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Leaving Freenode for a new network

613 points by 4ad 5y ago

diogenesjunior 5y ago
Fuck Andrew Lee
varjag 5y ago
In 21-ish years on OPN/Freenode it was one constant in rapidly changing tech landscape. Sad to see it go this way, and much thanks to the staff for taking it thus far.
Sebb767 5y ago
It's interesting to me that the draft was censored and mentioned a buyer, while this one only talks about control. For me, it paints the situation worse. Still sad to see FreeNode fall. This will lead to a lot of split communities and dead links. EDIT: Fuchs finds some harsher words[0]: > In the past few weeks, this has changed[2], and the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know the substance of this legal threat as it contains some kind of gag order preventing its broader discussion within staff. The democratically elected heads of their respective teams, development, infrastructure, projects and communities were removed by force[3] and have been informed that they are not entitled to act in their respective capacity. > [...] A contract in which christel, former head of staff, allegedly sold freenode, surfaced. And while I personally think that this would have neither included any servers or code or user data, since that did not belong to christel to sell, I am not a lawyer and apparently some of our volunteers got pressured very hard and their personal life could have been ruined easily should we have fought against this apparent contract. This makes it look far more hostile than the linked note. Sad to see. [0] https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
- EE84M3i 5y ago
  >the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know the substance of this legal threat as it contains some kind of gag order preventing its broader discussion within staff. Is there any more context about this? I'd be interested to read logs. Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode?
  - puyoxyz 5y ago
    Log (#freenode): https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4 https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c... Log from after that one (#freenode-staff-discussion): https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...
    - EE84M3i 5y ago
      I skimmed these logs and it is not clear what legal order they are talking about or in what way there is a gag. Are there specific lines in these logs that go into detail?
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    > Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode? no of course they are not saying that, they would be punished if they did (because it would be illegal). now, that such a thing exists in a "democracy"... is a topic on its own broader scope.
    - fmajid 5y ago
      Apparently it’s in the UK, where judges are prompt to issue “superinjunctions” where even discussing the injunction is contempt of court and can incur a prison sentence. Whether a monarchy without a written constitution, or separation of Church and State can be considered a democracy is left as an exercise to the reader.
      - Pet_Ant 5y ago
        The constitution is entirely written, we're just not sure which documents are part of it...
        jkaplowitz 5y ago
        Source? Everything I've ever heard about the UK constitution is that it has both written and unwritten elements. Indeed, no statute or court ruling even defines the important head of government role of Prime Minister.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Chris2048 5y ago
  A lot of questions here: > christel, now former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party why was the previous owner/director(s) of this company (presumably christel) and what rights did they have to sell - and where did the money go? EDIT: yes https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/10308021 https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/10308021 also, it is claimed by AL that christel was harrassed. Fuchs contests this. > it seems that Andrew Lee - despite zero involvement in the day-to-day operations of Freenode - has decided that ownership of the domains entitles him to ownership of Freenode as a network and community, and intended to give his own people administrative access to the network so, did AL get access to "the network" and if so, how? It seems AL sponsored ~3k/month, but did they also sponsor, and thus control, the hardware too? > this company has absolutely no operational involvement. It does not own any servers, it does not employ any of the staff Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from? > The democratically elected ... were removed by force[3] The link shows the 'people' page listing different people in various roles. What does "changed by force means"? That someone was able to edit a webpage? Or something more (like access revoked)? How did the website content get changed? By someone with access to the original site, or a clone? Was the domain redirected at any point? EDIT: AL claims "tomaw" changed the staff page. Fuchs says he made the change - which further complicates what is meant by "by force"... > have been informed that they are not entitled to act in their respective capacity How, and by who?
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    > Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from? Freenode the vaguely defined project staff, not Freenode the company staff.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  Freenode didn't fall. They just had to change to a new name. It's a better name anyway. People that are not able to adjust to a new name, you should feel sorry for them. Dang should pin an announcement about the new domain for a few weeks. Or all the subreddits and other forums the maintainers use can do something like that. The word will get out.
  - juancb 5y ago
    I think this is a matter of opinion but how is libera or libera.chat a better name than FreeNode? How do you even pronounce that? Lee-Bear-Ah? Lee-Bera? Libra? Leebra? Liberia? That last one is a joke. In Latin Libera is to deliver and pronounced Lee-Bera In Spanish Libera is to liberate and pronounced Lee-Bear-Ah I can't say either of those roll off the tongue in either language and any English mispronunciation of it is just awful. Lee-brah and the like to me is about as grating as Tay-Co (taco), Jal-Ah-Peeno (jalapeño) or Ques-Aaadla (quesadilla). This is a major loss of brand for the network. I'm sure I'll get downvoted into oblivion.
    - tovej 5y ago
      OTOH freenode sounds like freedom fries to me, like American political talk.
supermatt 5y ago
Why was this ever a commercial entity?
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > This was done, from what we were informed, to organize our freenode #live conferences, that required a legal body. Source: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
  - oauea 5y ago
    With hindsight that sounds like an excuse to make some money.
IceWreck 5y ago
I just got a message from the staff on freenode: [Global Notice] Hi all. It feels like my moral responsibility to inform all users that administrative control of freenode and its user data will soon change hands, and I will be resigning from freenode staff effective immediately. It's been an honour to help you all. Sad to see a hostile takeover of Freenode. Its controlled by Private Internet Access now.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  What’s the connection to PIA? EDIT: Andrew Lee is founder of PIA. From Wikipedia: > The company was founded by the American-born Andrew Lee.[6][7] London Trust Media also owns the Freenode IRC network.[8][failed verification]
  - wut42 5y ago
    It's not owned by PIA now. PIA and London Trust Media was sold by Lee; who moved most other holdings to "Imperial Family Companies", which is effectively the owner of freenode: https://imperialfamily.com https://imperialfamily.com
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - sct202 5y ago
      So interesting it seems he's going all in on the royalty branding using Korea's former royal house's seal. I saw a news article of him being named 'crown prince' of Korea by one of the pretenders to the throne despite not being closely related.
      - esjeon 5y ago
        A related article (by SCMP): https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/3124523/real-life-k-drama-how-did-andrew-lee-go-tech https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/312... Very cheap.
trollied 5y ago
Previous discussion, from when the draft was posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338
narag 5y ago
I had not used IRC in a long time, just checked libera.chat... it doesn't work ("software caused connection abort")
- JulianWasTaken 5y ago
  It's irc.libera.chat, and seems to work fine here, though servers are understandably dealing with a surge (particularly on nick registration).
  - narag 5y ago
    I did use "irc." before and tried again now. No dice. Oh, the previous comment was downvoted. How nice!
- ecmascript 5y ago
  It's down right now
  - metreo 5y ago
    I feel sorry for their servers rn
tazjin 5y ago
If this leads to a mass exodus from Freenode, it'll probably significantly reduce overall IRC usage. Communities will fracture, people will set up random splinter networks that will die off in a few months, and lots of open-source projects that already want to be using something Javascripty like Slack or Discord are going to use this as the motivating thing to make the switch. Personally I'm staying put on Freenode because I don't see a lot of user-facing impact potential here, and IRC was already essentially untrusted/public (yes, even your private messages - you don't really know who is relaying them and how trustworthy they are).
- IshKebab 5y ago
  IRC is already dying anyway. This will just speed up the process.
- orblivion 5y ago
  How many would move to Matrix?
  - newvectorllc 5y ago
    Why does it matter? Matrix is no IRC. Fewer clients, way more complex protocol, the identity server is centralized, only one complete server implementation exists (and it seems like that's the only one that will ever exist, other attempts appear dead, despite the list on matrix.org) and worse than Freenode being owned by private capital, all of Matrix is controlled by New Vector LLC -- the protocol, the clients, and the biggest servers, and they operate the main identity server so they can keep track of your phone number or email address and map it to your Matrix ID. (I wonder when they'll start selling that data?) If this situation with Freenode makes you move to Matrix you're choosing to move to a network with all the same problems you're fleeing, but magnified Oh but there's one more thing about Matrix If you don't like it, the CEO of the company will come argue with you about it here I don't check for replies to my comments on HN because this community is too toxic but I'll bet Arathorn eventually comments to tell me I'm wrong. Maybe he'll promise that they don't sell the vector.im identity data. I don't trust him, anyway.
kuroguro 5y ago
Q: Do accounts/channels that have been inactive for years get purged automatically? Used to have some stuff there, not sure if it's worth the time to find the correct emails/passwords.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Piggybacking off this, what's a good way to archive Freenode content? I think I may still have some content on there from over a decade ago
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    You're probably thinking of the wrong service. Freenode is an IRC chat network, not a web site or other service with permanently stored "content".
- helb 5y ago
  Looks like inactive accounts are removed, NickServ doesn't know me anymore.
  - kuroguro 5y ago
    Yep, same, thanks! NickServ didn't know any of the usernames I think I had.
supermatt 5y ago
A gem from one of the linked chatlogs (Ariadne is security chair for Alpine linux and a prolific FOSS contributer): [23:07:35] <Ariadne> i mean, i have important work to do. dealing with an IRC network is not really something i want to be doing this decade outside of fucking around for fun with IRCX [23:07:51] <Ariadne> i have code running on two planets
