January 13th 2010
As you are most likely aware we've been working on our replacement ircd; ircd-seven for some time now. After extensive testing by users and staff, we are now preparing for the switch-over which is taking place at the end of this month. We would like to thank those of you who have helped test, those who have botted the testnet and in particular those who have helped us find and iron out bugs.

We would like to encourage those of you who run bots to take these last couple of weeks to make sure that they work with the new ircd, so as to not experience disappointment on switch-over for the production network. More information about seven, the testnet and how to connect can be found here and a brief overview of user-facing changes can be found in our seven-for-hyperion-users guide.

All going well, the switch-over is scheduled for Saturday January 30th 2010. Further information pertaining to the migration itself will be forthcoming on the freenode blog.

Please Note: While we will copy over channel modes and topics for registered channels (there will be no changes to the services database, all nick and channel settings with services will stay the same) we are unable to do so for channels NOT registered with ChanServ. If your project utilises non-registered channels for whatever reason, please make note of the topics and modes so you can make a manual transfer of these yourselves.

Should your project have any questions regarding the migration, you are welcome to direct these to #freenode on the production network where all volunteer staff are voiced.

Further information about freenode can be found over at freenode.net, you can visit our blog for information about what we're up to and when, follow us on twitter or identi.ca for status updates and maintenance alerts. Staff can always be found in #freenode where connected freenode staff volunteers will be voiced and for other support requests you may e-mail us at support AT freenode DOT net. Should you wish to donate to the PDPC, the organisation who owns and operates freenode, you can do so here.