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Hi this is Andrew from the post and freenode. Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to shar

Hi this is Andrew from the post and freenode. Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that. Secondly, staff claim there was a hostile takeover. I have owned freenode for years and was a great custodian as far as I can tell (only compliments from former staff some of which even flew into defcon and came to my house on my dime, internationally) - I intervened when a hostile takeover from the inside began taking place - my dns was cut and the internal structure was changing to a non democratic one. All of this is detailed in the post and screenshots for proof since there’s been a lot of falsehoods spread. I had to step in and did just in time.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Thank you for taking the time, Andrew. I have noticed this pattern in many online communities which are controlled by one or small group of people, I think it's straight from the playbook.
- rasengan 5y ago
  I agree and you’re very welcome!
tapoxi 5y ago
From what I've read it seems like you generally seem to have Freenode's interests at heart, but this seems like a complete communication failure. Most channels I've been a part of have moved to Libera Chat, so I don't think Freenode in its current form can recover from this. Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? It would be nice to have a homeserver that people can rely on and isn't Matrix.org.
- hhvn 5y ago
  One of the main points of matrix is that every server should be compatible and form a federation with others. What is the point of moving people onto a specific server? With IRC freenode has a control structure that can enforce their rules/guidelines, this breaks with matrix.
  - Macha 5y ago
    I think the big concerns with matrix.org centralisation are: * If matrix.org went away tomorrow, is there enough capacity in the rest of matrix for users to migrate to. * Federation only exists when a channel has users from multiple homeservers on it - how many small/medium channels only exist on matrix.org? * People's identities are tied to their home server. You would be userfoo:matrix.org - if matrix.org went away, how would you find all your contacts again? Points 1 and 2 would be addressed by more capacity and more independent homeservers, point 3 would require some sort of multi-homing.
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      1. About 30% of the visible users on Matrix are on Matrix.org. So, yes. 2. Almost all public rooms seem to have users from other servers. 3. Account portability/multihoming is in the works at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2787 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2787
- Syonyk 5y ago
  > * Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? * Please don't. I like Matrix, I use it, but it's not IRC, and it's far, far more resource heavy (both in homeserver and in clients) than IRC is. You can run IRC on ancient gutless wonders, and it uses almost no resources. Matrix, especially the flagship Element client, is a resource hog. Start throwing rooms with thousands of users in, and it requires an awful lot of resources. Keep IRC IRC.
  - tapoxi 5y ago
    IRC stays IRC, but how else does a network like freenode survive a giant schism? They need to differentiate from libera chat. Matrix has problems, but as the ecosystem grows we'll start to see improvements.
    - Macha 5y ago
      If Libera.chat gets 60% of the users, freenode would still be the second largest IRC network. I think there will be a enough inertia among people/projects who don't follow hacker news or internet trends for the remainder of freenode to retain an audience. The bigger question is if they retain enough server sponsors, who may be paying more attention. They might defect to libera.chat or OFTC, or just decide the whole business is not worth their while.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Why wouldn’t freenode survive? The people that want to go can go. The people that stay, stay.
    - ique 5y ago
      I’ve been using Matrix with Riot, now Element, for 5 years and it’s only ever gotten worse. You really shouldn’t expect to see improvements.
      - Syonyk 5y ago
        My main problem with Matrix (which I'm willing to work around because of the benefits of a federated, self hosted, encrypted chat system) is that it seems to assume everyone has a lot of high end, modern hardware, at all ends of the system. Synapse is fine until someone on the homeserver starts joining a bunch of rooms, then you'd better have a lot of RAM for it. And Element, while a perfectly good client, is the standard "bloated electron app" option that chews 700MB of RAM and lags, entering text, on a Raspberry Pi 4. There are alternatives, but they tend to have weird issues, at least last time I messed with them, in how they handle some of the corner cases of encryption.
duckfang 5y ago
That's fine. We've already switched quite a few rooms to Libera.chat due to this debacle. More are moving as we speak. I don't know who's right or who's wrong. What I do know is that a LOT of volunteer IRC OPs left en masse for "reasons". I know a few of them, and am inclined to trust them. I'll talk with them after the dust settles. I know how to read the room, even though I don't have all the information. I helped migrate the rooms I'm frequent in. So far, it's been pretty smooth over on Libera. Technology has almost never been about the tech - it's about the people. Always has been.