- aerovistae 5y ago
  Who is that? And I guess now that I think about it, who is trying to poach him or her? I have no context for this comment and I'm probably not the only one.
  - Ndymium 5y ago
    There is more context and link to the full(er) log here: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1393006479700078595 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1393006479700078595 I will not attempt to summarise it as I don't have enough information on the situation.
  - rakshazi 5y ago
    https://ariadne.space/about https://ariadne.space/about - she's pretty cool
- gnulinux 5y ago
  I mean, she is right.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  That last line is fucking legendary. Thanks for posting it.
- juliend2 5y ago
  > i have code running on two planets Pretty cool. I wonder which one of her libraries (if that's what she's referring to) is being used on a Mars rover.
ddevault 5y ago
I have moved my channels to libera.chat: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-05-19-liberachat/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-05-19-liberachat/ I set up a bot which herds people on Freenode, shoot me a PM (ddevault) if you want me to /join it to your channel as well.
blibble 5y ago
I submitted this link under the title "freenode IRC network purchased by VPN company PIA" back in 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101538 it hit the top of the front page, and people complained about my use of the word "purchased" (including freenode staff now that seem to be extremely upset...): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102030 needless to say the title was edited...
- snthd 5y ago
  https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history/MzE3NTcyNzE2M2FkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... Shows Mr Lee aquired >50% voting rights in 2017. (via https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...)
  - 88 5y ago
    From what I understood of the previous (draft) resignation notes, there was a misunderstanding/disagreement over what (if any) Freenode assets actually belonged to that limited company.
    - wut42 5y ago
      Tomaw fought legally with Lee to get the sale contract from what I've read; and apparently it _does_ legitimately own the network.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        By "network", do you mean the domains? What did the sale contract say?
        nabakin 5y ago
        He means the irc network. The servers which one connects to when using irc. The freenode network is an irc network that one can connect to in order to chat but there's a freenode domain that acts as a client to the network which it seems freenode Ltd (of which Andrew is now the only member on the board) owns
Thorentis 5y ago
Perhaps this could be the rise of Matrix many of us have been waiting for? I hope many freenode channel operators and admins encourage people in that direction, rather than trying to start alternative IRC networks that will die out.
- mxuribe 5y ago
  I sure hope so! ...Not only because "yay, more people on the matrix network"...but because it would bring even more devs and designers (and content writers for documentation!), which would bring continued improvements to the ecosystem of servers and clients/apps as well as the matrix protocol itself! (Obviously, massive shout outs to all who do this tough work already, but more eyes/hands makes the bucket of bugs shallow, right?) Plus, not unlike the spike in activity in 2016/2017 around the fediverse - primarily Mastodon, where nontrivial numbers of people started their presence on the fediverse away from FB, etc. - i hope lots more homeservers start appearing for folks to host their own matrix homeservers (or at least host it for/on behalf of their communities and such). And, if any spike in activity does not in fact occur, that's ok too...things seem to be growing slow and steady anyway for the matrix network. ;-)
  - platz 5y ago
    I see, so the moral cause you've identified is the opportunity to grab users from freenode and put them onto matrix. This is like when twitch streamers stab each other in the back over/for subs.
    - mxuribe 5y ago
      > the opportunity to grab users from freenode and put them onto matrix... While i certainly prefer matrix network, I have no desire to grab any users that don't wish to move to the matrix network if they don't want to. I merely made positive, hopeful comments that if users are abandoning freenode, that matrix network is an option, and that the matrix network can benefit from the influx...but the new users may akso benefit...but i'm not forcing anyone, nor am i trying to use morality. Of course freenode irc users can simply find or establish an alternative that leverages irc. I used and enjoyed irc since 1992, but i simply prefer matrix network and protocol (warts and all); and in fact i reserve the right to have that opinion. That's all.
sharken 5y ago
This gives a lot of context to the previous Freenode article and the resignations mentioned there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 Hostile takeovers are almost never a good thing.
donw 5y ago
For somebody with zero context: what are the implications of this?
- Ndymium 5y ago
  A bunch of people will probably move to libera.chat, some to Matrix, some won't care at all. Communities may splinter to smaller pieces. As for Freenode, it's not really clear what the new "owner"'s plans are and if they can administer it without the volunteers that left. I guess time will tell.
- gaoshan 5y ago
  a popular IRC network has been taken over by a private owner. The users don't like that and are leaving. It was around for a long time so for many of those users it's effecting them negatively. I would imagine that these users could start a new network? If you were not part of the community you are likely not impacted.
aliljet 5y ago
Pointing the entire community to a new server (ircs://irc.libera.chat/) is going to cause a huge disruption, maybe destroy the community altogether. I can't help but wonder if there's no better way. What a tragedy.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Bridge your IRC community to Matrix today for the best of both worlds.
- cheph 5y ago
  I dunno who the "We" is in "We are founding a new network with the same goals and ambitions to support foss and likeminded communities: libera.chat." But if it is the same people who mismanaged freenode into this joke then maybe nobody should go there. Just a heads up. I think this Andrew Lee person would have a tough time being worse than them. How long until they sell libera.chat for a pack of magic beans? I give it 2 years max.
  - psy-q 5y ago
    They were the ones opposed to this sale. The sale was basically not a sale but a hostile takeover, and the former staff have now created a non-profit organization under Swedish law to hold the new network so that this kind of thing can't happen again.
    - cheph 5y ago
      > under Swedish law What statute in Swedish law prohibits them from selling the network to someone who "totally gave his word" for a pack of beans?
ashneo76 5y ago
A. I am wondering if all of the volunteers are resigning. That would be great. B. I will move with libera. This shady hostile takeover wouldn't have to be just accepted by communities
icy 5y ago
Made the switch. I quite like the short cloaks: icy (znc@user/icy) Staff are a little overloaded, understandably. Nickserv works, so now's the time to grab that nick you couldn't get on Freenode!
- silicon2401 5y ago
  what did you switch to?
  - icy 5y ago
    irc.libera.chat:6697 (SSL)
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  How did you get the cloak?
  - icy 5y ago
    You can ask for one at #libera.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      #libera-cloak is the place to go now, by the way.
- kawsper 5y ago
  It seems like there's something wrong with NickServ: > 15:56 -NickServ(NickServ@services.libera.chat)- Sending email failed, sorry! Registration aborted It's probably just busy with the influx of new people :-)
  - psy-q 5y ago
    Yeah, it worked fine for me a bit later.
benrbray 5y ago
Possibly of interest, Edward Kmett posted [1] his thoughts on the issue to r/Haskell today as well. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nfqw0t/thoughts_on_the_state_of_the_freenode_irc_network/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nfqw0t/thoughts_on...
danpalmer 5y ago
I don't know about the process of the sale/takeover of Freenode, but I'm a long time PIA user and have a fair amount of trust and goodwill for London Trust Media (the owner of PIA and now Freenode). - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors - They don't seem to get into the "snake oil privacy" marketing that so many VPN providers seem to be doing - They have been fairly open with how their tech works and it all sounds reasonable - London Trust Media have sponsored the Open Rights Group (the UK's equivalent of the EFF) in the past and engaged in ORG events. It's hard to know how much you can trust an organisation as an outsider, but for me they tick most of the good/reasonable boxes. They may have messed Freenode around, but I'd be surprised if there was a significant danger to user privacy here.
- pull_my_finger 5y ago
  Have you noticed any significant changes in quality or transparency since the Kape acquisition? There was a lot of concern around that time. I was a happy customer until then, but I chose not to renew at my next term. I'm curious to hear your experience since.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    Good point, I hadn't considered this. The service quality has probably increased, product seems more active. As for the privacy/trust angle, I haven't seen as much public commenting from them but I haven't been looking for it. Seems fine so far.
- voxic11 5y ago
  London Trust Media was sold and most of those things were the doing of the old owners.
- ludocode 5y ago
  > - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors I used Private Internet Access for a long time. When they merged with Kape Technologies (resulting in the ludicrous situation of having Mark Karpelès as their CTO) I lost all faith in them and immediately switched to Mullvad. Having used both, I can tell you that Mullvad is far better designed. Mullvad has only account numbers, no usernames, emails or passwords. Creating an account is one click. Mullvad has an all-in-one VPN check page. Mullvad provides easy preconfigured OpenVPN configurations for any of their servers (you don't have to add your credentials among other things; as I understand PIA still just offers an "openvpn.zip" with a bunch of files you have to edit, which is error prone.) Mullvad is based in Sweden, not America. All of these things provide much better privacy than PIA. And on top of that I don't recall any scandals with Mullvad than resemble the merger with Kape or the current situation with Freenode. These events should make you question whether you should continue to trust PIA.
lxeiqr 5y ago
I wonder whether old and long-lasting communities that depend on Freenode (eg. #linux or #openbsd) are going to switch to the new network.
- smhenderson 5y ago
  #openbsd is already there, it was the first channel I joined. Not sure about #linux but #debian is there on the new server as well.
  - joeyh 5y ago
    The are #debian channels here and there, but the Debian project uses irc.oftc.net (aka irc.debian.org).
- bredren 5y ago
  #django has been / was a very responsive and friendly channel. Much more so than other frameworks du jour. I also wonder if that will move.
barneygale 5y ago
https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...
dhimes 5y ago
This sounds really bad, but I know nothing of the other side of the story. It's been a couple of years since I used freenode. I worked up some tests for Stripe integration, and followed a developer of something or other and bought him some whisky (Adam Shaw maybe? I can't recall). Anyway, is there a better network for finding these groups now?
