IRC has no message storage - so not only it has no IMAP, it has no POP3 either.
And IRC is a horrible transport protocol because it handles errors by dropping messages. SMTP has both message-ids and explicit confirmation response to make sure that as long as server comes up, eventually, the message will be delivered exactly once. IRC does not; so it is simply not appropriate for the cases where each message matters.
And IRC is a horrible transport protocol because it handles errors by dropping messages. SMTP has both message-ids and explicit confirmation response to make sure that as long as server comes up, eventually, the message will be delivered exactly once. IRC does not; so it is simply not appropriate for the cases where each message matters.