- scrutinizer80 5y ago
  The logs posted over at https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18926720&cid=61404806 https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18926720&cid=61404... Seem to indicate that the staff were unitedly and firmly against this. It's suspicious having the entire team against one person. I still don't get the whole picture but claims when made by an entire staff usually have merit.
  - rasengan 5y ago
    It is ritual defamation [1]. This has been apparently going on for quite some time [2]. [1] http://techrights.org/2021/04/29/ritual-defamation/ http://techrights.org/2021/04/29/ritual-defamation/ [2] https://phanes.silogroup.org/vae-victis/ https://phanes.silogroup.org/vae-victis/
    - tptacek 5y ago
      It's pretty funny that your one-two punch here consists of accusing the Freenode operator community of defaming you, and then following up with a post that does little more than accuse them of assisting stalkers and abusers.
    - scrutinizer80 5y ago
      Link #2 is a low-level, disrespectful and rude document - filled with personal attacks and insults. How can you expect to gain any sympathy posting something that is phrased like that? Despicable.
greyface- 5y ago
Hi Andrew, thanks for participating in the comments here. Will you consider disclosing the terms under which you purchased freenode? PDFs of executed documents, ideally?
- rasengan 5y ago
  That information is confidential in nature. That said tomaw has seen it and has handed freenode back over if that helps to understand what it’s content may have. I really apologize for the inconvenience.
  - greyface- 5y ago
    What are the terms of the confidentiality agreement? Who would need to sign off on terminating the confidentiality agreement, and would you consider doing so in order to help the public understand what's going on?
    - rasengan 5y ago
      About the majority of the questions I will get back to you. In terms of the latter - I wish I could have simply posted it — so absolutely, yes.
      - greyface- 5y ago
        Thanks. I'm glad to hear that -- I think the lack of transparency around the sale is making it hard for a lot of people (myself included) to make sense of this whole situation.
  - duckfang 5y ago
    Oof. Confidentiality, NDA's, and other business tools like it are at complete odds with open source, free software, transparency, and honesty. It's comments like this that cement the idea of getting off of Freenode to Libera.chat is the best thing we could do.
rcdwealth 5y ago
Thanks Andrew, and very good that you prepared enough evidences to counter those issues raised by drama queens. All the free software is protected by copyrights, foundations, and so is the infrastructure. Somebody has to pay for it. Somebody does have assets, be it foundation or private individual or a group of individuals, but somebody is always considered owner of the assets and those assets have to be protected. Thanks for doing the work, and I kind of feel it unfair and totally unjust to you as a protector and supporter of the IRC network. It is free because of people like you and others. IMHO, all that drama was staged, planned. The reason why such networks have to be held under legal entities is funding number one, as to keep networks financed by sponsors, and protection number two. Legal entities are formed under country's laws and in case of trouble it is legitimate to use laws to protect assets. You have not done nothing wrong in doing so. Keep doing well!
- blibble 5y ago
  it's free because the actual sponsors (the ISPs) paid for the servers and the staff volunteered their time to support the network Mr Lee coming along and secretly giving christel a salary on the side would likely have had no effect on the operations of the IRC network had it not happened (bar maybe christel spending less time on IRC...)
rcxdude 5y ago
Why do you think nearly the entire staff was against this? If it was a hostile takeover by a small 'non democratic' group, would you not expect that only that group would quit? Also, if you were the owner of freenode for so long, why does almost no-one in the chat logs which have been made public seem to be aware of you?
- rasengan 5y ago
  Did you read the PDF? It’s actually really clear there. Lots of defamatory and false comments were made by the former staff - which are proven to be false in the document. In terms of the ownership, it was on the main blog and website for the past 4 years [1]. Also checkout http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/ http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/ Thanks! [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
  - wut42 5y ago
    >There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now
    - rasengan 5y ago
      It did until I was locked out of the dns and an internal reorganization and structure was put in place. The screenshots from former staff agenda is on the PDF. I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.
        rasengan 5y ago
        Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.
scythe 5y ago
