[HN Gopher] Happy Birthday, Libera Chat
___________________________________________________________________
Happy Birthday, Libera Chat
Author : mcwhy
Score : 282 points
Date : 2022-05-19 06:07 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (libera.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (libera.chat)
| akselmo wrote:
| Happy birthday libera chat! I use matrix to connect there because
| im a heretic, but im glad i can do that.
| rkangel wrote:
| I'm going to take this opportunity to point out that (for me at
| least) the best IRC client is Matrix. They offer a bridge to
| Libera.chat, and that then sets up a Matrix "room" for each IRC
| channel you join.
|
| You then get a consistent session, that all history
| automatically, with clients for every platform. Plus you're on
| Matrix which is a good thing :)
| justaj wrote:
| Except when it sporadically disconnects and forgets your login
| credentials.
| Arathorn wrote:
| it should never forget your login creds if you saved them.
| type !help in the admin room and it'll tell you how to save
| them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| czernobog wrote:
| Dear lord, it's been a year already? It feels like it was only
| yesterday when Freenode was trying to take over every other
| channel on their network. Glad to see Libera doing alright
| jokoon wrote:
| I wonder if discord might threaten IRC, it seems that is not the
| case.
|
| There are two servers dedicated to the c++ language.
| Macha wrote:
| Discord has absolutely hurt IRC, and supplanted it in many
| cases. Once upon a time, e.g. subreddits had their chats on
| Snoonet IRC, now it's all discord. Tech is still IRC-heavy, but
| Discord, Slack and Matrix all have sizeable presences now too.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| While I use discord (because thats what my online gaming
| buddies use) my main issue is discord is that they disallow alt
| clients https://twitter.com/discord/status/1229357198918197248
|
| My main gripe if the offical client is the lack of multi
| account support, Yeah I know it has an account switcher but a)
| its only desktop atm b) you only get notifactions from the
| account you are currently using. The "workaround" is to multi-
| client.
|
| The thing is with IRC, its a protocol, so any client supporting
| the protocol works, If one client doesn't support the features
| you want you can swap to another, if no client supports the
| feature you want you can hack it onto an existing one / create
| your own.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I am part of a few programming/language communities that are
| both on discord and IRC. I noticed that discord lends itself
| to...low quality discourse, so to speak.
|
| It might sound a bit cliche but despite a big overlap of
| members which hang out and participate in _both_ at the same
| time IRC has way less noise and better discussions and answers.
| I also feel like the language creators, while hanging out in
| both, do the "important" communication on IRC.
|
| On discord there is more emote, picture and link spam and more
| "joking around with memes", and that is despite the fact that
| the discord servers already have dedicated channels for certain
| topics.
|
| Now this is a very subjective observation on my part, but I
| believe that there will always be a place for plaintext
| communication, since it automatically filters a lot of noise
| and demands a lot less mental overhead to keep running in the
| background.
|
| Please note that I am not really _nostalgic_ for IRC, since I
| am a pretty recent user. I 'm at an age where I barely missed
| the "golden IRC years" and when I got into programming it was
| already declared dead by many, whatever that even means given
| that some people have been claiming the death of IRC for a long
| time now.
| someotherperson wrote:
| I think Freenode helped serve as a lesson to rasengan on a few
| things:
|
| 1. Technical prowess doesn't supersede the value of
| interpersonal/social abilities
|
| 2. Money doesn't let you control the narrative in a free system
|
| 3. Elon Musk isn't Elon Musk because he's rich, he's Elon Musk
| because he's good at marketing
|
| 4. Reputation is everything
|
| It's a shame that the cost of these lessons was the destruction
| of Freenode and further fragmentation of IRC, and hopefully the
| recovery continues. It was great to see everyone united for a
| brief moment though, regardless of your views against Freenode or
| any particular channel it was widely accepted that it was a
| horrible move and everyone resisted the hostile takeover.
| usrn wrote:
| Twitter is not IRC. Switching from Freenode to Libra means
| changing a config and possibly sorting out some channels that
| switched faster than you expected.
|
| Switching from Twitter to Mastodon means abandoning the (pretty
| terrible but familiar) software and an entire mode of
| interaction. Mastodon is much more about interacting with your
| peers than celebrities.
|
| If anything this shows how superior IRC because of its
| flexibility.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| It shows an advantage of an open protocol over a closed
| system:
|
| You can just host it somewhere else if things go sour.
| dark-star wrote:
| You assume that resangan wanted to continue running FreeNode
| the way it was.
|
| To me it looks like he had some issues with the people behind
| FreeNode and decided to take it over simply to destroy it
| (and/or change it into the right-wing gaslighting pro-trump
| "community" that it is now). If you look at it this way, it all
| makes sense: It's all just a personal vendetta project for him
| bsnal wrote:
| I was there and rasengan handled it extremely poorly. He
| could've taken over the network and most people wouldn't have
| moved out if he didn't screw so many things up.
