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> In 2017, Christel Dahlskjaer—who was, at the time, head of Freenode staff—created a corporation, Freenode Ltd., which she immediately sold to Lee Dahlskjaer

> In 2017, Christel Dahlskjaer—who was, at the time, head of Freenode staff—created a corporation, Freenode Ltd., which she immediately sold to Lee Dahlskjaer incorporated Freenode Limited in August 2016, contacted Lee about a possible acquisition in March 2017, and finalized the sale in April 2017. That's hardly immediately, and evidence to support Lee's involvement with the incorporation isn't currently public. > Escalation in April Before any of these events, Lee's long held access to freenode's DNS account was revoked and requests for that to be reverted were declined, along with threats that staff would quit if the revocation was not honored. > A week after Lee's effectively public announcement of ownership and de facto dictatorial operation of Freenode, the staffers who resigned from Freenode created Libera.chat as a replacement. Libera Chat was created April 23rd, before any control was transferred to Lee, 5 days after Fuchs' post and 7 days before the testnet was shutdown. It was only publicly announced on May 19th.

hn-detective 5y ago
Further clarification after looking into the repository's reflog [1]: - Shells' logo goes up on February 25th. - tomaw assumes his position as head of staff on March 21st. - Lee's access is revoked anywhere April 5th-18th, not to be regained until May. - Fuchs publishes the reorganization announcement on April 18th. - Lee gets lawyers involved on April 19th. - Libera Chat was created and its bylaws were written on April 23rd. - tomaw takes down the testnet and swantzter reverts Fuchs site changes (by force-pushing them out of existence) on April 30th. Presumably under Lee's request. - Lee appoints kevinp as head of infrastructure on May 11th. So the narrative that Libera Chat was created because of Lee's active network control is fading the more information we gather. Staff planned, registered and wrote the bylaws for Libera Chat after Lee's request for his access back. That's the only evidence they provided. All other evidence of Lee's supposed hostile actions happened at least 7 days after Libera's inception and should only be seen as a post-rationalization. [1]: Event #16150837732 at http://web.archive.org/web/20210525011039/https://api.github.com/repos/freenode/web-7.0/events?per_page=100&page=2 http://web.archive.org/web/20210525011039/https://api.github...
- stonogo 5y ago
  Let's say I believe you. My remaining question is: so?
  - hn-detective 5y ago
    So the "hostile takeover" narrative was nothing but a smear campaign. Had staff said "It's come to our attention freenode is owned by a privately owned company, something we can't stand behind. Join us at Libera Chat to participate in a truly community-owned network," everyone would still gladly side with and support them. Instead, they are portraying someone as a hostile actor when there is no evidence of that. This casualty is dishonest — Christel sought Andrew out for the sale, not the other way around, and Andrew never tried to exert control in 9 years of direct or indirect sponsorship. If you have evidence to suggest Andrew intentionally tried to gain control before his DNS access was revoked, please let me know as I've been compiling an extensive timeline of events [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514
    - jart 5y ago
      Here's the statement from the Andrew Lee himself: https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48 https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e... according to hackaday https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-network/ https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta... I have no idea who this tomaw person is and why they all hate Lee so much, or why they accuse him of bribery when he offers to pay his volunteers. I mean if you're just some scrappy online hacker and the crown fucking prince of a wealthy country reaches out to you directly and says he needs your support: you say yes!