One thing which is unambiguous, both from your timeline and Thomas's: you were the first to contact a lawyer and send a gag order. He then responded with his own lawyer and his own gag order. And frankly, it doesn't seem at all reasonable that confidentiality would be necessary if the dispute is really just about a domain name account and a logo. Overall, it's hard to parse a coherent narrative from anything here, but a bare reading of the few unambiguous facts doesn't look good for you, from where I'm sitting. I have no association with freenode or any major IRC channels, unless you count the GT Linux Users' Group (which is exactly what it sounds like).
ilaksh 5y ago
I think you left out a few important things in that paragraph. There was at least one significant dispute. Something about a DNS change that would cause many people to leave. What exactly was that? Also, that Christel person or whatever their name, the fact that they apparently were kind of desperate for money at some point and so supposedly sold you something seems like you were taking advantage of them and the situation rather than getting involved from the goodness of your heart. How can you own something like Freenode which is a completely volunteer effort that doesn't make money? And what would be the point of "buying" it if you were not trying to monetize it? And if you were then how would that be in the spirit of "Free"node? How is it "just in time" if the majority of the projects already left?
- rasengan 5y ago
  The DNS dispute is when I, who owned the domains, was cut off from the domains and simply asked for it back. As you can see I was approached by freenode to buy freenode please don’t twist it. Did you read the PDF with the screenshots?
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    I am not twisting anything. If I had not read the PDF then how would I know christel was desperate? Why is it so important for the Freenode community that you own the domain? Because as far as I can tell, the Freenode community moved to Libera.chat and made a much nicer website that doesn't have an ad on it for some kind of unrelated VM service prominently featured on the home page. And they have moved the chat rooms also.
  - mynameisvlad 5y ago
    "If you make me do this I'll lose half the staff" "for a pointless dns change you'll probably never do anything with" That sounds like a specific change was requested which was controversial.
  - zokier 5y ago
    > As you can see I was approached by freenode You were approached by christel.
ryukafalz 5y ago
> Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that. https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489 https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489 "since the start."
- makomk 5y ago
  That commit is replacing the logo and link of the previous sponsor Private Internet Access with one for Shells instead, and looking at the Wayback Machine that previous logo and link has been there since about April 2016[1] in the same location with the same level of prominence. (The one in the top-right corner underneath the Wayback Machine's toolbar, not the "Private Internet Access" entry in the footer which seems to have disappeared with the switch to Shells.) So in reality, this isn't some shocking new intrusion of corporate logos that began in 2021 despite ex-Freenode staff succesfully spinning it that way, it's something that's been going on pretty much since he purchased Freenode Inc half a decade ago. (Actually, maybe even before he did. Not 100% sure of the exact timeline.) The only thing that's changed is which sponsor and logo exactly is featured. Apparently somehow no-one thought to check if this key, easily-verified claim is actually true until I ended up stumbling on the old PIA logo by accident when looking for the new sponsor's one. In fact, thinking about it I seem to remember some discussion of the fact that the PIA logo had been added at the time and that it was something to do with their funding of Freenode Live, and that no-one much seemed to care back then aside from a few trolls of the sort Freenode has always attracted under all its owners. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode....
  - joepie91_ 5y ago
    There were actually plenty of concerns about the PIA involvement and logo at the time, but they were largely dismissed by others with the usual "what are you complaining about, it's just business" rhetoric. And that's how we ended up here.
ex-fnstaffer 5y ago
Is it really a hostile takeover when it's supported by 100% of the staff who had been running freenode for decades, and the only person who didn't like it was you?
danieldle 5y ago
Hostile takeover by and from whom? It was ran by the very staff that all left. No exceptions, all of them. So who exactly where they taking it away from? The appointed heads were appointed by all of staff, democratically, as your very PDF proves from the meeting notes. It is you who tried to force in people in a leading position that staff were disagreeing with, so if there was a hostile takeover, it was yours. You also never owned freenode, you owned Freenode Limited. You had zero involvement with the network, that was ran by volunteers in their spare time. Also you have not been locked out from DNS either. One of your employees insisted on enabling 2FA, and you simply haven't had a key. For ages, mind, not just for the past few weeks. But sure, blame your mismanagement of your own company on volunteers that had nothing to do with you or your ltd.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Thank you for taking the time, Andrew. I have noticed this pattern in many online communities which are controlled by one or small group of people, I think it's straight from the playbook.