| blibble wrote:
| it was almost a masterclass on how not to do it
|
| all he had to do was change the top level administration and
| keep quiet for a few months, at which point he could have
| implemented his changes slowly
| bsnal wrote:
| He is not right in the head, that's pretty clear from all
| that he's said and done. What I mean to say is that someone
| sane could've handled it well. iirc freenode was already
| "taken over" by the guy who sold it to rasengan years ago
| and nobody noticed.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah. When the first reports of problems a-brewing were
| coming out, I mostly ignored them as dumb Internet drama that
| would blow over. Then the channel take-overs started
| happening...
| grvgr wrote:
| 0. Do not threaten and steal from the guy who runs the show, or
| you're going to have a bad time.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| Gaurav Giri
|
| Ex-CIO Private Internet Access Inc. (5.5 years)
|
| PS: War is expensive, his costs are mounting.
| Doxin wrote:
| I wouldn't accuse him of having technical prowess. Pretty much
| as soon as the takeover happened freenode started suffering
| technical issues. Libera on the other hand dealt with the
| insane influx of users really well. There was some connection
| troubles for the first hour if I recall correctly, but has been
| pretty much spotless ever since.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| The most difficult thing to deal with in the first couple of
| days were the occasional server crashes. We would have liked
| some more time on our testnet to iron out the bugs in the IRC
| server software we were planning to migrate to (and started
| out with on the new network), but that didn't end up
| happening. In essence, we deployed a beta straight to
| production with >10k users on day 1 and had everything ironed
| out by day 4 if I recall correctly.
| Macha wrote:
| I believe this was criticising the initial operation of
| post-Lee-takeover freenode, not Libera.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| I was responding to "There was some connection troubles
| for the first hour if I recall correctly", most of which
| were caused by incorrect ulimits (easy fix; change
| limits, restart ircd) or server crashes (not so much;
| investigate, write patch, test patch, deploy patch to
| half a dozen boxes, restart ircd).
| Doxin wrote:
| Well from a users perspective, for all intents and purposes
| it looked like you got everything sorted by the end of day
| 1. I vaguely recall some netsplits happening after that,
| but that's just part of the IRC experience on most
| networks.
|
| Props on the smooth switchover. It could have hardly gone
| any better as far as I can see.
| jasonzemos wrote:
| Aaron did a really nice job putting together Solanum
| (https://github.com/solanum-ircd/solanum).
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| Solanum isn't my effort; Ed has done most of the work on
| it. I'm more focused on services (NickServ, ChanServ, et
| al.)
| Macha wrote:
| To be fair, when you don't own your servers, don't have any
| contracts with the volunteers who provide those servers, and
| then they exercise their ability to stop providing those
| servers, that's more a social problem than a technical one.
| fps_doug wrote:
| Is there any hints at this being the case? I could just as much
| see him somehow doubling down on everything, twisting it as
| purging the network from bad actors and that the current state
| of freenode is actually what he wanted in the first place, or
| god-knows-what...
| nickdothutton wrote:
| One of the biggest selling points of IRC is that large numbers of
| people are not on it, and will never be on it.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I stopped actively using IRC about 15 years ago precisely
| because regular (for the time) people gradually disappeared.
|
| I've stuck with too many dying communities.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220519070552/https://libera.ch...
| tentacleuno wrote:
| Happy birthday libera.chat! Thank you very much to the founders
| for providing this free and open platform :-)
| radarsat1 wrote:
| Can people explain what they like about IRC? I've often found the
| idea of having a community chat around some topic quite
| intriguing, but in practice when I've tried briefly joining such
| communities, I simply don't last long, as it doesn't grab my
| attention. Rooms tend to have tens or a hundred people joined,
| but saying nothing, until someone has a problem they want to talk
| about or question they want to ask, which is either answered
| quickly, or devolves into seeing that no one can help them, eg.
| because what they are asking doesn't make sense or is too
| mbitious or whatnot. Then silence again. In other words I've
| never gotten a clear sense of "community", but rather a forum for
| random and often uninteresting questions, and therefore just
| naturally stop visiting. All in all it just kind of gets boring
| very fast, I find, so I am curious how people manage to get
| something out of it and what motivates them to stay joined in a
| channel.
|
| I haven't tried newer systems like Matrix or Discord so I have no
| idea if these do any better, or if so, why, although I am
| consistently surprised by the number of requests posted to reddit
| to 'join our discord community'. (My reaction is always kind of,
| well, we're here in this reddit where there is already a
| community, so..)
|
| My point is not to dis on IRC/chat rooms here, just explaining
| why I've never particularly found it engaging, and so I'm curious
| what others see in it, as I feel it's something I could learn to
| appreciate if I tried a bit harder.
| coldpie wrote:
| No in-line images. No animated GIFs. No reactions. No cutesy
| junk that wiggles and tells me jokes. Lack of those features
| keeps users who want those things away.
| endorphine wrote:
| After using Slack, Discord and JS build tools that fill the
| terminal with emojis (half joking here), joining some IRC
| channels from a lightweight Linux client (looking at you,
| Electron) felt amazingly refreshing.
|
| Plus it woke up some nostalgic feelings back from when I was
| first discovering the internet (circa 2000).
