[HN Gopher] Goodbye Freenode
___________________________________________________________________
Goodbye Freenode
Author : Foxboron
Score : 243 points
Date : 2021-06-13 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nedbatchelder.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nedbatchelder.com)
| rektide wrote:
| worth pointing out that a huge amount of the longstanding
| freenode policy & other bits of content (history) were
| unceremoniously taken off the website 3 days ago.
|
| "Leenode" really is trying hard to burn itself to the ground.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475592
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| ,,I was constantly messaging people telling them to use a
| competitor and I was banned." the entitlement of these people
| blow my mind.
| mokus wrote:
| Thinking you can buy a business relationship with millions of
| people on a network run mostly by volunteers and expect
| everyone to start operating it and using it for _your_ benefit
| instead of for the ideals of their 20+ year community sounds a
| lot more entitled to me.
|
| The whole idea of purchasing a business for its customer base
| is pretty disturbing in the first place. I as a customer do not
| consider my relationship with any business to be a transferable
| asset.
| nedbat wrote:
| What I was doing on Freenode was providing a quick answer to
| questions, and also pointing out that most people had moved, so
| better answers were more likely on Libera. I never told people
| to not answer questions. If people wanted Freenode #python to
| be a lively place, they were welcome to stay and answer
| questions. They didn't.
|
| Of course, Freenode is free to decide that my mentioning Libera
| was a reason to remove me. But I didn't see a clear policy
| forbidding it (though the policies have been changing daily, so
| I might have missed it). Just as Freenode is free to remove
| people, people are free to move to another network. And that is
| what is happening.
|
| My main point in my blog post was not, "I have been wronged!"
| My point was, "Freenode is doing this to themselves, but it's
| OK because Freenode doesn't matter."
| SaberUK wrote:
| Within IRC culture networks exist to serve the projects and
| users not the other way around. Failing to understand this is
| why leenode is losing users in the first place.
| spinax wrote:
| I know, right? The sheer _audacity_ of Freenode to believe they
| own the communities of FSF, Arch, Gentoo, GNU, Python and
| countless other FOSS projects is unfathomable. I just can 't
| believe how entitled Freenode believes itself to be, banning
| project leaders and performing hostile takeovers of established
| communities being run by their official projects. It really
| does blow my mind.
| georgyo wrote:
| All my chat networks I care about have migrated to Libera or
| Matrix. And I agree freenode is circling the drain.
|
| I was also banned and Klined, but I am not sure this was a free
| node action...
|
| I was immediately able to reconnect to a different freenode
| server. And have not been bothered since. It definitely feels
| like a rouge operator just banned everyone on their node.
|
| However despite this happening several days ago, there is no
| statement from freenode, so IDK.
| d23 wrote:
| Malicious individuals invariably rely on and take advantage of
| good faith interpretations of their behavior. This is the only
| way they are able to continue their abuse for so long. Judge
| people by their actions.
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| As well as purging #python and network banning some of the
| regulars there for pushing back, #fsf and #gnu were taken over
| this morning by the new freenode staff, despite a 2 week
| transition plan being published.
|
| https://status.fsf.org/notice/4214348
| spinax wrote:
| FSF/GNU transition post mentioned above:
| https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-gnu-move-official-irc-chann...
| Foxboron wrote:
| Seems like 2 Arch Linux maintainers have now been klined after
| they (again) took over ##archlinux to redirect people back to
| #archlinux.
| fairity wrote:
| Are there usage statistics that support or invalidate the theory
| that a majority of active users have migrated from Freenode to
| Libera?
| SaberUK wrote:
| https://isfreenodedeadyet.com/ and
| https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php are useful.
|
| The former has PRIVMSG (message) statistics which show that
| Libera Chat is considerably more active than freenode despite
| having less total users (for now, the crossover point is
| predicted to be the 26th and it's been moving closer and closer
| for days).
| deckard1 wrote:
| This drama all reminds me of what happened at DALnet in the early
| 2000s. A few overzealous IRCops started a purge of all the
| warez/mp3 scene channels. Everyone suspected RIAA put the
| pressure on them. I was a channel op with a handful of friends at
| the time of a popular channel (100-200 members on average). One
| day I logged on and the channel was invite only. They took the
| channel via their ChanServ service. Everyone I know either moved
| to EFnet or Undernet.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I think it's important to continuously warn people about the
| freenode takeover, lest communities end up split.