thinkingemote 5y ago
It seems inevitable that any Good company with great TOS with promises to never turn can be bought and changed towards evil. We've seen it time and time again. It's inevitable? How can we structure these organisations from creation so that this cannot happen? freenode believed the purchaser promises. What should they have done differently?
- SamWhited 5y ago
  Be a worker-owned co-op from the get go so that one person can't just sell the whole thing. Or at least have a larger board be the legal representative and don't give the president or whomever the ability to sign contracts without other signoff. I don't know why or how this was possible with Freenode, but it's not hard to prevent.
  - SamWhited 5y ago
    (the internet suggests they may not have had the legal authority to sell off Freenode but taking it to court to prove that would be ruinously expensive for the volunteers; I don't know if this is actually the case or not though; maybe someone can provide them some pro-bono legal services since this network is such a core piece of infrastructure for so many OSS projects?)
- marcinzm 5y ago
  Make it a foundation/non-profit with some form of specific charter. Some sort of actual management structure with a board and distributed power. If you want even more safety have some sort of larger voting base that can replace the board via some process.
- lutoma 5y ago
  It seems to me like this is a shortcoming of the English (and American) legal system, where non-profit organizations and such can only be founded as "regular" companies and then tax-exempted. This means they are still subject to all the normal procedures surrounding companies like sales, and still tend to have one or a few owners who are solely in charge of everything. By comparison, many other European countries (Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, …) have specific types of legal entities for associations that have appropriate restrictions on what can be done with them. For example, they can generally not be sold, are required to be internally democratic with fixed statutes, usually (but not always) have open membership and an elected board. I think that would go a long way to fixing these recurrent issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization_laws_by_jurisdiction#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization_laws_by...
abhijat 5y ago
This may be a naive question but why would a vpn company buy an irc network? Is there an overlap?
- atatatat 5y ago
  Either: 1) community or 2) valuable data
ionwake 5y ago
Will startups move to another network?
toyg 5y ago
After going through a few logs, it looks like the crux of the matter is that things went bad when the previous head Chrystel left. Andrew Lee argues she was effectively pushed out by a gang of other ops, and he’s “taking it back” to “take it forward” with something that smells like cryptopayments or something. The admins say Lee, when Freenode Limited was created for admin purposes, originally swore precisely not to do what he’s now doing, and that he got lawyers involved to implement a hostile takeover. Just sad to see this happening, it looks like there is no possibility for mediation anymore. The result will likely be fragmentation, which probably weakens everyone, but in a way it’s all “very FOSS”, we’re just seeing a project fork.
dionian 5y ago
We got banned from freenode because ircops didn’t like our political speech in our private chat room .. then klined us for pointing out they permit the leftist political chat rooms. I’ve never been so revolted by literal fascists running irc networks. Too bad … the tech communities were decent. Hope they find a new home
- atatatat 5y ago
  Who's we...? Anyway, many Matrix rooms are welcoming of ignorant people of all flavors, ha — check it out.
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    The Left is probably the most ignorant political group despite being composed of generally great people because they all make the assumption that those who dare disagree do it out of ignorance or malice.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      This doesn't seem like a productive topic for...anyone.
BluSyn 5y ago
My (limited) understanding is Andrew Lee has been a large source of donations to Freenode for many years. As well as a significant benefactor to open source projects and founder of privacy focused services (PIA being one). So this ownership change may be simply an extension of that charity into a formal business arrangement. I don't know the particulars behind-the-scenes, just trying to not immediately assume the worst.
herodoturtle 5y ago
> * jess has quit (Quit: so long and thanks for all the fish) Poignant :-(
bjourne 5y ago
I have been on Freenode for the last 10 to 20 years but I have absolutely no clue what this is all about. Neither this resignation letter nor the last explains it very well other than that the resigning staff apparently wants me to quit Freenode and join their network instead. I see no compelling reason to do so. Understanding whether there is some "substance" to this drama appears completely impossible. [removed snip] Really, if you can't explain why your cause is just to someone like me, who cares a lot of software freedom, you will not reach a majority of Freenode's users either.
- RickHull 5y ago
  The resignation letter says there was a hostile takeover and bad faith actions by the new owner. Most of the staff has resigned in protest. Thus, the reputation that freenode built is likely not any indication for how it will perform and behave going forward.
  - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    My understanding of Freenode's reputation is it's always been a giant bag of drama by a select few running the show. Nobody wants to see their dirty laundry, but they persist in showing us.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I'd edit your comment and remove the snip about downvotes. It's a lame cheat code for upvotes. (I upvoted you regardless.) What I wanted to say was, I tried to join the new server and discovered it was down. So if they can't survive HN front page, I'm not sure it's a good idea to move decades-old communities to it. I'm in the same boat as you. Your best bet is to join #lesswrong and ask them about the implications, I think. They seem to care a lot about this.
- baryphonic 5y ago
  The key point seems to be that the new owner wants to harvest user data. If I were one of the staff commanded to violate users' expectations, I might also resign in protest. That being said, sifting that out from the messaging they've presented was not easy. Most of it seems like either posturing for negotiation (e.g. the line "I have code running on two planets," which is admittedly a strong statement, albeit less impressive once examined critically) or just dunking on the new owner for the amusement of Twitter followers and maybe a few people on HN. Regardless, most of it seems to be targeting an audience who already agrees with them, and not to inform and persuade those of us who don't know. If leaking IRC logs is the tactic du jour, it'd be much more effective if we had IRC logs where the disgruntled staffers repeatedly questioned the new owner about the substantive actions they have an issue with (e.g. harvesting user data for commercial purposes), and either got him to back down, admit or evade. That would tell a story that can transcend internecine organizational politics and/or tribalism. But, alas, the medium is the message, and so we get Twitter dunking.
ognarb 5y ago
More info from Fuchs: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006888.html https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006888.h... :( It's bad news.
mfer 5y ago
This is an example of why a well organized governance and legal standing matters for projects like this. If that were the case this situation would not have happened.
singpolyma3 5y ago
Just letting people know, if you or a project you know is looking for a new home because of this, I can hook you up with chatroom over XMPP and web + optional IRC bridging, no charge for open source or free culture: https://cheogram.com/freedomware-muc/ https://cheogram.com/freedomware-muc/
- jacob019 5y ago
  XMPP MUC is is fantastic, but it seems like the only public chats are for developing XMPP clients.
  - singpolyma3 5y ago
    There are a lot of those of course, but browsing https://search.jabber.network/ https://search.jabber.network/ I see for example: - xmpp:openhardware@conference.magicbroccoli.de?join for chatting about open hardware - xmpp:discuss@conference.soprani.ca?join for chatting about bridges and opening up the phone network - xmpp:floss@rooms.dismail.de?join for general FLOSS discussion - xmpp:thinkpad-user@rooms.dismail.de?join for people who love thinkpads - xmpp:libreparents@conference.singpolyma.net?join for discussion of the intersection of FLOSS life and parenting Probably more, and I only looked for ones in English for this list :)
    - jacob019 5y ago
      Not many though, and not much discussion going on there. It seems that German language MUCs are more popular. It would be nice to see more.
tarkin2 5y ago
IRC seems like drama central. I can’t say I understand the detail of this takeover and split. But the tone of all the messages are very dramatic. Why is that? Is it something inherent in the aggregated community of mods, channels and servers? Some communities seem ripe for drama and I have no idea why.
- yakubin 5y ago
  This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. There is more drama in issue trackers of random GitHub projects that surface once a month on HN. I don't know where this perception of IRC comes from. Such a comment shows up under every link commenting on the matter. But it's still just one case.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. How old are you? For my generation (40+), IRC and drama are basically synonyms. It seems to have subsumed a lot simply because younger folks don't use it as much as we did.
    - yakubin 5y ago
      23. Been using IRC on and off since I was 14.
      - dspillett 5y ago
        So since ~2012. I've not used IRC since before then so maybe things have been relatively calm in those nine years, but IRC has been around since 1988 and has a long history of drama arguably starting with the first big split in 1990. While not caring to know the details of past drama is fine, to be _completely_ unaware of it seems both rather myopic and somewhat naive IMO. Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? <snark type="unneccesary" how-unneccesary="probably completely" style="hyperbole-level:calc(Godwin-2); old-man-shouting-at:clouds;">I've not been aware of any world wars since I joined the world in 1978, have any really happened?</snark>
sandGorgon 5y ago
hey guys, could you please use a tld that can be protected by registry lock (not registrar lock). you are free to use libera.chat for your branding domain. But could you switch to something like liberachat.com for the actual server and turn on registry lock please (Safenames or Cloudflare,etc)
Lightkey 5y ago
Welp, don't feel like repeating every resignation letter, they are aggregated in this previous post that seems to have been buried: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926
emilfihlman 5y ago
Andrew Lee is also trying to disappear from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Lee_(entre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
related resignation post from Md that has links to others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208422
techolic 5y ago
> Some time ago, Christel, the former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party Couldn't help wondering - where did the money go? If it was sold for cash.
peter_retief 5y ago
Account dropped, really sorry to say goodbye after so many years!
xbar 5y ago
I officially consider FreeNode nodes hostile.
synergy20 5y ago
