I'm part of those who don't really value "fighting for freedom via using IRC" so I use Slack & Discord. I have no stakes in saving IRC. Also, building and main

I'm part of those who don't really value "fighting for freedom via using IRC" so I use Slack & Discord. I have no stakes in saving IRC. Also, building and maintaining a free IRCCloud clone is worth much more of 5$/month of my time. And seriously, it's not that hard. I know people who master the ins and out of much more complex server stacks as a hobby. A nice example is the implementation of World of Warcraft private servers. IRC is nowhere near as complex as that. I do concede that it's a long-term effort though. It's certainly not just a "weekend project". Still as far as "saving things" go, this one is easy enough that a single person could build the tech on his free time and then you just need (a) patron(s) to pay for the infrastructure bill.