| depingus wrote:
| > although I am consistently surprised by the number of
| requests posted to reddit to 'join our discord community'. (My
| reaction is always kind of, well, we're here in this reddit
| where there is already a community, so..
|
| I feel the same way about IRC (and Matrix). I think a part of
| the problem is that the technical Q&A discussion that happens
| in most of the dev channels would be better served taking place
| on a forum. Lots of those chats aren't happening in real-time
| anyways. And if you're not there to receive the messages, the
| information is lost.
|
| OTOH, certain activities do lend themselves better to real-time
| messaging. For example, the subreddit of your favorite
| sportsball team might have a Discord chat that is lots of fun
| during a live game. Another example; many video game subreddits
| will have all their LFG (looking for group) activity in a
| Discord server. Both of these scenarios are very "in the
| moment" interactions that don't really need to be preserved for
| the future.
| lkramer wrote:
| I think it's inertia and age. I joined a few IRC channels when
| I was a teenager for topics I were interested (Tolkien and old
| Disney films) and poked around in a lot of other communities,
| but never really stuck with any in particular. Back then
| obviously I was looking for friends and chatting to random
| people. Eventually a small group moved from the Tolkien IRC
| channel I was on and created a small community of our own which
| over the years have dwindled to a handful of people, but some
| of us still stick around (and couldn't imagine going anywhere
| else). The only other IRC channel I'm on was built around a
| small message board for a group of highschool friends. The
| message board is still somewhat active, but the IRC channel is
| down to 2 members :) I'm now past 40. My social circles stays
| fairly static. I have tried joining new communities on Discord
| (and IRC) and generally failed. I don't think it's specifically
| IRC (although I much prefer its simplicity to Slack and
| Discord).
| kriro wrote:
| When I was in high school I was in different Linux related
| channels on IRC as I was getting into Linux. I ended up on
| Quakenet, not sure why, because I'm not a big gamer. Looking
| back it was mostly the community and meeting like-minded
| people. Instead of watching TV I'd fire up irrsi and hang out
| in the chats, talk a bit, answer some basic Linux questions and
| learn a bit myself. It was also a great place to get help as
| the expertise was bundled there and there weren't many online
| sources like these days. I was also in some C/C++ channels and
| the same goes for that. Some of them were basically a live
| version of Stackoverflow these days (I'm trying to do X, here's
| my pastebin of code...any suggestions). I slowly faded away
| once I got more busy and forums/search engines provided quick
| answers for most questions.
| jokoon wrote:
| It's not engaging, because it's made for developers. It's a
| serious tool, and it's not corporate. Professionals want
| something that works, not something attractive.
|
| For example there are two big c++ discord servers. You can't
| even search for discord servers, you can't favorite single
| channels. You quickly get overwhelmed with notifications. Not
| to mention the things you have to click when you join a server.
|
| And it runs with electron.
|
| It's about the people who will use the tool. Software
| developers would use irc, gamers would use discord.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is an overly reductive summary that isn't backed by any
| of the stats--the number of IRC users has declined well below
| the number of professional developers. Dozens to hundreds of
| open source projects were already on Slack/Discord before the
| explosion of Freenode, dozens more switched when that
| happened. It's not as simple as "professionals use IRC,
| gamers use discord".
|
| You could definitely argue that IRC appeals more to the kind
| of developer who spends their entire day in the terminal and
| Vim--but that's not the only kind of developer out there!
| Just like many developers prefer IntelliJ to Vim, many prefer
| Discord to IRC. Discord and Slack both offer real
| improvements for some workflows, and some people value those
| improvements.
|
| As an example, persistent chat is hugely valuable in a help
| community--I often find I don't need to ask a question at all
| because I can just search in the history to find what I'm
| looking for. Even something as seemingly frivolous as
| reactions is quite useful--one person can answer a question
| and get a chorus of 'amens' without actually having a bunch
| of "what he said"s in the chat.
| myself248 wrote:
| I share your observations, which apply to a lot of topic-
| focused channels.
|
| I think they don't apply to the freewheeling chat channels.
|
| In those, a totally different set of social norms apply, and
| one that may be counterintuitive is that, to get a conversation
| going, you shouldn't try to be _too_ provocative to get
| attention. Reason being that you may be dismissed as a troll
| not worthy of feeding. There's a balance to be struck, but it
| does exist.
|
| Chat is also not for everyone. And IRC isn't even for every
| chatter. So it's entirely plausible and not really damning if
| IRC just isn't your vibe. But if the idea (of a 33-year-old
| protocol, of a mostly-decentralized infrastructure, of f/oss
| server and client software) intrigues you, then I'd encourage
| you to give it another try but with different goals.
|
| Explore more channels. Pop into some of the social ones with
| 100 < n < 1000 users. Set up a persistent client like TheLounge
| or Convos on a pi in the closet, so you can catch what happens
| after you close your browser or sleep your laptop.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| I see, interesting perspective thanks. Your tip about
| capturing the conversations to catch up later is a nice idea.