freenode is like a public utility for many developers, now one person with some cash suddenly owns it. maybe from now on each well-known essential OSS project like freenode should have a donation page and make it clear, unless it has enough fund to continue operations for the year its service will have to pause, so it can be self-sustainable for good. and yes make it a non-profit for tax purposes.
- dspillett 5y ago
  Having enough funds to survive a projected period of time in no way precludes management finding the idea of more funds[†] rather attractive, even if the projected survival period was effectively until some infinity. [†] for the project, for themselves, or some mix of both, apply your preferred level of cynicism here
0898 5y ago
Wait. An IRC network has employees?
- blibble 5y ago
  seemed like it had one, who sold it to some guy in exchange for a salary (without telling anyone) then buggered off when the consequences became clearer
- metreo 5y ago
  I wondered as well and I think they're just used to calling their contributor team members 'staff', like you needed to be voted in as a contributor then you are 'staff', apparently oftc does the same thing
supplemental 5y ago
Just use Slack. It's a lot more user friendly and inclusive.
- twiclo 5y ago
  This is a joke right?
  - metreo 5y ago
    or a massive troll on freenode
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
Not sure about people pushing matrix as an alternative. I tried out Matrix several weeks ago and hated everything about it. From the account creation process, shiny modern UI, channel finding options, activity level (since you are basically constantly logged in, channels with even quite a lot of users have next to no activity for days at a time), kind of activity (and most of it was really poor activity, like someone sharing a link, someone giving a thumbs up, and channel dead for another day) and I'm not sure I fancy large number of mobile phone users on any form of IRC replacement. It's complicated/convoluted enough to be for a tech crowd, and modern/shiny/complex enough to be a disgusting mess to someone coming from IRC. At least for me. Given more users and activity I still wouldn't like it. I might be wrong, but maybe this whole mess with Freenode won't be a big deal in the end. IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" for me, many channels are logged by some or most of their users, or even publicly online via some sites. As long as Freenode continues to work (in a technical sense), and mass migration of channels doesn't ensue, I see no point in stopping my use of it. I desperately hope matrix (or discord, which I haven't yet tried, but don't have much hope for either) won't be the answer. Maybe a switch to OFTC is an option for some channels. We will see.
- littlecranky67 5y ago
  > IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" True, like almost all nice network protocols and implementations in heavy use of the 90s (NNTP/Usenet, Mail, IRC amongst others) no one did foresee the privacy/spam wave that hit us when the internet became famous. I remember in Europes most used IRC network at that time - IRCnet - it was mandatory to run an identd server that would tell the user of the logged in system to the IRC server, and it would display it to all users (along with the IP address of course). Imagine such requirements today...
- xvilka 5y ago
  With Matrix there is also a lack of good lightweight clients and servers. The official client uses Electron. It will never be an alternative to the IRC with this attitude. There is a Weechat plugin but it's in Python...
  - 5y ago
ElectricMind 5y ago
Sounds like chaos that someone like "Fierce Nerds" would create. Keep it up.
duxup 5y ago
Why would someone want to buy freenode? Is there some monetization angle?
- pmlnr 5y ago
  Selling user data?
  - duxup 5y ago
    Is IRC user data of any value?
    - edm0nd 5y ago
      Only to law enforcement or government intelligence agencies IMO
bluedino 5y ago
Some channels have announced they are moving, some don't know yet. Hope this isn't another blow to IRC
vinodpandey7 5y ago
you can write whatever restrictions you want to apply to the company into its founding articles of association/memorandum, which are the legal documents which state what the company is allowed to do and how it is to be operated
hutrdvnj 5y ago
> You can connect to the new network at `irc.libera.chat`, ssl port 6697 (and the usual clearnet port). You might want to consider to shutdown the clearnet port, since it sends user passwords and private chat messages in plaintext over the internet.
breck 5y ago
> under a legally registered Swedish non-profit Thank you Sweden, again. Anyone have a good read why Sweden is always on the forefront of liberty and intellectual freedom?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Community transitions to irc.libera.chat seem to be starting and things are happening step by step. Note that currently irc.libera.chat is under a lot of load, and might take some time to get things organized/get load sorted/etc. As a minor upside: I'm seeing people live who possibly haven't actually been online for a long while!
almostbasic 5y ago
Private Internet Access has no connection to Freenode at all anymore. It WAS owned by London Trust Media, which also owned PIA, however Kape Technologies acquired PIA in December of 2019 and has had no connection since then. We do not have any involvement or knowledge of any takeover of Freenode.
josteink 5y ago
This story is just so I’m clear and leaves me full of questions. It’s a complete mess, despite the numerous semi-official statements trying to clear things up. Things I’m wondering about: - why was freenode being sold in the first place? - for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale? - Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves? - why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network? - Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold? Can anyone please help me understand?
marcan_42 5y ago
Apparently London Trust Media, the company founded by Andrew Lee and which purchased Freenode, has now rebranded under the name "Imperial Family Companies". londontrustmedia.com now redirects to https://imperialfamily.com/ https://imperialfamily.com/ and it lists Freenode under Technology. Andrew Lee also claims to be the crown prince of Korea, which was no doubt the inspiration for this move: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-12-01/south-korean-royals-buy-thousand-oaks-home-12-6-million https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-12-0... Lee also hired Mark Karpelès (of Mt.Gox infamy) as CTO of London Trust Media. and he is still listed as CTO of Shells.com, which is also owned by Imperial Family Companies: https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team Edit: Comment was moved, reworded to make it work in its new context.
- vmception 5y ago
  Any thoughts on these observations?
- NopeNotToday 5y ago
  londontrustmedia.com I read that as "I on don't trust media" the first time.
- rideontime 5y ago
  As someone who followed the Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange drama as it unfolded, I'm amazed anyone would hire him for a technical role.
  - edm0nd 5y ago
    If he lived anywhere else besides Japan, he would have done jail time for the amount of fraud he did. He deserved that and got off light IMO. Dude is a complete joke and useless.
    - gerikson 5y ago
      He spent around 1 year in custody before being released on bail. And he's sentenced to 30 months, suspended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s#Arrest_and_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s#Arrest_and_... From all I've read, custody before sentencing in Japan is no picknick.
Scarbutt 5y ago
What economic value does Freenode has?
- lozenge 5y ago
  None now that all of its team and channels will move to another network.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    One of the benefits of old decentralized protocols: The community is not locked in and can move as nomads, so it can't be sold. At best they get an archive of stale information.
- esjeon 5y ago
  Network + personal info, I guess...? But a catch here is that most people in the network are proficient in technology, which makes it difficult to abuse them like how Facebook does to its users.
  - metreo 5y ago
    I guess only if they know about it though
ohgreatwtf 5y ago
Honestly this just feels like karma. I'm banned from some rooms for being too eccentric and making too many waves with some of the things I say. Those people then proceed to ban me from other rooms. I don't violate TOS, I'm not(usually) a troll, but I am a free spirit who is eccentric and chooses to express contentious views that are not de rigueur acceptable among redditors and sensitive greybeards. The fact that, anonymously joining some such rooms on freenode, I notice those who were hostile to me looking to leave- I find that joyously karmatic. By all means, andrew should take the network in a new direction.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rubicks 5y ago
Welp, we had a good run, far longer than I expected.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  It still the exact same thing in libera.chat
macksd 5y ago
I'm a little confused by all this controversy. I'm no stranger to people trying to exert secret influence in open-source projects, and put themselves in positions of power to satisfy egos, etc. and I certainly don't like that kind of thing. But what was actually done on Freenode? I've read several of the volunteer resignations and it seems to just be that they're obviously now in control and people don't like that. Is there something more concrete they've done that points to a particular ulterior motive or the negative impact of their ownership? Am I just missing some historical baggage?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It seems Lee actively sought to take over the operational access to the network, brought in staff outside of the existing staff process, and started exercising editorial control over the Freenode website. So if you mean "is there actual end-user operational impact to the network", it seems that there isn't so far, but the way Lee took over everything does not bode well and I completely understand why the existing staff resigned. When staff processes change so suddenly and abruptly, end-user visible changes tend to follow, and in any case this warrants significant loss of trust.
designium 5y ago
They might as well put "Arasaka" logo into their website (for those who played Cyberpunk 2077).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Looks like the relevant previous threads are: Freenode resignation is official, not a draft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 - May 2021 (10 comments) The Freenode resignation FAQ, or: “what the fuck is going on?” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169301 - May 2021 (8 comments) I am resigning along with most other Freenode staff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 - May 2021 (262 comments) Edit: oh - there's also this currently on the front page: Welcome to Libera Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734 - May 2021 (254 comments)
unixhero 5y ago
Speaking of IRC, what about EFNET and Dalnet?
metreo 5y ago
does anyone have a sense for the daily active users across freenode? asking for a friend ;)
kseifried 5y ago
Just a heads up I assigned CVE-2021-1000189 https://json.distributedweaknessfiling.org/CVE-2021-1000189 https://json.distributedweaknessfiling.org/CVE-2021-1000189, especially in light of the data harvesting concerns and DoS (offering people the ability to arbitrarily k-line people) and the simple fact that a good solution exists in the form of https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/
sswam 5y ago
Community infrastructure should be owned and run by the community.
Black101 5y ago
There are pretty good at spamming the libera network... Even get spammed on non-freenode networks and in my emails.

