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Freenode ops take control of 700 channels

• techrat 5y ago
  This submission is not a dupe, however, there is more discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285774 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285802
• techrat 5y ago
  Also happened to #r/linux: https://i.imgur.com/02X39YU.png https://i.imgur.com/02X39YU.png and #elitedangerous: https://i.imgur.com/02X39YU.png https://i.imgur.com/02X39YU.png and #prjmistral: https://pastebin.com/UGgTwRnt https://pastebin.com/UGgTwRnt Edit: Additional channels taken over by Freenode Staff: #irssi #reprap #regex #ubuntu #wikipedia #gcc #rhel Looks like it's widespread. Won't be editing further.
  • db48x 5y ago
    Do you happen to know what the topics were?
    • transientbug 5y ago
      Seems to be any topic mentioning libera chat.
    • techrat 5y ago
      Topic: * libera*
  • isantop 5y ago
    They also semi-affected #system76. I still have ops in the ACL, but there was a new ## opened (which is invite-only) and they added themselves to the ACL.
• wrl 5y ago
  Just happened to #zig as well: https://twitter.com/andy_kelley/status/1397388932367601665 https://twitter.com/andy_kelley/status/1397388932367601665
• spicywasabi 5y ago
  freenode has now started taking over and removing access, bans, and forwarding users from official on topics channels (such as #wikipedia, #znc etc) and forwarding them to ##offtopic channels saying they are in violation of apparent new policy. no explanation and lots of users losing access to official groups.
• eminence32 5y ago
  I was willing to idle on freenode to help any users who came into our channel looking for help. But freenode has forcibly set the channel to secret, invite only, and moderated. If they want people to use their network, they're not acting like it.
  • techrat 5y ago
    They also nuked private channels that were being used for Wikimedia and Wikipedia's editor communications. This is less about enforcing policy and more about angry, petty grievances.
• rasengan 5y ago
  These channels were already already closed. We removed the topics and forwarded users to an off-topic channel with the same name. If your channel was incorrectly marked in this, please let our staff know and we'll remediate it asap. Thank you for your patience!
  • techrat 5y ago
    By doing what you have just done, you have shown every FOSS project that you cannot be trusted, are vindictive and will retaliate against any project using your service for any perceived slight. You are everything you accused ex Staffers of being: An abusive operator with a massive chip on his shoulder. You are too immature to be trusted to run one channel, nevermind an entire IRC network. You are poison and everything you touch will die. Freenode will not be the exception. --- Decided to go through and grep my irssi logs. Andy, remember saying this in #freenode about ten days ago? 08:57 < rasengan> You ban abusively, and haven’t really helped freenode at all until now. Freenode policies have been shaped for you and your posse to extract value and now you’re holding it hostage while asking people to go to another network. Aged like fine milk, that one... Banning abusively... Haven't really helped Freenode... Freenode policies being shaped for you and your posse... Holding it hostage... I'd ask you if all of this is really what you want to be remembered for, but the more important thing is that we're all going to get on just fine without you.
    • db48x 5y ago
      Agreed. I thought last week that all this was a tempest in a teapot and I wasn’t going to bother thinking about it. Today’s drama is a pretty convincing demonstration that Freenode is not a stable place to hold discussions any more. There’s plenty of other irc networks out there.
  • vifon 5y ago
    > If your channel was incorrectly marked in this, please let our staff know and we'll remediate it asap. Ah yes, shoot first, ask questions later. Two of my channels just got hijacked this way and I'm not in a mood to jump through your hoops now.
  • deleted 5y ago
• wally4000 5y ago
  Happened to #dragonbox-* / #openpandora-*
• abstractbeliefs 5y ago
  For anyone wondering "what now": https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ This network is run by the old staff that Andrew Lee evicted last week to seize the network. Libera cares about foss and will help you transition your project. From last week: https://kline.sh/ https://kline.sh/
  • Seirdy 5y ago
    Some channels are also moving to OFTC. Alpine, cat-v, #freedesktop, #wayland, and others are examples.
    • endgame 5y ago
      #dhall is on OFTC too. The #nixos universe seems to have moved to Matrix.
• jcranmer 5y ago
  The apparent cause of this is a channel topic mentioning libera at all. This was the topic for the channel that affected me (with redacting of URL and channel name): [memetic people] Logs, stats, etc: [url redacted] -- See also #redacted on irc.libera.chat Also everyone in the #topic channel at the time of the takeover was apparently banned from both the #topic and ##topic channel it was supposedly moved to. At this point, I am firmly of the opinion "fuck Freenode."
