freenode, formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which is particularly popular with free and open source software users and programmers. It is the official network of many major open source projects, such as Debian GNU/Linux. freenode reports over 23,500 simultaneous connections at weekly peak.
Users of the network are encouraged to contribute to Peer-Directed Projects Center. The contributed funds are used to continue the improvement of the network, as well as for the PDPC to take on a variety of charitable social support projects for the FOSS communities.
freenode uses IRC server software (ircd) called dancer-ircd (there is also an IRC "bot" called "dancer," completely unrelated to freenode), which is derived from EFNet's ircd-hybrid-6.0 tree (as opposed to Undernet) codebase. It has NickServ and ChanServ bots provided to reserve nicknames and channels. The services program is dancer-services, and it is a modified version of hybserv, designed only to work with dancer-ircd, due to changes in the server to server messages. freenode servers are usually named after science fiction or fantasy authors.
History
Rob Levin (lilo), the founder of the network, traces its inception back to January 29, 1994, when he started a small Linux support channel called #linuxneo on the EFnet IRC network. The channel wasn't active until August of that year, and soon after it became active it changed its name to #linpeople.
It moved from UnderNet to DALnet, and in late 1995 became an IRC network, irc.linpeople.org. In 1998, the network became irc.openprojects.net and generalized its mission, attracting a variety of free software projects. In August, 2002, it became freenode, a service of Peer-Directed Projects Center.
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