There are several versions of PaperIRC floating around, the last that I know of for public release was 9 but it had some serious bugs. Version 5 through to 8 were reasonably stable with version 8 being developed by winzero (recently killed in a car crash RIP)

This file is available for download in our download section

I have looked at this version very briefly and I know there are people using it without problems, so if you want to play around with your own chat server install this and have a play around.

This is not what I use here, my needs are quite specific so I developed a hybrid chat server that communicates directly with a database thru MySQL queries making it much more secure.

I would advise you not try to run an open chat server as I hear it has security issues (I dont know details sorry) but it should be fine for a small community

FireHorse