Freenode

In their own words

The freenode project exists to help peer-directed project communities flourish. Peer-directed projects combine open, informal participation with broad licensing and wide dissemination of output. freenode provides facilities to peer-directed project communities, including those of free and open source software (FOSS). The IRC component of freenode is a self-referential medium, existing mainly to service IRC users — but the network was created to serve groups that exist outside of IRC. freenode is designed to encourage community members to improve their skills in the areas of cooperative effort, interpersonal communication and project coordination, and to create a real-time bridge to the outside world for our target communities.