User:Quintuplicate/The Fall of Freenode

Background
IRC was refined in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen from preexisting protocols for live chat on BBSes. The difference between IRC and BBS chat protocols was that servers could be dedicated to conversation, and could be linked with each other to form a global network. By 1990, such a network had been formed and promised to set discussion free forever. That was not to be.

After a server known as "eris" became disfavored by the operators of many IRC servers, they banded together and formed a new network by the name of "Eris Free Network" - EFnet. They succeeded in kicking off the non-EFnet servers from IRC, but also in shackling future Internet users to decades of corporate rule.

In 1992, using the precedent of EFnet's breakaway, Undernet was established as a network which would not be connected to any EFnet servers. This was to be the first major permanent secession, but not the last. Other splits followed: DALnet in 1994, IRCnet in 1996, by which point the IRC world had become so fractured that new networks were expected to start from scratch, just like new websites.

It was in this climate that Freenode was founded as an IRC network catering especially to free and open-source software projects who desired a free and public protocol in which to communicate. Over the next 15 years, Freenode grew as casual users of other IRC networks deserted IRC for proprietary protocols with more features.

The arrival of Discord seemed to deliver the coup de grace for IRC. Discord, though claiming to be "free", was far from it. At long last, many of the FOSS project "clients" of Freenode realized they had to meet this new threat. Fortunately, an open-source protocol called Matrix had emerged with most of Discord's features. Freenode's growth slowed as many FOSS projects moved to Matrix.

So by the beginning of The Fall of Freenode, we have: a deep sense of crisis in IRC, the rise of proprietary and corporate chat platforms, and Freenode finally feeling the decline to which other networks had been subject for years.