Regarding the idea of our own IRC servers: Allow me to add: Freenode is a nice network, they have a good solid setup and a staff which is experienced in handling it. If it's attacked by flood-bots, clone-bots, IRC viruses, zombies, et cetera, someone will be able to handle it. Regarding the servers going down: Freenode isn't going anywhere soon. And if it does, we can always set ours up in a hurry (simply running an ircd is *not* hard :). And finally, you can lurk around on other Freenode channels and lure in open-source-lovers to help out. :)