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I was a PIA customer precisely because I knew they donated to freenode (among other things; ie: financial sponsorship for WireGuard). Doesn’t seem to me like s

I was a PIA customer precisely because I knew they donated to freenode (among other things; ie: financial sponsorship for WireGuard). Doesn’t seem to me like staff are fully aware of what they’re destroying and how there will never be another real dominant IRC network. Freenode was it. Slack and discord have killed IRC for a lot of things already, and this is now the final nail in the coffin. “Libra”-whatever will not last long, and neither will freenode without staff. Is all of this worth it? Did he really do anything that bad? Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will? Isn’t there a reasonable explanation for trying to put some of these things in LLCs and formal organizations, etc.? Someone has to own the domain, right? It doesn’t sound to me like he was asking for a lot of effort. Anyway, too late to cry about it, it’s done and over with now. RIP to IRC. I guess I’ll see you guys on Discord! I love the modern internet!!!

mlatu 5y ago
> Someone has to own the domain, right? Why not an association then? Why must it always be someONE who owns something? Communal property is the way forwards, not setting up fences.
- jlokier 5y ago
  It is already owned by an association, a non-profit called Freenode Limited.
  - jlokier 5y ago
    Nice downvote for looking up a simple legal fact, to address the misleading impression from the GP that an individual person holds the domain. Perhaps this will be downvoted as well because the childishness is strong on this issue, but for the benefit of anyone who cares, the parent comment is at least technically correct (the best kind of correct). The domain at the centre of this controversy is owned by an incorporated non-profit association registered as a company limited by guarantee, not by a "someone".
RIMR 5y ago
This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand. If the Freenode volunteers and users move to Libera Chat, then Libera Chat becomes the new Freenode. Oracle didn't kill Continuous Integration when they bought and destroyed the Hudson project. All the volunteers moved to the forked Jenkins project, the users followed. Jenkins is now the new Hudson. Like Oracle, Andrew and Co. will end up holding the bag on a dead brand as the project moves elsewhere.
- rocqua 5y ago
  Point made was that there are succesful competing alternatives in slack and discord. Hence any damage to existing IRC communities is likely to see some users move towards IRC competitors, rather than another IRC server.
- HajiraSifre 5y ago
  > This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand. Sure, but it will still negatively affect the number of users. For example, I'm already aware of one community that decided to end their IRC presence altogether (and only keep their discord) rather than migrate their freenode channel to another network. There will undoubtedly also be a number of individuals who decide to just quit IRC instead of moving.
- myself248 5y ago
  And I've heard of Jenkins, I've never heard of Hudson. So that's something. How long was Hudson dominant for? Freenode has been the go-to name for IRC (in FOSS circles) for two decades plus. There's also OFTC which I don't know the whole story of, and there are some projects making their home on Efnet and elsewhere too, but the majority of everything has been on Freenode. To the point that I don't even /list anymore, I just blindly /join #name_of_project and almost always land somewhere useful. This kills that. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to Libera. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to OFTC. Some projects will stay on Freenode. It fragments an ecosystem that was useful primarily because it was so universal, and the value of that universality is not conserved through fragmentation. I wish I understood the complaint better, so I could make a better argument for projects to move, and hopefully restore some of that universality elsewhere. But as it is, I simply can't make sense of the complaints without a lot of backstory I don't apparently have. For all the volunteers to walk out, there must be something there, I just don't grok it.
monsieurbanana 5y ago
> Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will? Good will, sure, but the work of volunteer staff? Why would it?
chalst 5y ago
If you're going to move from IRC, give Zulip a look. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123
- syoc 5y ago
  I like zulip a lot, but is it really comparable? IRC is built as a simple open protocol and the clients are tuned towards being able to join multiple servers at once. This is a hard requirement for mass adaptation in for example FOSS communities IMO. There is no way that people will bother logging into the zulip or mattermost instances for the 5-15 different FOSS projects they are interested in. This means either a centralized solution like Discord or something like Matrix which is 100x more complex than IRC.
  - chalst 5y ago
    I can well imagine Zulip failing for FOSS for as stupid a reason as users finding juggling user accounts tiresome, but the Zulip codebase offers servers plenty of flexibility in authentication options. https://fmcthanos.zulip.com/help/configure-authentication-methods https://fmcthanos.zulip.com/help/configure-authentication-me...
rcxdude 5y ago
Apparently neither Andrew Lee or the freenode staff have any idea what happened to the money he apparently donated to freenode (the company has not filed its accounts as required and is in danger of being dissolved, which is legally Lee's responsibility but he seems to think the volunteer staffers who claim no knowledge of donated funds are responsible for it). Freenode mostly operates off of donated infrastructure and volunteer efforts, the expenses they have are basically minimal.

