21 ms·

“Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

119 points by rasengan 5y ago

antimba 5y ago
In the end, it seems what happened is that christel sparked a huge misunderstanding between freenode staff and Andrew Lee by making misleading statements to both parties and lying to hide the fact that she had sold freenode to get herself out of financial troubles.
- blibble 5y ago
  yes, this seems to be the summary of the entire affair Lee thinks that he legitimately purchased Freenode, and is understandably going after his asset and the staff have a difference of opinion meanwhile christel seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth
nitrix 5y ago
People that aren’t in the wrong don’t need to save face like you’re desperately trying to do. All I can say is good luck running Freenode without its staff and sponsors.
- noofen 5y ago
  Unless they're under a legal gag-order?
- logical_person 5y ago
  People that have never interacted with a freenode ircoper will believe everything they post.
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  I don’t have much of a dog in the Freenode fight, but the idea that people who are in the right don’t need to work to convince others is just patently false and not supported by reality. Especially when one side is seen as the side of “good” by default.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Yeah that is nonsense. Almost as bad as "people with nothing to hide don't need privacy" or "if you're innocent you should talk to the cops".
- tinco 5y ago
  > People that aren’t in the wrong don’t need to save face like you’re desperately trying to do. That's a ridiculous statement, you should be ashamed of yourself. > All I can say is good luck running Freenode without its staff and sponsors. Do you actually have an allegation to make or are you just here to fan the flames?
  - nitrix 5y ago
    Yes, let’s do that: I, and the projects I’m involved in, have moved to Libera. I watched the drama unfold and consider myself informed enough to develop my own opinion, which coincides with that of the staff. It’s been a completely smooth transition and don’t see how Freenode will recover without these amazing people. As for the “ridiculous statement” and the need to feel ashamed, I leave that to future me to decide. Not you.
    - a1369209993 5y ago
      > and don't see how Freenode will recover without these amazing people. Huh? Freenode is fine, they just had to move to a different domain name (liber.chat) due to aggressive domain squatting. The ridiculous statement is that: > People that aren't in the wrong don't need to save face like you're desperately trying to do. not the associated implication that rasengan in particular is in the wrong, which is true, but not particularly supported by their desperately trying to save face.
  - wowaname 5y ago
    There's truth in the fact that freenode (the current network under new management) is in an unfavourable position due to sponsors packing their bags—sponsors who hosted critical infra for spam management and mail service. I think the situation could have been handled better but I don't know who to fault for this situation.
SquibblesRedux 5y ago
This link initiates a download.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  It's a PDF. Firefox just displays it in the browser with no download prompt.
  - SquibblesRedux 5y ago
    I did some troubleshooting to see why the original link did not behave as expected. The original link: https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf redirects to here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf and this command: curl -v https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf 2>&1 | less reveals: content-type: application/octet-stream The application/octet-stream is for "Any kind of binary data," suggesting the correct browser behavior would be to download. To inform the browser that the document is a viewable PDF, a web server normally sends an application/pdf MIME type. [1] The "raw" in the original link is why GitHub thinks the file should be treated as a generic binary. While this may all seem much ado about nothing and pedantic, I often see this kind of behavior exploited in the wild to deliver malicious payloads. In this case I would say Firefox behaves "safer" than Chrome, but not not necessarily more correctly. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_HTTP/MIME_types/Common_types https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_...
    - Macha 5y ago
      If you want something to be downloaded, you need to declare Content-Disposition: attachment <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Disposition https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co...> Otherwise, the browser is perfectly ok to attempt to render it if it understands how to
  - adrianmonk 5y ago
    I guess it varies by browser since on Chrome there's a download (and a "file:///" URL in the tab).
rjbwork 5y ago
Once again showing that the hardest problems in tech are not actually technical problems - they're social problems.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- maxmcd 5y ago
  What technology problem is not a social problem :)
  - itisit 5y ago
    The one you work on by yourself.
    - qu1j0t3 5y ago
      Nobody works entirely by themselves. They always rely on a village, family, spouse, etc.
      - itisit 5y ago
        Thankfully my village, family, spouse, etc. have nothing to do with my side projects. :)
dna_polymerase 5y ago
This is probably a pdf of this blog post: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss I'm not familiar with the situation, but find it odd, that the author signs off as "Chairman, freenode limited" where he seems to be the owner of the company that owns Private Internet Access (PIA) [0]. This form of selectively under-reporting has a weird smell to it. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26053770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26053770
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  It includes additional content, though I didn’t review more closely than that.
- Macha 5y ago
  PIA have clarified that they are wholly owned by Kape these days, and that LTM/Imperial holdings/Andrew Lee has no stake remaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_belongs_to_andrew_lee_and_im_leaving/gyq1h81/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_... This is also why the sponsor logo on freenode.net is for Shells, not PIA. Kape has its own questionable background, but not one that involves this incident.
- erk__ 5y ago
  PIA was sold to a Israli company some time back: https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/ https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sol...
  - InsightfulIke 5y ago
    PIA was sold to a company that is associated with Lumosity and Hola VPN.
AlexandrB 5y ago
As an outsider who hasn't used IRC or Freenode in over a decade, this situation is impenetrable. Neither the posts by the Freenode volunteers nor this post by Andrew paint a coherent narrative I can follow (maybe I'm just old). Best I can gather, the flashpoint that triggered this series of events is a dispute over the control of the freenode domain name and DNS servers?
- barneygale 5y ago
  The FreeNode staff (rightly) don't want FreeNode's operations taken over by the owner of a VPN company and former CFO of Mt Gox. They're not obliged to work for this cretin.
- tremon 5y ago
  I think the flashpoint was the nasty lawyerese received by the newly-instated head of staff (tomaw) after he had been elected. The story is impenetrable because, from what I gather, the lawyerese contained a gag order not to discuss the contents of the letter.
  - rasengan 5y ago
    These letters were sent both ways. That’s why I was unable to speak until now.
    - mnordhoff 5y ago
      Who sent them first, and why?
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  It sounds like rasengan/Andrew Lee wanted a specific DNS change made which was objectionable to the staff, and that triggered the whole mess. I hadn’t seen it mentioned before but one of the chats from Thomas includes something about backing off from a DNS change.
  - Juntu 5y ago
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
I want my usenet back
- kstrauser 5y ago
  It never left you. You left it. It’s sitting there waiting for you to come visit.
  - opk 5y ago
    Not quite. Used to be that any normal ISP provided a news server. Now with it being so heavily used for distributing dodgy binary files, finding a freely available and usable server is not trivial.
barneygale 5y ago
> The former staff leave, destroying the network andits community in the process Baffling lack of self reflection on display. Own your mistakes.
- fastball 5y ago
  It's not clear (yet) if Lee actually made any mistakes.
  - barneygale 5y ago
    > 1) In early 2021, the freenode website was altered to begin prominently > mentioning Shells, a company that Andrew co-founded [4]. > > This was not discussed among staff at the time. This caused some > disruption and considerable confusion among staff for months afterward, > as to how to handle user inquiries about it, of which we received many. > > Ultimately, christel chose to resign rather than explain the situation to > us. > > As an addendum, this is *extremely* irregular. All website advertising is > usually only found at [5]. > > [4] https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team > [5] https://freenode.net/acknowledgements This is the incident that kicked everything off. https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...
    - fastball 5y ago
      Does anyone have a Wayback Machine link showing what exactly this looked like?
      - makomk 5y ago