  • Buttons840 5y ago
    This matches the story I got from Reddit on /r/haskell and /r/emacs.
• abstractbeliefs 5y ago
  For anyone wondering what to do now: https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ This network is run by the old staff that Andrew evicted from freenode last week. Libera cares about foss and will help you transition your project. from last week: https://kline.sh/ https://kline.sh/
• swe_guy 5y ago
  Looks like there's a mirror channel ##ob-freenode-policy-feedback on Libera if you want to peek at the insane drama happening on freenode right now.
  • keepwaitingig 5y ago
    I wish the Libera folks would've properly prioritized the Matrix bridge. The fact that multiple linux communities *migrated the entirety of their live chat ecosystems, nearly over-night to Matrix*... and I still can't join Libera from Matrix without ruffling feathers... it's not a good look for Libera. Meanwhile I'm in multiple Matrix spaces with ... jfc post-2000 communications functionality. Moderation? wew boy! But then again, I appreciate not-being-jerked-around like HN making me fill out captchas that even CF has given up on. Yeah, ok buddy. Anyway, I do kind of feel like a jerk, because these are volunteers and blah blah blah, but so are the people that moved the [X], [Y], and [Z] communities to Matrix (again, seeingly overnight, the result of their careful planning and thought... they saw Freenode coming, as many did, and apparently starting working behind the scenes) So on one hand, I've got multiple big communities I'm in... that saw the writing on the wall, appropriately planned and got ahead of it... and then *one of the directly involved parties* who seems to be ... behind the ball - from both a technical and community-building standpoint. Anyway, I hope the Libera folks have fun, the Matrix servers I'm on are ... much more active than their IRC predecessors. Like, it's not even close. EDIT: maybe this is off-topic, but I joined the listed chat room only to find out it's not actually bridged yet. So... hence this post.
    • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      The dust is still settling, so please wait. Active development and negotiations are ongoing between the Libera and Matrix.org folks. It's a tumultuous time and everyone's trying hard. (Full disclosure I am NOT affiliated with the Matrix project in any way)
    • staz 5y ago
      the problem is that it is the matrix.org team that can do the bridging, not the Libera folks
• Seirdy 5y ago
  It's hilarious that rasengan is complaining about Libera "fracturing the FOSS community".[0] For example, #newsboat members decided to move by June 5th, and we've been deciding between OFTC and Libera. Then this happened: 20:05 --> freenodecom [freenode-placehol] (www.freenode.net) (~com@freenode/staff) has joined #newsboat 20:05 -- freenodecom has changed topic for #newsboat from "We intend to migrate off Freenode. What do you prefer: OFTC or Libera.chat? Details here: https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat/issues/1643" to "This channel has moved to ##newsboat. The topic is in violation of freenode policy: https://freenode.net/policies" 20:05 <@freenodecom> This channel has been reopened with respect to the communities and new users. The topic is in violation of freenode policy: https://freenode.net/policies 20:05 -- Mode #newsboat [+o freenodecom] by OperServ 20:05 -- Mode #newsboat [+impsf ##newsboat] by ChanServ 20:05 <@freenodecom> The new channel is ##newsboat 20:05 <-- freenodecom (~com@freenode/staff) has left #newsboat Great. Now none of us can speak on #newsboat, making coordination to switch much harder. New users might get confused and join the wrong channel operated by a hostile party. The community is more fractured now. To everyone with a freenode channel: whatever you do, do not mention "libera" in your channel topic. That's the trigger for this action. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210525231635/https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://web.archive.org/web/20210525231635/https://freenode....
• beprogrammed 5y ago
  There's the smoking guns if you were on the fence about who is in the right on all this.
• Macha 5y ago
  So I mellowed out on if it was a hostile takeover and feel it was a communication breakdown between the original staff and Andrew largely egged on by the original downplaying of the acquisition by Christel and Andrew. However, actions like this show that it doesn't really matter who was at fault in the original drama. By his actions, Andrew has proven his new staff team are not suitable stewards of an irc network. Regardless of the ownership conflict being largely based on misunderstanding and feeling Christel may have been the person to do the most wrong, it's clear that libera.chat or unrelated parties like OFTC or Matrix are the more trustworthy choices going forward.
  • wut42 5y ago
    You are mostly right. It was all born on misunderstanding, Lee's escalated it too much, then went to interfere and create this situation. But the actions he's been doing on it after that ? It speaks by himself, and he's the only one responsible.
    • xupybd 5y ago
      What does he get out of all of this. I can't understand his motive?
