When comparing Foo IRC vs Quassel, the Slant community recommends Quassel for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Quassel is ranked 7th while Foo IRC is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Quassel is:
Quassal is available for free with source code licensed under GPL and available [here](http://bugs.quassel-irc.org/projects/quassel-irc/repository).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lots of customization options
Pro Consistent looks and function as a UWP app
Being a Universal Windows Platform app, FooIRC follows the design guidelines set forth by Microsoft, which allows it to look native to the UI. This also means things such as notifications integrate well with the notification center.
Pro Great, simple UI
Pro Plugin support
Pro Supports DCC
Pro Free and open source
Quassal is available for free with source code licensed under GPL and available here.
Pro Distributed
It's possible for a front-end client or multiple front-end clients to connect to a single core client. This allows setting up an always on-line core that can be accessed from anywhere.
Pro Easy installation on Ubuntu due to the existence of PPA's
Right now Quassel has a PPA maintainer, which allows you to install the stable version or daily versions.
Support for PostgreSQL as database backend and easy to configure for people that know a bit about systems.
Cons
Con Costs money
Con Universal Windows Platform app
Con Potential memory bloat in monolithic client if left running for a period of time
(I don't know if this problem has been fixed in recent years, but I have doubts)
Con No DCC support
DCC or Direct Client-to-Client protocol allows for private communications between users (without the traffic being routed through servers). Neither chat nor file transfers are supported.