|
| (see also: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php current
| statistics)
| cdubzzz wrote:
| I have been watching that graph since this whole thing flared
| up and, if nothing else, find it hilarious when paired with the
| "freenode exists for FOSS" blog post[0] with this leading
| statement:
|
| > The current global user count of freenode exceeds the user
| count of the 2nd-6th largest networks, combined. I am pleased
| to announce, the plan to destroy freenode has failed!
|
| [0] https://freenode.net/news/for-foss
| kuschku wrote:
| That's why I implemented this warning in my client:
| https://twitter.com/quasseldroid/status/1397824682259329024
| atatatat wrote:
| /., Digg, reddit -- centralized convenience is still too
| convenient.
|
| Build out open standards well, instead of trying to get people
| to avoid services on principles alone (it doesn't go great
| usually).
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| thankfully, IRC is an open protocol, so for most people
| making such a change could be as simple as mechanically
| replacing "chat.freenode.net" with "irc.libera.chat" in their
| config.
| kunagi7 wrote:
| Seems like the transition is going quite smoothly so the
| warnings are going through despite the bans and channel
| closures. Good job to the libera staff and community! And
| definitively I'm saving that link.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I find the quote "never attribute to malice what could be
| explained by incompetence" to be woefully overused.
|
| People are often petty, mean spirited, and act irrationally. To
| throw your hands up and say "hey it was a mistake!" Without
| further reflection on the intention and purpose of an action is
| setting yourself up for failure.
|
| This does not mean do not be charitable. This means don't be lazy
| and rely on a poorly formed quote as an axiom to live your life
| by. Dig deeper.
| atoav wrote:
| I don't think this is the be way it works. Maybe at the _first_
| time I will not attribute to malice _if_ it can be explained by
| incompetence.
|
| But that individual will either way land on my "observe a
| little more carefully"-list which might give me more data to
| decide if they act maliciously or just incompetently.
|
| What isn't successful at all is when you constantly suspect all
| others are doing everything for the most evil reason possible.
| Because this is really not the case in pracise and also has a
| cost that you need to carry.
|
| Edit: although in this example one could argue explaining it by
| incompetence alone will need some major mental gymnastics.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| I happened to experience an interesting incident not long ago
| related to the subject.
|
| After a week or two of uptime, I restarted my PC. As it happened,
| I reconnected while Freenode was in the middle of a spam wave.
| Something mistook my client for a spam bot and banned my IP.
|
| Oh well, "and nothing of value was lost" I thought and deleted
| Freenode from my server list. But, later that day, I discovered
| that I could not connect to other IRC networks: the Freenode ban
| was propagated to DroneBL, and then picked up by other IRC
| networks. I was effectively blacklisted from all of IRC. This
| also affected some services I was providing to a few communities.
|
| I did get the ban removed, but after this incident, I would not
| recommend anyone to connect to Freenode at all. The new
| administration doesn't seem to have sufficient experience to fill
| their present position suitably.
| rincebrain wrote:
| FWIW, I did something foolish that triggered the spambot
| detection on Libera, and it likewise propagated my ban to
| DroneBL.
|
| (It all got removed very quickly when someone was contacted
| about it, and I have no negative opinion about the experience
| because, in my case, it very much was of my own making, I just
| mention it so you're aware that sort of blacklisting is not
| limited to freenode.)
| jordemort wrote:
| I mean, I guess if new Freenode's mission to "preserve IRC"
| includes preserving drama, flamewars, channel takeovers, and mass
| bans, then mission accomplished!
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is why I abandoned IRC long ago in favor of Matrix.
|
| Until the IRC scene settles down a bit, I'm out. IRC is painful
| enough as it is.
| christofosho wrote:
| I stuck around IRC because of people like Ned providing sound
| advice and keeping a kind community. It's a shame that drama
| brews and things like this happen. Hopefully the change keeps the
| community happier and healthier!
| phoe-krk wrote:
| The current Libera Chat[0] is everything that Freenode was before
| rasengan entered the game: a stable IRC network that goes out of
| its way to be transparent to the communities and projects that
| use it and to provide them with stability and network operator
| support, period.
