "use_case": "bridging chat networks to IRC", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore"}, {"id": 768083778, "item_id": 48005236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005236", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "anything CLI shines such as SIC + Bitlbee to talk with chat platforms", "excerpt": "For accesibility edbrowse https://github.com/cmb/edbrowse and anything CLI shines such as SIC + Bitlbee to talk with chat platforms, and maybe pjsua for SIP. These can be combined wth yasr (terminal reader)+speech-dispatcher as a TTS.", "context": "", "use_case": "Chat gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility"}, {"id": 764872356, "item_id": 47804522, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804522", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Try free Biltbee servers over IRC too", "excerpt": "Salvage old free as in freedom distros. Learn about i2pd and tunneling Usenet/IRC and Email (even cool online Nethack/Wesnoth/FreeCiv gameplays over it, any turn based libre game will work). There are some Usenet servers (text content only, no binaries, all illegal crap it's cut down by design) listening under I2P servers. By design enforcing any cross-pond law it's impossible. Learn about NNCP in order to tunnel mes", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification"}, {"id": 760643553, "item_id": 47540222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540222", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-03-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "will allow upon connecting to a registered IRC account to several protocols in the server", "excerpt": "With iodine you can tunnel TCP/IP over DNS. Really slow but usable for text web sites, gopher, gemini, irc... gopher -> gopher://magical.fish, gopher://sdf.org... gemini -> gemini://gemi.dev, it has geminipedia, a web to gemini converter reading sites over gemini at great speeds. irc -> servers from https://bitlbee.org will allow upon connecting to a registered IRC account to several protocols in the server. For inst", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Doom entirely from DNS records"}, {"id": 760003026, "item_id": 47500189, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47500189", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can connect most modern protocols such as Jabber/Mastodon/Discord", "excerpt": "Install Windows 3.11 and Calmira Desktop, it will give you a Win95 like taskbar and maybe a better explorer. It's libre software. With Win 3.11 you can even set networking and read HN at gopher://hngopher.com Also, with an IRC client and the public servers from https:/bitlbee.org you can connect most modern protocols such as Jabber/Mastodon/Discord and the like and still be communicated. Usenet it's usenet, still wor", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 3.1 tiled background .bmp archive"}, {"id": 758500816, "item_id": 47406301, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47406301", "by": "deepforest", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Thank you for very interesting post) >I used the text web (https://text.npr.org and the like) thru Lyx maybe you mean Linx or Links insted Lyx?", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC chat gateway", "switched_from": "", "story": "The 49MB Web Page"}, {"id": 758285665, "item_id": 47392854, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47392854", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Bitlbee saved (and still saves) my ass with tons of the protocols available via IRC", "excerpt": "I used the text web (https://text.npr.org and the like) thru Lyx. Also, Usenet, Gopher, Gemini, some 16 KBPS opus streams, everything under 2.7 KBPS when my phone data plan was throttled and I was using it in tethering mode. Tons of sites did work, but Gopher://magical.fish ran really fast. Bitlbee saved (and still saves) my ass with tons of the protocols available via IRC using nearly nil data to connect. Also you c", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC gateway for chat protocols", "switched_from": "", "story": "The 49MB Web Page"}, {"id": 751824657, "item_id": 46989041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989041", "by": "Arathorn", "date": "2026-02-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Chatty/-/tree/main/src/matrix?ref_type=heads might be able to help you?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Discord Alternatives, Ranked"}, {"id": 744180738, "item_id": 46511296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511296", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I think Bitlbee itself listened on 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost", "excerpt": "You are right; it's a bit of a excuse. Tons of small services under Unix (by default) listen on several interfaces and networks. I think Bitlbee itself listened on 0.0.0.0 instead of localhost. Ditto with some UPNP/DLNA daemons. It takes very little to set up IPFS to just listen to tun0, disable routing (let ygg do its job) and throttle the bw a little so it doesn't hog the whole network. I would be surprised if the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Anna's Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension"}, {"id": 737763426, "item_id": 46110214, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110214", "by": "Arathorn", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "", "excerpt": "iamb is pretty good and not abandonware, fwiw: https://github.com/ulyssa/iamb", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Self-hosting a Matrix server for 5 years"}]}