      • wut42 5y ago
        I try to, but it's really hard. The initial "take-over" was because he felt entitled to do so (feeling an agression (that mostly didn't happen and was a misunderstanding) on his property). But what he's been doing ever since is weird, and could also make think of another motive for the original actions as well...
        • xupybd 5y ago
          I followed a dude on Twitter. He was semi famous and a big proponent of free speech. One day he posted some steaks he cooked. Some people started responding with steak cooking tips. He responded by banning everyone of of them. This has the same feel but on a larger scale. I had a boss that used to get really angry at people when they wished him happy birthday. Same feeling. I hate puzzles like this, they get stuck in my head. I'll be thinking about this for weeks.
• snu 5y ago
  #blender got hit too, tho interestingly enough, not any of the sub-channels (none of which had 'libera.chat' in the topic) were hit. This seems like it is very bad timing on the part of freenode staff... with many communities already on the knife edge about switching, this is likely to push plenty of people over.
• intsunny 5y ago
  Maybe this is all for the better. Helping to kill off what the community no longer wants. I remember the XFree86 licensing controversy of 2004. That change effectively killed XFree86, gave rise to X.org, and new life to the world of open source X11.
  • SilverRed 5y ago
    This will probably just kill IRC entirely. Freenode was keeping IRC alive and now that it has fractured, there will be little reason not to use Matrix or Discord as the new wave of developers do not care that you can't talk on Matrix via netcat.
    • deknos 5y ago
      well there's also oftc and hackint
    • croon 5y ago
      Matterbridge (and probably similar) exists. If some old farts (myself included) want to keep using irc hosting your own isn't bad, and having a bridge between that (and other services/protocols) and discord enables everyone to use whatever client they want. At least that's what I'm doing for a few groups.
    • erk__ 5y ago
      I would bet that the biggest irc network is twitch, although that is a very different kind of community than what is usually associated with irc.
    • anthk 5y ago
      Eh, no. Libera.chat is doing it well.
    • herewulf 5y ago
      Hmm.. sed -i 's/freenode.net/libera.chat/' .irssi/config irssi Switching is too easy.
• phire 5y ago
  I was mostly ignoring this freenode drama until now, I didn't have enough fucks to care. At the very least I was hoping for things to settle down before making an informed decision to move or not. But this kind of behavior really calls into question the suitability of Andrew Lee to be a leader/owner of a project like freenode.
  • trenchgun 5y ago
    He is not the leader/owner of the project freenode. Freenode the project has moved to libera.chat. Lee owns Freenodes servers and user data - althought illegitimately. You can't buy the ownership of a volunteer project like that.
    • immibis 5y ago
      I'm hearing he didn't even own the servers, which were mostly run by volunteers.
      • GekkePrutser 5y ago
        The servers aren't owned by volunteers but provided free of charge by a number of companies (mostly not related to Lee) All they get in return is a small acknowledgement on the MOTD and the acknowledgement page. They are managed by the volunteers though, and the sponsoring authorities don't get operator rights on the network.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • grayhatter 5y ago
    Calls it into question? I'd suggest a mass resignation would call it into question. This just proves they were right to resign.
  • immibis 5y ago
    It happened in stages. Each stage a bigger red flag than the last. Seems this red flag was big enough for you. I wonder what the next flag will be.
• superkuh 5y ago
  Uh, I'm not sure it was actually 700. Not every channel with libera in the topic was taken over. It was mostly just those with a single #.
  • esarbe 5y ago
    I'm not sure if that is a good defense of the actions. "I didn't beat all of them, just the ones that I thought showed /real/ disrespect?" It's a abuse of trust. That's it. Any (other) commercial company trying to do the same thing would be in deep trouble.
    • superkuh 5y ago
      I am certainly not defending the actions. I just know that that 720 number was found by searching netsplit.de's list of Freenode channels for "libera". It is not a list generated from known takeovers. And I know that Andrew Lee created a new set of rules (after the fact) for this act which center around primary channels (single #) as a cover for his (still obvious) bad behavior. So, definitely not in defense, just pointing out where the numbers came from. The ##* channel I've op'd for many years with hundreds of users has had "libera" in the topic for a while and has not yet been taken over. But we are moving regardless.
      • esarbe 5y ago
        Ah, I was mislead by the wording. Ah, thanks for the clarification!
