[HN Gopher] One week of Libera Chat
___________________________________________________________________
One week of Libera Chat
Author : wut42
Score : 478 points
Date : 2021-05-26 10:31 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (libera.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (libera.chat)
| threatofrain wrote:
| Prior discussion.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734
| 0mp wrote:
| It's incredible how fast the whole transition is happening. I'm
| really grateful to the Libera Chat team for creating a space for
| the communities to move to. Amazing job!
| bencollier49 wrote:
| This controversy has got me back on IRC. It feels good to be
| sitting in chatrooms and occasionally able to pitch in and help
| people. And the interface is better than Slack. :-)
| NoahTheDuke wrote:
| What client do you use?
| [deleted]
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Textual.
| natrys wrote:
| It had be write my first weechat script, it's fun :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| > And the interface is better than Slack.
|
| Don't tell it everywhere. Some people might get offended. :D I
| agree with you though.
| rplnt wrote:
| Is there a way to get similar feel that slack has for irc?
| You know, half a gigabyte of client data, at least 1GB of ram
| usage, multiple processes, high cpu load?
| xena wrote:
| Run badly written weechat scripts, a lot of them.
| kadoban wrote:
| I do realize you're being sarcastic, but to answer honestly
| anyway: best way is to use Matrix and bridge to IRC. This
| allows you to use almost all Matrix functionality without
| anyone you talk to on IRC being affected by that really at
| all.
|
| Matrix isn't anything like as resource heavy as Slack is I
| don't think (and to me more importantly it's an open,
| federated protocol), but to many IRCers it'll seem similar
| in both the good and the bad ways, depending on what they
| find comfortable.
| anaganisk wrote:
| I dont know how you use matrix but its android and pc
| client are heavy as hell and buggy, and isnt the desktop
| apps just electron based? I dont even want to get started
| with the resource hog of the matrix server instance.
| kadoban wrote:
| I just run it in browser. It runs "fine" for me. It
| doesn't bother me in terms of speed or resources. I
| wouldn't give it any kind of glowing recommendation on
| that front, I just think it's better than Slack.
|
| Slack crawls for me more than Matrix does, though to be
| fair I only use them each on totally separate machines,
| so it's not a fair test.
|
| Raw IRC beats both in resources and responsiveness, but
| the tradeoffs are well worth it for me to use Matrix
| personally (to name just one, I consider scrollback to be
| a required feature, and to get that with IRC requires too
| much effort/cost).
| myself248 wrote:
| Not aware of how to do any of those things, but if you want
| some of the _better_ aspects: Lives in a browser tab,
| connect from anywhere, etc, look into TheLounge or Convos
| as your client. I'm a major version behind on TheLounge and
| it's still fantastic.
| ta8645 wrote:
| How is Libera meant to be pronounced? L-eye-beer-ah, or maybe
| "liberal" without the trailing ell? Freenode was such a great
| name, this one is hard to warm up to in the same way.
| hnarn wrote:
| It's an English word, you can listen to it here:
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/libera
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Wiktionary, which I _usually_ find to be more comprehensive
| and accurate than the commercial dictionaries, lists
| 'libera' as a word in Esperanto, Galician, Ido, Italian,
| Latin, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. But not English.
|
| Regardless, it doesn't seem like a challenging word to me,
| somebody who has only ever spoken English. I just pronounce
| it like it's written, "lib-eh-ra", it never occurred to me
| that this world might be challenging.
| macintux wrote:
| Ly-bar'-uh
|
| Leeb'-er-uh
|
| Lee-bar'-uh
|
| Lib'-er-uh
|
| I have no idea, and I don't see how it can be construed as
| unambiguous.
| hibbelig wrote:
| OT: That entry says it's the name of a deity. Are names
| "words"? And are _Italian_ names _English_ words?
|
| This is meant to be an honest question, I just don't know.
| Intuitively, I was surprised.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Everything is a word. Most words are informal, and may not
| effectively communicate both direct meaning and cultural
| implications.
|
| Formal words can generally be found in a dictionary, and
| when used in those contexts, are more likely to effectively
| communicate direct meaning.
| hnarn wrote:
| My personal opinion is that if you can find it in an
| English dictionary, it's an English word. It's pretty
| common, in English as it is in all languages, that the
| pronunciation differs from that of the original language
| from which the name originated.
