[12][self-published source] Freenode began as a four-person Linux support channel called #LinPeople on EFnet, another IRC network.

[15][16] PDPC was incorporated in Texas and the IRS recognised it as a 501(c)(3) charity from 2002[17] until approximately 2010,[18] during which it received support from such organizations as the Linux Fund in 2007.

[21] Around 30 January 2010, an internet troll organization, Gay Nigger Association of America, took an established exploit in HTML form and HTTP POST implementation (previously used in attacks on email protocols, e.g. POP3 and SMTP) and applied it to the IRC protocol to create a novel type of attack on Freenode, which had never been seen before in the wild.

[22] The organization created a piece of JavaScript that caused users of Mozilla-based browsers such as Firefox and SeaMonkey to silently connect to Freenode and flood it.

[22] Weev, one of the group members responsible, later claimed that the attack had rendered the network "unusable [...] for days" due to what he perceived as incompetence among Freenode's staff at the time.

On 2 February 2014, Freenode suffered a DDoS attack (confirmed by @freenodestaff on Twitter) which caused a partial outage.

Freenode's infrastructure team noticed a vulnerability on one of their IRC servers and evidence of compromise by an unknown third party.

Freenode recommended that all users change their NickServ password for safety reasons, and temporarily took the compromised server offline until the vulnerability was fixed.

[34] After OPN co-founder Rob Levin died in September 2006, Christel Dahlskjaer, a PDPC board member,[35] incorporated Peer-Directed Projects Center Limited in 2008 in the UK as a private company limited by guarantee without share capital, stating "general non-profit making enterprise" as its object.

[4][5] In February 2021, Dahlskjaer added the logo of Shells, a company and service which Lee co-founded, to the Freenode website.

[5] On 11 May, Lee appointed a new person to oversee Freenode infrastructure and published a statement accusing staff members of ousting Dahlskjaer.

[4] Hackaday reported that Vim and RepRap had migrated from Freenode to Libera Chat, a new IRC network announced by some of the former staff members shortly after the mass resignations.

[5] Anil Dash, a technology entrepreneur, stated that it was "heartbreaking to see Freenode in disarray after decades of being a vital open platform for communities.

"[45] Lee dismissed the criticism, stating that a "cancel culture mob has actively infiltrated major FOSS projects".

Hyperion was then replaced with IRCd-Seven, a Freenode-specific fork of Charybdis,[47] on 30 January 2010,[48][49] using Atheme services, which were originally developed for use on Freenode.

PDPC was created to run the Freenode network and to establish a variety of programs relating to peer-directed project communities.

The decision to dissolve was made in part due to the donation levels and costs associated with maintaining its status as a charitable organization in the UK.