1 score and a little over 2 years ago, IRC was created by the great and honorable Jarkko Oikarinen.  It's had its ups and downs, from the era of net splits to the era of cancel culture.  However, we're proud to announce that we've completely drained obliterated the swamp removing the shackles on progress, and now we're sailing blue seas. YaRR!

Now, we go onwards.

Pushin' it to a new level

The freenode digital autonomous zone is proud to announce IRC.com by freenode.  In addition to our FOSS and free IRC bouncer service that keeps you connected 24/7, we now provide Android and iOS applications that connect to our freenode bouncer, enabling push notifications, avatars and a whole other suite of IRCv3 capabilities!

Head on over to the Android Play store or the iOS App store and download, install and login!  Share it with your friends as IRC and FOSS are no longer walled gardens - freedom is for everyone with no phone number required!

For those of you that know what an API is and don't think it's a typo for a fruity company, there's webhooks built in so you can immediately integrate freenode and IRC.com into your development and org processes.

The app is in beta, but everything works.  If you find any bugs, please let us know in #freenode-bnc!

On Desktop and Web

On the desktop and web, you can use your favorite desktop or web client to connect to the same connection that your iOS and Android apps are on.  Simply use the freenode bnc.  Use server bnc.freenode.net with port 6697 and SSL enabled.  Then, enter your username:password in the connection password field and connect.

We also deployed our webchat.  As of now it connects directly to freenode, but we will soon be adding IRC.com by freenode features which means it will connect to the freenode bnc in the future!

A fresh Start to a new Era

Now that IRC is up to speed with modern messaging clients, we're now aiming to take things further yet.  IRC is a much more robust and useable messaging platform than anything else out there.  We're just getting started.

Special thanks goes out to tjr and his team, as well as the entire freenode staff as we worked through the transition from legacy to present.  An additional special thanks goes out to prawnsalad, who's previous contributions to the FOSS and IRC community, including the Kiwi IRC suite of FOSS, made all of this possible.

The power of the people cannot be stopped.  freenode is here to stay, no matter what gets thrown at it.  It's now, as well, a recognized digital autonomous zone which gives it the unique ability to provide what freenode does best:  freedom.

freenode is IRC.  freenode is FOSS.  freenode is freedom.  Ask not what you can do for freenode, but what freenode will do for you.  IRC is back!

Hello World!

On behalf of freenode and the entire team,

Andrew Lee (rasengan)

President

freenode autonomous zone