| [deleted]
| anthk wrote:
| Lee-beh-ra, as "libera" (he/she/it frees) in Spanish.
| nairboon wrote:
| Libera.Chat is growing quite fast [0], let's see how it ranks in
| another week [1]. Todays channel hijacking on freenode [2] will
| probably trigger a bigger move.
|
| [0]: https://netsplit.de/networks/statistics.php?net=Libera.Chat
|
| [1]: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628
| arkitaip wrote:
| Is there any policy in place that prevents another freenode
| incident from happening again? i.e. IPs being sold off in a
| hostile takeover?
| mobilemidget wrote:
| So who is this .. person who keeps spamming the shit out of
| everybody on freenode IRC* claiming that libera chat is a new
| network for pedofiles?
| Tenoke wrote:
| I'm guessing a random person invested in freenode over the
| years rather than staff or anyone involved.
| mst wrote:
| Nah, it's a set of idiot trolls we've been dealing with for
| years - they've also been trying to spam libera in "support"
| of freenode but libera have people who know how to deal with
| IRC spam so it's not gone nearly as well.
| noir_lord wrote:
| > but libera have people who know how to deal with IRC spam
| so it's not gone nearly as well.
|
| That says it all really doesn't it :).
| Kliment wrote:
| It's a bunch of trolls from 4chan. They've been doing this for
| years on freenode trying to accuse the (now former) freenode
| staff of same.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| The noteworthy (IMO, obviously) communities/projects that I have
| seen jump ship (either voluntarily or by force) are wikimedia &
| wikimedia, ubuntu, gentoo, centos, kde, postgres, sourcehut,
| wesnoth, mutt, vim, emacs, lisp, scheme, clojure, haskell. Any
| other ones that I haven't seen yet?
| spindle wrote:
| NixOS
| Filligree wrote:
| Moved to Matrix, but there are active IRC channels on Libera
| as well.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| I thought Matrix group sizes are limited to 1024 members. I
| can't google if this limit still exists.
| ptman wrote:
| There are no hard limit on matrix room member counts. e2e
| encrypted rooms with thousands of users se a lot of key
| negotiation traffic, but with such sizes maybe full
| encryption doesn't buy much as any user can share the
| log/history.
| kadoban wrote:
| If a "group" is a room, then this is definitely not
| currently true. I'm in Matrix rooms well over this size.
| tazjin wrote:
| The move to Matrix was not a community decision, which is
| why it's now fractured slightly between the different
| systems. Maybe someone will bridge them in the future.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I'm seeing plenty of Nix/OS/pkgs IRC regulars and seniors
| in matrix rooms, and lots of active discussion going on.
|
| There is demand and mourning for IRC bridges, and I'm
| sure that will be taken care of sometime soon, but to me
| it seems Matrix is the new home.
| asicsp wrote:
| #lobsters
| gwillen wrote:
| The Bitcoin community has moved / is moving to Libera; I think
| #bitcoin was the second-largest freenode channel, after
| #ubuntu.
| dudul wrote:
| Elixir apparently based on another HN front page post
| chishaku wrote:
| Is irc the primary means of communication for all these
| projects?
| bierjunge wrote:
| IRC and mailing lists are still the most important
| communication channels for a lot of projects (see: kernel.org
| and similar projects). It haven't changed for 30+ years and I
| hope it won't change in the future.
| myself248 wrote:
| Not sure I'd call it primary for all of them, but it's been a
| supremely useful, and speedy, support resource whenever I've
| needed it. Being able to just blindly /join #name_of_project
| and land somewhere useful (even if unofficial) is like magic.
| capableweb wrote:
| > clojure
|
| While there is a #clojure on both Freenode and Libera, it's not
| official as far as I know. Also,
| https://clojure.org/community/resources still links to the
| Freenode channel. Most of the Clojure community hangs around on
| Zulip and Slack (Clojurians) more than IRC anyways.