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    The new policy says "Primary channels are required to stay open. If a primary channel closes access to its users or is in violation of freenode policies, then it will be closed and forwarded to a topical channel." So I assume that advertising Libera is not (yet) enough to be taken over. Taking over channels that declare themselves closed (and redirecting them to an unofficial channel about the same topic) seems reasonable, tbh.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 3np 5y ago
  dang: rasengan's toplevel comment is dead/flagged, can this be undone as it's very central to the discussion? Hope it's OK I post it here in the meantime for users who aren't aware that they can still read it by enabling showdead: --- These channels were already already closed. We removed the topics and forwarded users to an off-topic channel with the same name. If your channel was incorrectly marked in this, please let our staff know and we'll remediate it asap. Thank you for your patience!
  • em-bee 5y ago
    here is a link to his message: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285980
  • Liskni_si 5y ago
    No, many of those channels were not already closed. #xmonad was still very much active on both sides as we were waiting for libera.chat staff to process our community registration, and there was just this tiny little mention at the _end_ of the topic that we're in the process of moving. Still, freenode kicked us out anyway this morning. Luckily the Libera staff were able to process our registration quickly afterwards.
• Spunkie 5y ago
  #killfreenode seems on point now. Kindly move your communities over to matrix, or I guess https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ if you just must stick with irc.
  • Seirdy 5y ago
    I wrote my thoughts on IRC/Matrix wrt moving from Fleenode in the Libravatar mailing list: https://lists.launchpad.net/libravatar-fans/msg00330.html https://lists.launchpad.net/libravatar-fans/msg00330.html Pasting the message below: Personally, I don't have a big problem with either since both are open platforms with some degree of federation; I use both daily through WeeChat and Gomuks. However, I do have a preference for IRC for a number of reasons: 1. Given that so many other projects are on IRC, it makes sense to not require people to use a different client just for a few select communities. 2. Many people, including myself, prefer TUI clients to graphical ones. Right now, the only TUI Matrix client that isn't missing essential features is Gomuks. While Gomuks development seems to be progressing well, I wouldn't say it's a replacement for other graphical clients yet. 3. Issues with Matrix itself: I described these in a bit more detail in a blog post, "Keeping Platforms Open". https://seirdy.one/2021/02/23/keeping-platforms-open.html https://seirdy.one/2021/02/23/keeping-platforms-open.html. Regarding features in Matrix that aren't present in IRC: Long-form and long-term discussion already happens in a mailing list, which is well-suited for the task; I'm not aware of any other open platform that allows nested discussion threads delimited by subject. Given the existence of a mailing list, I think a chat platform should focus on a niche that isn't covered by mailing lists: ephemeral, real-time chat with less structure. If a discussion needs marked replies and searchable history, it's probably better off happening in a mailing list. Given that these features aren't especially valuable given the existence of a mailing list, I'd say that IRC should fit the bill. Honestly, I don't think a Matrix-IRC bridge hurts the Matrix experience too much since join/leave events can simply be filtered out from most clients. Most of the issues come from the perspective of IRC users, mainly long-form messages turning into pastebin links instead of being broken up. That being said, I find excessive pastebin links preferable to not having IRC support at all.
  • qiqitori 5y ago
    Any good CLI clients for Matrix?
• jsve 5y ago
  You know, none of this can happen if you have a decentralized network such as Matrix.
  • immibis 5y ago
    Because you can move to a different server, right? You can also do that on IRC. Almost every client has good multi-server support.
• gassius 5y ago
  Sheees this guy is really taking over channels because they mention and or are discussing an alternative??? Imagine any propetary platform doing that and the backslash will face
  • StavrosK 5y ago
    Well, we don't have to imagine!
    • gassius 5y ago
      It might be, but I am not aware. Any reference?
      • J-Kuhn 5y ago
        Whatsapp blocked telegram.me links at some point (I think when it was acquired by facebook, inciting an other mass exodus)
        • scrollaway 5y ago
          How? WhatsApp messages are e2ee. Via the preview pings maybe?
          • e3bc54b2 5y ago
            If I remember, telegram.me links would not be identified as URLs requiring manual copy-paste. They didn't have link previews back then. The messages are E2EE only in transit. They can always tweak clients for things like this.
      • forty 5y ago
        For example, try referencing another platform or payment system in an iOS app ;)
      • michaelmrose 5y ago
        Freenode is now a proprietary platform operated by Lee.
• kragen 5y ago
  We should stop implicitly legitimizing Andrew Lee's power grab by referring to his dominion as "Freenode". Freenode is a quarter-century-old community that has changed its name to libera.chat; the thing being referred to here as "Freenode" is something else that has illegitimately acquired control of Freenode's old servers and user database, causing enormous inconvenience to the real Freenode. cheapie has coined the name "Leenode" for this abomination. Let's start using it!
