Unity (which is the first implementation of the SRC protocol which in turn is part of this project) is an attempt to improve the situation of real-time chatting on networks such as the internet. As a base to work on we have chosen the current Internet Relay Chat protocol.
We all (at least those of us who have spent some time trying to understand how IRC works) know that the current IRC protocol is not scalable enough for really large networks. That's because all servers need to know all users and all channels, and everything has to be kept synchronized all the time. When two servers establish a link, the initial synchronization data can be as large as a 100 MB.
Also, the IRC protocol provides no mechanism to permanently register accounts or even channels, making channels hard to secure against people who want to disrupt a group of chatters.
Last but not least, IRC servers are either leafs or hubs which route messages to each other which doesn't really make sense since internet routers do exactly the same thing on a lower level.
Another drawback of another nature is that IRC servers tend to get organized in small networks, so if someone chooses a network they can't contact people on other networks without opening a second connection to that other network. Since the administration of those IRC networks usually is very strict on what is allowed on their network and what features their network has, new servers have bad chances of getting involved with an IRC network and keeping a fair bit of freedom at the same time.
If it was possible to keep all the servers apart without losing the possibility of communication between them, users as well as server administrators would have a lot more freedom to choose what they want.
Our goal is to do this and end all the problems explained above, together with adding other useful extensions and changes.
For more information, please read the docs on our homepage which is located at http://srcd.de/.