      - wearywanderer 5y ago
        Not everybody is so easily impressed by the bullshit titles claimed by pretenders.
      - aahortwwy 5y ago
takeda 5y ago
Does it feel weird writing about yourself in 3rd person? But ok. We have conflict between people who run freenode for decades and someone who since 2017 owns the freenode name and its DNS. What do you think will happen? There's already an exodus of Open Source projects (I learned about the drama from Nix). All you will ultimately end up with is the freenode name and database of people's registration emails. Was it worth it?
- hn-detective 5y ago
  I'm not Andrew and I welcome an unbiased party to verify my identity. The issue is that they're completely within their rights to move to a community-owned network, but they didn't need to paint someone as a hostile actor without evidence of that. If you do have evidence of Andrew trying to exert any control in any way prior to his long-held access being revoked, I'll openly change my mind. Otherwise, read my other posts for why I think it's disingenuous to shape the narrative like that. > All you will ultimately end up with is the freenode name and database of people's registration emails. Was it worth it? Exactly, it makes no sense for someone who's been sponsoring the project for 9 years to up and try to kill it all of a sudden.
  - takeda 5y ago
    > I'm not Andrew and I welcome an unbiased party to verify my identity. But then why create a puppet account?
    - hn-detective 5y ago
      Because I have reason to believe I would be harassed for asking for evidence for the claims that Andrew tried to control the network prior to his access revocation. Look around: there are multiple news articles on the subject and all of them take the hostile takeover perspective as gospel. People have already decided Andrew controls a corporation with evil intentions. In this case, I was pointing out factual mistakes that could eventually paint a different narrative. Despite seeing waves of upvotes and downvotes, no one has offered any piece of evidence backing their claims: The article implies Freenode Limited was incorporated for the sole reason to be sold to Andrew. Evidence for this angle? None so far, instead it looks like Christel is the one who incorporated and months later actively sought an acquisition. There are Companies House records for the incorporation, and Andrew provided the email showing Christel coming to him. The article implies Andrew escalated the debacle by asserting his authority over the reorganization. Reality? They conveniently did not mention staff asked Andrew to sign over the domain, then consequently Andrew was locked out and the staff announced a reorganization with partnership with OFTC. Andrew mistakenly sees this as a coup and fights back. While staff was acting in good faith, so was Andrew. Evidence of ill intention? None. Evidence of a single instance where Andrew tried to intervene in the network affairs from 2012 to 2021? None as well. The article implies Libera Chat was created after Andrew fully took over. Reality? It was created right after the lawyer tried to restore Andrew's access. This implies they were ready to move regardless of Andrew's actions. And that's fine, I too support a community-owned network as opposed to a company-owned one. However, if their bylaws were written prior to any actual takeover, why are they trying to portray Andrew as the active actor that prompted Libera Chat's creation? And lastly, the only thing that's blatantly clear is that Christel backstabbed every single one of them. Yet, Andrew's face is plastered everywhere as the villain. He might be a douchebag, but you have to be disingenuous to refuse to provide evidence to support your narrative and question why I wouldn't share my real name along with facts I provided evidence for [1]. Once again, I too will demonize Andrew as soon as evidence of him interfering with the network affairs since 2012 is provided. Pretty please? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514