  • techrat 5y ago
    To further reinforce the fact that he intends for it to be his dominion... the incident the submission refers to? <rasengan> I apologize for the poor communication and few erroneous channels that were caught up, freenode. This was my mistake alone. He admits fault for the targeted dissolution of 700+ channels that, coincidentally, contained "libera" in the topic.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • michaelmrose 5y ago
    I like how you think if you should want to register leenode.net and forward it to freenode its available.
  • dspillett 5y ago
    Maybe go with UK news' terminology for ISIS: "so called Islamic State (as the group called themselves that, but we're far from university accepted by Islamic communities and were not officially recognised as a state). So we now have the "so called freenode". Freenode in name only.
    • randomswede 5y ago
      "Leenode IRC network"?
  • danjac 5y ago
    What I don't understand is what is Lee's motivation for doing this? He'll just end up in charge of a bunch of dead channels with all the staff and communities gone. I don't see a profit motive - is it pure vandalism?
• Seirdy 5y ago
  Adapted from a comment I made in the wrong thread: It's hilarious that rasengan is complaining about Libera "fracturing the FOSS community".[0] For example, #newsboat members decided to move by June 5th, and we've been deciding between OFTC and Libera. Then this happened: 20:05 --> freenodecom [freenode-placehol] (www.freenode.net) (~com@freenode/staff) has joined #newsboat 20:05 -- freenodecom has changed topic for #newsboat from "We intend to migrate off Freenode. What do you prefer: OFTC or Libera.chat? Details here: https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat/issues/1643" to "This channel has moved to ##newsboat. The topic is in violation of freenode policy: https://freenode.net/policies" 20:05 <@freenodecom> This channel has been reopened with respect to the communities and new users. The topic is in violation of freenode policy: https://freenode.net/policies 20:05 -- Mode #newsboat [+o freenodecom] by OperServ 20:05 -- Mode #newsboat [+impsf ##newsboat] by ChanServ 20:05 <@freenodecom> The new channel is ##newsboat 20:05 <-- freenodecom (~com@freenode/staff) has left #newsboat Great. Now none of us can speak on #newsboat, making coordination to switch much harder. New users might get confused and join the wrong channel operated by a hostile party. The community is more fractured now. To everyone with a freenode channel: whatever you do, do not mention "libera" in your channel topic. That's the trigger for this action. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20210525231635/https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://web.archive.org/web/20210525231635/https://freenode....
  • raverbashing 5y ago
    Or, maybe, you know, pick one and move already, then discuss later if people prefer the other one. Indecisiveness and excess democracy are things that make "open-source" slower. Edit: you're all responding like the actual choice they made didn't result in a bad situation for the members
    • TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Or, better still, pick one but create channels on both - the other one just to tell people where the primary channel is. Or even to carry discussion on both simultaneously, until you reach the decision. Do that to prevent a hostile party from doing it before you.
• bayindirh 5y ago
  I was watching the whole saga as a bona-fide, albeit painful, metamorphosis of a community for the better, however this is a whole new level of ugly.
• xbar 5y ago
  A short-cycled policy update to https://freenode.net/policies https://freenode.net/policies and a blog post espousing love and FOSS by Lee https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://freenode.net/news/for-foss ("President freenode limited") feels hollow and vindictive. Goodbye, whatever open culture remained in Freenode.
  • ilaksh 5y ago
    They just moved to a different domain name.
  • kemayo 5y ago
    The tone of that blog post is a bit unhinged. Taking a break to talk about cancel culture, and the definitely-real hundreds of complaints Lee has received about it...
    • 1propionyl 5y ago
      If you think that's unhinged... https://www.irc.com/lets-take-irc-further https://www.irc.com/lets-take-irc-further
      • arkitaip 5y ago
        It's sad that he destroyed the very thing he cherished above everything else. That is, if he is telling the truth.
        • joepie91_ 5y ago
          I do believe he was truthful about his intentions. But his ego has gotten in the way of realizing that his approach is wrong, and is causing harm.
        • jeltz 5y ago
          I suspect that he is. It is pretty sad to see delusional people like this.
      • 5y ago
• monkin 5y ago
  Oh, #vim was also taken and closed. :O
• rasengan 5y ago
  This should have been communicated better and for that I apologize. We published a draft policy update and worked with the community in #freenode-policy-feedback to understand the community's wishes. The policy was updated today to make clear that inappropriate advertising was unacceptable. As many of these channels were simply wildly unmoderated and closed, yet by protocol standards, "open" under a primary (#) namespace while in "official capacity", we felt it was best to redirect users to an unofficial off-topic (##) namespace. I apologize for this being communicated poorly. This is entirely my fault, and I take all the blame for that.