        Ah, figured it out: it's at the top-right on https://web.archive.org/web/20210228045521/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210228045521/https://freenode.... covered by the Wayback Machine's own toolbar. This is the same location and the same level of prominence as the logo for Private Internet Access, their previous sponsor also associated with Andrew Lee, was placed in for about half a decade between around April 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.... and January 2021. It certainly wasn't just limited to https://freenode.net/acknowledgements https://freenode.net/acknowledgements so the claim that this is some shocking, unprecedented new practice that justifies the entire admin team quitting and encouraging everyone else to leave and sponsors to do stuff like delete their mail server without warning seems completely unfounded in actual evidence. I guess everyone just decided to trust the Big Reputable Freenet Operators over that evil Andrew guy without bothering to check; though to be fair I only happened to notice because initially the other Private Internet Access link in the footer, which had no Shells equivalent, was the only one I could find and it turned out to go way back.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
> In 2017, Christel, the former owner of freenode, asked me for assistance with funding and asked me to acquire it. I oblige. Was Christel ever the owner of Freenode? I thought Freenode was anarchically-organised.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  Christel was the head of staff and created a limited corporation in the UK to manage freenode’s name and trademarks. What’s unclear is how much “freenode limited” owns in terms of the network itself.
  - logical_person 5y ago
    the formation of Christel's corporation did effectively make her* the owner. any court would see a service she is involved in operating by his company's trademark, as belonging to that company. sad.
    - admax88q 5y ago
      Her
    - mynameisvlad 5y ago
      As I said, the part that is unclear is how much “freenode limited” owns. The core of freenode- the servers themselves- are sponsored and owned by third parties. The volunteers maintaining the infrastructure are not affiliated with the corporation either. So really what this whole mess has boiled down to is what is the delineation between freenode limited and freenode-the-volunteer-run-sponsored-network. Andrew believes he owns everything, and the former staff believe he only owns the name, trademark, and potentially the website/domain.
      - pedrocr 5y ago
        > the former staff believe he only owns the name, trademark, and potentially the website/domain That's my reading too but apparently the staff did hand over the network on their way out. So now freenode is apparently actually consolidated into the Freenode Limited company with both the name/DNS/trademark and the network itself. The legal situation behind those moves is not public and is probably the only thing left to be known.
kgwxd 5y ago
"The conversation ends up a monologue with me explaining decentralization to Thomas, who abruptly ends the conversation letting me know he’d like to speak later." Where's that monologue? Why cut it out?
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  Agreed. Also not sure why he chose to point out someone putting a pause on a conversation. People aren’t obligated to talk with you when you want them to. It’s clear from later messages that Thomas had other things going on and I’m sure that conversation was not helping.
floatingatoll 5y ago
This is a self-post by the author of the document in question. This site, HN, draws a line at personal insults, no matter how atrocious someone’s actions seem. Please remain civil, no matter what others are saying. (I don’t use Freenode or IRC at all, I don’t know any of the characters in this play, I have no horse in this race.)
canjobear 5y ago
I love IRC drama! It reminds me of the internet in the early 2000s.
synergy20 5y ago
After reading both sides these days, somehow I feel Andrew is more trust-able and reasonable. I will stay with freenode.
- gerikson 5y ago
  I don't trust Lee, but I'm staying on Freenode too. I have an acccount on Libera. Decentralization is great.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    decentralization may be great. permanent netsplits, not so much.
    - gerikson 5y ago
      I suspect the rise of Discord, Matrix etc has done more to drain people from IRC than this kerfuffle.
mam3 5y ago
with all that i still don't know what freenode is lol
- rcdwealth 5y ago
  It is IRC network, people who like free software chat there freely and help each other, it is like support for anything related to free software projects. See here:https://freenode.net/ https://freenode.net/ and connect by using IRC chat client.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Congratz, you found the crux of the matter. There's a volunteer community called freenode, an IRC network called freenode, and a private company called freenode, and nobody seems to be able to agree on who owns what.
  - lonjil 5y ago
    Well, the servers are owned by the sponsors, and the sponsors have informal agreements with the staffers who are no longer with Freenode. Freenode Ltd (which apparently will cease to exist in a few weeks due to Lee's lack of taking care of company admin) apparently owns the domain name. Lee owns Freenode Ltd. Other than that there is nothing to own.
zach_garwood 5y ago
This has all the intrigue of a middle school slap fight. I cannot wait until all these folks get over themselves and stop screaming in public.
rntksi 5y ago
Anyone still old enough to remember this [1] and this [2] ? [1] https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ [2] https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189470&cid=15603568 https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189470&cid=15603568 Back in the days :-)
ryanmentor 5y ago
This just muddies the waters further. Let's get concrete: What assets does Freenode have, and who legally owns them?
- tremon 5y ago
  That question will not help you get clear answers. First ask: what constitutes the entity "Freenode"? Its trademark? Its domain name? Its servers? Its server-side management code? Its operational processes? Its bylaws? Its staff? Once that part of your question is clear, you can ask which part owns which assets.
- lonjil 5y ago
  The servers are owned by various sponsors. The domain name was apparently owned by Freenode Ltd? Other than that there isn't really anything to own.
- pedrocr 5y ago
  As far as I can tell "freenode" is a fairly blurry mix of: The brand, including the DNS: that was passed on between people and then sold within the Freenode Limited company. If you have this you can point the blog and the network to whatever you want but you don't actually have an IRC network to point it to. The servers: these are donated by various organizations and thus owned by each one. They could join any other IRC network tomorrow or just be turned off by any of those organizations. The staff: all volunteers that apparently left in mass as they didn't like what was happening. As far as we know they don't have any employment contract with Freenode Limited. The actual channel/nick data: this is what actually makes the network recognizable to anyone and it's quite unclear where that is and who owns it. Are the Nickserv/Chanserv servers separate and owned by a particular entity or just sharded/replicated across the donated servers? That last bit seems to be the crucial one. The data is supposedly stored on those donated servers and was operated by that volunteer staff, so owning the DNS wouldn't give you too strong of a claim to it. But apparently the staff was indeed forced to hand the keys over on their way out and start from scratch instead of just standing up the same data on another DNS and doing a blockchain style split. Why this happened seems to be IRC drama. Exactly who has legal rights seems extremely muddy, both because we lack a lot of information, and because it's possibly a thorny issue even for a judge to adjudicate with full briefs. If you buy a DNS that points to a volunteer run network on donated servers do you now own the network that exists there and evolves over time?
blibble 5y ago
the only relevant information is what's in the contract that "sold" freenode to Lee which has conveniently been omitted without that this looks like gaslighting
- fastball 5y ago
  Lee is claiming that this is due to some confidentiality agreement, which makes is more inconvenient than convenient.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    "I own you, and I have this contract here that proves it, but unfortunately it's secret so I can't show it to you." Seems utterly convenient for him, and inconvenient only for anyone who isn't him. So, no, that can't really be how it works in the real world, can it? If it were -- hey, did you know that I now own the municipality where you live? Bought it a couple years ago, so all your local tax payments for the last year are now due to me. I've implemented a flat-rate income tax of 60 percent. Naah, sorry, the sales contract is a secret, so you'll just have to take my word for it... If he wants to claim ownership of this utterly nebulously-defined entity "Freenode", he has to show: 1) That he's bought it, i.e. at least the paragraphs of the contract that directly concern the sale -- or, alternatively (not sure how this works in Britain) the registration of transfer of ownership at the relevant regulatory authority; and 2) What he's bought, exactly, i.e. the paragraphs of the contract that specify what exactly was included in the sale -- or alternatively, the registration, including a listing of the assets that went into it, of the company's founding at the relevant regulatory authority. (In the latter case, if those assets are now claimed to include stuff that wasn't there to begin with, those also need to be explicitly specified.)
yannoninator 5y ago