| itchyjunk wrote:
| Getting a hang of irc does take time, imho. It's not something
| you actively look at and interact. Rather it's something I look
| at occasionally and interact with. I think this style of
| irc'ing has made it ideal for me. Once you get more used to
| specific servers/channels, you tend to have different types of
| engagement. In my experience, a lot of new users come in hoping
| for this type of more personal/involved discussion from the get
| go and get disappointed quite a bit.
|
| There are also different types of channels. I only talk in
| technical channels like #ubuntu when I need help. No point
| introducing noise. But I might have a monologue about some
| petty stuff in ##math-offtopic, for example.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Open standard
|
| Simple protocol
|
| Use any client I like
|
| Also accessible via the web
|
| Decentralized and non-hierarchical
|
| Been around for a while
| holler wrote:
| Appreciate your thoughts on this topic. What are some things
| that would help keep your interest in a topical chat app? Is it
| strictly that you're uninterested in the content and so the
| discussion is boring? Or is the asynchronous/disjointed
| conversation more of an issue?
|
| > My reaction is always kind of, well, we're here in this
| reddit where there is already a community
|
| I think that misses the different ways people seek to interact
| online. Reddit/HN style threaded comments have played a
| traditional role in social/aggregation sites, whereas live
| chat-based platforms are newer and facilitate a different kind
| of experience.
|
| Both have value but they are different, and it could be that
| the latter is simply less interesting to some people.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| > you're uninterested in the content and so the discussion is
| boring?
|
| I would say that perhaps, at least from what I've seen, it's
| often not really a discussion at all, but more like a
| question answering forum. I suppose what I like about
| HN/reddit style forums more, is that there is a "post", with
| a clear topic or article, and then people actually have a
| full, long discussion about it. Sometimes of varying quality,
| but it's at least full of threads where people react, people
| react to those reactions, etc. Whereas what I've seen on IRC
| is mostly just "how do I do x", and then some random short-
| lived arguments about how to do X better, or why are you
| doing X, etc. It doesn't seem to be a discussion but more
| like a problem solving brainstorm with a bunch of people who
| aren't stakeholders in whatever the original poster is
| talking about.
|
| So, I'm not sure, but maybe the way the discussion in a link
| aggregator is specifically oriented around a "post" and clear
| topic is what makes it more engaging for me, rather than just
| a nebulous promise that "this channel is to discuss X.."
| followed by people just sitting there with not much to say
| about X.
|
| But, maybe my take is completely wrong, and that's why I
| asked the question, maybe I've missed the very interesting
| and dynamic back-and-forth discussions and funny moments that
| attract and keep people engaged in a chat room. Maybe it's
| just a matter of being there long enough.
| holler wrote:
| Disclosure I'm building a topical chat site at
| https://sqwok.im
|
| One thing I've noticed is many conversations will start out
| on-topic but eventually the active participants will
| exhaust whatever they have to say and it will pivot to more
| casual conversation. It isn't necessarily bad, but it
| creates the problem where new/arriving users see a
| conversation that appears unconnected from the topic. I
| recently received a bunch of feedback to that affect.
|
| Another factor that someone else already mentioned is
| simply that many people like to lurk and don't want to
| engage in live discussion. Also not a problem if the
| previous issue is solved.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Discord seems more about gathering people around a community
| that someone is driving. For example users of a service, driven
| by the company. Or a book author running a programming language
| server. As such they are more successful but perhaps less
| discoverable. There is no big list of them. (Which might be a
| good thing from a spam perspective)
| kashyapc wrote:
| A quick few thoughts based on using IRC for 13-ish years:
|
| * I like IRC because it is clean and a light-weight text-only
| interface (well, you _could_ use emojis, if you wish). I prefer
| text-based conversations when possible. I 'm equally fine with
| video, but text is far more effective for technical
| conversations.
|
| * It is also less stressful for me, as I can respond in a more
| asynchronous manner, without any implicit pressure to
| immediately respond (e.g. the "$person is typing ..."
| notification).
|
| * IRC 'stuck' with me, because I largely use it for upstream
| projects that I participate in.
|
| * To avoid "boring questions" it is useful to put an etiquette
| "hint" in the channel topic, and gently point new users to it.
| E.g. I've written this some 8 years ago for a channel I used to
| moderate: https://www.rdoproject.org/contribute/irc-etiquette/
|
| * Lastly, I recognize IRC's pros and cons, so I'm not
| religiously attached to it, and I'm fine to use other chat
| tools. I just don't want to become that guy in the last pane of
| this XKCD comic ;-) -- https://xkcd.com/1782/
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| I may not be the common case, but I didn't join IRC looking for
| a community. I primarily used it (and still do today) for help
| and collaboration -- open source work and ##javascript /##math
| questions, usually. By being in the channels frequently enough
| you begin to figure out the community. Many channels also have
| off-topic variants for, well, off-topic discussion. Those will
| tend to be more like communities and not have hundreds or
| thousands of users.
|
| In terms of why IRC specifically, I enjoy the simplicity of the
| protocol and the open-source nature of it's ecosystem
| radarsat1 wrote:
| Are the off-topic discussions more (or less?) engaging than
| the topical ones, for you? Just curious.