613 points by 4ad 5y ago

Fuck Andrew Lee

In 21-ish years on OPN/Freenode it was one constant in rapidly changing tech landscape. Sad to see it go this way, and much thanks to the staff for taking it thus far.

Sebb767 5y ago

It's interesting to me that the draft was censored and mentioned a buyer, while this one only talks about control. For me, it paints the situation worse. Still sad to see FreeNode fall. This will lead to a lot of split communities and dead links. EDIT: Fuchs finds some harsher words[0]: > In the past few weeks, this has changed[2], and the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know the substance of this legal threat as it contains some kind of gag order preventing its broader discussion within staff. The democratically elected heads of their respective teams, development, infrastructure, projects and communities were removed by force[3] and have been informed that they are not entitled to act in their respective capacity. > [...] A contract in which christel, former head of staff, allegedly sold freenode, surfaced. And while I personally think that this would have neither included any servers or code or user data, since that did not belong to christel to sell, I am not a lawyer and apparently some of our volunteers got pressured very hard and their personal life could have been ruined easily should we have fought against this apparent contract. This makes it look far more hostile than the linked note. Sad to see. [0] https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt

EE84M3i 5y ago
>the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know the substance of this legal threat as it contains some kind of gag order preventing its broader discussion within staff. Is there any more context about this? I'd be interested to read logs. Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode?
- puyoxyz 5y ago
  Log (#freenode): https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4 https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c... Log from after that one (#freenode-staff-discussion): https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...
  - EE84M3i 5y ago
    I skimmed these logs and it is not clear what legal order they are talking about or in what way there is a gag. Are there specific lines in these logs that go into detail?
- bsedlm 5y ago
  > Are they saying Andrew Lee got an NSL for freenode? no of course they are not saying that, they would be punished if they did (because it would be illegal). now, that such a thing exists in a "democracy"... is a topic on its own broader scope.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    Apparently it’s in the UK, where judges are prompt to issue “superinjunctions” where even discussing the injunction is contempt of court and can incur a prison sentence. Whether a monarchy without a written constitution, or separation of Church and State can be considered a democracy is left as an exercise to the reader.
    - Pet_Ant 5y ago
      The constitution is entirely written, we're just not sure which documents are part of it...
      - jkaplowitz 5y ago
        Source? Everything I've ever heard about the UK constitution is that it has both written and unwritten elements. Indeed, no statute or court ruling even defines the important head of government role of Prime Minister.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Chris2048 5y ago
A lot of questions here: > christel, now former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party why was the previous owner/director(s) of this company (presumably christel) and what rights did they have to sell - and where did the money go? EDIT: yes https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/10308021 https://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/10308021 also, it is claimed by AL that christel was harrassed. Fuchs contests this. > it seems that Andrew Lee - despite zero involvement in the day-to-day operations of Freenode - has decided that ownership of the domains entitles him to ownership of Freenode as a network and community, and intended to give his own people administrative access to the network so, did AL get access to "the network" and if so, how? It seems AL sponsored ~3k/month, but did they also sponsor, and thus control, the hardware too? > this company has absolutely no operational involvement. It does not own any servers, it does not employ any of the staff Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from? > The democratically elected ... were removed by force[3] The link shows the 'people' page listing different people in various roles. What does "changed by force means"? That someone was able to edit a webpage? Or something more (like access revoked)? How did the website content get changed? By someone with access to the original site, or a clone? Was the domain redirected at any point? EDIT: AL claims "tomaw" changed the staff page. Fuchs says he made the change - which further complicates what is meant by "by force"... > have been informed that they are not entitled to act in their respective capacity How, and by who?
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  > Then why are staff resigning? What are they resigning from? Freenode the vaguely defined project staff, not Freenode the company staff.
ilaksh 5y ago
Freenode didn't fall. They just had to change to a new name. It's a better name anyway. People that are not able to adjust to a new name, you should feel sorry for them. Dang should pin an announcement about the new domain for a few weeks. Or all the subreddits and other forums the maintainers use can do something like that. The word will get out.
- juancb 5y ago
  I think this is a matter of opinion but how is libera or libera.chat a better name than FreeNode? How do you even pronounce that? Lee-Bear-Ah? Lee-Bera? Libra? Leebra? Liberia? That last one is a joke. In Latin Libera is to deliver and pronounced Lee-Bera In Spanish Libera is to liberate and pronounced Lee-Bear-Ah I can't say either of those roll off the tongue in either language and any English mispronunciation of it is just awful. Lee-brah and the like to me is about as grating as Tay-Co (taco), Jal-Ah-Peeno (jalapeño) or Ques-Aaadla (quesadilla). This is a major loss of brand for the network. I'm sure I'll get downvoted into oblivion.
  - tovej 5y ago
    OTOH freenode sounds like freedom fries to me, like American political talk.

supermatt 5y ago

Why was this ever a commercial entity?

Sebb767 5y ago
> This was done, from what we were informed, to organize our freenode #live conferences, that required a legal body. Source: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
- oauea 5y ago
  With hindsight that sounds like an excuse to make some money.

IceWreck 5y ago

I just got a message from the staff on freenode: [Global Notice] Hi all. It feels like my moral responsibility to inform all users that administrative control of freenode and its user data will soon change hands, and I will be resigning from freenode staff effective immediately. It's been an honour to help you all. Sad to see a hostile takeover of Freenode. Its controlled by Private Internet Access now.

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
What’s the connection to PIA? EDIT: Andrew Lee is founder of PIA. From Wikipedia: > The company was founded by the American-born Andrew Lee.[6][7] London Trust Media also owns the Freenode IRC network.[8][failed verification]
- wut42 5y ago
  It's not owned by PIA now. PIA and London Trust Media was sold by Lee; who moved most other holdings to "Imperial Family Companies", which is effectively the owner of freenode: https://imperialfamily.com https://imperialfamily.com
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sct202 5y ago
    So interesting it seems he's going all in on the royalty branding using Korea's former royal house's seal. I saw a news article of him being named 'crown prince' of Korea by one of the pretenders to the throne despite not being closely related.
    - esjeon 5y ago
      A related article (by SCMP): https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/3124523/real-life-k-drama-how-did-andrew-lee-go-tech https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/312... Very cheap.

trollied 5y ago

Previous discussion, from when the draft was posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338

narag 5y ago

I had not used IRC in a long time, just checked libera.chat... it doesn't work ("software caused connection abort")

JulianWasTaken 5y ago
It's irc.libera.chat, and seems to work fine here, though servers are understandably dealing with a surge (particularly on nick registration).
- narag 5y ago
  I did use "irc." before and tried again now. No dice. Oh, the previous comment was downvoted. How nice!
ecmascript 5y ago
It's down right now
- metreo 5y ago
  I feel sorry for their servers rn

tazjin 5y ago

If this leads to a mass exodus from Freenode, it'll probably significantly reduce overall IRC usage. Communities will fracture, people will set up random splinter networks that will die off in a few months, and lots of open-source projects that already want to be using something Javascripty like Slack or Discord are going to use this as the motivating thing to make the switch. Personally I'm staying put on Freenode because I don't see a lot of user-facing impact potential here, and IRC was already essentially untrusted/public (yes, even your private messages - you don't really know who is relaying them and how trustworthy they are).

IshKebab 5y ago
IRC is already dying anyway. This will just speed up the process.
orblivion 5y ago
How many would move to Matrix?
- newvectorllc 5y ago
  Why does it matter? Matrix is no IRC. Fewer clients, way more complex protocol, the identity server is centralized, only one complete server implementation exists (and it seems like that's the only one that will ever exist, other attempts appear dead, despite the list on matrix.org) and worse than Freenode being owned by private capital, all of Matrix is controlled by New Vector LLC -- the protocol, the clients, and the biggest servers, and they operate the main identity server so they can keep track of your phone number or email address and map it to your Matrix ID. (I wonder when they'll start selling that data?) If this situation with Freenode makes you move to Matrix you're choosing to move to a network with all the same problems you're fleeing, but magnified Oh but there's one more thing about Matrix If you don't like it, the CEO of the company will come argue with you about it here I don't check for replies to my comments on HN because this community is too toxic but I'll bet Arathorn eventually comments to tell me I'm wrong. Maybe he'll promise that they don't sell the vector.im identity data. I don't trust him, anyway.

kuroguro 5y ago

Q: Do accounts/channels that have been inactive for years get purged automatically? Used to have some stuff there, not sure if it's worth the time to find the correct emails/passwords.

silicon2401 5y ago
Piggybacking off this, what's a good way to archive Freenode content? I think I may still have some content on there from over a decade ago
- duskwuff 5y ago
  You're probably thinking of the wrong service. Freenode is an IRC chat network, not a web site or other service with permanently stored "content".
helb 5y ago
Looks like inactive accounts are removed, NickServ doesn't know me anymore.
- kuroguro 5y ago
  Yep, same, thanks! NickServ didn't know any of the usernames I think I had.

supermatt 5y ago

A gem from one of the linked chatlogs (Ariadne is security chair for Alpine linux and a prolific FOSS contributer): [23:07:35] <Ariadne> i mean, i have important work to do. dealing with an IRC network is not really something i want to be doing this decade outside of fucking around for fun with IRCX [23:07:51] <Ariadne> i have code running on two planets

aerovistae 5y ago
Who is that? And I guess now that I think about it, who is trying to poach him or her? I have no context for this comment and I'm probably not the only one.
- Ndymium 5y ago
  There is more context and link to the full(er) log here: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1393006479700078595 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1393006479700078595 I will not attempt to summarise it as I don't have enough information on the situation.
- rakshazi 5y ago
  https://ariadne.space/about https://ariadne.space/about - she's pretty cool
gnulinux 5y ago
I mean, she is right.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
That last line is fucking legendary. Thanks for posting it.
juliend2 5y ago
> i have code running on two planets Pretty cool. I wonder which one of her libraries (if that's what she's referring to) is being used on a Mars rover.

