Libera.Chat and the freenode exodus
loreops cultureprogramming
The IRC network founded in May 2021 by the volunteer staff who resigned from freenode after a disputed change of control, taking most of the free-software projects that had used freenode with them within days.
freenode had been the default home of open-source project channels for two decades. When its staff concluded the network's ownership had changed hands in a way they could not accept, they left as a body and stood up a replacement, and thousands of projects moved almost immediately - a demonstration that in volunteer infrastructure the community, not the domain name, is the asset. It is the clearest modern case of a fork applied to an organisation rather than to code, and it worked because the people who ran the thing were the thing.
Also known as: freenode, libera, 2021 irc exodus