Taking IRC Further

IRC was the beginning for many of us, and over the past few weeks, we've heard many great coming of age stories from so many of you. Many of us, including me, share the same.

IRC is our home and our root.

This is why it was surprising to find that IRC was in the same state that it was in the early 2000s. Today, I'm honored to announce that freenode has begun modernizing IRC.

freenode Bouncer: Stay connected on IRC, all the time

Stay connected to IRC, without missing a beat. freenode now offers a free IRC bouncer to anyone with a registered nickname through NickServ.

Just point your client to bnc.freenode.net and port 6697 with SSL enabled. Next, enter your NickServ username and password in the IRC connection password field. For example, if your nickname is Fuschia and your password is password, then you would use Fuschia:password in the IRC connection password field.

freenode is the home of FOSS, so of course it's powered by open source.

freenode is the first major IRC network to provide instant always on connectivity for everyone, for free.

freenode BBS: Share links with the freenode community

We’re proud to announce that we’ve launched an IRC-first web link aggregator, BBS. You can join now, post links and comment by joining #freenode-bbs, #freenode-bbs-discussion and #freenode-chit. Chit is our web commenting platform controlled via an IRC bot.

All moderation is publicly visible via the IRC channel, the way things are supposed to be - transparently. Source repository links are found on the respective websites as well.

freenode is the first IRC network to run a major website with all user interaction over IRC.

freenode Jobs: Hire or be hired directly on IRC

freenode is the home of the most talented people in the world. That's why we were surprised to hear that many users were looking for work. We're proud to announce that we've also launched an IRC-first jobs index, Jobs. Now, anyone can post on and view the LFW, or looking for work, or Hiring boards. This replaces the former freenode Jobs which was a web-first website, with an irc-first website.

Canceling cancel culture or why anonymity is important

Many of you have reached out and let us know that within many large FOSS projects you were incredibly fearful of being canceled for sharing your views. We didn’t like that. As such, we’re proud to provide a simple IRC channel anonymizer that allows channel members to participate without fear of being a target, anonymously. Try it out in #anonchan or setup your own.

Now you can share thoughts and views without fear of being canceled.

Staff appreciation

As a final, but most important note, I’d like to thank the hard-working freenode team. Without their efforts, we wouldn’t have been able to take things this far. If you see an @ in #freenode, please don’t hesitate to share your appreciation.

The future for freenode and FOSS communications, indeed, looks bright and exciting. Stay tuned for many great things to come!

On behalf of freenode,

Andrew Lee

President

freenode limited