Hi folks,

We're currently looking at gitter as a potential IRC compatible replacement and my personal opinion is that we should go with it.

You can already mess about in the proposed channel; you can read anonymously, or use a github or twitter account to contribute: 

https://gitter.im/OpenMAMA/OpenMAMA

It has several great features:

1. Instant messages are persisted to the room, so you will see history when you log in
2. Sensible concurrent login access with no username1 nonsense
3. Web front end comes for free
4. Provided by github so integrates very nicely into the project wiki etc
5. Native client provided for Mac, windows, Linux, iPhone and android
6. Also compatible with standard IRC clients

Downsides:

1. It increases the github lock-in
2. You'll need a github or twitter account to contribute

If anyone has any feedback about making the move, please speak up now. I'm sending this to both users and developers because it will impact both and I'll welcome and consider all responses. I'd hope that we can agree a decision one way or another by 7th June, then (if necessary) take the plunge.

Cheers,
Frank