y2k.chat

y2k.chat is a retro-styled, vintage-computing-accessible chat service, written with the goal of having a reasonably secure, fun and usable multi-user and direct chat experience on older machines, like AIM, MSN, Skype or Yahoo was - but informed by modern development and user experience practices.

y2k.chat is built on revolt.chat. (possibly using Spacebar instead? though I'd prefer to bring more alternative client support to Revolt.)

our software stack involves three main parts: a service, a frontend, and a client. Sometimes a backend may be involved, between the service and frontend/client.

the service is built atop the revolt.chat backend, and associated components. this gets a base data model, API and the necessary mechanisms in place for the rest of it.

revolt.chat has its own frontend, which we will include at the start, but this is far too heavy to expect to run on anything less than a modern, high-end client machine.

we'll provide and customize this at first, but our plan for a web frontend is to write something lightweight and accessible to browsers like Netscape Navigator 4, Internet Explorer 5, and the like, in PHP.

realistically, all we would expect for a frontend, is a place to download the applications for your machine.

y2k.chat will maintain forks of open-source clients for other, similar chat services, with the API retooled for revolt.chat:

• iProgramInCPP's "DiscordMessenger" source code, a Discord third-party client built for Windows 98-and-up machines (WIP for NT 3.5!).
• not-nullptr's AeroChat for Windows XP, Vista, 7
• dosdude1's "Discord Lite", another third-party Discord client for Mac OS X 10.4.
• ayn2op's "discordo" for the commandline, on machines that can run Go programs

and perhaps others from https://github.com/Discord-Client-Encyclopedia-Management/Discord3rdparties

y2k.chat may also have gateway services and customized clients on lighter protocols, like XMPP and IRC. We won't actively support non-y2k.chat clients, and we can and may make incompatible protocol changes for user experience or ease-of-use reasons, but we currently don't see a reason to block the use of other clients at this time.

• adding Revolt support to matterbridge to support other platforms
• Wallops (archived link, original is down as of time of writing) - an IRC client for classic Macintosh (system 6)

these sit in between the revolt.chat API backend itself, and a different API. these would be bridge protocols, and not necessarily direct.

• IRC: we'll be making a bridge of sorts to support IRC through revolt, in order to more easily support existing IRC chat clients on older platforms.
• OSCAR: we may consider bridging to AIM's OSCAR protocol, as well.
• Discord: While implementing the Discord API would be interesting to support other third-party Discord clients, it would require using a different platform from revolt.chat. we may look into using Spacebar as an alternative, though.

it's not a non-goal for us, but implementing it - especially video - will be a challenge. we will likely be using mumble as a basis technology for this. don't expect 4K60 video if at all - think more like 2002 webcam quality.

• Q. why?
• A. chasing the iteration and advancement of personal computing and smartphone technology has caused untold ecological damage, and has generally been a stupid pursuit for marketing and fads. this was true back in the early 2000s, too, but we managed to do it with 1/64 the amount of resources, often less. refocusing on what made the personal computer actually personal, and not marketing strategies to increase shareholder value before an IPO, is a good strategy towards making better software, better computers and better services.