ddevault 5y ago

I have moved my channels to libera.chat: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-05-19-liberachat/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-05-19-liberachat/ I set up a bot which herds people on Freenode, shoot me a PM (ddevault) if you want me to /join it to your channel as well.

blibble 5y ago

I submitted this link under the title "freenode IRC network purchased by VPN company PIA" back in 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101538 it hit the top of the front page, and people complained about my use of the word "purchased" (including freenode staff now that seem to be extremely upset...): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102030 needless to say the title was edited...

snthd 5y ago
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history/MzE3NTcyNzE2M2FkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... Shows Mr Lee aquired >50% voting rights in 2017. (via https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10308021/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...)
- 88 5y ago
  From what I understood of the previous (draft) resignation notes, there was a misunderstanding/disagreement over what (if any) Freenode assets actually belonged to that limited company.
  - wut42 5y ago
    Tomaw fought legally with Lee to get the sale contract from what I've read; and apparently it _does_ legitimately own the network.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      By "network", do you mean the domains? What did the sale contract say?
      - nabakin 5y ago
        He means the irc network. The servers which one connects to when using irc. The freenode network is an irc network that one can connect to in order to chat but there's a freenode domain that acts as a client to the network which it seems freenode Ltd (of which Andrew is now the only member on the board) owns

Thorentis 5y ago

Perhaps this could be the rise of Matrix many of us have been waiting for? I hope many freenode channel operators and admins encourage people in that direction, rather than trying to start alternative IRC networks that will die out.

mxuribe 5y ago
I sure hope so! ...Not only because "yay, more people on the matrix network"...but because it would bring even more devs and designers (and content writers for documentation!), which would bring continued improvements to the ecosystem of servers and clients/apps as well as the matrix protocol itself! (Obviously, massive shout outs to all who do this tough work already, but more eyes/hands makes the bucket of bugs shallow, right?) Plus, not unlike the spike in activity in 2016/2017 around the fediverse - primarily Mastodon, where nontrivial numbers of people started their presence on the fediverse away from FB, etc. - i hope lots more homeservers start appearing for folks to host their own matrix homeservers (or at least host it for/on behalf of their communities and such). And, if any spike in activity does not in fact occur, that's ok too...things seem to be growing slow and steady anyway for the matrix network. ;-)
- platz 5y ago
  I see, so the moral cause you've identified is the opportunity to grab users from freenode and put them onto matrix. This is like when twitch streamers stab each other in the back over/for subs.
  - mxuribe 5y ago
    > the opportunity to grab users from freenode and put them onto matrix... While i certainly prefer matrix network, I have no desire to grab any users that don't wish to move to the matrix network if they don't want to. I merely made positive, hopeful comments that if users are abandoning freenode, that matrix network is an option, and that the matrix network can benefit from the influx...but the new users may akso benefit...but i'm not forcing anyone, nor am i trying to use morality. Of course freenode irc users can simply find or establish an alternative that leverages irc. I used and enjoyed irc since 1992, but i simply prefer matrix network and protocol (warts and all); and in fact i reserve the right to have that opinion. That's all.

sharken 5y ago

This gives a lot of context to the previous Freenode article and the resignations mentioned there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 Hostile takeovers are almost never a good thing.

donw 5y ago

For somebody with zero context: what are the implications of this?

Ndymium 5y ago
A bunch of people will probably move to libera.chat, some to Matrix, some won't care at all. Communities may splinter to smaller pieces. As for Freenode, it's not really clear what the new "owner"'s plans are and if they can administer it without the volunteers that left. I guess time will tell.
gaoshan 5y ago
a popular IRC network has been taken over by a private owner. The users don't like that and are leaving. It was around for a long time so for many of those users it's effecting them negatively. I would imagine that these users could start a new network? If you were not part of the community you are likely not impacted.

aliljet 5y ago

Pointing the entire community to a new server (ircs://irc.libera.chat/) is going to cause a huge disruption, maybe destroy the community altogether. I can't help but wonder if there's no better way. What a tragedy.

atatatat 5y ago
Bridge your IRC community to Matrix today for the best of both worlds.
cheph 5y ago
I dunno who the "We" is in "We are founding a new network with the same goals and ambitions to support foss and likeminded communities: libera.chat." But if it is the same people who mismanaged freenode into this joke then maybe nobody should go there. Just a heads up. I think this Andrew Lee person would have a tough time being worse than them. How long until they sell libera.chat for a pack of magic beans? I give it 2 years max.
- psy-q 5y ago
  They were the ones opposed to this sale. The sale was basically not a sale but a hostile takeover, and the former staff have now created a non-profit organization under Swedish law to hold the new network so that this kind of thing can't happen again.
  - cheph 5y ago
    > under Swedish law What statute in Swedish law prohibits them from selling the network to someone who "totally gave his word" for a pack of beans?

ashneo76 5y ago

A. I am wondering if all of the volunteers are resigning. That would be great. B. I will move with libera. This shady hostile takeover wouldn't have to be just accepted by communities

icy 5y ago

Made the switch. I quite like the short cloaks: icy (znc@user/icy) Staff are a little overloaded, understandably. Nickserv works, so now's the time to grab that nick you couldn't get on Freenode!

silicon2401 5y ago
what did you switch to?
- icy 5y ago
  irc.libera.chat:6697 (SSL)
wizzwizz4 5y ago
How did you get the cloak?
- icy 5y ago
  You can ask for one at #libera.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    #libera-cloak is the place to go now, by the way.
kawsper 5y ago
It seems like there's something wrong with NickServ: > 15:56 -NickServ(NickServ@services.libera.chat)- Sending email failed, sorry! Registration aborted It's probably just busy with the influx of new people :-)
- psy-q 5y ago
  Yeah, it worked fine for me a bit later.

benrbray 5y ago

Possibly of interest, Edward Kmett posted [1] his thoughts on the issue to r/Haskell today as well. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nfqw0t/thoughts_on_the_state_of_the_freenode_irc_network/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nfqw0t/thoughts_on...

danpalmer 5y ago

I don't know about the process of the sale/takeover of Freenode, but I'm a long time PIA user and have a fair amount of trust and goodwill for London Trust Media (the owner of PIA and now Freenode). - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors - They don't seem to get into the "snake oil privacy" marketing that so many VPN providers seem to be doing - They have been fairly open with how their tech works and it all sounds reasonable - London Trust Media have sponsored the Open Rights Group (the UK's equivalent of the EFF) in the past and engaged in ORG events. It's hard to know how much you can trust an organisation as an outsider, but for me they tick most of the good/reasonable boxes. They may have messed Freenode around, but I'd be surprised if there was a significant danger to user privacy here.

pull_my_finger 5y ago
Have you noticed any significant changes in quality or transparency since the Kape acquisition? There was a lot of concern around that time. I was a happy customer until then, but I chose not to renew at my next term. I'm curious to hear your experience since.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  Good point, I hadn't considered this. The service quality has probably increased, product seems more active. As for the privacy/trust angle, I haven't seen as much public commenting from them but I haven't been looking for it. Seems fine so far.
voxic11 5y ago
London Trust Media was sold and most of those things were the doing of the old owners.
ludocode 5y ago
> - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors I used Private Internet Access for a long time. When they merged with Kape Technologies (resulting in the ludicrous situation of having Mark Karpelès as their CTO) I lost all faith in them and immediately switched to Mullvad. Having used both, I can tell you that Mullvad is far better designed. Mullvad has only account numbers, no usernames, emails or passwords. Creating an account is one click. Mullvad has an all-in-one VPN check page. Mullvad provides easy preconfigured OpenVPN configurations for any of their servers (you don't have to add your credentials among other things; as I understand PIA still just offers an "openvpn.zip" with a bunch of files you have to edit, which is error prone.) Mullvad is based in Sweden, not America. All of these things provide much better privacy than PIA. And on top of that I don't recall any scandals with Mullvad than resemble the merger with Kape or the current situation with Freenode. These events should make you question whether you should continue to trust PIA.

lxeiqr 5y ago

I wonder whether old and long-lasting communities that depend on Freenode (eg. #linux or #openbsd) are going to switch to the new network.

smhenderson 5y ago
#openbsd is already there, it was the first channel I joined. Not sure about #linux but #debian is there on the new server as well.
- joeyh 5y ago
  The are #debian channels here and there, but the Debian project uses irc.oftc.net (aka irc.debian.org).
bredren 5y ago
#django has been / was a very responsive and friendly channel. Much more so than other frameworks du jour. I also wonder if that will move.

barneygale 5y ago

https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...

dhimes 5y ago

This sounds really bad, but I know nothing of the other side of the story. It's been a couple of years since I used freenode. I worked up some tests for Stripe integration, and followed a developer of something or other and bought him some whisky (Adam Shaw maybe? I can't recall). Anyway, is there a better network for finding these groups now?

thinkingemote 5y ago

It seems inevitable that any Good company with great TOS with promises to never turn can be bought and changed towards evil. We've seen it time and time again. It's inevitable? How can we structure these organisations from creation so that this cannot happen? freenode believed the purchaser promises. What should they have done differently?

