Prior to Leenode, freenode was one bedrock thing, like email, some archives, other basic pieces.
I used it a lot, and on occasion still hop on to have a chat, get pointers to info.
Sad to see this happen, but the interesting bit to me is just hoe much depends on humans being good, or at the least mutually considerate and respectful to one another.
The closed platforms damp down on this some. Notable and thought provoking dynamics in play here.
Open protocols matter, but so do the people. Matter more than some, many of us might expect?
I just had a stray thought about all this. For those of us around early, these basics are evident. And as older pieces get impacted by the growing mess, a lot gets put into question.
The early net was the people. They cared and they had broad agency to do the right things.
Now that it's more economically driven, we've got growing issues, and we've got some real advancement. It's not all bad.
But... maybe making more people, somehow, is an answer to the issues.
When I was brought online, it was late 80's via BBS gateways at first, then a unix shell account and PPP later on, in 1990-1, right in there somewhere. At that time, the sysadmin was kind of bringing people up, holding discussions, teaching, helping, and the same thing happened in various places.
Each of us got a sense of how special it all was, and our conduct mattered. I know for me it did.
We don't do that anymore, or if we do, it's onboarding to some closed thing or other, each seeking to own the people, to prevent agency, prevent what we had started with.