If you're one of those people who still use IRC, you've probably heard of the sort of meltdown that freenode has been experiencing. Despite all that, I was still on the network, partly because I had been since forever, but mostly because one of my favourite projects still has their community channel on there.

This evening I noticed that my IRC client was disconnected from freenode and since can't reconnect. I've set up automatic SASL authentication into the nickname I had registered on the network for some — oh… I don't know — fifteen years or so. That authentication fails and therefore irssi drops the connection.

Weird right? So I connected to freenode without authentication and asked the network's nickserv service about my previous account. Looks like it's not registered anymore. Fantastic! No prior warning. No nothing.

Strictly speaking, I have no right to the account of course. So I guess there's little point in complaining, and this post is enough of that.

Just in case somebody who knew me on freenode as ft is wondering: Should the nickname appear again in the future, you're not talking to me any more. A network like this is not worth the hassle.