| shakna wrote:
| The Freenode channel says it has moved:
|
| > ChanServ: This channel is moving to #clojure on
| irc.libera.chat
| bregma wrote:
| Python
| purerandomness wrote:
| bootstrap
| wut42 wrote:
| Alpine (to oftc), voidlinux, grafana, prometheus, fosdem, curl,
| bastillebsd, couchdb, musl, ircpuzzles, jellyfin,
| gamingonlinux, xen, devuan, irssi, weechat, .... The list is
| too big to get it exhaustively
| eclipseo76 wrote:
| Fedora is planning too, but it's colliding with our project of
| having our own Matrix server bridged with IRC.
| ognarb wrote:
| Same with KDE, but the Matrix wnd Libera team are working on
| it.
| Kliment wrote:
| kicad, implicitcad, reprap, scopehal
| MadVikingGod wrote:
| It might be easier to start a list of channels that didn't
| move.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| openscad, spritely, elixir
| 3np wrote:
| apart from what sibling mentioned: armbian, xmonad
| Semaphor wrote:
| Archlinux: https://archlinux.org/news/move-of-official-irc-
| channels-to-...
| Grinnz wrote:
| Perl
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Looking at https://freenode.net/static/img/wikimedia-forced-
| move.png the forced part is by people on the projects.
| Honestly, that sort of stuff is the main reason I stopped using
| IRC. I can completely believe that someone decided to do that
| and it shows contempt for the community it says they want to
| have.
|
| It's easy to say the community moved when you kick and ban
| everyone from a channel and create a new channel on a different
| network. But how many people actually moved? Did they just
| damage their own community over this?
| geocar wrote:
| ecl moved.
| jackdaniel wrote:
| Both #ecl and #clim moved, yes.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| So did #clasp - forcibly.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Forcibly how?
| phoe-krk wrote:
| All operators and bans were removed and the channel was
| forcibly redirected to ##clasp.
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289071
| wut42 wrote:
| freenode staff took over en masse all channels who
| mentioned "libera" in their topic. It's been discussed
| all over HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285774
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285802
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287283
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287750 (gentoo)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287807 (raku)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288673 (elixir)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288771 (alegro)
| adenner wrote:
| The same thing happened with our local linux user's group
| #cialug
| asddubs wrote:
| rsync too i believe
| betawaffle wrote:
| also zig and go-nuts
| _Gyan_ wrote:
| FFmpeg already has registered channels there. Will update
| website within a day.
| dsr_ wrote:
| lopsa - the League of Professional SysAdmins.
| drmpeg wrote:
| gnuradio. We also got hijacked.
| est31 wrote:
| 3.2k commits as of now:
| https://github.com/search?p=6&q=libera&type=Commits
| app4soft wrote:
| > _3.2k commits as of
| now:https://github.com/search?p=6&q=libera&type=Commits_
|
| Not all "libera" commits on GitHub related to "Libera Chat"
|
| There are 470 commits for "libera chat"/"libera.chat"[0,1]
|
| [0] https://github.com/search?q=libera+chat&type=Commits
|
| [1] https://github.com/search?q=libera.chat&type=Commits
| est31 wrote:
| Indeed but note that if you search for "libera chat" or
| "libera.chat" (I think they are equivalent, github's search
| doesn't recognize punctuation I think), it filters out the
| commits that don't mention both "libera" "chat" in the
| commit message, and only turns up those that do. In
| particular, github's commit search does not search diffs,
| only commit messages, so even if the diff contains
| libera.chat, it won't turn up until the commit message also
| mentions it.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| All the cryptocurrency channels bitcoin monero etc the ones I
| care about migrated to libera.chat ASAP
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| If you want them to move to Libera, just join the channels and
| write the word "libera" in there.
| zokier wrote:
| I want to say just that I appreciate the positive and largely
| non-confrontational tone of this post. Considering the
| circumstances it could have as easily become muddled with
| bitterness and/or cheap snipes.
| wut42 wrote:
| And look for contrast on https://freenode.net/news/for-foss -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27283964
| CornCobs wrote:
| The identical experience of libera chat makes me realize how
| useful open protocols are, and how much harder it would be to do
| something like this with some platform like discord
| simias wrote:
| I don't use Discord but apparently there was some pretty drama
| a couple of weeks ago because they made a bunch of changes to
| the UI of the client that apparently the community didn't like.
|
| If you want to have control of your platform then don't use
| closed source, proprietary solutions!