|
| The current Fleenode is nothing that Freenode was before rasengan
| entered the game: it destroyed the stability of all the projects
| that previously used it by flipping the network's functioning
| upside down, in a very mediocre way ("accidentally" horrible
| communication from the current staff towards everyone else,
| "accidentally" taking over channels via bot action,
| "accidentally" k-lining irccloud about the time [3] was
| introduced, using the "I'm being cancelled" argument as one line
| of defense and "mistakes were made but they are fixed,
| understanding would be appreciated" as another) and with very
| mediocre results[1].
|
| All of this was done seemingly in order to introduce several
| Freenode-branded projects[2][3][4][5] that I haven't seen anyone
| request. These projects, in their current shape, seriously look
| to me like some shiny toys that use Freenode as a hub and that
| are now out there, looking for use and popularity.
|
| Congratulations and massive thanks to the Libera Chat team for
| proving that hard community forks are possible not just in
| theory, but also in practice - the transition period was short
| and the staff there really did everything to make it smooth. I've
| migrated and it seems it was a good decision, I don't look back
| in the slightest.
|
| [0] https://libera.chat/
|
| [1] https://isfreenodedeadyet.com/
|
| [2] https://chit.freenode.net/ - a bash.org clone
|
| [3] https://bbs.freenode.net/ - a Hacker News clone
|
| [4] https://bnc.freenode.net/ - an irccloud clone
|
| [5] https://jobs.freenode.net/ - a Hacker News clone, just
| exclusively with job postings
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| > using the "I'm being cancelled" argument
|
| I love it when people find the most ridiculous things to blame
| on "cancel culture". This goes toe to toe with Bob Baffert
| blaming it for being banned from horse racing after his
| Kentucky Derby winning horse being caught with steroids in his
| system, and after having his horses failing 31 drug tests over
| his career.
|
| It's like the "dog ate my homework" of 2021
| mst wrote:
| While Mr. Lee (and some of his supporters) is also claiming
| that the criticism of him is due to anti-asian racism.
|
| The phrase "pick a lane" springs to mind.
| [deleted]
| app4soft wrote:
| > _https://jobs.freenode.net/ - a Hacker News clone, just
| exclusively with job postings_
|
| Hacker News has _" jobs"_[0] too ;)
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
| mst wrote:
| According to rasengan, in his current incarnation as root, the
| irccloud thing wasn't accidental: < root>
| what accidental irccloud blanket ban? < root> I keep
| hearing about this? < mst> I think all of irccloud got
| k-lined briefly - shit happens < root> It's intentional
| for sure. < root> I think someone accidentally removed
| it. < mst> is there a public statement about that
| anywhere?
|
| (and then nobody ever responded as to why, so I'm afraid that's
| all I know wrt that particular situation)
| kemayo wrote:
| The IRCCloud thing is my own breaking point for staying
| connected to Freenode for some channels that hadn't moved
| yet. I'm not going to switch my entire IRC client setup
| around because they're being childish and can't stand being
| criticized.
|
| Since I gather that about half the people left in some of
| those channels were taken out by this k-line, hey, might
| accelerate the move anyway. :D
| xena wrote:
| 14:59 <@taw> IRCCloud was not klined by mistake.
| 14:59 <@taw> We don't allow IRCCloud on freenode.
| 14:59 <@taw> We offer our own free BNC, if you'd like to use
| that instead.
| edwardkmett wrote:
| "Use our bouncer or else."
|
| Sounds like a very democratic, open source, do what you
| will solution to me.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| Oh, perfect. So it's anticompetitive behavior at its
| finest.
| mst wrote:
| Also <@root> irc cloud is banned cuz fck
| irc cloud <@root> this was not an accident
| <@root> not a mistake <@root> actually it was
| supposed to happen a logn time ago
| p_l wrote:
| I have finally pulled the plug on #lisp on Freenode as of few
| minutes ago.
|
| Only logging bots remained connected and minion, and one fellow
| op.
|
| And and of an era for me - I think it's been over 16 years
| since I joined #lisp for the first time, and around a decade of
| being an Op there. It helped me maintain sanity at times. While
| pretty much everything got moved to libera, it doesn't mean it
| doesn't hurt to do it in a way :|
| hprotagonist wrote:
| if you k-line nedbat, of all people, you're obviously deranged.
|
| fuckin' bye.