rasengan 5y ago
I agree and you’re very welcome!

tapoxi 5y ago

From what I've read it seems like you generally seem to have Freenode's interests at heart, but this seems like a complete communication failure. Most channels I've been a part of have moved to Libera Chat, so I don't think Freenode in its current form can recover from this. Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? It would be nice to have a homeserver that people can rely on and isn't Matrix.org.

hhvn 5y ago
One of the main points of matrix is that every server should be compatible and form a federation with others. What is the point of moving people onto a specific server? With IRC freenode has a control structure that can enforce their rules/guidelines, this breaks with matrix.
- Macha 5y ago
  I think the big concerns with matrix.org centralisation are: * If matrix.org went away tomorrow, is there enough capacity in the rest of matrix for users to migrate to. * Federation only exists when a channel has users from multiple homeservers on it - how many small/medium channels only exist on matrix.org? * People's identities are tied to their home server. You would be userfoo:matrix.org - if matrix.org went away, how would you find all your contacts again? Points 1 and 2 would be addressed by more capacity and more independent homeservers, point 3 would require some sort of multi-homing.
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    1. About 30% of the visible users on Matrix are on Matrix.org. So, yes. 2. Almost all public rooms seem to have users from other servers. 3. Account portability/multihoming is in the works at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2787 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2787
Syonyk 5y ago
> * Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? * Please don't. I like Matrix, I use it, but it's not IRC, and it's far, far more resource heavy (both in homeserver and in clients) than IRC is. You can run IRC on ancient gutless wonders, and it uses almost no resources. Matrix, especially the flagship Element client, is a resource hog. Start throwing rooms with thousands of users in, and it requires an awful lot of resources. Keep IRC IRC.
- tapoxi 5y ago
  IRC stays IRC, but how else does a network like freenode survive a giant schism? They need to differentiate from libera chat. Matrix has problems, but as the ecosystem grows we'll start to see improvements.
  - Macha 5y ago
    If Libera.chat gets 60% of the users, freenode would still be the second largest IRC network. I think there will be a enough inertia among people/projects who don't follow hacker news or internet trends for the remainder of freenode to retain an audience. The bigger question is if they retain enough server sponsors, who may be paying more attention. They might defect to libera.chat or OFTC, or just decide the whole business is not worth their while.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Why wouldn’t freenode survive? The people that want to go can go. The people that stay, stay.
  - ique 5y ago
    I’ve been using Matrix with Riot, now Element, for 5 years and it’s only ever gotten worse. You really shouldn’t expect to see improvements.
    - Syonyk 5y ago
      My main problem with Matrix (which I'm willing to work around because of the benefits of a federated, self hosted, encrypted chat system) is that it seems to assume everyone has a lot of high end, modern hardware, at all ends of the system. Synapse is fine until someone on the homeserver starts joining a bunch of rooms, then you'd better have a lot of RAM for it. And Element, while a perfectly good client, is the standard "bloated electron app" option that chews 700MB of RAM and lags, entering text, on a Raspberry Pi 4. There are alternatives, but they tend to have weird issues, at least last time I messed with them, in how they handle some of the corner cases of encryption.

duckfang 5y ago

That's fine. We've already switched quite a few rooms to Libera.chat due to this debacle. More are moving as we speak. I don't know who's right or who's wrong. What I do know is that a LOT of volunteer IRC OPs left en masse for "reasons". I know a few of them, and am inclined to trust them. I'll talk with them after the dust settles. I know how to read the room, even though I don't have all the information. I helped migrate the rooms I'm frequent in. So far, it's been pretty smooth over on Libera. Technology has almost never been about the tech - it's about the people. Always has been.

