Happy holidays!

It's been just over a year since freenode saw it's biggest shake-up yet, the passing of founder Rob 'lilo' Levin. It has been a challenging and interesting year both for freenode and Peer-Directed Projects Center, the not-for-profit organisation which owns and operates the network. There have been changes within the staff, there have been technical changes and soon we will see the change-over of both our Services package and our IRC daemon.

freenode is doing well -- we've more sponsors than ever, and we've gained around 18,000 users. We've had interesting projects choose to use our services and we've had a lot of input from users on what changes they would like to see. This past year has truly shown freenode for what it is -- a service provided by the community for the community. We've been joined by new staff, all of whom we're pleased to have onboard. We're making progress on the development side, both internally and externally.

PDPC has been more of a challenge. The NFP was fairly inactive previously and the change to having a active board who share a passion for the community we serve has been great, but it has also meant that we've had a lot to tidy up. While we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, we haven't quite gotten to where we want to be yet. However, I am confident that all the hard work put in by the board members, project specific volunteers and of course, our lawyers, CPA and accountant (without whom we'd be hairless by now), we will be able to do some truly spectacular things for the community in the coming years.

It has been a interesting and exciting year -- I am proud and happy to have had the chance to work with such an amazing group of people: freenode staff, the PDPC board, past and present code contributors, projects using our services and of course the diverse and incredible user group freenode has.

I'd like to thank the PDPC board for sticking in there and for having the energy and drive to push on with what at times looked bleak and depressing, each and every one of the freenode staff members for the time and effort they have put in to keep the network running, our developers and code contributors for new services and IRCd (and of course, to the original Atheme and Charybdis developers for allowing us to continue work on already amazing services in order to make it fit our needs!), every project which uses our facilities, every single PDPC donor for helping us help the community, and of course our sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible.

I'd also like to thank the OFTC staffers for this year's collaboration. It has been an interesting journey and one which I hope we will continue together.

And finally, I'd like to wish everyone happy holidays and a great new year!