XChat, commonly written X-Chat or xchat, is a popular Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...

 (IRC) client

Client (computing)

A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....

. It is available for Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 systems, Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 (with additional features), Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 (X-Chat Aqua), and for other X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

-based systems (Fink project

Fink

The Fink project is an effort to port and package open-source Unix programs to Mac OS X. Fink uses dpkg and APT , as well as its own frontend program, fink ....

). It has a choice of a tabbed document interface or tree interface, support for multiple servers and is highly configurable. Both command line and graphical

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 versions are available. The main code is licensed under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, but the official Windows version is Shareware, and uses the GTK+

GTK+

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

 toolkit for its interface. It is also available as an app for Joli OS.

Features

XChat is a full-featured IRC client and includes all basic functionalities that are found in most other IRC clients, including CTCP

Client-To-Client Protocol

Client-To-Client Protocol is a special type of communication between Internet Relay Chat clients.CTCP is a common protocol implemented by most major IRC clients in use today. CTCP extends the original IRC protocol by allowing users to query other clients or channels, this causes all the clients...

, DCC

Direct Client-to-Client

Direct Client-to-Client is an IRC-related sub-protocol enabling peers to interconnect using an IRC server for handshaking in order to exchange files or perform non-relayed chats. Once established, a typical DCC session runs independently from the IRC server. Originally designed to be used with...

 file transfers and chats, and a plugin system for various languages (including at least C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 or C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

, Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

, Tcl

Tcl

Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...

, Ruby

Ruby (programming language)

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...

, Lua, CLISP

CLISP

In computing, CLISP is an implementation of the programming language Common Lisp originally developed by Bruno Haible and Michael Stoll for the Atari ST...

, D

D (programming language)

The D programming language is an object-oriented, imperative, multi-paradigm, system programming language created by Walter Bright of Digital Mars. It originated as a re-engineering of C++, but even though it is mainly influenced by that language, it is not a variant of C++...

, and DMDScript). By writing plugins, one can extend the features and customize the functionality of XChat.

XChat runs on the following operating systems: GNU/Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

, NetBSD

NetBSD

NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...

, OpenBSD

OpenBSD

OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...

, Solaris, AIX, IRIX

IRIX

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 98/ME/NT/2000/XP and others. Support for 98/ME was dropped from the official Windows build,

License change

As of August 23, 2004, official Windows build of XChat has become shareware, and must be purchased after a 30-day trial period. Previous (freeware) builds for Windows have been removed from the official site.

Assessment

There has been a great deal of discussion about the legality of this move. Since the XChat project has not required copyright assignment, the maintainer (Peter Železný, or zed) of the XChat project does not actually hold copyright to the entirety of the code. While he has offered to remove and rewrite any patches, provided the author of the patches asks him to, there are many who feel that he is still in violation of the GPL, especially since the code for the shareware enforcement is not disclosed. As the code may be in violation of the GPL, a developer whose code is currently in the XChat source code may be entitled to legal action. Code which is included under a more permissive license such as LGPL

GNU Lesser General Public License

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...

 (as a library), BSD

BSD licenses

BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses. The original license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix-like operating system after which it is named....

, or public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

, does not entitle the developer to this legal option.

Author's rationale

It is stated that the shareware fee is required due to the excessive amount of time it takes to make it compile under Windows.

Unofficial builds

Unofficial Windows builds of XChat are made available by contributors, most of whom maintain binaries of the latest release, yet may release more often with builds based on SVN.

Reception

A review at Softonic of the official shareware version 2.8.9 called it a "good looking and easy to use IRC client", and appreciated the UI layout, which color codes nicknames, and left-justifies conversational text, but gave the software a grade of 6/10.

In a review in IRCReviews.org of the "Silverex" contributed Windows build, Allan Preston wrote, "Overall, XChat is a very capable, solid, and robust client, but it is not a mIRC copy. You can alter almost every aspect of it, either by altering the config files, or by scripting. I would recommend XChat to any windows user who is looking for a free alternative to mIRC, or to users who are bored with mIRC’s limitations."

External links

• [irc://irc.freenode.net/xchat #xchat] on freenode
  Freenode
  freenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are all accessible from the domain name [irc://chat.freenode.net chat.freenode.net], which load balances connections by using the actual servers in rotation...
  
  
• [irc://irc.efnet.org/xchat #xchat] on EFnet
  EFnet
  EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with more than 35,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.- History :...
  
  

Derivative software

• XChat Aqua or XChat Azure for Mac OS X
  Mac OS X
  Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
  
  
• XChat Gnome
• lurc, an IRC client based on XChat 1.0
• Conspire, an IRC client based on XChat 2.8-cvs
• PChat-IRC, an IRC client based on XChat 2.8.6 with a new UI design coming up
• XChat-WDK, an IRC client based on XChat 2.8.8, for Windows.