| ziml77 wrote:
| While I do hate that Discord is being used for all chat needs
| instead of just sticking to being a replacement for Ventrilo
| or Skype for gaming groups, I want to point out that the
| drama is a massive overreaction. Discord made very minor
| style changes and slightly modified their logo, wordmark, and
| brand color scheme (with the logo being the only one of those
| you really end up seeing inside the application).
| dharmab wrote:
| As a colorblind user, the redesign decreased the
| accessibility of the application. Other users with visual
| impairments have reported similar issues.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's just the logo though, no? The actual UI is still the
| same and no color changes have occurred within the app
| (for both light mode and dark mode).
| nulld3v wrote:
| There were a couple color changes made. I'm on the dark
| theme and this is what I saw:
|
| They made the blue on some buttons more saturated. I
| don't really have a problem with this.
|
| They made the highlight color of user and channel
| mentions more brighter. This hurt readability as the text
| is white. Making the background of the text brighter
| decreases contrast.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, I did not like the change but it was a tiny change so
| I agree with that it was an overreaction.
| simias wrote:
| I thought they seemed like trivial changes as well,
| although not being a user myself I couldn't really form an
| opinion.
|
| Still, it should serve as a wakeup call that the users
| really aren't in charge and that it can potentially suck.
| It's a taste of things to come whenever Discord decides to
| more aggressively monetize themselves for instance.
|
| But apparently the conclusion was more that they should
| insult the devs on twitter and reddit instead.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I use Discord (grudgingly) and I have to admit
|
| I did not, and do not, give a single shit about the
| change. It's a god damn icon for like 99% of people
|
| I guess some people just want to sit and gawk at their
| start menu for hours on end and Discords change has
| broken that zen-like meditation for them or something
| Zancarius wrote:
| I feel it's a classic example of bikeshedding. Except
| this is 2021, so the obvious solution is apparently
| harassment, anger, and vitriol.
|
| Someone up-thread made mention of the stylistic changes
| being problematic for people with visual impairment or
| low vision, which would seem to me to be a much more
| serious issue than a stupid icon.
|
| But, what do I know? When they announced the change, I
| had an incredibly difficult time feeling anything other
| than indifference. Why people would be upset is beyond
| me.
| xbar wrote:
| Thank you for the clear description of the change. It
| seemed like this was a teapot typhoon, but I was not quite
| interested enough to lift the lid myself.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I use discord almost daily and didn't even notice any
| changes. The UI is still garbage and it still makes random
| notification sounds with no indication as to why.
| Zarel wrote:
| The random notification sounds are because default server
| notification settings are set by the server owner. So
| when you join a server, its notification setting could be
| "all messages" or "mentions only" depending on what the
| server owner set. This setting only affects the
| notification sound (it doesn't badge the server or
| anything), so it's easy to misunderstand.
| trulyme wrote:
| If it's easy to misunderstand then it's bad UX. Discord's
| chat could learn a lot from Slack and Mattermost (but
| then again, so could Signal, Skype and Teams). Their
| videoconf however is top notch.
| bytematic wrote:
| They just changed their logo and primary brand color
| slightly. Although I agree it is worse, hardly can call that
| "UI changes"
| dustyharddrive wrote:
| also fonts were replaced and the background colors of
| mentions/reactions made less prominent
| spike021 wrote:
| I wouldn't say it was a 1:1 identical experience; registering
| was a pain as there was no process to take over user
| registrations or channel registrations from freenode.
|
| But, assuming you did those things smoothly then it was pretty
| identical and as simple as changing your client config to
| connect to libera instead of freenode.
| rplnt wrote:
| Not too long ago Slack supported IRC gateways, with limited
| features of course.
| loeg wrote:
| When the IRC gateway stopped working, I found
| https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack worked pretty well.
| But I switched employers months ago and no longer have to use
| Slack, which is even better! (So, I don't know how well it
| works today.)
| dijit wrote:
| You have to install it as an app on slacks side. Some
| employers don't allow that.
| loeg wrote:
| There used to be two variants that worked; I think the
| other is "session tokens?"[0]
|
| Not sure if that approach still works, or not.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack#get-a-
| session-token
| yrro wrote:
| Embrace, Extend, Extinguish...
| dijit wrote:
| It was a good way of appeasing people who prefer IRC/XMPP and
| getting them to accept the walled garden.
