Happy Birthday freenode!

It's freenode's birthday party. Please come celebrate with us.

In early August, 1994, a small IRC support channel called #linuxneo, on the EFNet IRC network, began to see activity. The channel grew, and in a few days its name was changed to #linpeople. The channel eventually moved to Undernet, then DALnet, and in late 1995 it became its own IRC network, irc.linpeople.org. By early 1998, its focus began to broaden, from GNU/Linux to free software in general, and it became irc.openprojects.net. In August, 2002, the network changed its name to irc.freenode.net as it became the first project of a new nonprofit [(not-for-profit) --Ed.] entity, Peer-Directed Projects Center.

Today, freenode peaks at over 15,000 users, and we're home to coordination channels for such projects as Debian GNU/Linux, fedora, Gentoo, KDE and subversion. We're the official IRC network of the Free Software Foundation's GNU project; we provide support channels for FreeBSD, GNU/Linux and a variety of free software applications. But the real conceptual moment when the network was born was early in 1994, on 29 January at 01:49 UTC, when I first joined the channel #linuxneo.

So, happy birthday to us! Ten years later to the minute, on 29 January 2004 at 01:49 UTC, the birthday party will begin in channel #linuxneo on irc.freenode.net. It'll last all day. Grab an IRC client, get a little help setting it up, and come join us on freenode!