SamWhited 5y ago
Be a worker-owned co-op from the get go so that one person can't just sell the whole thing. Or at least have a larger board be the legal representative and don't give the president or whomever the ability to sign contracts without other signoff. I don't know why or how this was possible with Freenode, but it's not hard to prevent.
- SamWhited 5y ago
  (the internet suggests they may not have had the legal authority to sell off Freenode but taking it to court to prove that would be ruinously expensive for the volunteers; I don't know if this is actually the case or not though; maybe someone can provide them some pro-bono legal services since this network is such a core piece of infrastructure for so many OSS projects?)
marcinzm 5y ago
Make it a foundation/non-profit with some form of specific charter. Some sort of actual management structure with a board and distributed power. If you want even more safety have some sort of larger voting base that can replace the board via some process.
lutoma 5y ago
It seems to me like this is a shortcoming of the English (and American) legal system, where non-profit organizations and such can only be founded as "regular" companies and then tax-exempted. This means they are still subject to all the normal procedures surrounding companies like sales, and still tend to have one or a few owners who are solely in charge of everything. By comparison, many other European countries (Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, …) have specific types of legal entities for associations that have appropriate restrictions on what can be done with them. For example, they can generally not be sold, are required to be internally democratic with fixed statutes, usually (but not always) have open membership and an elected board. I think that would go a long way to fixing these recurrent issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization_laws_by_jurisdiction#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization_laws_by...

abhijat 5y ago

This may be a naive question but why would a vpn company buy an irc network? Is there an overlap?

atatatat 5y ago
Either: 1) community or 2) valuable data

ionwake 5y ago

Will startups move to another network?

toyg 5y ago

After going through a few logs, it looks like the crux of the matter is that things went bad when the previous head Chrystel left. Andrew Lee argues she was effectively pushed out by a gang of other ops, and he’s “taking it back” to “take it forward” with something that smells like cryptopayments or something. The admins say Lee, when Freenode Limited was created for admin purposes, originally swore precisely not to do what he’s now doing, and that he got lawyers involved to implement a hostile takeover. Just sad to see this happening, it looks like there is no possibility for mediation anymore. The result will likely be fragmentation, which probably weakens everyone, but in a way it’s all “very FOSS”, we’re just seeing a project fork.

dionian 5y ago

We got banned from freenode because ircops didn’t like our political speech in our private chat room .. then klined us for pointing out they permit the leftist political chat rooms. I’ve never been so revolted by literal fascists running irc networks. Too bad … the tech communities were decent. Hope they find a new home

atatatat 5y ago
Who's we...? Anyway, many Matrix rooms are welcoming of ignorant people of all flavors, ha — check it out.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  The Left is probably the most ignorant political group despite being composed of generally great people because they all make the assumption that those who dare disagree do it out of ignorance or malice.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    This doesn't seem like a productive topic for...anyone.

BluSyn 5y ago

My (limited) understanding is Andrew Lee has been a large source of donations to Freenode for many years. As well as a significant benefactor to open source projects and founder of privacy focused services (PIA being one). So this ownership change may be simply an extension of that charity into a formal business arrangement. I don't know the particulars behind-the-scenes, just trying to not immediately assume the worst.

herodoturtle 5y ago

> * jess has quit (Quit: so long and thanks for all the fish) Poignant :-(

bjourne 5y ago

I have been on Freenode for the last 10 to 20 years but I have absolutely no clue what this is all about. Neither this resignation letter nor the last explains it very well other than that the resigning staff apparently wants me to quit Freenode and join their network instead. I see no compelling reason to do so. Understanding whether there is some "substance" to this drama appears completely impossible. [removed snip] Really, if you can't explain why your cause is just to someone like me, who cares a lot of software freedom, you will not reach a majority of Freenode's users either.

RickHull 5y ago
The resignation letter says there was a hostile takeover and bad faith actions by the new owner. Most of the staff has resigned in protest. Thus, the reputation that freenode built is likely not any indication for how it will perform and behave going forward.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  My understanding of Freenode's reputation is it's always been a giant bag of drama by a select few running the show. Nobody wants to see their dirty laundry, but they persist in showing us.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I'd edit your comment and remove the snip about downvotes. It's a lame cheat code for upvotes. (I upvoted you regardless.) What I wanted to say was, I tried to join the new server and discovered it was down. So if they can't survive HN front page, I'm not sure it's a good idea to move decades-old communities to it. I'm in the same boat as you. Your best bet is to join #lesswrong and ask them about the implications, I think. They seem to care a lot about this.
baryphonic 5y ago
The key point seems to be that the new owner wants to harvest user data. If I were one of the staff commanded to violate users' expectations, I might also resign in protest. That being said, sifting that out from the messaging they've presented was not easy. Most of it seems like either posturing for negotiation (e.g. the line "I have code running on two planets," which is admittedly a strong statement, albeit less impressive once examined critically) or just dunking on the new owner for the amusement of Twitter followers and maybe a few people on HN. Regardless, most of it seems to be targeting an audience who already agrees with them, and not to inform and persuade those of us who don't know. If leaking IRC logs is the tactic du jour, it'd be much more effective if we had IRC logs where the disgruntled staffers repeatedly questioned the new owner about the substantive actions they have an issue with (e.g. harvesting user data for commercial purposes), and either got him to back down, admit or evade. That would tell a story that can transcend internecine organizational politics and/or tribalism. But, alas, the medium is the message, and so we get Twitter dunking.

ognarb 5y ago

More info from Fuchs: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006888.html https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006888.h... :( It's bad news.

mfer 5y ago

This is an example of why a well organized governance and legal standing matters for projects like this. If that were the case this situation would not have happened.

singpolyma3 5y ago

Just letting people know, if you or a project you know is looking for a new home because of this, I can hook you up with chatroom over XMPP and web + optional IRC bridging, no charge for open source or free culture: https://cheogram.com/freedomware-muc/ https://cheogram.com/freedomware-muc/

jacob019 5y ago
XMPP MUC is is fantastic, but it seems like the only public chats are for developing XMPP clients.
- singpolyma3 5y ago
  There are a lot of those of course, but browsing https://search.jabber.network/ https://search.jabber.network/ I see for example: - xmpp:openhardware@conference.magicbroccoli.de?join for chatting about open hardware - xmpp:discuss@conference.soprani.ca?join for chatting about bridges and opening up the phone network - xmpp:floss@rooms.dismail.de?join for general FLOSS discussion - xmpp:thinkpad-user@rooms.dismail.de?join for people who love thinkpads - xmpp:libreparents@conference.singpolyma.net?join for discussion of the intersection of FLOSS life and parenting Probably more, and I only looked for ones in English for this list :)
  - jacob019 5y ago
    Not many though, and not much discussion going on there. It seems that German language MUCs are more popular. It would be nice to see more.

tarkin2 5y ago

IRC seems like drama central. I can’t say I understand the detail of this takeover and split. But the tone of all the messages are very dramatic. Why is that? Is it something inherent in the aggregated community of mods, channels and servers? Some communities seem ripe for drama and I have no idea why.

yakubin 5y ago
This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. There is more drama in issue trackers of random GitHub projects that surface once a month on HN. I don't know where this perception of IRC comes from. Such a comment shows up under every link commenting on the matter. But it's still just one case.
- toyg 5y ago
  > This is the first IRC drama I'm hearing about. How old are you? For my generation (40+), IRC and drama are basically synonyms. It seems to have subsumed a lot simply because younger folks don't use it as much as we did.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    23. Been using IRC on and off since I was 14.
    - dspillett 5y ago
      So since ~2012. I've not used IRC since before then so maybe things have been relatively calm in those nine years, but IRC has been around since 1988 and has a long history of drama arguably starting with the first big split in 1990. While not caring to know the details of past drama is fine, to be _completely_ unaware of it seems both rather myopic and somewhat naive IMO. Have you never taken any interest in the history of the tools you use or the Internet generally? <snark type="unneccesary" how-unneccesary="probably completely" style="hyperbole-level:calc(Godwin-2); old-man-shouting-at:clouds;">I've not been aware of any world wars since I joined the world in 1978, have any really happened?</snark>

sandGorgon 5y ago

hey guys, could you please use a tld that can be protected by registry lock (not registrar lock). you are free to use libera.chat for your branding domain. But could you switch to something like liberachat.com for the actual server and turn on registry lock please (Safenames or Cloudflare,etc)

Lightkey 5y ago

Welp, don't feel like repeating every resignation letter, they are aggregated in this previous post that seems to have been buried: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926

emilfihlman 5y ago

Andrew Lee is also trying to disappear from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Lee_(entre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

related resignation post from Md that has links to others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208422

techolic 5y ago

> Some time ago, Christel, the former head of freenode staff sold `freenode ltd` (a holding company) to a third party Couldn't help wondering - where did the money go? If it was sold for cash.

peter_retief 5y ago

Account dropped, really sorry to say goodbye after so many years!

xbar 5y ago

I officially consider FreeNode nodes hostile.