|
| A good trick because once slack is adopted it's very
| difficult to get rid of it for most companies.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| It would be enough for each node, to know the whole contact
| graph, and have that stored in a open format?
|
| Like a xml adressbook, that could be parsed by any software and
| could be created even with limited apis as provided by discord
| etc.
| CornCobs wrote:
| It's not the network, though - it's the experience. When some
| community decides to up and move to libera, I connect and
| register with the new server and it's literally the same
| thing.
|
| Clients create the UX and the community creates the content.
|
| Now I imagine trying to get a community off discord to a
| different platform with slightly different interactions,
| slightly different "channel" styles, different reactions or
| role-setting, would be a much harder sell.
|
| That being said, I have nothing against discord - I think
| they've made a really compelling product and have certainly
| set a bar for what a future open protocol should cover if it
| wants to be relevant
| ajacksified wrote:
| Good usecase for Solid (https://solidproject.org/).
| simias wrote:
| I fully expected some blockchain nonsense opening your
| link, I'm pleasantly surprised.
|
| It seems like an interesting project but I wonder if it has
| any chance of reaching critical mass. The incumbents have
| no incentives to interoperate with such a protocol as far
| as I can tell.
| lolinder wrote:
| The same is true for any open protocol, at least at
| first. Any open protocol _has_ to reach widespread usage
| first, and only then will incumbents have to adopt it.
| That 's an extremely difficult task, but hopefully not
| impossible.
| simias wrote:
| Is there a single example in recent memory of an open
| protocol achieving mainstream success without being
| sponsored by a large company?
|
| I really wish something like this Solid protocol would
| succeed, but I don't see how you could generate enough
| momentum for it at the moment.
| atatatat wrote:
| Which large company sponsors Bitcoin?
|
| ActivityPub?
|
| Matrix (before they landed their gov contracts etc)?
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm not aware of any, no, and there's 0 incentive for any
| large company to sponsor one.
| hobofan wrote:
| It's also a good use case for a good old .vcard, which
| already has semantics for plenty of contact fields, so I
| wouldn't be surprised if there are some for IRC.
| medstrom wrote:
| Modern phones have done their utmost to end these. If you
| even find the option to load a vcard they will (often
| sneakily) copy the contents to Google Contacts or
| similar, and you don't know if the phone is even keeping
| the vcard updated. It has made the approach feel
| unreliable.
| hobofan wrote:
| I've switched to self-hosting my contacts with
| Radicale[0] (with "backups" to a git repo) synced via
| DavX5[1], with no problem of them mixing with Google
| Contacts. It's pretty annoying though that basically no
| current contacts app recognizes common fields like the
| nickname for a person.
|
| [0]: https://radicale.org/
|
| [1]: https://www.davx5.com/
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think that's just because of the simplicity of IRC -
| migrating off of discord would entail a lot of friction because
| of the features it gives you, like super granular permissions
| and access to channels. IRC channels are just places to chat
| with minor access control, so moving is easy as long as the
| community/people move.
| siraben wrote:
| The ease at which one connects to Libera with an IRC client, it
| was like nothing had happened, at this point (especially after
| recent events) you'd get a very close experience of what Freenode
| was like, with the same people, topics and all.
|
| Grateful to see it flourish!
| cpach wrote:
| It does indeed sound like a very smooth migration when taking
| into account the staggering amount of projects and users
| involved.
| scoopr wrote:
| It seems the matrix bridge is not up yet, so I guess I'm not
| joining quite yet :/
|
| Though the one channel I really frequent these days is totally
| not caring about the whole issue, and seems there is no
| motivation to move. (It is not a project channel, just some
| hangout channel around a topic)
| dpcx wrote:
| One of the things that Freenode (and other networks) allowed that
| I haven't seen from Libera.chat (yet) is the ability for others
| to host servers as well. I wonder if that will show up in time,
| or if the plan is for only Libera.chat servers to be part of the
| network.
| nabakin wrote:
| The last post related to this whole situation [1] had 245 points
| in 3 hours, was then manually down-weighted off the front page,
| and died as a result. I think that was a bit too much of a
| correction. Hopefully the same doesn't happen to this post.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628
| beckman466 wrote:
| Can someone who is more in the know help me: is the move away
| from the Freenode name (or rebranding) a way to leave the project
| as it is (keeping existing functionality and thereby ensuring
| backwards compatibility)? Or is it because of a disagreement
| between maintainers, or something else?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Freenode's management changed. Libera.Chat is a new
| organization with new servers not associated with Freenode --
| but many organizations that had previously maintained IRC
| channels on Freenode are moving to Libera.Chat.
