The thing is though, there are several projects for servers out there. As a decentralized FOSS project, you don't need to rely on one source for either servers nor clients.
I don't know anything about the protocol itself. I don't know if there's anything there that is fundamentally broken, but if it's an implementation issue, that can be fixed by others.
I use #FluffyChat for my client, and though I don't use it often, it is a fairly pleasant client to use I must say.