| cout wrote:
| Who is nedbat?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Ned Batchelder, the author of the post.
|
| Among much else, he's consistently a voice of patient sanity.
| cout wrote:
| Thank you for the swift and polite reply.
| StavrosK wrote:
| He's super helpful in #python, great guy.
| [deleted]
| foxhop wrote:
| The author of the blog post uses the nick 'nedbat' on IRC and
| on the internet and he is a really smart and nice fellow who
| shares and helps people with all sort of Python and other
| questions.
| neilv wrote:
| Many IRC networks have had drama.
|
| But does anyone know the _motivation_ for recent actions by
| Freenode?
|
| I'm discounting conspiracy theories (e.g., flipping, sabotage)
| because I think anyone acting strategically wrt IRC knows that
| forking an IRC network has been part of the standard toolkit for
| responding to "damage", since almost the start.
|
| I'm starting to lean towards a theory of there being no longer
| being a business reason nor ideological reason to Freenode's
| recent actions. At least not after the first few days.
| progval wrote:
| There is some speculation about the motivations here:
| https://ariadne.space/2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluff...
| neilv wrote:
| I don't know these particular people, but, absolutely, many
| people grew up with IRC and similar earlier online social
| forums as a refuge from trauma, or to find community or
| acceptance.
|
| (That started in the age of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_
| the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... , before more conventional
| social dynamics took over the 'Net.)
|
| If that theory is correct, I'd guess there's a good path to
| something that everyone feels better about. But it might
| involve Freenode being turned over to a nonprofit. I think
| many traditional users wouldn't go back, but the right
| nonprofit might find a way to pivot to new service to the
| world. In the credible nonprofit scenario, the value of the
| Freenode brand now might be of the flavor: we made mistakes,
| learned dearly, came out much stronger.
| jeltz wrote:
| My personal theory is that rasengan had a boyhood dream of
| running his own IRC network. A dream he tried to realize by
| buying Freenode. The actual purchase happened under very
| dubious circumstances which (plus some other disagreements in
| the Freenode team) led to the creation of Libera. This just
| rasengan lashing out when they broke his toy.
| [deleted]
| geofft wrote:
| Andrew Lee also claims to be the Crown Prince of Korea -
| because he claims to be distantly related to a very old king,
| contacted one of the aging claimants to the throne who has no
| male children, and organized a "ceremony" with him in a
| Vietnamese restaurant in Beverly Hills.
|
| I think if you want to form a theory of mind re his Freenode
| actions, you'd be well informed by forming a theory of mind re
| his Korea actions. Obviously part of it is the monarchist
| philosophy, the idea that an autocratic government over Korea
| with no input from the people is somehow worth something. Even
| in the case of the North, you couldn't call the restoration of
| the monarchy an improvement. And even in monarchism in general,
| there's still a vague idea of government by at least a little
| bit of consent from at least a few of the governed, from the
| Glorious Revolution to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven.
| The so-called crown prince has none of that.
|
| But more interestingly, Lee thinks something happened at that
| dinner to make him crown prince. The claim to the throne by the
| scion in question is already disputed, and it's far from clear
| that he had the power, according to the old royal rules, to
| make some random person who happens to have the same last name
| his heir. And if he does, it would be via adoption, not via a
| "Passing of the Sword Ceremony" and a seafood entree. There's
| no evidence that Lee has once participated in the yearly
| cultural ceremonies in Korea that honor the late royalty and
| still to this day involve members of the former royal house -
| the other claimant to the throne does that. If you're not going
| to stick by the very practical rule that the legitimate ruler
| is the person physically on the throne, you at least need to
| stick by the rules of the royal house about legitimacy, and
| he's done neither.
|
| I believe he approaches Freenode in the same way. He genuinely
| believes that it is possible and reasonable to transfer control
| of Freenode without the involvement or consent of Freenode's
| users and that the good users will stay loyal to the name
| "Freenode," instead of to the intangible community. So he
| didn't even anticipate the possibility that the staff would set
| up their own network and manage to move almost all of the
| community over. He also believes that all that needs to happen
| is to contact one person who has a bit of a claim to Freenode
| and arrange for DNS to be transferred, and everything will work
| itself out.
