Regarding the idea of our own IRC servers:
Allow me to add: Freenode is a nice network, they have a good solid
setup and a staff which is experienced in handling it. If it's
attacked by flood-bots, clone-bots, IRC viruses, zombies, et cetera,
someone will be able to handle it.
Regarding the servers going down: Freenode isn't going anywhere soon.
And if it does, we can always set ours up in a hurry (simply running
an ircd is *not* hard :).
And finally, you can lurk around on other Freenode channels and lure
in open-source-lovers to help out. :)