hmmm, the crown prince of korea owning freenode is just as believable as the queen of england contributing to the linux kernel.
- bhickey 5y ago
  He's just a pretender to the throne. His claim to an extinct house is barely better than mine.
  - fapjacks 5y ago
    Maybe it will surprise you to learn that monarchies (and their supporting monarchists) are a weird bunch, and will fight for generations over a throne that hasn't existed for generations. They will even have generations of supporters with no claim to power. It really seems hardwired into our nature.
- wut42 5y ago
  He's also not really the crown prince. It's been disputed, as the previous crown prince was disputed as well.
- blibble 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if he sets up Linux Limited then started claiming he (the "Linux board") owns the kernel
- a1369209993 5y ago
  No it isn't. It would be surprising if Elizabeth II bothered to personally write kernel code, but it's hardly unbelievable. Unless you're being absurdly pedantic about England-the-kingdom technically not existing because it's actually part of Great Britain/the UK now, but if so, you should probably say that.
  - yannoninator 5y ago
    oh my god, it's just a joke.
  - 5y ago
IncRnd 5y ago
From Freenode's own website in 2017: "Following discussion and deliberation we have decided to formally (and legally) ally ourselves with PIA. Freenode will continue to operate as a not-for-profit entity under the same management, with the same principles, but PIA's involvement going forwards will provide us with opportunities and resources that we could previously only dream of. PIA will provide an operating budget, mentorship and support that will allow freenode to implement some of the projects and ideas that have previously been on the backburner due to constraints in terms of volunteer time and resources." [1] [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
- epsylon 5y ago
  Classic Faustian bargain. Offer people money, obtain control in exchange.
fastball 5y ago
I don't know who initiated what and if Freenode will survive and if Libera should be its spiritual successor, but if these chat logs are real I hope tomaw isn't in charge of anything at Libera.
- wowaname 5y ago
  He settled with his responsibilities at OFTC, as far as I can tell.
mmcgaha 5y ago
When we are not happy with a situation, it is easier to pack your shit and leave quietly than to make a stink about it. Many years ago, I was not happy with my bonus after an acquisition so instead of raising a stink I made my own bonus by leaving for a higher paying job. Do yourself a favor: always leave on good terms and be helpful when your old company calls with questions.
esjeon 5y ago
Now this throws the ball to thomaw, who is, according to this pdf, “not capable with working with people in a suitable way”. Also, while Andrew claims he supports decentralization, he also says he is “the owner” of freenode, which still smells really bad. It’s possible that Andrew himself also sent out bad signals to other staffs, which led to this drama.
- slenk 5y ago
  I still want to know what the decentralization plan is
M2Ys4U 5y ago
This raised my eyebrow a little: >At this point, I reach out to prawnsalad, a known person in the IRC space who has relationships with many people. What Lee neglects to say here is that prawnsalad's work has been sponsored by Lee (via PIA) as far back as 2017.[0] I have no reason to suggest that prawnsalad has acted improperly,[1] but he's not necessarily a disinterested party here. [0] https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI... [1] In fact I've worked with him in the past, and have met him many times in a social context IRL. I was involved with KiwiIRC until shortly before PIA sponsored his work.
- rasengan 5y ago
  He didn’t improperly act as you said and was not interested in this situation other than for the benefit of irc. To be clear, I have sponsored so many FOSS projects in the past and it’s pretty common knowledge within FOSS — for example even freenode ;)
  - blibble 5y ago
    he didn't act improperly, you did by implying that he is a neutral party which as your employee/patreon: he isn't
    - rasengan 5y ago
      He’s not my employee and I said he’s friends with both sides. I would say that makes him neutral.
      - blibble 5y ago
        from prawnsalad, in his own words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17377232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17377232 > Kiwi IRC developer here that was sponsored and hired by LTM back in November he states he was hired by LTM (London Trust Media): your company he is not neutral in any way, shape or form arguing over these sort of semantics is not a good way to build up your (desperately needed) credibility
jchw 5y ago
Ouch! I idiotically deleted my account thinking that there was a risk it was about to be swept up by a VPN company. I don’t use IRC much anymore so I logged in for the occasion. I’ll admit I don’t honestly understand what did and did not happen very well, but the narrative that drove Libera Chat’s adoption is now bothersome, as it created an imperative to immediately stop using and delete Freenode accounts, and now it seems like the timing of which information got out was itself dishonest in order to strike first. Even if the majority of people still side with Libera Chat, I will now have serious trust issues with them as a network. This whole situation is bad and I hope it becomes clearer what happened and why.
joepie91_ 5y ago
It's worth noting that, unlike the integral chatlogs published earlier displaying Andrew's questionable views on Freenode, this PDF is full of heavily-snipped logs without context.
dpedu 5y ago
The fact that this statement was delivered as a PDF tells us all we need to know.
- wowaname 5y ago
  Which is what, exactly?
donatzsky 5y ago
The only thing that's clear to me, after this, is that the whole governance structure was never properly defined and codified. It all seems to have been based on gentlemens agreements.
wut42 5y ago
Besides discussing what happened, I wonder what IS going to happen. Right now every staffer introduced by rasengan isn't known by much, seems to be very new to freenode (and even at some times, struggling with managing the services). Some of the new staffers seems to be previous operators of Rizon[1], also known as the 4chan of IRC, which is a dubious move. One of them also seems to have been fired from it[2]. On "Freenode is FOSS"[3] post, there's a paragraph about decentralization. This essentially seems to be another Lee's project, "Tower of Chats"[4][5], which is like a sort of super-network with multiple more-or-less independent servers. Is Lee's plan to merge Freenode and ToC ? Or merge Snoonet/IRC.com with Freenode ? Or merge them all together onto ToC ? [1]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395347865271246853 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395347865271246853 [2]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395667119778500611 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395667119778500611 [3]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss [4]: https://letstoc.com https://letstoc.com [5]: irc.imperialfamily.com (edited to fix links)
- tptacek 5y ago
  There's the further detail of Handshake, which Lee appears to be deeply involved in, which is a cryptocurrency that in essence claims the DNS roots as its own (part of the marketing strategy of Handshake appears to have been some sort of "airdrop" --- I'm not a cryptocurrency person and may be using that term wrong --- of coins to open source projects; I don't know if that's connected to the FOSS donations Lee keeps referencing). I've seen more than one person on HN express confusion about what "decentralizing" means in the context of Freenode's DNS, which seems to be the core of the controversy here, and do wonder myself whether this has something do with Handshake. (Handshake is a deeply silly project, but it's not at all clear to me whether it is or isn't implicated in this drama).
  - wut42 5y ago
    Oh. Interesting too. I read that Lee was involved in Handshake but handshake looks so silly to me that I didn't even envisage this. I've also raised the IRCd thing in another sub-thread, and I think that freenode adopting/developing a new IRCd (and publicly) could impair Lee's idea of merging Irc.com/Snoonet/Freenode onto ToC, since ToC seems to be running Unreal.
jgilias 5y ago
Interestingly, I don't really see any 'other side' of the story here. It's the same story: 1. Christel sells 'something' to Andrew while under apparent financial distress. 2. Tomaw somehow learns that Andrew is willing to take over operational matters and tries to act against it. 3. Andrew keeps pushing his authority using titles such as 'Board of Freenode' and 'Chairman of Freenode'. 4. Volunteers actually running Freenode don't feel like working for free for a for-profit company and leave to found Libera.chat.
- rasengan 5y ago
  #2 is very false
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    If you had no plans to take over operations, then what was your argument about decentralization, and what was your "plan forward" that you spent "considerable time preparing"?
    - hannasanarion 5y ago
      And another thing, why did you believe that you had the right to "appoint" a head of staff?
      - ryan-allen 5y ago
        He is a prince.
pandem 5y ago
Sent an email to policy@freenode.net to see my personal data as GDPR provides me the opportunity. Curious to see what they have.
dang 5y ago
We changed the url from https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on... to one that doesn't do a file download.
Macha 5y ago