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| Some channels (right now I can specifically think of
| SourceHut's) refer to their off-topic channels as the
| watercooler, and I think that's an apt description. If the
| main channel is something you're interested in then you'll
| enjoy the off-topic too.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| _My point is not to dis on IRC /chat rooms here, just
| explaining why I've never particularly found it engaging, and
| so I'm curious what others see in it, as I feel it's something
| I could learn to appreciate if I tried a bit harder. _
|
| I have also always felt this way, trying to get into it and
| thinking I'll enjoy it but never really succeeding. Maybe all
| of the people trying to get into it need to create a channel on
| Libera and just start talking?
|
| IRC and all internet communities that rely on real-time
| communication have this implicit hurdle where you have to be
| comfortable talking to people you have never and will never
| meet.
|
| I personally have never felt especially interested in internet
| friends and so when I see a Slack channel for something I'm
| interested in, I just lurk. There is something about the real-
| time nature of it that is harder to get into compared to sites
| like HN or reddit, where you can post something and not be as
| actively holding up a conversation; It's more work. It's also
| less interesting than doing it in person.
|
| The upside of lurking on platforms like Slack is that every now
| and then, when someone posts a link, a job posting, something
| else that I find interesting, I can click on it and easily
| search for it. Without an IRC bouncer and checking in at
| regular intervals, I see less interesting stuff over time. You
| have to "be there", it seems. That's aside from the slow,
| questions only discussions you're referencing. My guess is that
| people who can't get into chat rooms, IRC, etc are not willing
| to check into these online spaces in the same way they do
| physical ones.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Information density is a phrase I throw around a lot when
| comparing the new web based chats to IRC.
| kaoD wrote:
| I agree with sibling comments.
|
| I'd also add that IRC nowadays is very different from what it
| used to be. If you removed bouncers channels would be mostly
| empty. That's why you often see silence.
|
| Back in the days IRC had very vibrant communities. I'd say it's
| turning into nostalgia now.
| nullc wrote:
| You're probably making the mistake of joining communities
| that have been embrace-extended-extinguished by slack and
| matrix bridges.
|
| Users on the attacking service get full access to IRC but
| also additional channels. For who don't mind the insane web
| bloatware it's simply the least friction path to abandon irc
| to participate.
|
| In my experience communities that banned these bridges have
| remained vibrant and active.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Runs from command line (with a quake-like terminal) so it's
| easier to access than alt tabbing. Text only. Most users have
| technical background or are hobbyists so the conversations tend
| to be different.
| oynqr wrote:
| Not hard to remember, since it's also my birthday. Thank you,
| Libera, for being one of the players keeping IRC alive.
| anned20 wrote:
| Happy birthday!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious,
| and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their
| way to construct a history that isn't technically wrong, but, if
| you didn't know that Libera got its start as a fork of Freenode
| that almost everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible, you'd
| never figure it out.
| resonious wrote:
| From the article,
|
| > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users
| in just a month and a half, a number which has been mostly
| steady since.
|
| Seems pretty impressive when they put it that way!
| hda111 wrote:
| A fork would imply it had copied all user accounts and
| channels. But this didn't happen.
| FoxbrushTailwag wrote:
| Hi, one of the blog authors here, Fuchs.
|
| My initial draft did include a sentence about freenode in the
| first paragraph, but after a short internal discussion we
| decided to remove that, so I rewrote that part. Rather easy and
| quick, actually.
|
| Now on the why: Libera was a clear cut. Reasons for that are
| different per person affected, but include e.g. a lot of pain
| to see what has become of something we put years in, wanting to
| have a positive vibe / outlook and rather create than mourn et
| cetera. We always communicated and worked in that way, we also
| asked people who basically lifestreamed the decline of
| freenode, which looked a mixture of a bad trash tv novella and
| a dumpster fire, to please move it out of our main channel. The
| blog post basically just continues in that spirit.
|
| We are aware of our history, and people interested in it still
| can find the whole mess floating around on the web. Tech
| articles, discussions on social media, blog posts of various
| projects and users etc. I think history is "in our favour" and
| there is no need to try and hide it. The blog post, however, is
| about our Birthday and focusses on Libera.Chat, and not on the
| past that freenode was.
|
| Of course that makes the "from scratch" sound a bit wrong, but
| as some other user here already pointed out: it isn't that
| wrong. We built up everything from scratch, and that includes
| trust. We didn't know how many projects and communities would
| follow us and migrate over, especially not that early. We are
| of course very grateful that so many did, and for all the
| support we received during the very hard first weeks. But we
| could never be sure if it would go that well.
|
| Hope that clears up that part a bit :)
|
| Edit: removed a typo / half cut off sentence
| stavros wrote:
| I agree that history is in your favor (and so does everyone
| else who moved to Libera), which is why it was a bit odd to
| not see Freenode mentioned at all. It's nothing bad, it was
| just a bit "hmm, I wonder why they did that".
