Techrights

16 Years of Transparency Through Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 07, 2024

WE HAVE had an exceptionally productive week and on Monday we have parties (yes, plural) to celebrate an important anniversary. There is another anniversary: One for our IRC community!

The siege against us (also DDoS attack this week) cannot prevent truth from coming out; bullying family members would also be frowned upon and get escalated to the police shall that become necessary. Having a lawyer's licence isn't a licence to bully people. There are clear boundaries and sometimes people get disbarred.

The Freenode NDA is about to expire, so maybe there will be revelations next week (if anyone still remembers or cares about Freenode; NDAs tend to delay publication and thus lessen the impact, relying on collective amnesia and/or apathy). Freenode basically 'died' 3 years ago, but IRC did not. More networks have been created (or grew) since then. Ours is doing OK.

Freenode was embraced by us in the summer of 2008, so right about now our IRC community turns 16. Some of the first people in the channel were people I had known from USENET and Slated helped set up the first channel. Ever since then we've published IRC logs for every single day without exception. Transparency is important to us. █