Internet Relay
Chat (IRC) is a longstanding protocol—or series of protocols—for
creating online,
text-based chat rooms.
While many of the "channels" (as chat rooms are usually called) are highly useful to
a wide variety of projects and organizations, including much of the
free-software world,
IRC seems to have a community that suffers from
more than its fair share of disagreements, hostile forks, vitriol, and other types of
divisiveness.  It is perhaps no huge surprise, then, that the IRC
world is currently undergoing another of its periodic upheavals.  The
largest IRC network, freenode, is
embroiled in a messy dispute that has led
to the mass resignation
of many of its volunteer staff, the founding of a competitor network (run by the former staff),
and its abandonment by multiple high-profile projects.