|
| What we're seeing is him operating as if everything will _soon_
| work itself out, once he deals with a few small problems. Once
| people forget about Libera, once the uncooperative channel ops
| "spamming" suggestions to try Libera are removed, once #python
| is turned from a channel run by the PSF to a channel with
| Python enthusiasts, etc., Freenode will eventually emerge as
| the home of FOSS, like it's always been, and he'll be on the
| throne.
| neilv wrote:
| That's a compelling theory (and I loved the "and a seafood
| entree" line), though I'd hope it's not the current
| situation.
|
| In any case, I'm assuming Freenode is over, and that the only
| way it might be reborn is by abdicating the throne, and
| turning it over to something like a representative democracy
| (with a sufficiently reassuring foundation than the new
| spinoff).
|
| (Incidentally, there was rare occasional young royalty or
| child actor on early IRC. I suppose because they had the
| money and time for Internet access, and the social
| isolation/barriers that made IRC relatively welcoming, so
| they could be just people. I never heard of any expecting
| special status on the Internet, in that time before Social
| Media Influencers.)
| geofft wrote:
| It's not over. It's alive and well, it just happens to be
| named "Libera" these days. The only thing 'rasengan
| _actually_ bought was the rights to the name (including the
| domain registration) and, indirectly, a user base of
| forgotten bouncers that will be reconfigured next time they
| 're used.
|
| Note how the growth in the Libera graph parallels the drop
| in the Freenode graph:
| https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
| phoe-krk wrote:
| I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| referring to as IRC, is in fact, IRC/Freenode, or as I've
| recently taken to calling it, Leenode. IRC is not a
| complete social network unto itself, but rather another
| free component of a fully functioning royal fiefdom
| system made useful by the chit server, the integrated
| bouncer and vital bulletin board servers comprising a
| full network kingdom as defined by Tower of Chats.
|
| Many IRC users connect to a modified version of Leenode
| every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn
| of events, the version of Leenode which is widely used
| today is often called "IRC", and many of its users are
| not aware that it is basically the Leenode network,
| develope^Wpurchased by Andrew "rasengan" Lee.
|
| There really is an IRC, and these people are using it,
| but it is just a part of the system they use. IRC is the
| protocol: the part of the system providing network
| connectivity between the users accessing it. The protocol
| is an essential part of a network, but useless by itself;
| it can only function in the context of a complete
| networking system. IRC is normally used in combination
| with Leenode: the whole system is basically Leenode
| connected via IRC, or IRC/Leenode. All the so-called
| "IRC" servers are really servers of IRC/Leenode.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There's no evidence that Lee has once participated in the
| yearly cultural ceremonies in Korea that honor the late
| royalty and still to this day involve members of the former
| royal house - the other claimant to the throne does that.
|
| Technically, if I understand who you are referring to, that
| other person is a claimant to the position of head of the
| royal house; Unlike the line of claimants Lee is in, that
| line does not assert that the monarchy either still exists or
| should be restored. There waa another restoration claimant,
| but IIRC she passed without a designated heir, and no
| pretender has arisen with a claim through hers.
| siraben wrote:
| At this point, it has been exceedingly clear that almost every
| project has jumped ship[0][1]. For weeks the leave list has grown
| to over 700 while the stay list is at 3.
|
| [0] https://github.com/siraben/freenode-exodus
|
| [1] https://isfreenodedeadyet.com/
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > or weeks the leave list has grown to over 700 while the stay
| list is at 3.
|
| It's more like 1.5 [0]. #techrights stayed and #forth has a
| bridged setup. The third channel listed is #freenode.
|
| [0] https://github.com/siraben/freenode-exodus#projects-and-
| chan...
| gerikson wrote:
| #techrights have migrated to their own server and are
| bridging to Freenode.
| siraben wrote:
| Yes :), part of the joke is that even when you try to look
| for channels staying (and I've asked dozens of people at this
| point), they're obviously staying (tied to freenode),
| compromising (bridging) or very extreme (#techrights is not
| the most pleasant of places, let's put it like that).
| waon wrote:
| According to one of the new ops for the now unofficial Freenode
| #fsf channel, #reactos may have stayed. If true, the count
| would be four.
