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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://ne
by 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 agohttps://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 agoFrom 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 agoTomaw fought legally with Lee to get the sale contract from what I've read; and apparently it _does_ legitimately own the network.
- Chris2048 5y agoBy "network", do you mean the domains? What did the sale contract say?
- nabakin 5y agoHe 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
- wut42 5y agoI mean everything that makes freenode freenode. I don't know what the contract say exactly, but by reading the resignations letters, especially this one https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd... : What has become clear to us in the last few days is that we were lied to, by both Andrew and christel. Contrary to public and private statements, the sale included the network as a whole, something christel should not have had the ability to relinquish, as most of the infrastructure is not owned by her or any of us. However, Andrew has more money than us, and so we cannot fight this.
- nabakin 5y agoI've read a lot of chat logs and so far I've only seen Andrew try to claim he owns the whole network, domain, copyrights, etc whereas it seems he only owns freenode Ltd which owns the domain that has a client to the irc network. The volunteer staff of the irc network say the irc network itself is hosted on servers owned by sponsors of the network who are not affiliated with freenode Ltd. Up to what I read, they were still trying to figure out if freenode Ltd owned the copyright/trademarks for freenode. Was this from newer chat logs then?
- wut42 5y agothe thing is, IMO, that once Christel shut down the PDPC (the entity behind freenode a long time ago), Freenode just became "Christel" owned. And Christel sold everything under shady reasons (without really saying everything was sold) to Lee. Some resignations letters say that it seems to say this.
- eplanit 5y agoWhy did people object? Because "purchased" makes it legitimate?
- gojomo 5y agoNot fully up on the controversy, but I suspect because it implied the "freenode IRC network" is something that can be "owned" - when it's more complicated than that. (A company can be owned, legally, sure, but an ongoing-set-of-relationships, & mostly-volunteer processes, is usually something more than property with neat property-title.)
- corobo 5y agoLooks like it got pretty owned tbf
- that_guy_iain 5y agoRealistically, the infrastructure for the servers can be replace and when that is done there is a high chance >75% of the users remain. There will always be other people willing to volunteer. I remember the AOL ICQ IRC had volunteer opers and there is no way you can think that wasn't fully a for-profit setup.
- gojomo 5y agoIf your analysis centers on 'servers', I think you're missing the point of concerns about describing an "IRC network" as being "purchased", and other aspects that make some Freenode channels interesting.
- that_guy_iain 5y agoI think you miss the point, my point is that point is moot. A community is about people, if the people don't move the community stays. Sure there seems to be some very vocal very committed staffers leaving but a major part of Freenode when I was using it was the people who had massive amount of knowledge and were sharing it on a regular basis. If those people stay then Freenode lives on even as a corporate sell out.
- thih9 5y ago> needless to say the title was edited... Congrats on spotting the danger early. Still, I support editing the title back to the original. Avoiding editorialised titles is important, it means that opinions are shared in comments and it's easier to have a neutral discussion. Back then you were right about the purchase but it seems that you weren't able to get your point across to the others; I wish people listened more and I also wish you talked more.
- taurath 5y agoI’m in the camp of whatever title seems less biased and more directly describes what is happening should win out. As someone with only a passing interest in freenode which I used to use but no longer do, learning they were bought is much more relevant than the implication they formed a partnership. I understand that there is grey area over whether they were “bought”, but a partnership doesn’t seem to cover what went down in any way.
- thih9 5y ago> a partnership doesn’t seem to cover what went down in any way True, but we only know that in hindsight. At the time the claim about acquisition was disputed [1] [2]. If somebody replied with information about voting rights [3] then perhaps the "joining forces" title would have been treated as misleading and replaced with "purchased by". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102301 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102139 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207992
- jasonzemos 5y agoThe title was edited only after the original propitiated the story into notoriety. The votes before and after the intervention therefor became in conflict. Hacker News aided in the spread of disinformation.
- baybal2 5y agoPIA can't feed its own pilots, yet still goes doing outlandish foreign acquisitions. They will sell their last airliner, but will still cling on to stuff like Roosevelt hotel, and such.
- jkaplowitz 5y agoPilots? Airliners? The PIA in question is Private Internet Access, a VPN company. Unless a VPN company also flies planes?
- jaywalk 5y agoIn this instance, PIA is referring to the Private Internet Access VPN service, not Pakistan International Airlines.
- baybal2 5y agoUh, it got to me now. Performing the facepalm maneouvre
- dang 5y agoThat's an interesting example because I don't think we'd edit the title that way now. We try to replace corporate-press-release tropes with more direct language; but of course only if we can be sure that it's true. If people in the thread were complaining about the word "purchased", that explains why we'd have changed your title. But I cringe a little to see that we put press release language like "joining forces" back in there. Corporate press releases are sort of a special case: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... I sometimes say they're an exception to HN's title rule, but that's not really true. The rule is "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait", and the euphemistic, one-sided language of CPRs tends to be misleading (and sometimes is intentionally so).
- jasonzemos 5y agoDan, if you're actually one person and not some algorithm, I have to commend the visibly valiant effort you've put into this place. You got this one wrong though. It was a different atmosphere back then; far more "grifty" a time perhaps. I need not make appeals to some Hegelian universal history for us all to see now the owl of Minerva has flown. You were duped and spread disinformation -- that's okay -- apologetics can save you. Since you are in a position of authority and trust, ironically, just like the subjects of this very story, there is one thing you can do: Apologize. Just apologize, and keep doing your thing. History will judge all of us far better than our downvotes.