Did Web 2.0 make us all forget how open IRC networks were run?
Resources donated by an organization in the form of a server linked into a larger network, a committee that vetted new server applications to the network, volunteer administrators for the network and the individual servers, coordinated regional and global upgrades. And as network users increased, reforming under a hub and spoke models to improve scale and capacity.
And when a single IRC server went away after some time operating for its various reasons, the network kept going.
Could the average IRC user start/host their own instance *and* link it to the larger network? No. But they didn't need to.
Resources donated by an organization in the form of a server linked into a larger network, a committee that vetted new server applications to the network, volunteer administrators for the network and the individual servers, coordinated regional and global upgrades. And as network users increased, reforming under a hub and spoke models to improve scale and capacity.
And when a single IRC server went away after some time operating for its various reasons, the network kept going.
Could the average IRC user start/host their own instance *and* link it to the larger network? No. But they didn't need to.