Chat without servers

I always thought IRC was pretty decentralized, but I didn’t realize talk(1) was designed to work machine-to-machine.  That means in theory that if you have a talk(1) binary on your machine, you could chat directly to anyone else with the same binary, even on a different platform.  Since 4.3BSD!  Anyway, I only realized this because of this recent bugfix thanks to Dan Cross.

5 Replies to “Chat without servers”

  1. That’s what I meant for servers, the idea that there’s a central site you have to pass through to reach other users; no direct communication, always an intermediary. We’re saying the same thing.

  2. How does the talk daemon find the other user in the other machine?

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