What happened?

Something akin to a hostile takeover happened a month or so ago on the freenode IRC network, which led to many of the staffers resigning. Ars Technica has a good summary of events and I’ll link to the resignation letter of one of the staffers here which also links to the letters of other staffers.

At that point I already started considering moving our polybar IRC channel to another network.

Yesterday, freenode apparently decided to drop all existing channel and nickname registrations and I effectively lost control of the #polybar channel. I could probably get it back by going through the registration process again, but I don’t think polybar has any future on the freenode network (and neither does freenode itself).

A New Home

The official #polybar IRC channel now lives on libera.chat:6697, a new network created by old freenode staffers on a more stable legal footing. Learn how to connect to the network here.

While the #polybar channel on freenode technically still exists because there are users in it, it is no longer an official channel and we encourage you to disconnect. No polybar team member will be present in any freenode polybar channel in the future.

Come join us!

— Patrick