While a number of people in the group are friends, I definitely wouldn't call it a closed group of friends. These are people that have been developing different

While a number of people in the group are friends, I definitely wouldn't call it a closed group of friends. These are people that have been developing different IRC projects for many years, all discussing the protocol and making sure clients + servers actually work together. Friendships will come from this over years. A lot of the core group all work on different competing projects, servers and clients, and do frequently discuss any proposal made by anyone if it makes sense.