| supermatt wrote:
| This whole freenoda issue is a problem primarily because of the
| control of the domain name.
|
| Who controls libera.chat domain? It says it is a swedish
| nonprofit (although I cant see any specifics on their website),
| but the unredacted portions of the whois show it is owned by an
| Icelandic entity.
|
| Sounds like scope for more future drama...
| wut42 wrote:
| Libera.Chat is likely owned by the Swedish Non profit. The
| Icelandic entity you see in the whois is the privacy protection
| of "with held for privacy"[0], a privacy DNS entity.
|
| The Swedish non-profit is still in bureaucracy approval from
| what I've heard from their staff, but you can already look at
| their bylaws[1].
|
| [0]: https://withheldforprivacy.com [1]:
| https://libera.chat/bylaws
| wut42 wrote:
| Adding some info on the freenode situation -- it did not
| really came from the DNS issue. DNS was always more or less
| owned by freenode limited, just that rasengan got locked out
| by a previous mistake and then took this as an offense while
| it was just a mistake. Surely tomaw did some retention on
| giving the access back after, but for other reasons (mainly
| signs of interference from rasengan).
| [deleted]
| supermatt wrote:
| That is simply an assumption. It is not clear who the owner
| is exactly because of this "privacy protection".
|
| Why does a nonprofit organisation need this privacy
| protection? The org is the identity that should control it,
| and the information of the org is a matter of public
| knowledge (if it REALLY exists, which isnt clear either.)
|
| These issues are critical for the trust that the libera.chat
| domain isn't suddenly going to be pointing elsewhere due to
| it not being control by the "trusted" org.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| > Why does a nonprofit organisation need this privacy
| protection?
|
| This isn't about keeping public information entirely
| secret. It's about controlling where and how public
| information is shared. As an individual, you might agree to
| have your telephone number and your address published in a
| paper telephone directory, but you might not be so keen to
| have that information published in an easily scraped online
| service leaving you with obnoxious sales calls, and junk
| mail.
|
| The same applies to a non-profit as well.
|
| > the information of the org is a matter of public
| knowledge
|
| Yes. But the what and the how is typically explicitly
| outlined by local laws.
|
| Typically, you could direct yourself to a local tax office
| or public registry where you could search and look into
| basic information about a legal entity as defined /
| outlined in a legal statute.
|
| You might find that domain names aren't required to be
| divulged publicly by law, and doing so is entirely at the
| discretion of the organization. (Example in the same vain:
| a public office isn't going to outright hand you a list of
| employees at a company if it's not legally mandated)
|
| Whether there's a moral responsibility is a different
| question.
|
| > These issues are critical for the trust that the
| libera.chat domain isn't suddenly going to be pointing
| elsewhere due to it not being control by the "trusted" org.
|
| The freenode.net domain name isn't pointing to anywhere
| differently over the past period. It's also still very much
| registered to Freenode Ltd. That hasn't changed. What
| really changed is the control over the Ltd as the a
| majority stake in voting rights changed hands some time
| ago, and how that majority stake is now suddenly behaving
| very differently.
|
| In that regard, DNS records aren't a definitive indicator
| for trust.
|
| You have to amend that by (a) looking at who's represented
| in the board governing the non-profit, (b) look at
| documents such as yearly account balances and year reports
| which are typically legally mandated to be made publicly
| each year to see how the organisation is governed and (c)
| gauging day-to-day operations.
|
| Last week, I made a remark that the libera.chat website was
| precariously terse in contact information or mentions about
| it's legal status or whoever was behind this initiative.
| It's assuring to see that the website has been amended over
| the past week with the "bylaws" section and the "about
| Libera" section with mentioning full composition of the
| board as well as whoever actively contributes to the
| organiation.
| sampo wrote:
| > Typically, you could direct yourself to a local tax
| office or public registry where you could search and look
| into basic information about a legal entity as defined /
| outlined in a legal statute.
|
| Sweden doesn't require non-profit associations to be
| registered.
|
| https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideell_f%C3%B6rening
| supermatt wrote:
| I appreciate your response, and would argue that the
| website is still lacking transparency.
|
| As is theres no evidence that the org owns the domain, or
| that the org even exists.
|
| Thats worrying, and if awareness was higher, its possible
| people wouldnt be migrating there - especially given the
| reason for the move in the first place.
|
| I personally dont care for all this drama - I have a few
| small rooms on freenode, and am also looking to migrate -
| but I dont want to follow the drama...