hn-detective 5y ago

Further clarification after looking into the repository's reflog [1]: - Shells' logo goes up on February 25th. - tomaw assumes his position as head of staff on March 21st. - Lee's access is revoked anywhere April 5th-18th, not to be regained until May. - Fuchs publishes the reorganization announcement on April 18th. - Lee gets lawyers involved on April 19th. - Libera Chat was created and its bylaws were written on April 23rd. - tomaw takes down the testnet and swantzter reverts Fuchs site changes (by force-pushing them out of existence) on April 30th. Presumably under Lee's request. - Lee appoints kevinp as head of infrastructure on May 11th. So the narrative that Libera Chat was created because of Lee's active network control is fading the more information we gather. Staff planned, registered and wrote the bylaws for Libera Chat after Lee's request for his access back. That's the only evidence they provided. All other evidence of Lee's supposed hostile actions happened at least 7 days after Libera's inception and should only be seen as a post-rationalization. [1]: Event #16150837732 at http://web.archive.org/web/20210525011039/https://api.github.com/repos/freenode/web-7.0/events?per_page=100&page=2 http://web.archive.org/web/20210525011039/https://api.github...

stonogo 5y ago
Let's say I believe you. My remaining question is: so?
- hn-detective 5y ago
  So the "hostile takeover" narrative was nothing but a smear campaign. Had staff said "It's come to our attention freenode is owned by a privately owned company, something we can't stand behind. Join us at Libera Chat to participate in a truly community-owned network," everyone would still gladly side with and support them. Instead, they are portraying someone as a hostile actor when there is no evidence of that. This casualty is dishonest — Christel sought Andrew out for the sale, not the other way around, and Andrew never tried to exert control in 9 years of direct or indirect sponsorship. If you have evidence to suggest Andrew intentionally tried to gain control before his DNS access was revoked, please let me know as I've been compiling an extensive timeline of events [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514
  - jart 5y ago
    Here's the statement from the Andrew Lee himself: https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48 https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e... according to hackaday https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-network/ https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta... I have no idea who this tomaw person is and why they all hate Lee so much, or why they accuse him of bribery when he offers to pay his volunteers. I mean if you're just some scrappy online hacker and the crown fucking prince of a wealthy country reaches out to you directly and says he needs your support: you say yes!
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      Not everybody is so easily impressed by the bullshit titles claimed by pretenders.
    - aahortwwy 5y ago

takeda 5y ago

Does it feel weird writing about yourself in 3rd person? But ok. We have conflict between people who run freenode for decades and someone who since 2017 owns the freenode name and its DNS. What do you think will happen? There's already an exodus of Open Source projects (I learned about the drama from Nix). All you will ultimately end up with is the freenode name and database of people's registration emails. Was it worth it?

hn-detective 5y ago
I'm not Andrew and I welcome an unbiased party to verify my identity. The issue is that they're completely within their rights to move to a community-owned network, but they didn't need to paint someone as a hostile actor without evidence of that. If you do have evidence of Andrew trying to exert any control in any way prior to his long-held access being revoked, I'll openly change my mind. Otherwise, read my other posts for why I think it's disingenuous to shape the narrative like that. > All you will ultimately end up with is the freenode name and database of people's registration emails. Was it worth it? Exactly, it makes no sense for someone who's been sponsoring the project for 9 years to up and try to kill it all of a sudden.
- takeda 5y ago
  > I'm not Andrew and I welcome an unbiased party to verify my identity. But then why create a puppet account?
  - hn-detective 5y ago
    Because I have reason to believe I would be harassed for asking for evidence for the claims that Andrew tried to control the network prior to his access revocation. Look around: there are multiple news articles on the subject and all of them take the hostile takeover perspective as gospel. People have already decided Andrew controls a corporation with evil intentions. In this case, I was pointing out factual mistakes that could eventually paint a different narrative. Despite seeing waves of upvotes and downvotes, no one has offered any piece of evidence backing their claims: The article implies Freenode Limited was incorporated for the sole reason to be sold to Andrew. Evidence for this angle? None so far, instead it looks like Christel is the one who incorporated and months later actively sought an acquisition. There are Companies House records for the incorporation, and Andrew provided the email showing Christel coming to him. The article implies Andrew escalated the debacle by asserting his authority over the reorganization. Reality? They conveniently did not mention staff asked Andrew to sign over the domain, then consequently Andrew was locked out and the staff announced a reorganization with partnership with OFTC. Andrew mistakenly sees this as a coup and fights back. While staff was acting in good faith, so was Andrew. Evidence of ill intention? None. Evidence of a single instance where Andrew tried to intervene in the network affairs from 2012 to 2021? None as well. The article implies Libera Chat was created after Andrew fully took over. Reality? It was created right after the lawyer tried to restore Andrew's access. This implies they were ready to move regardless of Andrew's actions. And that's fine, I too support a community-owned network as opposed to a company-owned one. However, if their bylaws were written prior to any actual takeover, why are they trying to portray Andrew as the active actor that prompted Libera Chat's creation? And lastly, the only thing that's blatantly clear is that Christel backstabbed every single one of them. Yet, Andrew's face is plastered everywhere as the villain. He might be a douchebag, but you have to be disingenuous to refuse to provide evidence to support your narrative and question why I wouldn't share my real name along with facts I provided evidence for [1]. Once again, I too will demonize Andrew as soon as evidence of him interfering with the network affairs since 2012 is provided. Pretty please? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250514