Readit NewsIRC has been getting the retro nostalgia kick start, and it briefly came back to attention when Slack started as "wrapper" of IRC. In my experience IRC channels are used by about 50% of open source projects, even though it's abysmal for access on mobile devices, very unfriendly for users, and extremely limited in functionality. About 50% of those have a bridge to Matrix so the mobile access is at least somewhat solved, and there are some more usable client options.
It seems because you haven't seen people already adopt it, you believe it must not be good. I'd encourage some basic research for your own benefit so you can see how XMPP is way easier to setup and maintain, far more efficient, and more capable than the oddly more commonly used Matrix/Element. In fact, between the organization issues of the last couple years, everyone finally getting fed up with Matrix being brittle, unmaintainable, and extremely inefficient to run on a server, I would expect Matrix support channels to drop off very rapidly over the next few years.
Sorry to remind you, but this never happened. AIM and ICQ eventually interoperate because they were owned by the same company at that point. There was never XMPP federation in the mix here.
So, in your entire career, you've always worked in companies where you were a subject matter expert on everything the company did? Always knew the business domain inside out? You were running the numbers, sitting with customers, and determining yourself what they really wanted?
> If you push back on requirements when they are not reasonable. Etc
I did, because the requirements had a cost, which I had to balance with limited resources.
If widget A would make 10 customers happy, but would cost two weeks of work, that could be better spent making widget B that'd make 20 customers happy, then it would not be reasonable.
If widget A and B are free, then it becomes unreasonable to say no.
You don't have to be the only person involved in the requirements for you to be involved. So yes, I've been involved from my very first internship where I pitched a new product to the CEO in my second month on the job and got told to go make that happen.
If you are part of the requirements process. If you find problems to solve and solve them. If you push back on requirements when they are not reasonable. Etc. Then you still have a career and I don't see anything coming for you soon.
Why does this seem unlikely? I have no doubt they are optimizing all the time, including inference speed, but why could this particular lever not entirely be driven by skipping the queue? It's an easy way to generate more money.
The claim Stallman would make (after punishing you for using Open Source instead of Free Software for an hour) is that Closed Software (Proprietary Software) is unjust. but in the context of security, the claim would be limited to Free Software being capable of being secure too.
You may be able to argue that Open Source reduces risk in threat models where the manufacturer is the attacker, but in any other threat model, security is an advantage of closed source. It's automatic obfuscation.
There's a lot of advantages to Free Software, you don't need to make up some.