Quote from: laszlo on May 22, 2011, 10:01:32 PM

Just so everyone understands..

* LFnet IRC network is primarily used for bitcoin - a few others and I maintain it and we're all bitcoin users.

* I am a regular bitcoin contributor. I'm also the guy that bought the 10,000 bitcoin pizza in case anyone is wondering. I'm a moderator on this forum, I maintain the Mac OS build and I wrote the original GPU miner (http://heliacal.net/~solar/bitcoin/opencl-v2-svn-95-2010-06-30.patch) - I hope that's enough credentials to prove to anyone that I'm not some BOFH IRC admin

* We will make sure the #bitcoinXX channels are not 'taken over' or anything like that.

* The IRC servers have been configured to limit the number of records returned when a client joins #bitcoin and issues a WHO request. This greatly reduced the bandwidth and memory requirements.

* We use and monitor IRC and will keep an eye on the #bitcoinXX channels. The channel modes will be locked to a reasonable normal setting like #bitcoin is today.

I would like to add an option/preference to disable IRC in the client. It should be on by default, since that's the whole point, to bootstrap new users, but then the user should be able to switch it off. There will still be plenty of people who leave it on to provide booting to others, but not everyone needs to do that; especially if you don't have the inbound port open.

I also think that alternative bootstrap methods are a good idea, but it should be possible to switch it all off once you're connected to the network.

Thanks,
Laszlo

Couldn't you in theory hijack almost the entire network?
I'm not claiming that you would of course, but i'm wary of that ability being available to any one entity - what if, for example, someone sniffed your connection and got /oper access?