  • donatzsky 5y ago
    Considering how much of this mess is supposedly due to "poor" communication, don't you think it's high time to start working on that aspect? While I might have given you the benefit of the doubt before, the long list of heavy-handed, "poorly communicated" actions, make you look more and more like an inept, authoritarian jerk.
  • marcusramberg 5y ago
    I think you should apologize for attempting to fracture and disrupt the choice of communication channels for 100s of open source projects instead. You are making life harder for maintainers, who volunteer their time to give people software and support for free. Please stop doing that.
  • vesinisa 5y ago
    How come you think you will have any community left? A chat network is entirely composed of and founded on the trust of its users. Trust that you have irreversibly severed. If there is no trust, there are no users. Where there are no users, there is no community. Without a community, there is no chat network - people just migrate elsewhere and there's no trick you can pull to stop it. You have destroyed freenode and there is no recourse. My question to you is: How did you actually think this would turn out? It all seems like a pointless exercise, and a person with half a brain should have seen this coming miles ahead.
    • 5y ago
• lcabral 5y ago
  I was pretty unaware of this drama(not a freenode user) So I found me this summary to fill me in on the details (hopefully mostly true) https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee... This together with the freenode main page/blog (a very defensive one side view of the occurrences) leads to understand the freenode infrastructure/entity is compromised. I see this as turning into a worst case scenario of a free service that gets taken over and you can no longer trust it to secure your data.
  • SilverRed 5y ago
    What data were you trusting with freenode? It's almost all public and often logged to a public web server. So you had PMs and your irc password on there. IRC has never been a place for secure communication.
    • avereveard 5y ago
      yeah worst case was when freelists was acquired and then all the groups emails where suddenly indexed and made public in their tentative to become a web hub. those had a supposition of privacy, albeit minimal as it was not a specifically secure server, it was definitely not public.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
  I see they are learning from the best of the Silicon Valley social giants. “The topic is in violation of freenode policy”, but no mention of the exact clause, and when you click the link you don’t find anything that you have plausibly violated.
  • immibis 5y ago
    Based on the "discussion" on #freenode-policy-feedback and #freenode-services, they are considering it as "inappropriate advertising" and "spam"
• dlsa 5y ago
  The topic is in violation of policies? For being offtopic? Or for advertising? I hate it when I'm left to guess the reasoning for administrative actions. It causes me to assume "just because we say so". I'm an op for multiple things and always quote the specific portion when kicking or blocking or whatever. Helps when you number each part, but to quote my old mentor, "Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered, for just such an emergency." Ah foghorn!
  • immibis 5y ago
    "Advertising" is when someone comes into a channel and says "hey y'all join my other unrelated server". Advertising official project spaces by official project members has always been fine. Think of all the channel topics that have project websites in them - that's technically advertising, too! The real reason is that freenode is desperate to stop the bleeding. And in the process, they just destroyed their reputation. They are now the network that tried to build a Berlin Wall to keep the users in.
    • infogulch 5y ago
      > They are now the network that tried to build a Berlin Wall to keep the users in. If the free speech of official project channels is off the table, then the community has already been destroyed. How the result of these actions were not painfully obvious to Lee is beyond my comprehension.
    • anticensor 5y ago
      > They are now the network that tried to build a Berlin Wall to keep the users in. Are you sure that wall is not to keep them out? /s
  • phire 5y ago
    As far as I can tell, their policies say nothing about the contents of the #topic. But as of 8 hours ago, the policies do say that if a primary channel closes access to users then freenode will close the #primary channel and forward to the ##topical channel.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
  A lot of the affected projects have registered their trademarks. Could this be grounds to sue Freenode? I’m not much into IRC these days, hadn’t I seen this topic I would have easily been fooled into thinking that the affected channels still represent their respective projects.
  • immibis 5y ago
    Doubt it. ## channels have always been unofficial. Nothing stops you making a ##windows channel or whatever
    • Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
      It's the # channels that are affected. If I understand correctly, ending up on the ## counterpart when you try to go to # is Freenode's doing, not the projects themselves. I guess that makes ## channels official now.
