History and Growth

The chart below plots the increase in size of freenode over time. The network began as #linuxneo, a tiny GNU/Linux support channel, created by Rob Levin in 1994 on EFNet IRC. That channel soon changed its name to #LinPeople. By 1995, after moving to Undernet and then DALnet, #LinPeople became a small network, irc.linpeople.org. In early 1998, it became Open Projects Net, with about 200 users and fewer than 20 channels.

In 2002, Open Projects Net became freenode, a service of Peer-Directed Projects Center, a tax-exempt corporation. Today freenode peaks at around 65,000 users and contains just under 40,000 channels.