So my understanding of the situation (not an insider, just following the drama): 1. Way back when, Freenode was started by Rob Levin/Lilo. At some stage a legal entity needed to exist, which was Open Projects Network initially. 2. After some drama about misappropriation of funds, Freenode staff seperated themselves (all involved then having moved on by the time of the current drama) from OPN. [1] 3. Still realising the need for a legal entity, they formed PDPC . This had a structure and eventually christel was the leader of said structure. 4. Many years pass 5. The decision is made that PDPC is not providing enough value, when the cost of maintaining the non-profit is Freenode's primary expense. So it's dissolved[2][3]. At this stage, Freenode ceases to exist as a legal entity, but the network still exists. The domains etc. were likely under the personal control of christel at this point. 6. Many more years pass. 7. Due to reasons not definitively answered as christel has made no statements to this point, PIA steps in. They set up freenode ltd as a legal body for this. freenode ltd acquire freenode from christel as part of this, but what's publicly communicated[4] is that it's a partnership, and later downplayed to a sponsorship, including in public by christel[5]. This appears to have been what the staff was informed also. christel also becomes a PIA or LTM employee. 8. A few more years pass. During this time, PIA seperates from LTM via the Kape acquisition [6]. It's LTM which keeps the freenode stake, and Shells is the new LTM company that is the public facing sponsor. 9. Christel puts up a Shells sponsorship on the homepage which is unknown to the rest of the team as to why. When questioned, she leaves. Andrew Lee portrays this questioning as harassment, the libera.chat team portray it as asking "Hey, why is this sponsor there?" 10. Christel resigns. The staff, figuring that Freenode is still a volunteer run group, appoint a new leader, tomaw, who begins taking control and limiting access to Freenode resources to the staff. 11. Andrew Lee claims to own Freenode. After some legal back and forth between tomaw and Andrew Lee, the libera.chat team accept that Christel sold what she owned to Andrew Lee legally, though what she owned is unclear due to the dissolution of PDPC years prior. 12. The staff and Andrew Lee try to negotiate. The staff point out that Freenode is a volunteer run network running on volunteer provided servers, none of which are owned by a freenode entity, and also that it breaks previous public statements and promises to assert control. Andrew Lee points out he is the legal owner and it is inappropriate to remove his access. 13. The staff split off to form libera.chat So, the points of conflict: 1. Both sides at this point accept that christel sold what she legally owned to Andrew Lee. What did she legally own to sell? The domain and the website for sure, but what is Freenode? The IRC servers are provided on a volunteer basis by server owners with no commitment, the channels are "owned" by the communities in them. So what does it mean to own Freenode? 2. Was Christel in the right to sell things to Andrew Lee? Again, legally, the answer appears to be yes - without PDPC, she did own the assets personally, so could sell them, but morally she was the owner because she was representing the freenode volunteers and in this she didn't appear to have their participation, knowledge, or agreement. 3. Should freenode have a corporate owner? The idea is that it's a volunteer run group, so it feels weird to have a corporate owner. This is a big point of confusion for people who are going "So the owner took control, I don't see why there's a problem here". The issue was there should never have been an individual owner, but because of the costs involved in PDPC and its shutdown, there effectively was. The legal structure became divorced from the community structure at this point. This is considered to be a "So what?" by some people, while it's inherently a problem for others. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403441 [3]: https://freenode.net/news/bye-bye-pdpc https://freenode.net/news/bye-bye-pdpc [4]: https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn [5]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes [6]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_belongs_to_andrew_lee_and_im_leaving/gyq1h81/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_...
jokoon 5y ago
No idea what this is going to change. Maybe this is an attempt to monitor and index all conversations since it's difficult to do with decentralized IRC servers? With all data gathering practices, you can bet some people see an opportunity to make money with any human data.
- wowaname 5y ago
  I am fairly confident that neither side is intent on harvesting user data.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
The Ardour project has used Freenode for more than 16 years as our primary coordinating and realtime support platform. I (the project lead) also used IRC back in the 80s and early 90s. Here's what IRC is to me (I'm not speaking for everyone involved in Ardour): * a protocol * an accessible server * a channel (or two), with a founder and at least one operator If those things are all functioning, then I really don't care at all about anything going on "behind the scenes". I don't care who does what on the server, I don't care who owns the server, I don't care what the plan is for the ownership of the server. I don't care if there are controversial channels somewhere. I don't care if the server admins are fighting. I don't care where the servers are (*). I don't care about channel creation policies. I don't care about ANY of this, as long as those three things continue to function normally. The only exception to this is when there is (as there was last year or the year before) a coordinate DDOS attack on the servers. In the situation, I do care that the server admins are competent and have the tools to do what needs to be done. In the case of that attack (which IIRC also somehow centered on Christel in some way), the Freenode admins did what needed to be done, and I thank them for it. The service that Freenode offered the FOSS community was to make those 3 things available at no charge for our projects. This was (and remains) enormously valuable. But nothing else about Freenode is of importance to me. It could be owned by Google as long as those 3 things work in the right way. I prefer to be using an infrastructure maintained by people with some ideological preference that supports the work we do, but realistically speaking, on a day to day basis, it makes no difference. I'm the operator in #ardour, and as long as the network ops stay out, allow me to set channel modes and other policies, their existence is something I can remain almost entirely blissfully ignorant of. I don't want to have to care about what is happening at Freenode at all. What we get from IRC is completely orthogonal to the beliefs and behaviors of anyone behind the scenes. I'd prefer that it remains that way, but it seems as if everyone behind the scenes is telling me that I'm supposed to care. (*) anyone imagining that IRC has any degree of privacy doesn't understand IRC. Ergo, whether the servers are in the US, or the EU, or southern Africa makes no difference to the content that I'm willing to read or write on an IRC channel.
- fapjacks 5y ago
  I think this right here reflects the reality of many or most of the channels on Freenode. I am one of the few operators of one of the larger channels on Freenode and it cost me otherwise productive work time (with no warning whatsoever) just to have to prevent the inevitable trolls from squatting on related channels and nicknames (for anyone wondering, we were helped with the channels, but not with nicknames, despite having logs to demonstrate these were registered by squatters). Now we are being "encouraged" to put more work into this matter which is, as far as I can work out, just some interpersonal drama and power politics. We have taken a "wait and see what happens" stance, which seems to be what most are doing, not only because it is unclear what is actually going on here, but because I otherwise have a lot of work to do (despite the time I spend on HN, I promise!).
grouphugs 5y ago
freenode became a harmful organization which upholds harm, and now they're scared of dying
grouphugs 5y ago
freenode is harm, not foss, there's a difference
rowland66 5y ago
I think that Sayre's law applies here. "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."
IncRnd 5y ago
Reading some of these comments, it appears that HN is turning into IRC...
fastball 5y ago
So, uh, who owns the libera.chat domain name again?
InsightfulIke 5y ago
For whatever it's worth from an anonymous but inside source, the former staff members believe they are at war with Freenode, are colluding on Libera to attack Freenode with bots and spam, and intentionally damaged Freenode's infrastructure when they left. These people are not being forthright about their actions, but I still have no idea why. Originally I supported the breakaway faction of staffers, but now I see there's a lot more to this story than we have all been told.
pmlnr 5y ago
The basis of the whole debacle is that Andrew believes someone can own freenode. Reality is that the domain can be on someone's name, but that doesn't make them the owner - communities have no owners.
eevee 5y ago
What most fascinates me about this whole kerfuffle is your adamant refusal to take responsibility for anything. All I've seen from you is continued insistence that nothing is your fault, accompanied by pages of nigh incomprehensible "evidence" that doesn't seem relevant to anything that's actually happened. The facts of note seem to be: (1) you are, for whatever reason, in charge of freenode; (2) the very first moment you attempted to make use of that position, you destroyed freenode. That is a *catastrophic* management failure on your part, and the fact that I haven't seen so much as a "my bad" from you is appalling beyond words. Despite how much you claim to care about freenode, you are clearly more concerned with your own image.