| FoxbrushTailwag wrote:
| It seems to have confused some people, we also got some
| remarks in that direction on IRC and on Mastodon. I hope my
| answer cleared it up a bit.
| ivberrOg wrote:
| just leaving out the "from scratch" bit would probably
| have killed any confusion. happy to be a libera user
| regardless, thanks.
| endorphine wrote:
| I'm completely uninitiated to this topic but I'll give it a
| shot from what I've read in this and the parent comment: It
| seems like there's some denial about the past/roots of
| Libera, in this blog post. The "acceptance" phase is yet to
| come.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > It seems like there's some denial about the past/roots of
| Libera
|
| I'd disagree. There are some coals that no longer need to
| be continually raked.
| unixhero wrote:
| Some parts of the lawn we no longer cut
| gwern wrote:
| You may want to make it a 'clean cut', but that's not how it
| comes off as. When I read it (as well as everyone in our
| Libera channel who commented), it comes off as sounding so
| terrified of the clown prince that the word 'Freenode' can't
| even be mentioned, and the huge lacuna looks hilarious
| (especially the parts about growth).
| Beldin wrote:
| I sincerely applaud focusing on positivity instead of
| negativity. You all are not putting in your current efforts
| because of FreeNode. That's long in the past and completely
| irrelevant to current efforts. You're all doing it to enable
| the wonderful communities that are out there and thrive on
| this fertile ground.
| Aissen wrote:
| > We built up everything from scratch, and that includes
| trust.
|
| This is a half-truth. Some people (in a community I'm in) had
| implicit trust in the team that did such a great job running
| freenode, though not everyone. I'd say you already had some
| trust (just like some IRC software, I guess); and we're glad
| we chose to follow to libera.chat in the end.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Well, they're still the ones that built it. :-)
| hericium wrote:
| The text could actually mention Freenode because this wasn't
| really a "start from scratch" as stated:
|
| > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users
| in just a month and a half
| [deleted]
| phoe-krk wrote:
| Technically speaking, Libera Chat _did_ start from scratch.
| It isn 't their fault that another IRC network was in the
| process of imploding at the very same time and many projects
| and people felt the need to move to a less deranged
| foundation, therefore fueling the effective userbase of
| Libera.
| Shish2k wrote:
| The instance of the software was started from scratch; the
| communities (which are the hard part) were largely cut &
| pasted
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing
| today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it?
| When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing
| cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.
| gerikson wrote:
| It's back on netsplit's top 100 list at #7:
| https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php
|
| I'm idling in the top 10 channels, it's semi-active in that
| people pop in and say stuff, but there's no interaction. Most
| connections are from old bots, or from community pages that
| haven't been updated.
| myself248 wrote:
| > from community pages that haven't been updated.
|
| Yeah, I lurk in a community that _also_ has a Libera
| channel now, but they keep a bridge-bot in the old Freenode
| channel because all their old videos implore people to join
| them on Freenode.
|
| It gets a bit of traffic, meaning those folks might
| otherwise be lost without the bot, so I understand it. It
| just sucks.
| fps_doug wrote:
| Yeah suffering from that too; we need an internet-wide PSA
| that people should just s/freenode/libera/ whenever they
| see/read/hear it somewhere. :-)
| itchyjunk wrote:
| It seems to be alive. My client still connects to it. I saw a
| lot of trolling that seems to have simmered down now. I have
| had some odd/interesting conversations in the #freenode
| channel. 417 users in the channel at the time of this
| writing.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| It's had a bunch of guises as a website. For a while it was a
| blog filled with shouting about how removing the
| administrators will allow for real Free Speech and the future
| of everything will be freenode (and cryptocurrency, please
| buy our shitcoin maybe).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode..
| ..
|
| It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit,
| which nobody used.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode..
| ..
|
| It's now a wiki which refers to the network as "assmode" and
| implores you to instead join "pissnet" run by the Impeerial
| Family.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode..
| ..
|
| Sort of the death knell of desperately trying to form a
| community.
| 1propionyl wrote:
| Someone was editing that wiki, but to be clear Pissnet is
| not affiliated with Freenode, though it was born from its
| collapse. It is a small but active community, and has a
| couple hundred servers.
|
| https://shitposting.space/network
|
| It's very hard to explain, but it is a real network that
| currently operates as an anarchic sandbox for doing weird
| things with IRC software/protocols and just generally
| goofing around.
|
| Pretty much every single active user is a netadmin. It's
| the network where you register a nick by linking your own
| server.
| [deleted]
| abstractbeliefs wrote:
| Good, freenode is dead. Amen.
|
| I'm sure it doesn't help that the current owner of freenode is
| notoriously litigious.
| RonMarken wrote:
| > it doesn't help that the current owner of freenode is
| notoriously litigious.
|
| Yawn. All I have seen is some angry techbro who can dish out
| an hour of time for an attorney to write angry letter when he
| does not have things his way. That is not to say this is a
| criticism of victims but rather a damn shame more people do
| not stand up to this nonsense.
