It wasn’t interoperable enough with the wide cornucopia of devices in the group. We’re talking Mac, pc, android 6 thru to 15 and a few more besides.

It wasn’t that XMPP was incapable, it’s that the client matrix was too uneven across the wide range of devices I needed to support.

IRC was simpler, lighter, easier to diagnose, and had clients for basically everything. Plus most of us were familiar with IRC from back in the day.

I also already had Janus for video chat set up, plus Tailscale already hooked into the pi, so most of XMPP’s extra machinery solved problems I no longer had.

TL; DR easier to host on pi, easier for client devices, less moving parts.

Personally, I just really like the look and feel of motd