From what I've read it seems like you generally seem to have Freenode's interests at heart, but this seems like a complete communication failure. Most channels I've been a part of have moved to Libera Chat, so I don't think Freenode in its current form can recover from this.
Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? It would be nice to have a homeserver that people can rely on and isn't Matrix.org.
> * Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? *
Please don't. I like Matrix, I use it, but it's not IRC, and it's far, far more resource heavy (both in homeserver and in clients) than IRC is. You can run IRC on ancient gutless wonders, and it uses almost no resources. Matrix, especially the flagship Element client, is a resource hog. Start throwing rooms with thousands of users in, and it requires an awful lot of resources.
One (or some) of freenode staff did make it clear that freenode was a platform rather than exclusively an IRC network, which suggested that they may have had plans to look into alternative platforms in the future. And the Matrix-IRC bridge went to prove that Matrix usage is increasing, although I understand that there are a lot of people who still insist on IRC.
I'm not a huge fan of Matrix's current design or implementation, but I use it and I can understand why others do.
My main problem with Matrix (which I'm willing to work around because of the benefits of a federated, self hosted, encrypted chat system) is that it seems to assume everyone has a lot of high end, modern hardware, at all ends of the system.
Synapse is fine until someone on the homeserver starts joining a bunch of rooms, then you'd better have a lot of RAM for it.
And Element, while a perfectly good client, is the standard "bloated electron app" option that chews 700MB of RAM and lags, entering text, on a Raspberry Pi 4.
There are alternatives, but they tend to have weird issues, at least last time I messed with them, in how they handle some of the corner cases of encryption.
I've used Matrix for the past couple of years for work chat system, and I personally think that the thing is a fad at best.
Synapse is simply awful as a server implementation, and the clients are just simply bloated.
But if you are looking for a good federated, self hosted, and encrypted chat solution, for my own private chat system; I've gone back to XMPP - I've settled on:
* ejabberd (which is in Erlang so just by definition is going to perform leagues better than Python) - prosody also works fine (especially for "lower end" servers) - though both need a bit of configuration at first install
I used Riot/Element since back when it was still called "Vector" (these guys love their name changes)
It's ok but it's really aiming at the whatsapp/telegram crowd. Open a few hundred channels and it's overwhelmed, especially visually. You can set the channels to a higher-density view but not the channel list itself. You're scrolling forever.
Unfortunately Matrix is very tightly coupled with Element, it's the only client that really implements everything.
I'd love something like Quassel (which is what I use for IRC now) for Matrix. Native app, excellent performance and features.
fwiw Synapse has got progressively better, especially in the last 6 months. Element performance has certainly got worse over time though and we are working on that now.
If Libera.chat gets 60% of the users, freenode would still be the second largest IRC network. I think there will be a enough inertia among people/projects who don't follow hacker news or internet trends for the remainder of freenode to retain an audience.
The bigger question is if they retain enough server sponsors, who may be paying more attention. They might defect to libera.chat or OFTC, or just decide the whole business is not worth their while.
One of the main points of matrix is that every server should be compatible and form a federation with others. What is the point of moving people onto a specific server?
With IRC freenode has a control structure that can enforce their rules/guidelines, this breaks with matrix.
I think the big concerns with matrix.org centralisation are:
* If matrix.org went away tomorrow, is there enough capacity in the rest of matrix for users to migrate to.
* Federation only exists when a channel has users from multiple homeservers on it - how many small/medium channels only exist on matrix.org?
* People's identities are tied to their home server. You would be userfoo:matrix.org - if matrix.org went away, how would you find all your contacts again?
Points 1 and 2 would be addressed by more capacity and more independent homeservers, point 3 would require some sort of multi-homing.
Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? It would be nice to have a homeserver that people can rely on and isn't Matrix.org.