|
| > @freenode_CrystalMath:matrix.org
|
| > and i'm a reactos developer, though we're not on libera at
| all
|
| > @freenode_CrystalMath:matrix.org
|
| > we're only on freenode and mattermost
| Ndymium wrote:
| IRCCloud users have been banned from connecting to Freenode:
| https://twitter.com/IRCCloud/status/1404153550159159298
| StavrosK wrote:
| I don't understand what the big deal with all this Freenode drama
| is. It just got renamed to Libera, update your host files and
| you're done.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| I do wonder why the Libera staff didn't kick off the network
| with a copy of the Freenode user/channel database. Perhaps the
| Freenode legal entity has a claim to it?
| mst wrote:
| A commitment to privacy and principles.
|
| Fundamentally there was no viable way to get permission from
| the freenode user base for that in a way that was morally
| acceptable.
|
| (I'm sure there were legal reasons _too_ but I don 't believe
| the question ever got as far as that being relevant)
| StavrosK wrote:
| What good would that do, if the users aren't connecting to
| the network?
| CyberShadow wrote:
| > What good would that do,
|
| It would save both staff and users a lot of time from
| having to re-register accounts, channels, and
| projects/communities.
|
| > if the users aren't connecting to the network?
|
| I don't understand this part, sorry.
| StavrosK wrote:
| If your users are on Freenode and don't know about your
| network, having the structure there doesn't do much good.
| It doesn't take much time to register nicknames/channels
| anyway, certainly not enough to risk a lawsuit from
| Freenode.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The drama is that whenever someone attempts to tell people that
| on Freenode, their channels get taken over and/or they get
| banned.
| StavrosK wrote:
| My comment was a rather tongue-in-cheek take of how Libera is
| carrying on the spirit of Freenode, and we should just
| consider Freenode a random other network that somehow got
| Freenode's name by accident.
| raverbashing wrote:
| At this point, if you haven't heard of it through other means
| then you're Out Of The Loop (yeah I suppose if you were on a
| coma for the past months and only read IRC and no discussions
| anywhere else...)
|
| But I agree, it's a bit of needless drama, especially when
| continuing on Freenode has shown to be untenable.
| dTal wrote:
| While I agree that Libera is New Freenode and Old Freenode is
| rapidly dying a death, this whole episode has soured me mightily
| against Freenode as a whole. This should never have happened in
| the first place and the blame for it lies squarely at the
| OldFreenode/Libera admin's feet, not whichever outside actor took
| advantage of it. The admins are an "old boys network" - not
| chosen by the community, or elected, but simply in-group
| appointment - and while Rasengan is certainly a loose cannon, I
| have seen enough chatlogs to note that "the admins" are not
| innocent of power-tripping and favoritism either.
|
| If I were starting an IRC channel for a free software project
| now, I would put it on OFTC, which has a real governance model
| with elections and - mysteriously - also manages to be drama-
| free.
| DanielDent wrote:
| For a little bit of ancient history: I was one of the admins
| who worked to create OFTC. We all knew each other from Open
| Projects Network (which rebranded as Freenode).
|
| I was barely in high school when I came up with the name OFTC
| and I registered OFTC.net. Very early on in the process of
| creating OFTC, I agreed with all of the people I was creating
| OFTC with that I would behave as caretaker rather than owner of
| OFTC.net while we figured out our governance.
|
| Ultimately we came up with a governance model, and we also
| managed to convince Software in the Public Interest to take
| custody of the domain name and have it managed in accordance
| with the governance model we designed.
|
| We started with a pretty great group of both capable and well-
| intended people, and one of the things we figured out was that
| if OFTC was going to be a sustainable project, it needed more
| sustainable governance than the project we were leaving.
|
| One of the key people behind the very early push for OFTC to
| have a stable governance model later became a Member of
| Parliament here in Canada.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Agree. It would have been great if the old staff and servers
| would have merged with OFTC, but it seems this wasn't even
| considered at any point. Nothing seems to have changed in that
| relation. But oh well, just another network to connect to until
| everything has maybe moved off freenode.