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| For what it's worth:
|
| This organisation is a "ideell forening" under Swedish
| law.
|
| > In Sweden there are two kinds of associations: the
| voluntary association (ideell forening) and the economic
| association (ekonomisk forening). The second one is a
| cooperative company and must be registered with the
| authorities to become a legal entity. The first one is a
| member-based nonprofit organization and is formed without
| formal registration. The main steps in creating a
| voluntary association are explained here.
|
| > Once properly created, the voluntary association of
| course has to follow the tax law and other laws and rules
| established by the government. But it also has to follow
| the unwritten rules and traditions of Swedish voluntary
| organizations (god foreningssed) which guide how the
| organization should be run, how it makes decisions and so
| on.
|
| > ...
|
| > The association is a legal entity, but needs to apply
| to the tax authorities for a registration number, which
| is needed for tax reasons but also when opening a bank
| account or hiring an office and so on.
|
| http://www.voluntarius.com/How-to-create-a-voluntary-
| associa...
|
| In essence, the organisation proper isn't formally
| registered or incorporated (e.g. via a notary public) but
| it will be registered under Swedish tax law. The latter
| part is probably still being processed by the
| administrative paper mills.
| wut42 wrote:
| The non-profit isn't really live yet, this may be why. I'm
| sure the libera.chat staff wants do to things correctly
| this time-- they have learned the mistakes.
|
| As said, the entity isn't formally created yet because
| bureaucracy seems to be slow. This will happen, I'm 99%
| sure of this.
| supermatt wrote:
| That should be made clear to all those migrating. As it
| is it says it IS a NPO: "Libera Chat is a Swedish
| nonprofit organisation" - but doesnt provide any evidence
| to that effect.
|
| I guess this is why some of the larger (and more
| knowledgeable?) projects have moved to OFTC instead.
| sampo wrote:
| > The non-profit isn't really live yet
|
| Sweden seems to have really lightweight legislation for
| non-profits: Write by-laws, convene a meeting of at least
| 3 people, accept the by-laws, and bang: you're a legal
| entity. So it may be live, who knows.
|
| You only need to register with the Swedish Tax Office and
| get an organization number, if you want to conduct
| business transactions, such as opening bank account, pay
| taxes etc.
|
| https://skatteverket.se/foretagochorganisationer/forening
| ar/...
| tokai wrote:
| >It is not clear who the owner is
|
| The owner are the members of the organization. Look up what
| an Ideell Forening is.
| supermatt wrote:
| Can you prove that this Ideell Forening exists? Can you
| prove that libera.chat domain name is registered on
| behalf of that org? These are things that should be
| provable!
|
| Anyone can say: "I am the chairperson of an Ideell
| Forening called Libera Chat, and it holds every privacy
| protected domain on the planet (apart from the ones you
| know of that belong to others).". Prove me wrong.
|
| Show the official registration information for that
| organization. Show the official registrant of the domain.
| Thats all Im asking for.
|
| Honestly...
|
| As I mentioned, if they hold a bank account (which
| clearly they should, to pay for the domain if nothing
| else, to reinforce "ownership" of the domain), then they
| need - BY LAW - a company registration number.
|
| EDIT: So many downvotes for asking for proof that this
| non-profit exists and "owns" the domain. What a silly
| thing to ask... I'll be putting off migrating until its
| clear its not another bait and switch.
| matsemann wrote:
| Prove it by writing supermatt in a html comment on
| libera.chat, or editing a dns entry...?
| [deleted]
| mPReDiToR wrote:
| Is this not what Keybase and the like are for?