119 points by rasengan 5y ago

In the end, it seems what happened is that christel sparked a huge misunderstanding between freenode staff and Andrew Lee by making misleading statements to both parties and lying to hide the fact that she had sold freenode to get herself out of financial troubles.

blibble 5y ago
yes, this seems to be the summary of the entire affair Lee thinks that he legitimately purchased Freenode, and is understandably going after his asset and the staff have a difference of opinion meanwhile christel seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth

nitrix 5y ago

People that aren’t in the wrong don’t need to save face like you’re desperately trying to do. All I can say is good luck running Freenode without its staff and sponsors.

noofen 5y ago
Unless they're under a legal gag-order?
logical_person 5y ago
People that have never interacted with a freenode ircoper will believe everything they post.
SirSourdough 5y ago
I don’t have much of a dog in the Freenode fight, but the idea that people who are in the right don’t need to work to convince others is just patently false and not supported by reality. Especially when one side is seen as the side of “good” by default.
- fastball 5y ago
  Yeah that is nonsense. Almost as bad as "people with nothing to hide don't need privacy" or "if you're innocent you should talk to the cops".
tinco 5y ago
> People that aren’t in the wrong don’t need to save face like you’re desperately trying to do. That's a ridiculous statement, you should be ashamed of yourself. > All I can say is good luck running Freenode without its staff and sponsors. Do you actually have an allegation to make or are you just here to fan the flames?
- nitrix 5y ago
  Yes, let’s do that: I, and the projects I’m involved in, have moved to Libera. I watched the drama unfold and consider myself informed enough to develop my own opinion, which coincides with that of the staff. It’s been a completely smooth transition and don’t see how Freenode will recover without these amazing people. As for the “ridiculous statement” and the need to feel ashamed, I leave that to future me to decide. Not you.
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > and don't see how Freenode will recover without these amazing people. Huh? Freenode is fine, they just had to move to a different domain name (liber.chat) due to aggressive domain squatting. The ridiculous statement is that: > People that aren't in the wrong don't need to save face like you're desperately trying to do. not the associated implication that rasengan in particular is in the wrong, which is true, but not particularly supported by their desperately trying to save face.
- wowaname 5y ago
  There's truth in the fact that freenode (the current network under new management) is in an unfavourable position due to sponsors packing their bags—sponsors who hosted critical infra for spam management and mail service. I think the situation could have been handled better but I don't know who to fault for this situation.

SquibblesRedux 5y ago

This link initiates a download.

rjbwork 5y ago
It's a PDF. Firefox just displays it in the browser with no download prompt.
- SquibblesRedux 5y ago
  I did some troubleshooting to see why the original link did not behave as expected. The original link: https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf redirects to here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf and this command: curl -v https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freenode/web-7.0/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf 2>&1 | less reveals: content-type: application/octet-stream The application/octet-stream is for "Any kind of binary data," suggesting the correct browser behavior would be to download. To inform the browser that the document is a viewable PDF, a web server normally sends an application/pdf MIME type. [1] The "raw" in the original link is why GitHub thinks the file should be treated as a generic binary. While this may all seem much ado about nothing and pedantic, I often see this kind of behavior exploited in the wild to deliver malicious payloads. In this case I would say Firefox behaves "safer" than Chrome, but not not necessarily more correctly. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_HTTP/MIME_types/Common_types https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_...
  - Macha 5y ago
    If you want something to be downloaded, you need to declare Content-Disposition: attachment <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Disposition https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co...> Otherwise, the browser is perfectly ok to attempt to render it if it understands how to
- adrianmonk 5y ago
  I guess it varies by browser since on Chrome there's a download (and a "file:///" URL in the tab).

rjbwork 5y ago

Once again showing that the hardest problems in tech are not actually technical problems - they're social problems.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
maxmcd 5y ago
What technology problem is not a social problem :)
- itisit 5y ago
  The one you work on by yourself.
  - qu1j0t3 5y ago
    Nobody works entirely by themselves. They always rely on a village, family, spouse, etc.
    - itisit 5y ago
      Thankfully my village, family, spouse, etc. have nothing to do with my side projects. :)

dna_polymerase 5y ago

This is probably a pdf of this blog post: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss I'm not familiar with the situation, but find it odd, that the author signs off as "Chairman, freenode limited" where he seems to be the owner of the company that owns Private Internet Access (PIA) [0]. This form of selectively under-reporting has a weird smell to it. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26053770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26053770

floatingatoll 5y ago
It includes additional content, though I didn’t review more closely than that.
Macha 5y ago
PIA have clarified that they are wholly owned by Kape these days, and that LTM/Imperial holdings/Andrew Lee has no stake remaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_belongs_to_andrew_lee_and_im_leaving/gyq1h81/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_... This is also why the sponsor logo on freenode.net is for Shells, not PIA. Kape has its own questionable background, but not one that involves this incident.
erk__ 5y ago
PIA was sold to a Israli company some time back: https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/ https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sol...
- InsightfulIke 5y ago
  PIA was sold to a company that is associated with Lumosity and Hola VPN.

AlexandrB 5y ago

As an outsider who hasn't used IRC or Freenode in over a decade, this situation is impenetrable. Neither the posts by the Freenode volunteers nor this post by Andrew paint a coherent narrative I can follow (maybe I'm just old). Best I can gather, the flashpoint that triggered this series of events is a dispute over the control of the freenode domain name and DNS servers?

barneygale 5y ago
The FreeNode staff (rightly) don't want FreeNode's operations taken over by the owner of a VPN company and former CFO of Mt Gox. They're not obliged to work for this cretin.
tremon 5y ago
I think the flashpoint was the nasty lawyerese received by the newly-instated head of staff (tomaw) after he had been elected. The story is impenetrable because, from what I gather, the lawyerese contained a gag order not to discuss the contents of the letter.
- rasengan 5y ago
  These letters were sent both ways. That’s why I was unable to speak until now.
  - mnordhoff 5y ago
    Who sent them first, and why?
mynameisvlad 5y ago
It sounds like rasengan/Andrew Lee wanted a specific DNS change made which was objectionable to the staff, and that triggered the whole mess. I hadn’t seen it mentioned before but one of the chats from Thomas includes something about backing off from a DNS change.
- Juntu 5y ago

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

I want my usenet back

kstrauser 5y ago
It never left you. You left it. It’s sitting there waiting for you to come visit.
- opk 5y ago
  Not quite. Used to be that any normal ISP provided a news server. Now with it being so heavily used for distributing dodgy binary files, finding a freely available and usable server is not trivial.

barneygale 5y ago

> The former staff leave, destroying the network andits community in the process Baffling lack of self reflection on display. Own your mistakes.

fastball 5y ago
It's not clear (yet) if Lee actually made any mistakes.
- barneygale 5y ago
  > 1) In early 2021, the freenode website was altered to begin prominently > mentioning Shells, a company that Andrew co-founded [4]. > > This was not discussed among staff at the time. This caused some > disruption and considerable confusion among staff for months afterward, > as to how to handle user inquiries about it, of which we received many. > > Ultimately, christel chose to resign rather than explain the situation to > us. > > As an addendum, this is *extremely* irregular. All website advertising is > usually only found at [5]. > > [4] https://www.shells.com/l/en-US/team > [5] https://freenode.net/acknowledgements This is the incident that kicked everything off. https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...
  - fastball 5y ago
    Does anyone have a Wayback Machine link showing what exactly this looked like?
    - makomk 5y ago
      Ah, figured it out: it's at the top-right on https://web.archive.org/web/20210228045521/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210228045521/https://freenode.... covered by the Wayback Machine's own toolbar. This is the same location and the same level of prominence as the logo for Private Internet Access, their previous sponsor also associated with Andrew Lee, was placed in for about half a decade between around April 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.... and January 2021. It certainly wasn't just limited to https://freenode.net/acknowledgements https://freenode.net/acknowledgements so the claim that this is some shocking, unprecedented new practice that justifies the entire admin team quitting and encouraging everyone else to leave and sponsors to do stuff like delete their mail server without warning seems completely unfounded in actual evidence. I guess everyone just decided to trust the Big Reputable Freenet Operators over that evil Andrew guy without bothering to check; though to be fair I only happened to notice because initially the other Private Internet Access link in the footer, which had no Shells equivalent, was the only one I could find and it turned out to go way back.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

