Enhanced Programmable ircII Client

The Enhanced Programmable ircII Client (ircII-EPIC) is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Unix-like systems descended from the ircII client. EPIC was formed by the merger of two independent forks of ircII by Jeremy Nelson and Jake Khuon. EPIC is now maintained by EPIC Software Labs.
Since the late 1980s IRC was a unified system, with one dominant network (EFNet) and one dominant client (ircII). In 1992 some folks decided to start up a rival IRC network (which became the Undernet) where they could run their own servers and do what they wanted. Other folks started a rival irc client (which in 1994 became EPIC) where they could write bots that weren't crippled. There was overlap between the members of both groups, and ircII-EPIC and the Undernet grew up side-by-side for a couple of years.
The EPIC name came first, and Enhanced Programmable ircII Client was sarcastically chosen as a pretentious backronym. This was to poke fun at legislative pressure groups whose names are obviously backronyms of the acronym they really wanted to use.
With the increasing use of GNU Screen, it became less necessary to run bots. One could keep his client connected to IRC continuously and use a comprehensive script capable of using all the features of a bot. Because EPIC was designed to make it easier to program bots, this transition happened organically.

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