[old and inaccurate]

How many people use this stuff?

Something between a hundred and a million, daily. There is an inner core of conscious users - about hundred steady ones, running their own servers (so it is only an estimate) - another thousand of people who drop by occasionally, or maybe more. There have been usage peaks with chat events held by symlynX and a period when BRASnet, an IRC network of a million daily users, was gatewayed into PSYC.

Why is it taking forever for PSYC to arrive?

Are we waiting for Godot? For Sisyphus to stop scaling the mountain? RFC 1324 says on this issue:

It is not expected that any protocol that meets the above demands [described in the RFC] will be either easy to arrive at or easy to implement. Some of the above requirements may seem to be exotic, unnecessary or not worth the effort. After viewing previous conferencing programs and how they work, many short comings can be seen in taking shortcuts.

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