• wumpus 5y ago
  That's what you get for centralization combined with a couple of decades of poor architecture choices. signed, the wumpus who gave the world EFNET
  • xref 5y ago
    Hah, had to look you up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat Brings back memories of tcl/tk eggdrop bots, buying shell accounts to keep your nick held while you were offline, and automating server jumping so you wouldn’t be banned for idling
    • wumpus 5y ago
      Good times! I wonder how many people were launched into infosec careers or learned coding or had some other positive result in their lives because of petty fights on IRC. I learned a lot from that era, not only about social skills, but also asynchronous programming from watching msa make the irc server code much more scalable.
      • 1propionyl 5y ago
        Just like Andrew Lee (rasengan)! > Today, I'm strong. Today, I'm confident. Today, I am social. Today, I am patient. Today, I am accepting. Today, I have a cause. This would not be the case, if yesterday, for me, was not IRC. Do you also agree that "IRC, is a transcended level of humanity, that values you for all the other genes and experiences that make you, you - unlike the "real" world which is utterly focused on nothing"? Source: https://www.irc.com/lets-take-irc-further https://www.irc.com/lets-take-irc-further (Yes, he bought irc.com too.)
        • wumpus 5y ago
          Well, and then there are some people that I don't exactly want to consider how IRC "improved" them.
        • wayvey 5y ago
• fvold 5y ago
  "How to murder an IRC network in 12 easy steps", huh?
• mariuolo 5y ago
  I think rasengan's actions are making everyone's decisions very easy.
• jgb1984 5y ago
  Until now my weechat was connected to freenode and libera, but this simplifies it for me: freenode is out. I recommend anyone to do the same and switch fully to libera: it's best for the IRC community if freenode dies a swift death.
  • medstrom 5y ago
    I did the same after you said this.
• brnt 5y ago
  Europeans: let's all GDPR bomb Freenode and request deletion.
  • medstrom 5y ago
    Does the GDPR apply?
    • zatertip 5y ago
      Freenode Ltd is a UK corporation, so I'd think so.
    • mjg59 5y ago
      Freenode Ltd is a UK company. The EU GDPR no longer applies as a result of Brexit, but the EU GDPR requirements have separately been incorporated into UK law. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't apply.
    • joepie91_ 5y ago
      The GDPR applies regardless of where the company is, so long as the requester is an EU resident.
    • brnt 5y ago
      To any EU citizen anywhere and anyone in the EU.
• sampo 5y ago
  Here's a possibly charitable interpretation: Like the post says, some channels moved over to Libera and left behind a "zombified" channel on Freenode [1]. A channel where nobody can talk, and only function is to have a pointer to the Libera channel in the topic. I can understand how the new Freenode doesn't want to get half-filled with such zombified channels. So they wrote a script to take over these channels, to let their users talk again. But they're not too experienced, and the script took over also non-zombified channels. Maybe their script only looked for a Libera pointer in the topic and they assumed the rest, not always correctly. [1] > It should be noted that the Ops never gave up control over their channels, they simply removed everyone's voice and changed the topic, a perfectly valid thing to do.
  • kadoban 5y ago
    That's too charitable. At some point when someone keeps showing you who they are, believing them is the right course of action.
  • joepie91_ 5y ago
    > I can understand how the new Freenode doesn't want to get half-filled with such zombified channels. Then maybe they shouldn't have done a hostile takeover, and actually worked with the community instead.
  • janc_ 5y ago
    If they would want to remove "zombie channels" after 6 months or so, that would make sense, but doing this while they still have a function (informing people about the move) is simply against the stated purpose of the Freenode IRC network (= supporting open projects).
• fimdomeio 5y ago
  Well that clears things up. Channels might not be sure where they want to end up, but now they know where they cannot stay.
• mormegil 5y ago
  Wikimedia IRC channels are moving from Freenode to Libera.Chat “Earlier we had planned on supporting the Freenode channels for longer with bridges across the networks, but supposedly "draft" changes to Freenode policies and recent actions by their new staff have pushed us to close our channels and fully leave their network.” https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/N2S532RNJQUCVHITDUVV2HA5BY5HEQOL/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Migrating_to_Libera_Chat https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Migrating_to_Libera_Chat
• Havoc 5y ago
  A lesson in how to buy something and then make it worthless
• JasonHarrison 5y ago
  Wow. I chat on Freenode daily during my teen years (~2007) and I used to be friendly with many of the Freenode opers, including Christel. I mostly stopped using IRC in 2017. Reading about Freenode's "acquisition" (takeover) spurs lots of nostalgia and makes me sad.
  • ilaksh 5y ago
    The people are mostly still around on libera.chat
• glimmung 5y ago
  Today's episode of the "Fresh Prince of Dead Air"...popcorn time again.
