send irc messages encoded as utf-8

For example blamelist is already stored as list of unicode strings
Remove MAINTAINERS.txt

The component-maintainer model didn't work out the way I'd hoped.
Merge pull request #1250 from kviktor/irc-encoding

Send irc messages encoded as utf-8
Merge pull request #1251 from djmitche/bug2856

(Based on the discussion in the mailing list and feedback at GitHub.)

Remove MAINTAINERS.txt

Closes ticket:2856