synergy20 5y ago

freenode is like a public utility for many developers, now one person with some cash suddenly owns it. maybe from now on each well-known essential OSS project like freenode should have a donation page and make it clear, unless it has enough fund to continue operations for the year its service will have to pause, so it can be self-sustainable for good. and yes make it a non-profit for tax purposes.

dspillett 5y ago
Having enough funds to survive a projected period of time in no way precludes management finding the idea of more funds[†] rather attractive, even if the projected survival period was effectively until some infinity. [†] for the project, for themselves, or some mix of both, apply your preferred level of cynicism here

0898 5y ago

Wait. An IRC network has employees?

blibble 5y ago
seemed like it had one, who sold it to some guy in exchange for a salary (without telling anyone) then buggered off when the consequences became clearer
metreo 5y ago
I wondered as well and I think they're just used to calling their contributor team members 'staff', like you needed to be voted in as a contributor then you are 'staff', apparently oftc does the same thing

supplemental 5y ago

Just use Slack. It's a lot more user friendly and inclusive.

twiclo 5y ago
This is a joke right?
- metreo 5y ago
  or a massive troll on freenode

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago

Not sure about people pushing matrix as an alternative. I tried out Matrix several weeks ago and hated everything about it. From the account creation process, shiny modern UI, channel finding options, activity level (since you are basically constantly logged in, channels with even quite a lot of users have next to no activity for days at a time), kind of activity (and most of it was really poor activity, like someone sharing a link, someone giving a thumbs up, and channel dead for another day) and I'm not sure I fancy large number of mobile phone users on any form of IRC replacement. It's complicated/convoluted enough to be for a tech crowd, and modern/shiny/complex enough to be a disgusting mess to someone coming from IRC. At least for me. Given more users and activity I still wouldn't like it. I might be wrong, but maybe this whole mess with Freenode won't be a big deal in the end. IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" for me, many channels are logged by some or most of their users, or even publicly online via some sites. As long as Freenode continues to work (in a technical sense), and mass migration of channels doesn't ensue, I see no point in stopping my use of it. I desperately hope matrix (or discord, which I haven't yet tried, but don't have much hope for either) won't be the answer. Maybe a switch to OFTC is an option for some channels. We will see.

littlecranky67 5y ago
> IRC never held a particular promise of "privacy" True, like almost all nice network protocols and implementations in heavy use of the 90s (NNTP/Usenet, Mail, IRC amongst others) no one did foresee the privacy/spam wave that hit us when the internet became famous. I remember in Europes most used IRC network at that time - IRCnet - it was mandatory to run an identd server that would tell the user of the logged in system to the IRC server, and it would display it to all users (along with the IP address of course). Imagine such requirements today...
xvilka 5y ago
With Matrix there is also a lack of good lightweight clients and servers. The official client uses Electron. It will never be an alternative to the IRC with this attitude. There is a Weechat plugin but it's in Python...
- 5y ago

ElectricMind 5y ago

Sounds like chaos that someone like "Fierce Nerds" would create. Keep it up.

duxup 5y ago

Why would someone want to buy freenode? Is there some monetization angle?

pmlnr 5y ago
Selling user data?
- duxup 5y ago
  Is IRC user data of any value?
  - edm0nd 5y ago
    Only to law enforcement or government intelligence agencies IMO

bluedino 5y ago

Some channels have announced they are moving, some don't know yet. Hope this isn't another blow to IRC

vinodpandey7 5y ago

you can write whatever restrictions you want to apply to the company into its founding articles of association/memorandum, which are the legal documents which state what the company is allowed to do and how it is to be operated

hutrdvnj 5y ago

> You can connect to the new network at `irc.libera.chat`, ssl port 6697 (and the usual clearnet port). You might want to consider to shutdown the clearnet port, since it sends user passwords and private chat messages in plaintext over the internet.

breck 5y ago

> under a legally registered Swedish non-profit Thank you Sweden, again. Anyone have a good read why Sweden is always on the forefront of liberty and intellectual freedom?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

Community transitions to irc.libera.chat seem to be starting and things are happening step by step. Note that currently irc.libera.chat is under a lot of load, and might take some time to get things organized/get load sorted/etc. As a minor upside: I'm seeing people live who possibly haven't actually been online for a long while!

almostbasic 5y ago

Private Internet Access has no connection to Freenode at all anymore. It WAS owned by London Trust Media, which also owned PIA, however Kape Technologies acquired PIA in December of 2019 and has had no connection since then. We do not have any involvement or knowledge of any takeover of Freenode.

josteink 5y ago

This story is just so I’m clear and leaves me full of questions. It’s a complete mess, despite the numerous semi-official statements trying to clear things up. Things I’m wondering about: - why was freenode being sold in the first place? - for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale? - Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves? - why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network? - Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold? Can anyone please help me understand?

marcan_42 5y ago

Apparently London Trust Media, the company founded by Andrew Lee and which purchased Freenode, has now rebranded under the name "Imperial Family Companies". londontrustmedia.com now redirects to https://imperialfamily.com/ https://imperialfamily.com/ and it lists Freenode under Technology. Andrew Lee also claims to be the crown prince of Korea, which was no doubt the inspiration for this move: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-12-01/south-korean-royals-buy-thousand-oaks-home-12-6-million https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2020-12-0... Lee also hired Mark Karpelès (of Mt.Gox infamy) as CTO of London Trust Media. and he is still listed as CTO of Shells.com, which is also owned by Imperial Family Companies: https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team Edit: Comment was moved, reworded to make it work in its new context.

vmception 5y ago
Any thoughts on these observations?
NopeNotToday 5y ago
londontrustmedia.com I read that as "I on don't trust media" the first time.
rideontime 5y ago
As someone who followed the Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange drama as it unfolded, I'm amazed anyone would hire him for a technical role.
- edm0nd 5y ago
  If he lived anywhere else besides Japan, he would have done jail time for the amount of fraud he did. He deserved that and got off light IMO. Dude is a complete joke and useless.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    He spent around 1 year in custody before being released on bail. And he's sentenced to 30 months, suspended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s#Arrest_and_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Karpel%C3%A8s#Arrest_and_... From all I've read, custody before sentencing in Japan is no picknick.

Scarbutt 5y ago

What economic value does Freenode has?

lozenge 5y ago
None now that all of its team and channels will move to another network.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  One of the benefits of old decentralized protocols: The community is not locked in and can move as nomads, so it can't be sold. At best they get an archive of stale information.
esjeon 5y ago
Network + personal info, I guess...? But a catch here is that most people in the network are proficient in technology, which makes it difficult to abuse them like how Facebook does to its users.
- metreo 5y ago
  I guess only if they know about it though

ohgreatwtf 5y ago

Honestly this just feels like karma. I'm banned from some rooms for being too eccentric and making too many waves with some of the things I say. Those people then proceed to ban me from other rooms. I don't violate TOS, I'm not(usually) a troll, but I am a free spirit who is eccentric and chooses to express contentious views that are not de rigueur acceptable among redditors and sensitive greybeards. The fact that, anonymously joining some such rooms on freenode, I notice those who were hostile to me looking to leave- I find that joyously karmatic. By all means, andrew should take the network in a new direction.

deleted 5y ago

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rubicks 5y ago

Welp, we had a good run, far longer than I expected.

ilaksh 5y ago
It still the exact same thing in libera.chat

macksd 5y ago

I'm a little confused by all this controversy. I'm no stranger to people trying to exert secret influence in open-source projects, and put themselves in positions of power to satisfy egos, etc. and I certainly don't like that kind of thing. But what was actually done on Freenode? I've read several of the volunteer resignations and it seems to just be that they're obviously now in control and people don't like that. Is there something more concrete they've done that points to a particular ulterior motive or the negative impact of their ownership? Am I just missing some historical baggage?

marcan_42 5y ago
It seems Lee actively sought to take over the operational access to the network, brought in staff outside of the existing staff process, and started exercising editorial control over the Freenode website. So if you mean "is there actual end-user operational impact to the network", it seems that there isn't so far, but the way Lee took over everything does not bode well and I completely understand why the existing staff resigned. When staff processes change so suddenly and abruptly, end-user visible changes tend to follow, and in any case this warrants significant loss of trust.

designium 5y ago

They might as well put "Arasaka" logo into their website (for those who played Cyberpunk 2077).

deleted 5y ago

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dang 5y ago

Looks like the relevant previous threads are: Freenode resignation is official, not a draft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 - May 2021 (10 comments) The Freenode resignation FAQ, or: “what the fuck is going on?” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169301 - May 2021 (8 comments) I am resigning along with most other Freenode staff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 - May 2021 (262 comments) Edit: oh - there's also this currently on the front page: Welcome to Libera Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734 - May 2021 (254 comments)

unixhero 5y ago

Speaking of IRC, what about EFNET and Dalnet?

metreo 5y ago

does anyone have a sense for the daily active users across freenode? asking for a friend ;)

kseifried 5y ago

Just a heads up I assigned CVE-2021-1000189 https://json.distributedweaknessfiling.org/CVE-2021-1000189 https://json.distributedweaknessfiling.org/CVE-2021-1000189, especially in light of the data harvesting concerns and DoS (offering people the ability to arbitrarily k-line people) and the simple fact that a good solution exists in the form of https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/

sswam 5y ago

Community infrastructure should be owned and run by the community.

Black101 5y ago

There are pretty good at spamming the libera network... Even get spammed on non-freenode networks and in my emails.