scrutinizer80 5y ago
The logs posted over at https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18926720&cid=61404806 https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18926720&cid=61404... Seem to indicate that the staff were unitedly and firmly against this. It's suspicious having the entire team against one person. I still don't get the whole picture but claims when made by an entire staff usually have merit.
- rasengan 5y ago
  It is ritual defamation [1]. This has been apparently going on for quite some time [2]. [1] http://techrights.org/2021/04/29/ritual-defamation/ http://techrights.org/2021/04/29/ritual-defamation/ [2] https://phanes.silogroup.org/vae-victis/ https://phanes.silogroup.org/vae-victis/
  - tptacek 5y ago
    It's pretty funny that your one-two punch here consists of accusing the Freenode operator community of defaming you, and then following up with a post that does little more than accuse them of assisting stalkers and abusers.
  - scrutinizer80 5y ago
    Link #2 is a low-level, disrespectful and rude document - filled with personal attacks and insults. How can you expect to gain any sympathy posting something that is phrased like that? Despicable.

greyface- 5y ago

Hi Andrew, thanks for participating in the comments here. Will you consider disclosing the terms under which you purchased freenode? PDFs of executed documents, ideally?

rasengan 5y ago
That information is confidential in nature. That said tomaw has seen it and has handed freenode back over if that helps to understand what it’s content may have. I really apologize for the inconvenience.
- greyface- 5y ago
  What are the terms of the confidentiality agreement? Who would need to sign off on terminating the confidentiality agreement, and would you consider doing so in order to help the public understand what's going on?
  - rasengan 5y ago
    About the majority of the questions I will get back to you. In terms of the latter - I wish I could have simply posted it — so absolutely, yes.
    - greyface- 5y ago
      Thanks. I'm glad to hear that -- I think the lack of transparency around the sale is making it hard for a lot of people (myself included) to make sense of this whole situation.
- duckfang 5y ago
  Oof. Confidentiality, NDA's, and other business tools like it are at complete odds with open source, free software, transparency, and honesty. It's comments like this that cement the idea of getting off of Freenode to Libera.chat is the best thing we could do.

rcdwealth 5y ago

Thanks Andrew, and very good that you prepared enough evidences to counter those issues raised by drama queens. All the free software is protected by copyrights, foundations, and so is the infrastructure. Somebody has to pay for it. Somebody does have assets, be it foundation or private individual or a group of individuals, but somebody is always considered owner of the assets and those assets have to be protected. Thanks for doing the work, and I kind of feel it unfair and totally unjust to you as a protector and supporter of the IRC network. It is free because of people like you and others. IMHO, all that drama was staged, planned. The reason why such networks have to be held under legal entities is funding number one, as to keep networks financed by sponsors, and protection number two. Legal entities are formed under country's laws and in case of trouble it is legitimate to use laws to protect assets. You have not done nothing wrong in doing so. Keep doing well!

blibble 5y ago
it's free because the actual sponsors (the ISPs) paid for the servers and the staff volunteered their time to support the network Mr Lee coming along and secretly giving christel a salary on the side would likely have had no effect on the operations of the IRC network had it not happened (bar maybe christel spending less time on IRC...)

rcxdude 5y ago

Why do you think nearly the entire staff was against this? If it was a hostile takeover by a small 'non democratic' group, would you not expect that only that group would quit? Also, if you were the owner of freenode for so long, why does almost no-one in the chat logs which have been made public seem to be aware of you?

rasengan 5y ago
Did you read the PDF? It’s actually really clear there. Lots of defamatory and false comments were made by the former staff - which are proven to be false in the document. In terms of the ownership, it was on the main blog and website for the past 4 years [1]. Also checkout http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/ http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/ Thanks! [1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
- wut42 5y ago
  >There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now
  - rasengan 5y ago
    It did until I was locked out of the dns and an internal reorganization and structure was put in place. The screenshots from former staff agenda is on the PDF. I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.
      - rasengan 5y ago
        Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.