|
| Incidentally this 'notoriously litigious' individual is also
| being sued over alleged sexual-harassment committed by him at
| his previous company London Trust Media[1]. However not sure
| of the latest status given the sale(s) of certain companies.
|
| [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/corrupt.tech/1708590130-ocr-
| compr...
| Gigachad wrote:
| Irc in general is in a slow death.
| cpach wrote:
| I mostly agree with you. But I still find IRC very useful.
| My main gripe is that there are few IRC clients that suite
| my tastes.
| fps_doug wrote:
| As fast as people who grew up with it die ;-)
| jolmg wrote:
| Slower probably. I doubt there aren't new people getting
| into IRC. You could've made your comment back when I just
| got into it, and IRC doesn't really seem any more dead
| now.
| fps_doug wrote:
| But maybe just as many as old folks leaving it for Matrix
| et al? Might just even it out in the grand scheme of
| things.
| fullstop wrote:
| Most of the people that I find on IRC are 40+.
| ollybee wrote:
| We are all in a slow death. Right now it and we are alive
| with a vibrant IRC community to be thankful for.
| denkmoon wrote:
| IRC as in the 1988 chat protocol, sure.
|
| IRC as a concept has never been healthier. Lots of
| alternatives, most proprietary, some libre, and more users
| than ever.
| INTPenis wrote:
| What are you basing this on?
|
| I'm not trying to be difficult, I have used IRC since the
| 90s and still use it. It's just the best format for chat
| imo.
|
| But my observation is also that it's dying slowly.
| kodah wrote:
| IRC has inspired most major chat protocols, even as much
| as they've deviated. The fact that there are major
| networks with tens of thousands and hundreds of users
| that are running with minimal funding is a testimony to
| the protocol and the communities around them.
| jolmg wrote:
| > But my observation is also that it's dying slowly.
|
| Is it? I'm not on it every day, but I don't really notice
| a change. Isn't it just that it isn't growing, at least
| not as much as the explosions of web-based, proprietary
| platforms like twitter or slack?
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
|
| In 2004, top 10 networks had together around one million
| of users. now, it's around 150 000.
|
| Top reason of this decline is gamers leaving the network.
| Quakenet and GameSurge had like 300K users together, now
| less than 10K (and probably mostly bots or bouncers).
| INTPenis wrote:
| Well first of all there was no "it" when it came to IRC
| 15 years ago. There were many huge servers that I never
| visited like Efnet, Quakenet, dalnet and more.
|
| Me and my little group of hackers would also host our
| own, and link with other groups around the world.
|
| I think it boils down to accessibility. Even back when I
| started certain people just couldn't handle the terminal
| clients so they used Xchat or Mirc. In school in Sweden
| IRC was actually often pronounced "mirck" because people
| would refer to the mirc client.
|
| So when web chat came along, with mobile apps too, it
| just reaches a much wider audience.
|
| So the ones who are left on IRC are old farts, and
| terminal junkies.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I wonder if they're afraid Lee might sue them if they did or
| something
|
| Edit: Or maybe they don't want to drag the whole drama into
| this celebration again :) Libera moved on so quickly that even
| after 2 months it felt like everything was in the distant past
| and the community was just as it had always been.
|
| But then it would have been better to not elaborate on the
| history. I agree it's a bit weird like this.
| grvgr wrote:
| He can try, it will not end well.
|
| https://twitter.com/grvgr/status/1526971545356214275
| blibble wrote:
| last time he even threatened them with legal action he
| managed to get them to transfer the domain name and
| everything else to him
|
| (so I was told)
| grvgr wrote:
| Yes, I understand. They prey on the weak, but we are not
| weak.
|
| They have also threatened me several times over many
| years.
|
| They will not last long now.
|
| https://gauravgiri.com/for-the-record/an-abusive-
| relationshi...
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Hello (do not) @buyvpnservice from (dirty) @Kape_com
|
| > I hope you're enjoying the ride.
|
| > You are now at KAPUT, you are booked until the final
| destination, FUBAR.
|
| > Please fasten your seatbelts and return your tray table
| to its full upright and locked position.
|
| I'll be honest: I have absolutely no idea what this means.
| It's obvious the @buyvpnservice is meant to be a play on
| "buy VPN service", but everything else looks like mindless
| mumbling to me. Could you explain it, please?
| grvgr wrote:
| Hello, thank you for taking the time to read.
|
| If you read my tweets since December 21, 2021 (<20 total)
| you will get some more context.
|
| I worked for PIA VPN for 5 years before it was bought by
| Kape.
|
| They're scammers.
| dspillett wrote:
| >* They're scammers.*
|
| Given all the not-false-but-absolutely-misleading
| advertising I see/hear for VPN providers1, I suspect they
| are all scammers or as near to as makes no odds.
|
| [1] including in sponsored segments in the output of
| technical influenzas who don't help their reputation in
| my view by parroting the words themselves instead of
| letting the sponsor do it, or by being more choosy about
| exactly what they are willing to parrot
| grvgr wrote:
| You are correct, scammers is too mild a term to describe
| criminal racketeers like Lee.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| > This time, instead of this awful cycle of disempowerment of
| the people, it's time that the people of the world, together,
| plant the flag of the power of the people on the Internet.
