Hi Folks,
A couple of things have come to light for me:
1) The administrators of the Freenode network are unpaid volunteers
2) Bitcoin Channels are being targeted in the Denial of Service attack against Freenode (<---unconfirmed FUD, I have discovered later)
3) The Bitcoin community relies on Freenode as an exchange (#bitcoin-otc), support counter(#cgminer, #bitfunder, #ozcoin, #bitcoin-assets, #bitcoin-dev, etc.), and most of all it creates a community of people working together on differnt Bitcoin Projects.
Those of use who feel a kinship and responsiblity to our IRC brethren should do what little we can to ease the strain that our fledgling currency has put on the Freenode network.
If the PDPC existed still, we would simply flood them with BTC donations, unfortunately this is not the case. The PDPC was dissolved when the Freenode network moved the the UK and its one paid employee pass away. There is no longer a non-profit org to donate to. The only thing left is our time and server support.
http://blog.freenode.net/2013/03/bye-bye-pdpc/If you are an IRC smarty, consider donating your time:
http://freenode.net/volunteering.shtmlIf you have an unused server somewhere or could spawn an instance w/out inflicting major costs, considering running an ircd server:
http://freenode.net/hosting_ircd.shtmlWhat ideas come to mind for supporting Freenode beyond these? Do you think we should allow Freenode to be DOSed until it adapts or we jump to a new IRC network? Other thoughts?