scythe 5y ago

One thing which is unambiguous, both from your timeline and Thomas's: you were the first to contact a lawyer and send a gag order. He then responded with his own lawyer and his own gag order. And frankly, it doesn't seem at all reasonable that confidentiality would be necessary if the dispute is really just about a domain name account and a logo. Overall, it's hard to parse a coherent narrative from anything here, but a bare reading of the few unambiguous facts doesn't look good for you, from where I'm sitting. I have no association with freenode or any major IRC channels, unless you count the GT Linux Users' Group (which is exactly what it sounds like).

ilaksh 5y ago

I think you left out a few important things in that paragraph. There was at least one significant dispute. Something about a DNS change that would cause many people to leave. What exactly was that? Also, that Christel person or whatever their name, the fact that they apparently were kind of desperate for money at some point and so supposedly sold you something seems like you were taking advantage of them and the situation rather than getting involved from the goodness of your heart. How can you own something like Freenode which is a completely volunteer effort that doesn't make money? And what would be the point of "buying" it if you were not trying to monetize it? And if you were then how would that be in the spirit of "Free"node? How is it "just in time" if the majority of the projects already left?

rasengan 5y ago
The DNS dispute is when I, who owned the domains, was cut off from the domains and simply asked for it back. As you can see I was approached by freenode to buy freenode please don’t twist it. Did you read the PDF with the screenshots?
- ilaksh 5y ago
  I am not twisting anything. If I had not read the PDF then how would I know christel was desperate? Why is it so important for the Freenode community that you own the domain? Because as far as I can tell, the Freenode community moved to Libera.chat and made a much nicer website that doesn't have an ad on it for some kind of unrelated VM service prominently featured on the home page. And they have moved the chat rooms also.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  "If you make me do this I'll lose half the staff" "for a pointless dns change you'll probably never do anything with" That sounds like a specific change was requested which was controversial.
- zokier 5y ago
  > As you can see I was approached by freenode You were approached by christel.

ryukafalz 5y ago

> Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that. https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489 https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489 "since the start."

makomk 5y ago
That commit is replacing the logo and link of the previous sponsor Private Internet Access with one for Shells instead, and looking at the Wayback Machine that previous logo and link has been there since about April 2016[1] in the same location with the same level of prominence. (The one in the top-right corner underneath the Wayback Machine's toolbar, not the "Private Internet Access" entry in the footer which seems to have disappeared with the switch to Shells.) So in reality, this isn't some shocking new intrusion of corporate logos that began in 2021 despite ex-Freenode staff succesfully spinning it that way, it's something that's been going on pretty much since he purchased Freenode Inc half a decade ago. (Actually, maybe even before he did. Not 100% sure of the exact timeline.) The only thing that's changed is which sponsor and logo exactly is featured. Apparently somehow no-one thought to check if this key, easily-verified claim is actually true until I ended up stumbling on the old PIA logo by accident when looking for the new sponsor's one. In fact, thinking about it I seem to remember some discussion of the fact that the PIA logo had been added at the time and that it was something to do with their funding of Freenode Live, and that no-one much seemed to care back then aside from a few trolls of the sort Freenode has always attracted under all its owners. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode....
- joepie91_ 5y ago
  There were actually plenty of concerns about the PIA involvement and logo at the time, but they were largely dismissed by others with the usual "what are you complaining about, it's just business" rhetoric. And that's how we ended up here.

ex-fnstaffer 5y ago

Is it really a hostile takeover when it's supported by 100% of the staff who had been running freenode for decades, and the only person who didn't like it was you?

danieldle 5y ago

Hostile takeover by and from whom? It was ran by the very staff that all left. No exceptions, all of them. So who exactly where they taking it away from? The appointed heads were appointed by all of staff, democratically, as your very PDF proves from the meeting notes. It is you who tried to force in people in a leading position that staff were disagreeing with, so if there was a hostile takeover, it was yours. You also never owned freenode, you owned Freenode Limited. You had zero involvement with the network, that was ran by volunteers in their spare time. Also you have not been locked out from DNS either. One of your employees insisted on enabling 2FA, and you simply haven't had a key. For ages, mind, not just for the past few weeks. But sure, blame your mismanagement of your own company on volunteers that had nothing to do with you or your ltd.