> In 2017, Christel, the former owner of freenode, asked me for assistance with funding and asked me to acquire it. I oblige. Was Christel ever the owner of Freenode? I thought Freenode was anarchically-organised.

mynameisvlad 5y ago
Christel was the head of staff and created a limited corporation in the UK to manage freenode’s name and trademarks. What’s unclear is how much “freenode limited” owns in terms of the network itself.
- logical_person 5y ago
  the formation of Christel's corporation did effectively make her* the owner. any court would see a service she is involved in operating by his company's trademark, as belonging to that company. sad.
  - admax88q 5y ago
    Her
  - mynameisvlad 5y ago
    As I said, the part that is unclear is how much “freenode limited” owns. The core of freenode- the servers themselves- are sponsored and owned by third parties. The volunteers maintaining the infrastructure are not affiliated with the corporation either. So really what this whole mess has boiled down to is what is the delineation between freenode limited and freenode-the-volunteer-run-sponsored-network. Andrew believes he owns everything, and the former staff believe he only owns the name, trademark, and potentially the website/domain.
    - pedrocr 5y ago
      > the former staff believe he only owns the name, trademark, and potentially the website/domain That's my reading too but apparently the staff did hand over the network on their way out. So now freenode is apparently actually consolidated into the Freenode Limited company with both the name/DNS/trademark and the network itself. The legal situation behind those moves is not public and is probably the only thing left to be known.

kgwxd 5y ago

"The conversation ends up a monologue with me explaining decentralization to Thomas, who abruptly ends the conversation letting me know he’d like to speak later." Where's that monologue? Why cut it out?

mynameisvlad 5y ago
Agreed. Also not sure why he chose to point out someone putting a pause on a conversation. People aren’t obligated to talk with you when you want them to. It’s clear from later messages that Thomas had other things going on and I’m sure that conversation was not helping.

floatingatoll 5y ago

This is a self-post by the author of the document in question. This site, HN, draws a line at personal insults, no matter how atrocious someone’s actions seem. Please remain civil, no matter what others are saying. (I don’t use Freenode or IRC at all, I don’t know any of the characters in this play, I have no horse in this race.)

canjobear 5y ago

I love IRC drama! It reminds me of the internet in the early 2000s.

synergy20 5y ago

After reading both sides these days, somehow I feel Andrew is more trust-able and reasonable. I will stay with freenode.

gerikson 5y ago
I don't trust Lee, but I'm staying on Freenode too. I have an acccount on Libera. Decentralization is great.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  decentralization may be great. permanent netsplits, not so much.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    I suspect the rise of Discord, Matrix etc has done more to drain people from IRC than this kerfuffle.

mam3 5y ago

with all that i still don't know what freenode is lol

rcdwealth 5y ago
It is IRC network, people who like free software chat there freely and help each other, it is like support for anything related to free software projects. See here:https://freenode.net/ https://freenode.net/ and connect by using IRC chat client.
hannasanarion 5y ago
Congratz, you found the crux of the matter. There's a volunteer community called freenode, an IRC network called freenode, and a private company called freenode, and nobody seems to be able to agree on who owns what.
- lonjil 5y ago
  Well, the servers are owned by the sponsors, and the sponsors have informal agreements with the staffers who are no longer with Freenode. Freenode Ltd (which apparently will cease to exist in a few weeks due to Lee's lack of taking care of company admin) apparently owns the domain name. Lee owns Freenode Ltd. Other than that there is nothing to own.

zach_garwood 5y ago

This has all the intrigue of a middle school slap fight. I cannot wait until all these folks get over themselves and stop screaming in public.

rntksi 5y ago

Anyone still old enough to remember this [1] and this [2] ? [1] https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ [2] https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189470&cid=15603568 https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189470&cid=15603568 Back in the days :-)

ryanmentor 5y ago

This just muddies the waters further. Let's get concrete: What assets does Freenode have, and who legally owns them?

tremon 5y ago
That question will not help you get clear answers. First ask: what constitutes the entity "Freenode"? Its trademark? Its domain name? Its servers? Its server-side management code? Its operational processes? Its bylaws? Its staff? Once that part of your question is clear, you can ask which part owns which assets.
lonjil 5y ago
The servers are owned by various sponsors. The domain name was apparently owned by Freenode Ltd? Other than that there isn't really anything to own.
pedrocr 5y ago
As far as I can tell "freenode" is a fairly blurry mix of: The brand, including the DNS: that was passed on between people and then sold within the Freenode Limited company. If you have this you can point the blog and the network to whatever you want but you don't actually have an IRC network to point it to. The servers: these are donated by various organizations and thus owned by each one. They could join any other IRC network tomorrow or just be turned off by any of those organizations. The staff: all volunteers that apparently left in mass as they didn't like what was happening. As far as we know they don't have any employment contract with Freenode Limited. The actual channel/nick data: this is what actually makes the network recognizable to anyone and it's quite unclear where that is and who owns it. Are the Nickserv/Chanserv servers separate and owned by a particular entity or just sharded/replicated across the donated servers? That last bit seems to be the crucial one. The data is supposedly stored on those donated servers and was operated by that volunteer staff, so owning the DNS wouldn't give you too strong of a claim to it. But apparently the staff was indeed forced to hand the keys over on their way out and start from scratch instead of just standing up the same data on another DNS and doing a blockchain style split. Why this happened seems to be IRC drama. Exactly who has legal rights seems extremely muddy, both because we lack a lot of information, and because it's possibly a thorny issue even for a judge to adjudicate with full briefs. If you buy a DNS that points to a volunteer run network on donated servers do you now own the network that exists there and evolves over time?

blibble 5y ago

the only relevant information is what's in the contract that "sold" freenode to Lee which has conveniently been omitted without that this looks like gaslighting

fastball 5y ago
Lee is claiming that this is due to some confidentiality agreement, which makes is more inconvenient than convenient.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  "I own you, and I have this contract here that proves it, but unfortunately it's secret so I can't show it to you." Seems utterly convenient for him, and inconvenient only for anyone who isn't him. So, no, that can't really be how it works in the real world, can it? If it were -- hey, did you know that I now own the municipality where you live? Bought it a couple years ago, so all your local tax payments for the last year are now due to me. I've implemented a flat-rate income tax of 60 percent. Naah, sorry, the sales contract is a secret, so you'll just have to take my word for it... If he wants to claim ownership of this utterly nebulously-defined entity "Freenode", he has to show: 1) That he's bought it, i.e. at least the paragraphs of the contract that directly concern the sale -- or, alternatively (not sure how this works in Britain) the registration of transfer of ownership at the relevant regulatory authority; and 2) What he's bought, exactly, i.e. the paragraphs of the contract that specify what exactly was included in the sale -- or alternatively, the registration, including a listing of the assets that went into it, of the company's founding at the relevant regulatory authority. (In the latter case, if those assets are now claimed to include stuff that wasn't there to begin with, those also need to be explicitly specified.)

yannoninator 5y ago

hmmm, the crown prince of korea owning freenode is just as believable as the queen of england contributing to the linux kernel.