mlatu 5y ago

> Someone has to own the domain, right? Why not an association then? Why must it always be someONE who owns something? Communal property is the way forwards, not setting up fences.

jlokier 5y ago
It is already owned by an association, a non-profit called Freenode Limited.
- jlokier 5y ago
  Nice downvote for looking up a simple legal fact, to address the misleading impression from the GP that an individual person holds the domain. Perhaps this will be downvoted as well because the childishness is strong on this issue, but for the benefit of anyone who cares, the parent comment is at least technically correct (the best kind of correct). The domain at the centre of this controversy is owned by an incorporated non-profit association registered as a company limited by guarantee, not by a "someone".

RIMR 5y ago

This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand. If the Freenode volunteers and users move to Libera Chat, then Libera Chat becomes the new Freenode. Oracle didn't kill Continuous Integration when they bought and destroyed the Hudson project. All the volunteers moved to the forked Jenkins project, the users followed. Jenkins is now the new Hudson. Like Oracle, Andrew and Co. will end up holding the bag on a dead brand as the project moves elsewhere.

rocqua 5y ago
Point made was that there are succesful competing alternatives in slack and discord. Hence any damage to existing IRC communities is likely to see some users move towards IRC competitors, rather than another IRC server.
HajiraSifre 5y ago
> This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand. Sure, but it will still negatively affect the number of users. For example, I'm already aware of one community that decided to end their IRC presence altogether (and only keep their discord) rather than migrate their freenode channel to another network. There will undoubtedly also be a number of individuals who decide to just quit IRC instead of moving.
myself248 5y ago
And I've heard of Jenkins, I've never heard of Hudson. So that's something. How long was Hudson dominant for? Freenode has been the go-to name for IRC (in FOSS circles) for two decades plus. There's also OFTC which I don't know the whole story of, and there are some projects making their home on Efnet and elsewhere too, but the majority of everything has been on Freenode. To the point that I don't even /list anymore, I just blindly /join #name_of_project and almost always land somewhere useful. This kills that. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to Libera. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to OFTC. Some projects will stay on Freenode. It fragments an ecosystem that was useful primarily because it was so universal, and the value of that universality is not conserved through fragmentation. I wish I understood the complaint better, so I could make a better argument for projects to move, and hopefully restore some of that universality elsewhere. But as it is, I simply can't make sense of the complaints without a lot of backstory I don't apparently have. For all the volunteers to walk out, there must be something there, I just don't grok it.

monsieurbanana 5y ago

> Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will? Good will, sure, but the work of volunteer staff? Why would it?

chalst 5y ago

If you're going to move from IRC, give Zulip a look. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123

syoc 5y ago
I like zulip a lot, but is it really comparable? IRC is built as a simple open protocol and the clients are tuned towards being able to join multiple servers at once. This is a hard requirement for mass adaptation in for example FOSS communities IMO. There is no way that people will bother logging into the zulip or mattermost instances for the 5-15 different FOSS projects they are interested in. This means either a centralized solution like Discord or something like Matrix which is 100x more complex than IRC.
- chalst 5y ago
  I can well imagine Zulip failing for FOSS for as stupid a reason as users finding juggling user accounts tiresome, but the Zulip codebase offers servers plenty of flexibility in authentication options. https://fmcthanos.zulip.com/help/configure-authentication-methods https://fmcthanos.zulip.com/help/configure-authentication-me...

rcxdude 5y ago

Apparently neither Andrew Lee or the freenode staff have any idea what happened to the money he apparently donated to freenode (the company has not filed its accounts as required and is in danger of being dissolved, which is legally Lee's responsibility but he seems to think the volunteer staffers who claim no knowledge of donated funds are responsible for it). Freenode mostly operates off of donated infrastructure and volunteer efforts, the expenses they have are basically minimal.