[cjbprime]

Back around 2000, I'd say that most open source programmers did know about Freenode.

It was pretty cool: you'd sometimes have the experience of being frustrated with a software project, guessing their IRC channel name on Freenode, joining with your question and getting an instant answer from the main author of the project.

But there were lots of things that weren't cool, mainly being unable to see messages sent when you weren't online. IRC bouncers existed but most people didn't have shell access to run one on; they were expensive.