bhickey 5y ago
He's just a pretender to the throne. His claim to an extinct house is barely better than mine.
- fapjacks 5y ago
  Maybe it will surprise you to learn that monarchies (and their supporting monarchists) are a weird bunch, and will fight for generations over a throne that hasn't existed for generations. They will even have generations of supporters with no claim to power. It really seems hardwired into our nature.
wut42 5y ago
He's also not really the crown prince. It's been disputed, as the previous crown prince was disputed as well.
blibble 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if he sets up Linux Limited then started claiming he (the "Linux board") owns the kernel
a1369209993 5y ago
No it isn't. It would be surprising if Elizabeth II bothered to personally write kernel code, but it's hardly unbelievable. Unless you're being absurdly pedantic about England-the-kingdom technically not existing because it's actually part of Great Britain/the UK now, but if so, you should probably say that.
- yannoninator 5y ago
  oh my god, it's just a joke.
- 5y ago

IncRnd 5y ago

From Freenode's own website in 2017: "Following discussion and deliberation we have decided to formally (and legally) ally ourselves with PIA. Freenode will continue to operate as a not-for-profit entity under the same management, with the same principles, but PIA's involvement going forwards will provide us with opportunities and resources that we could previously only dream of. PIA will provide an operating budget, mentorship and support that will allow freenode to implement some of the projects and ideas that have previously been on the backburner due to constraints in terms of volunteer time and resources." [1] [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

epsylon 5y ago
Classic Faustian bargain. Offer people money, obtain control in exchange.

fastball 5y ago

I don't know who initiated what and if Freenode will survive and if Libera should be its spiritual successor, but if these chat logs are real I hope tomaw isn't in charge of anything at Libera.

wowaname 5y ago
He settled with his responsibilities at OFTC, as far as I can tell.

mmcgaha 5y ago

When we are not happy with a situation, it is easier to pack your shit and leave quietly than to make a stink about it. Many years ago, I was not happy with my bonus after an acquisition so instead of raising a stink I made my own bonus by leaving for a higher paying job. Do yourself a favor: always leave on good terms and be helpful when your old company calls with questions.

esjeon 5y ago

Now this throws the ball to thomaw, who is, according to this pdf, “not capable with working with people in a suitable way”. Also, while Andrew claims he supports decentralization, he also says he is “the owner” of freenode, which still smells really bad. It’s possible that Andrew himself also sent out bad signals to other staffs, which led to this drama.

slenk 5y ago
I still want to know what the decentralization plan is

M2Ys4U 5y ago

This raised my eyebrow a little: >At this point, I reach out to prawnsalad, a known person in the IRC space who has relationships with many people. What Lee neglects to say here is that prawnsalad's work has been sponsored by Lee (via PIA) as far back as 2017.[0] I have no reason to suggest that prawnsalad has acted improperly,[1] but he's not necessarily a disinterested party here. [0] https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateInternetAccess https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI... [1] In fact I've worked with him in the past, and have met him many times in a social context IRL. I was involved with KiwiIRC until shortly before PIA sponsored his work.

rasengan 5y ago
He didn’t improperly act as you said and was not interested in this situation other than for the benefit of irc. To be clear, I have sponsored so many FOSS projects in the past and it’s pretty common knowledge within FOSS — for example even freenode ;)
- blibble 5y ago
  he didn't act improperly, you did by implying that he is a neutral party which as your employee/patreon: he isn't
  - rasengan 5y ago
    He’s not my employee and I said he’s friends with both sides. I would say that makes him neutral.
    - blibble 5y ago
      from prawnsalad, in his own words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17377232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17377232 > Kiwi IRC developer here that was sponsored and hired by LTM back in November he states he was hired by LTM (London Trust Media): your company he is not neutral in any way, shape or form arguing over these sort of semantics is not a good way to build up your (desperately needed) credibility

jchw 5y ago

Ouch! I idiotically deleted my account thinking that there was a risk it was about to be swept up by a VPN company. I don’t use IRC much anymore so I logged in for the occasion. I’ll admit I don’t honestly understand what did and did not happen very well, but the narrative that drove Libera Chat’s adoption is now bothersome, as it created an imperative to immediately stop using and delete Freenode accounts, and now it seems like the timing of which information got out was itself dishonest in order to strike first. Even if the majority of people still side with Libera Chat, I will now have serious trust issues with them as a network. This whole situation is bad and I hope it becomes clearer what happened and why.

joepie91_ 5y ago

It's worth noting that, unlike the integral chatlogs published earlier displaying Andrew's questionable views on Freenode, this PDF is full of heavily-snipped logs without context.

dpedu 5y ago

The fact that this statement was delivered as a PDF tells us all we need to know.

wowaname 5y ago
Which is what, exactly?

donatzsky 5y ago

The only thing that's clear to me, after this, is that the whole governance structure was never properly defined and codified. It all seems to have been based on gentlemens agreements.

wut42 5y ago

Besides discussing what happened, I wonder what IS going to happen. Right now every staffer introduced by rasengan isn't known by much, seems to be very new to freenode (and even at some times, struggling with managing the services). Some of the new staffers seems to be previous operators of Rizon[1], also known as the 4chan of IRC, which is a dubious move. One of them also seems to have been fired from it[2]. On "Freenode is FOSS"[3] post, there's a paragraph about decentralization. This essentially seems to be another Lee's project, "Tower of Chats"[4][5], which is like a sort of super-network with multiple more-or-less independent servers. Is Lee's plan to merge Freenode and ToC ? Or merge Snoonet/IRC.com with Freenode ? Or merge them all together onto ToC ? [1]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395347865271246853 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395347865271246853 [2]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395667119778500611 https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395667119778500611 [3]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss [4]: https://letstoc.com https://letstoc.com [5]: irc.imperialfamily.com (edited to fix links)

tptacek 5y ago
There's the further detail of Handshake, which Lee appears to be deeply involved in, which is a cryptocurrency that in essence claims the DNS roots as its own (part of the marketing strategy of Handshake appears to have been some sort of "airdrop" --- I'm not a cryptocurrency person and may be using that term wrong --- of coins to open source projects; I don't know if that's connected to the FOSS donations Lee keeps referencing). I've seen more than one person on HN express confusion about what "decentralizing" means in the context of Freenode's DNS, which seems to be the core of the controversy here, and do wonder myself whether this has something do with Handshake. (Handshake is a deeply silly project, but it's not at all clear to me whether it is or isn't implicated in this drama).
- wut42 5y ago
  Oh. Interesting too. I read that Lee was involved in Handshake but handshake looks so silly to me that I didn't even envisage this. I've also raised the IRCd thing in another sub-thread, and I think that freenode adopting/developing a new IRCd (and publicly) could impair Lee's idea of merging Irc.com/Snoonet/Freenode onto ToC, since ToC seems to be running Unreal.

jgilias 5y ago

Interestingly, I don't really see any 'other side' of the story here. It's the same story: 1. Christel sells 'something' to Andrew while under apparent financial distress. 2. Tomaw somehow learns that Andrew is willing to take over operational matters and tries to act against it. 3. Andrew keeps pushing his authority using titles such as 'Board of Freenode' and 'Chairman of Freenode'. 4. Volunteers actually running Freenode don't feel like working for free for a for-profit company and leave to found Libera.chat.

rasengan 5y ago
#2 is very false
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  If you had no plans to take over operations, then what was your argument about decentralization, and what was your "plan forward" that you spent "considerable time preparing"?
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    And another thing, why did you believe that you had the right to "appoint" a head of staff?
    - ryan-allen 5y ago
      He is a prince.

pandem 5y ago

Sent an email to policy@freenode.net to see my personal data as GDPR provides me the opportunity. Curious to see what they have.

dang 5y ago

We changed the url from https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on-freenode.pdf https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/raw/main/static/files/on... to one that doesn't do a file download.

