I used to do most of the dev work on freenode for a while, years ago. I said no to the ssl plans, for pretty much the reasons you describe. After I moved on, so

I used to do most of the dev work on freenode for a while, years ago. I said no to the ssl plans, for pretty much the reasons you describe. After I moved on, some people built the bad thing anyway, and we saw how well that worked out. The lesson that I take from this is that saying "no" to people who want to build a bad idea isn't sufficient, because it's just pitting your energy against theirs. You need to lick the chocolate by building something that is good enough to remove the incentive to build the bad idea, without replicating its worst flaws. I should have built the damn thing myself.