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| As has already been explained by others in this thread
| (e.g. [1]); we are still waiting for the Swedish tax
| authority to get back to us. We will be happy to publish
| a registration number when we are assigned one.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289911
| fhars wrote:
| But that explanation was given an hour after the question
| was asked. I think a lot of the downvotes vor supermatt
| are caused by HN's sorting by freshness, so many people
| read his slightly aggressive question after the answers,
| which makes it sound much more obnoxious than it actually
| has been in context. [Edit:] And of course as a reaction
| to asking the same question over and over again.
| Jiocus wrote:
| Is https://libera.chat/about specific enough?
| supermatt wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| Why is the domain owned by an icelandic entity instead of the
| nonprofit?
|
| Where is the company registration number of the nonprofit
| (required to open a bank account - where will donations be
| held, etc).
|
| Its all very vague and handwavy at the moment - just like
| early days of freenode...
|
| EDIT: Loads of downvotes, but why? Any of you want to leave a
| comment instead of just downvoting?
| Jiocus wrote:
| > Why is the domain owned by an icelandic entity instead of
| the nonprofit?
|
| According to the WHOIS information, the registration of
| _libera.chat_ was made 2021-04-23. This registration was
| made ~1 month before the organisation _Libera Chat_ was
| announced. As far as I can tell, the organisation could not
| have made the registration as a legal entity before
| existing.
|
| Seeing the registrar is Namecheap, I guess someone made the
| registration and made use of the zero-cost Whoisguard
| service available. Perhaps the registrant's contact details
| point to Iceland. Some of my domains point to Panama, what
| gives.
|
| > Where is the company registration number of the nonprofit
| (required to open a bank account - where will donations be
| held, etc).
|
| As the OP title suggests, Libera Chat was assembled a week
| ago. There is no Swedish law requiring that an organisation
| registers, but as you suggest, it will be necessary to
| register a legal entity for financial purposes. Fulfilling
| the paperwork of registering a non-profit organisation with
| Skatteverket and thus receiving an ORG number generally
| comes after the fact of the foundation of said
| organisation.
|
| Non-profit organisations in Sweden are real and protected
| entities, registration or not.
| majewsky wrote:
| > As far as I can tell, the organisation could not have
| made the registration as a legal entity before existing.
|
| Domain name ownership can be transferred. It's trivial
| for a founding member to register the domain name first,
| then transfer ownership to the organisation once it has
| been founded.
| Jiocus wrote:
| Of course, but many services would require a registered
| VAT number to be able to fulfill a purchase or transfer
| to an organisation. Or rather, to set up such an account
| in the first place.
|
| Frankly, WHOIS records is to crude a metric to really
| pass judgement on anything nowadays. The masked entries
| in the lookup for _libera.chat_ i.e. "REDACTED FOR
| PRIVACY", are typical of registrars not overstepping GDPR
| compliance when making them public.
| wut42 wrote:
| I think you are getting downvoted because you're making
| points that I've already responded to you. Libera is a week
| old. It may have been started to get in shape before the
| launch and mass resign of a week ago, but give them time to
| create the org properly (which, again, is in progress, and
| was already a week ago).
| supermatt wrote:
| Heh, and I wrote it before you even responded :D
|
| This comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289097 Your
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27289100
|
| Im happy to give them time - im just pointing out the
| current state of things, and what sets off my alarm
| bells. These are all things that can be addressed, no
| doubt.
| wut42 wrote:
| Ha! Sorry, didn't noticed this one when I replied before
| to you, so I thought it was new.
|
| All the bells you are ringing has been pointed already
| (and since Libera got opened), it's in progress. I trust
| them to do the correct things, and will be addressed
| soon. Maybe as you said in another comment that it should
| have been made more clear on their website, tho.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Libera has made itself our home very quickly, and I commend the
| Libera staff that have worked to approve our project group and
| set up cloaks.
|
| When the issue blew up last week, we quickly reserved our slot on
| Libera just in case. Some of our staff were pushing harder for
| Libera, and I was concerned it was a bit fervent and sensational,
| but ultimately went along with it.
|
| It's been sad to see over the last week how quickly they were
| proven right, and how it only took a few days for the new so-
| called freenode to deal a killing blow.
|
| Had we been still uncommitted to the Libera move, Andrew's
| actions this morning would have hurt our community more.
| admax88q wrote:
| What did Andrew do this morning?
| longwave wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628
| admax88q wrote:
| Yikes.
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