| The internet changed everything and leveled the playing
| field. This cannot be taken away.
|
| By his own manifesto he wouldn't do that, and he wouldn't
| want to be a hypocrite.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| "promises only bind those who believe them" - JL Gassee
| glandium wrote:
| FWIW, it's a very common saying in French. I wouldn't
| attribute it to Gassee.
|
| Edit: googling it in French attributes it to Henri
| Queuille.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Thanks. JLG attributed it to politicians, I think, but I
| was (a) too lazy to find the source, but also (b) don't
| speak French. I just didn't want to appear to be taking
| credit for such a sharp observation.
| glandium wrote:
| Jacques Chirac famously used a variant of it.
| Doxin wrote:
| > he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite
|
| I'm not sure that's actually true. Clearly he very much
| liked taking power away from a specific set of people. The
| guy really likes constructing this narrative where he's
| some sort of free speech savior, but when you look at his
| actions the opposite seems true. E.g. during the switch to
| libera if you had any mention of libera in the channel
| topic on freenode you'd end up with all the channel
| operators banned and replaced with friends of Lee. That's
| hardly a pro-free-speech thing to do.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| We need to standardize sarcasm punctuation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
| phoe-krk wrote:
| Just realized taht "/s" is a de-facto standard recognized
| almost everywhere in the international tech world -
| perhaps it would be viable to submit a RFC for it that
| can be referenced? Plenty of time before next year's
| April.
| Doxin wrote:
| Oh whoops. The sarcasm seems obvious in hindsight.
| Apologies :P
| dane-pgp wrote:
| "Oh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a _real_ useful
| invention. "
| phoe-krk wrote:
| _> By his own manifesto he wouldn 't do that_
|
| Except, well, he did.
| na85 wrote:
| He's a chump and only "believes" in that stuff insofar as
| it lets him perpetuate his savior complex.
| saghul wrote:
| I don't see anything wrong with that.
|
| I've been part of a community which forked in the past and it
| was so cringe (at least to me) for one of the sides to keep
| explaining the origins and such on each and every presentation
| even 10 years later.
|
| Anyone who knew Freenode knows the story already, and does any
| newcomer need to know, on that very blog post? I'd say no.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Because it's factually true and explains everything else.
| kossTKR wrote:
| Mentioning it somewhere is good for history, but it's confusing
| and meaningless info for most people. People don't care, don't
| know and would rather have something "fresh", also from an
| internal perspective in the org.
| hericium wrote:
| And fuck you, past 19 May 2021 Freenode.
| jolmg wrote:
| s/past/post-/;s/2022/2021/
| hericium wrote:
| Thank you.
| Vladimof wrote:
| I wish that Libera Chat would obfuscate user hostnames in the
| WHOIS...
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| There is, in fact, excellent documentation on their site for
| this https://libera.chat/guides/cloaks.
|
| Of course, it's not as much of a free-for-all as some other
| networks (I recall Rizon lets you set whatever cloak you want),
| but it should hide hostnames.
| Vladimof wrote:
| by default, Rizon replaces the identifying part of your
| hostname with "Rizon-xxxxxxxx"... I wish that liberachat
| would do the same without needing to register and then take
| some other action.... I don't need a custom hostname, just
| one that doesn't broadcast my IP.
| tribaal wrote:
| You can just set -r on yourself as you join, that should do the
| trick (from memory, I'm on mobile)
| yardstick wrote:
| What is the state of Freenode now? Looking at Wikipedia it
| apparently still had low-thousands of users at the end of 2021?
|
| 1.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#/media/File%3AIRC_t...
| saghul wrote:
| While I'm no longer using IRC, I'm happy to see Libera.Chat
| succeed. Godspeed!
| junon wrote:
| Woah, been a year already. I remember sitting on mIRC for hours
| and hours watching the users flood into libera and out of
| freenode.
|
| I will never forget how absolutely gobstricken I was with how
| _perfectly_ the Libera team executed everything, and they were so
| incredibly polite through what has to be some of the densest
| chaos one could witness on the internet.
|
| Really historic day. Happy birthday, Libera!
| jolmg wrote:
| I see Bitcoin still has their official channel on Freenode[1]. I
| wonder if there are more projects still doing that.
|
| [1] https://bitcoin.org/en/community
| nullc wrote:
| That's just an unmaintained webpage.
| gerikson wrote:
| I let Libreoffice know yesterday that their non-English pages
| were still pointing to Freenode, this was fixed.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| bitcoin.org is not owned by bitcoin project.
|
| There is some tug-of-war going on about that domain that's too
| stupid to even talk about. (As are all the stupid "what is true
| bitcoin???" debates of 2017-ish.)
|
| The actual Bitcoin domain is https://bitcoincore.org and they
| link Libera there.
| usrn wrote:
| It was kind of nuts to see so many pages that weren't updated
| in years change their links.
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