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| It would probably be risky to drag the only other foss-
| focussed network into the legal battle.
|
| Andrew Lee has shown that he is litigious, so why expose
| another organisation to that risk?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Fair enough.
| mst wrote:
| Speaking as somebody who dearly loves both libera and oftc,
| I'm glad there are still -two- major networks for open source
| stuff.
|
| The past couple months has shown that having too many eggs in
| a single basket can have unfun consequences, and my ideal
| future would be things being about 50/50 between libera and
| oftc so only half my IRC world is likely to be on fire at
| once.
| caf wrote:
| Merging two networks is problematic. The same nicks and
| channels are owned by different people on either side; in
| this case the server software is distinct as well with
| different features supported.
| lonjil wrote:
| OFTC as far as I know is much stricter about on-topicness and
| such than freenode was, and Libera is a fair bit less strict
| than freenode was, so merging the old freenode with oftc
| would've required drastically changing oftc, which I'm sure
| no one would want.
| mlang23 wrote:
| A clear instance of NIH-Syndrome. Besides, admins want
| something to admin... Moving to a new home _and_ loosing your
| status as the guy who is allowed to set the rules isn 't very
| atractive to most... And I even understand that. There must
| be some motivation to do volunteer work, even if the actual
| motivation is irritating when actually voiced.
| SaberUK wrote:
| As the maintainer of one of the more popular IRC server
| implementations I know a giant chunk of the Libera Chat
| (formerly freenode) staff pretty well and whilst we may
| disagree frequently on technical choices they're decent people
| who were appointed based on technical merit. They pretty much
| didn't have any say in rasengan seizing control of freenode as
| Christel sold out the project and lied to the other staff about
| what what had happened for several years. After Christel was
| ousted they reorganised and elected teams internally and after
| the network switch have developed a governance system which
| requires strong consensus to avoid this ever happening
| again.[1]
|
| OFTC and Libera Chat aren't as different as you seem to think.
| There is also a lot of cooperation between the two projects
| which has been going on for years. Solanum is being developed
| as a joint project and some staff members are involved with
| both networks.
|
| 1: https://libera.chat/bylaws
| dijit wrote:
| Hey Saber,
|
| Thanks for everything you do on inspircd and IRCv3, I've been
| using the former for my network for nearly 15 years now.
| SaberUK wrote:
| I'm glad you find my work useful. :)
| mst wrote:
| Apparently rasengan likes it too
| <@root> inpspiricd is a good project <@root> but
| we'll make it way better <@root> sadie is pretty
| good for a noob <@root> but obviously its time to
| take things serious
| SaberUK wrote:
| Yeah I heard that. It's GPLv2 licensed so he's free to
| use it (if he can even migrate his services database
| without corrupting it) but his lackies have been informed
| that they will be banned on sight if they try to ask for
| support.
| [deleted]
| caramelcream wrote:
| >If I were starting an IRC channel for a free software project
| now, I would put it on OFTC, which has a real governance model
| with elections and - mysteriously - also manages to be drama-
| free.
|
| I'm not sure if it's completely drama-free. During the
| community meeting on the future of FSF's presence on IRC[1],
| someone shared these logs:
|
| https://irclogs.thegrebs.com/oftc/2021/05/01
|
| https://irclogs.thegrebs.com/oftc/2021/05/03
|
| https://irclogs.thegrebs.com/oftc/2021/03/30
|
| I don't know anything about the context of these exchanges, but
| nevertheless they make me worry about their moderation
| policies.
|
| [1] - https://www.fsf.org/events/community-meeting-on-the-
| future-o...
| morelisp wrote:
| bagira/phanes is an extremely well-known troll, banned from
| multiple networks, who is likely clinically paranoid. Their
| moderation policies are fine.
| raphlinus wrote:
| It is ironic, but not at all surprising to me, that "free speech"
| in the context of current Freenode means being not enforcing
| codes of conduct (so being transphobia-friendly among other
| things), but an iron moderation grip on any criticism of the
| network itself.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| You're correct; if they actually supported free speech values,
| criticism of the network should clearly have been allowed, too.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| They're not just transphobia-friendly; one of their new ops got
| opped right after uttering a transphobic slur in a very
| transphobic sentence. Their own staff are openly transphobes.
| hluska wrote:
| If any trans people read this, I'm sorry some people are like
| that but I love the hell out of you.
| diogenesjunior wrote:
| Wow, what a king.
| mlang23 wrote:
| That is going with the times then. Feels like covid politics.
| So why arent people loving Lee for what they do? After all,
| "shut up and comply" is the new wave of democratics.
| grouphugs wrote:
| and another easy good bye to libera.chat
| azinman2 wrote:
| So at this point what does Freenode actually have? It seems like
| no one is left...
| [deleted]
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