**Free and Open Source Software Communities** -- whilst sponsors may be the lifeblood of the network, the FOSS communities are our reason for being. Unfortunately they, along with our sponsors, are the ones suffering at the hands of the attacker(s) -- it is their projects that are disrupted and affected and we can only apologise for the instability and disruption experienced by projects on the network in this last week.
**freenode** -- ironically freenode is the puzzle piece that gets off lightly. We're just a bunch of people passionate about FOSS -- the network itself is devoid of feeling and whilst our volunteers do their best dealing with the aftermath of the attacks and try to keep the network up and running the reality is that in the grand scheme of things freenode is nothing. freenode is just a means to an end; the projects that have chosen to use freenode could easily go elsewhere, the volunteers who staff the network... well, they could easily go wherever their projects went -- we volunteer for freenode because we're passionate about FOSS, and the majority of us also contribute to one or several FOSS projects or have done in the past. For us it has never been about "freenode" -- it has been about FOSS; and the projects we, as individuals, care about. We are all freenode users first, and staffers second.
**Free and Open Source Software Communities** -- whilst sponsors may be the lifeblood of the network, the FOSS communities are our reason for being. Unfortunately they, along with our sponsors, are the ones suffering at the hands of the attacker(s) -- it is their projects that are disrupted and affected and we can only apologise for the instability and disruption experienced by projects on the network in this last week.
**freenode** -- ironically freenode is the puzzle piece that gets off lightly. We're just a bunch of people passionate about FOSS -- the network itself is devoid of feeling and whilst our volunteers do their best dealing with the aftermath of the attacks and try to keep the network up and running the reality is that in the grand scheme of things freenode is nothing. freenode is just a means to an end; the projects that have chosen to use freenode could easily go elsewhere, the volunteers who staff the network... well, they could easily go wherever their projects went -- we volunteer for freenode because we're passionate about FOSS, and the majority of us also contribute to one or several FOSS projects or have done in the past. For us it has never been about "freenode" -- it has been about FOSS; and the projects we, as individuals, care about. We are all freenode users first, and staffers second.