Trust me, I get that; the main argument is that, in protocol wars, there's strength in numbers; IRC is a waning protocol, Matrix is a waxing protocol. I'm not saying people must change what's working for them already; my only case is that _if_ what _was_ working for you is now broken (the freenode network), you have a new opportunity to re-evaluate your position. That's all.

You don't even have to go "all in" on all the fancy new Matrix stuff; just write a wrapper to comply with being a "homeserver", and continue using the IRC API with no changes. If not, that's also fine, I'm not that invested in this personally.