Macha 5y ago

So my understanding of the situation (not an insider, just following the drama): 1. Way back when, Freenode was started by Rob Levin/Lilo. At some stage a legal entity needed to exist, which was Open Projects Network initially. 2. After some drama about misappropriation of funds, Freenode staff seperated themselves (all involved then having moved on by the time of the current drama) from OPN. [1] 3. Still realising the need for a legal entity, they formed PDPC . This had a structure and eventually christel was the leader of said structure. 4. Many years pass 5. The decision is made that PDPC is not providing enough value, when the cost of maintaining the non-profit is Freenode's primary expense. So it's dissolved[2][3]. At this stage, Freenode ceases to exist as a legal entity, but the network still exists. The domains etc. were likely under the personal control of christel at this point. 6. Many more years pass. 7. Due to reasons not definitively answered as christel has made no statements to this point, PIA steps in. They set up freenode ltd as a legal body for this. freenode ltd acquire freenode from christel as part of this, but what's publicly communicated[4] is that it's a partnership, and later downplayed to a sponsorship, including in public by christel[5]. This appears to have been what the staff was informed also. christel also becomes a PIA or LTM employee. 8. A few more years pass. During this time, PIA seperates from LTM via the Kape acquisition [6]. It's LTM which keeps the freenode stake, and Shells is the new LTM company that is the public facing sponsor. 9. Christel puts up a Shells sponsorship on the homepage which is unknown to the rest of the team as to why. When questioned, she leaves. Andrew Lee portrays this questioning as harassment, the libera.chat team portray it as asking "Hey, why is this sponsor there?" 10. Christel resigns. The staff, figuring that Freenode is still a volunteer run group, appoint a new leader, tomaw, who begins taking control and limiting access to Freenode resources to the staff. 11. Andrew Lee claims to own Freenode. After some legal back and forth between tomaw and Andrew Lee, the libera.chat team accept that Christel sold what she owned to Andrew Lee legally, though what she owned is unclear due to the dissolution of PDPC years prior. 12. The staff and Andrew Lee try to negotiate. The staff point out that Freenode is a volunteer run network running on volunteer provided servers, none of which are owned by a freenode entity, and also that it breaks previous public statements and promises to assert control. Andrew Lee points out he is the legal owner and it is inappropriate to remove his access. 13. The staff split off to form libera.chat So, the points of conflict: 1. Both sides at this point accept that christel sold what she legally owned to Andrew Lee. What did she legally own to sell? The domain and the website for sure, but what is Freenode? The IRC servers are provided on a volunteer basis by server owners with no commitment, the channels are "owned" by the communities in them. So what does it mean to own Freenode? 2. Was Christel in the right to sell things to Andrew Lee? Again, legally, the answer appears to be yes - without PDPC, she did own the assets personally, so could sell them, but morally she was the owner because she was representing the freenode volunteers and in this she didn't appear to have their participation, knowledge, or agreement. 3. Should freenode have a corporate owner? The idea is that it's a volunteer run group, so it feels weird to have a corporate owner. This is a big point of confusion for people who are going "So the owner took control, I don't see why there's a problem here". The issue was there should never have been an individual owner, but because of the costs involved in PDPC and its shutdown, there effectively was. The legal structure became divorced from the community structure at this point. This is considered to be a "So what?" by some people, while it's inherently a problem for others. [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403441 [3]: https://freenode.net/news/bye-bye-pdpc https://freenode.net/news/bye-bye-pdpc [4]: https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn [5]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes [6]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_belongs_to_andrew_lee_and_im_leaving/gyq1h81/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_...

jokoon 5y ago

No idea what this is going to change. Maybe this is an attempt to monitor and index all conversations since it's difficult to do with decentralized IRC servers? With all data gathering practices, you can bet some people see an opportunity to make money with any human data.

wowaname 5y ago
I am fairly confident that neither side is intent on harvesting user data.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

The Ardour project has used Freenode for more than 16 years as our primary coordinating and realtime support platform. I (the project lead) also used IRC back in the 80s and early 90s. Here's what IRC is to me (I'm not speaking for everyone involved in Ardour): * a protocol * an accessible server * a channel (or two), with a founder and at least one operator If those things are all functioning, then I really don't care at all about anything going on "behind the scenes". I don't care who does what on the server, I don't care who owns the server, I don't care what the plan is for the ownership of the server. I don't care if there are controversial channels somewhere. I don't care if the server admins are fighting. I don't care where the servers are (*). I don't care about channel creation policies. I don't care about ANY of this, as long as those three things continue to function normally. The only exception to this is when there is (as there was last year or the year before) a coordinate DDOS attack on the servers. In the situation, I do care that the server admins are competent and have the tools to do what needs to be done. In the case of that attack (which IIRC also somehow centered on Christel in some way), the Freenode admins did what needed to be done, and I thank them for it. The service that Freenode offered the FOSS community was to make those 3 things available at no charge for our projects. This was (and remains) enormously valuable. But nothing else about Freenode is of importance to me. It could be owned by Google as long as those 3 things work in the right way. I prefer to be using an infrastructure maintained by people with some ideological preference that supports the work we do, but realistically speaking, on a day to day basis, it makes no difference. I'm the operator in #ardour, and as long as the network ops stay out, allow me to set channel modes and other policies, their existence is something I can remain almost entirely blissfully ignorant of. I don't want to have to care about what is happening at Freenode at all. What we get from IRC is completely orthogonal to the beliefs and behaviors of anyone behind the scenes. I'd prefer that it remains that way, but it seems as if everyone behind the scenes is telling me that I'm supposed to care. (*) anyone imagining that IRC has any degree of privacy doesn't understand IRC. Ergo, whether the servers are in the US, or the EU, or southern Africa makes no difference to the content that I'm willing to read or write on an IRC channel.

fapjacks 5y ago
I think this right here reflects the reality of many or most of the channels on Freenode. I am one of the few operators of one of the larger channels on Freenode and it cost me otherwise productive work time (with no warning whatsoever) just to have to prevent the inevitable trolls from squatting on related channels and nicknames (for anyone wondering, we were helped with the channels, but not with nicknames, despite having logs to demonstrate these were registered by squatters). Now we are being "encouraged" to put more work into this matter which is, as far as I can work out, just some interpersonal drama and power politics. We have taken a "wait and see what happens" stance, which seems to be what most are doing, not only because it is unclear what is actually going on here, but because I otherwise have a lot of work to do (despite the time I spend on HN, I promise!).

grouphugs 5y ago

freenode became a harmful organization which upholds harm, and now they're scared of dying

grouphugs 5y ago

freenode is harm, not foss, there's a difference

rowland66 5y ago

I think that Sayre's law applies here. "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."

IncRnd 5y ago

Reading some of these comments, it appears that HN is turning into IRC...

fastball 5y ago

So, uh, who owns the libera.chat domain name again?

InsightfulIke 5y ago

For whatever it's worth from an anonymous but inside source, the former staff members believe they are at war with Freenode, are colluding on Libera to attack Freenode with bots and spam, and intentionally damaged Freenode's infrastructure when they left. These people are not being forthright about their actions, but I still have no idea why. Originally I supported the breakaway faction of staffers, but now I see there's a lot more to this story than we have all been told.

pmlnr 5y ago

The basis of the whole debacle is that Andrew believes someone can own freenode. Reality is that the domain can be on someone's name, but that doesn't make them the owner - communities have no owners.

eevee 5y ago

What most fascinates me about this whole kerfuffle is your adamant refusal to take responsibility for anything. All I've seen from you is continued insistence that nothing is your fault, accompanied by pages of nigh incomprehensible "evidence" that doesn't seem relevant to anything that's actually happened. The facts of note seem to be: (1) you are, for whatever reason, in charge of freenode; (2) the very first moment you attempted to make use of that position, you destroyed freenode. That is a *catastrophic* management failure on your part, and the fact that I haven't seen so much as a "my bad" from you is appalling beyond words. Despite how much you claim to care about freenode, you are clearly more concerned with your own image.