• reducesuffering 5y ago
  RIP IRC. The destructive splintering has already sent too many of what little was left to Discord, Slack, and Matrix.
• account42 5y ago
  Welp, as someone that was still waiting to see how this turns out, this is all the confirmation I need that the time to move has come. Well done Andrew, you could not have made a better advertisement for Libera if you tried. RIP freenode 1995-2021
• zatertip 5y ago
  Gentoo lost a large number of Freenode channels to rasengan overnight. Emergency relocation to Libera Chat ahead of schedule has been decided upon.
• nabakin 5y ago
  245 points in 3 hours and this isn't on the front page anymore? That's a bit too much down weight in my opinion.
• ilaksh 5y ago
  It's actually great that he still comes on HN. It gives people he screwed a chance to vent a little.
• xupybd 5y ago
  This is not a good look. None of this makes any sense. Why does a Millionaire want to deal with any of this drama? Does freenode even make money?
  • midmagico 5y ago
    Actively spying on the comms of thousands of people would be superb intel-gathering technique, especially when so many users are now virtual currency users.
    • xupybd 5y ago
      Yeah but if that's your goal why piss everyone off and torch your platform?
    • e3bc54b2 5y ago
      Most of freenode was public channels, no? Couldn't he just use a bouncer and store logs?
  • asddubs 5y ago
    seems like the guy genuinely does like IRC/freenode. So it's just a misguided attempt at wish fulfillment to the detriment of the community
• vbezhenar 5y ago
  Why people love centralization so much? Gentoo hosts their own website, they surely have enough expertise to host an IRC server. I just don't understand it.
  • pmlnr 5y ago
    If anyone is about to say that it is to make it easy for newcomers: it's gentoo. It'NEVER easy.
  • vertis 5y ago
    It takes effort. Presumably all of the people involved in Gentoo are already busy people and running your own IRC server is just another task they don't have time for. Add to this that potential users then have to discover YOUR server and use it, rather than just 'all the open source project IRCs are on freenode', and it's a big hassle. None of that is insurmountable, but they have to apply their effort in the most efficient way possible.
    • dTal 5y ago
      Not to mention that "running an IRC server" isn't just a technical job, it's a social one. You have to interact with channel owners, ban abusive users, combat spam etc. Much more efficient and convenient to consolidate all that into some sort of community.
  • immibis 5y ago
    And yet I bet they host their servers on one of a handful of popular server hosting companies. Interchangeable vendors are usually good enough. You don't have to go full decentralized. They have now interchanged their vendor to irc.libera.chat.
  • geofft 5y ago
    IRC is an unusual service in that legitimate use is very low-traffic and easy to handle (Freenode has under 100K users, and human users type at most one message per second or so), but it's also attractive for botnets and spam. Running the registration services and anti-spam measures to keep your small network going doesn't, to borrow a phrase, add business value. There's nothing Gentoo gets out of running their own server (besides avoiding once-in-a-lifetime events like this) that they wouldn't get out of using a service where someone is already dealing with all of that.
• davidgerard 5y ago
  Same thing happened to Wikimedia. They are not happy.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • gnastygnorc 5y ago
    Ubuntu too https://fridge.ubuntu.com/2021/05/26/announcing-ubuntus-move-to-libera-chat/ https://fridge.ubuntu.com/2021/05/26/announcing-ubuntus-move...
  • speeder 5y ago
    Allegro too. They didn't had moved to libera at all, now they have. https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/1397504457114636292 https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/139750445711463629...
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• q3k 5y ago
  We also got a number of channels totalling a few hundred names hijacked from chanserv, because of 'libera.chat' in the topic. No contact, nothing. We aren't even a F/OSS project, but a hackerspace. 10 years of a chanserv registration, gone, just like that. The irony is that we were planning on a progressive transition to Libera via bridging to make sure everything went smoothly for everyone and that we didn't split the community. Now, well, there's nothing to do but just move cold turkey. Great job, Andrew Lee.
  • NullPrefix 5y ago
    I fail to see a reason why freenode would prefer that you transition away smoothly? Going cold turkey means a chance of leaving someone behind on freenode. Edit: I see that I have not expressed my point clearly. Freenode knows that it is dying already. Allowing a smooth transition wouldn't stop that or heal that. A downwards trajectory. Like a dictator usurping the throne, the new management wants to gulag everyone who even slightly disagrees to not leave any dissenting voices on the network. This way those who stay might stay for good, instead of only for the smooth transition.
    • capableweb 5y ago
      Realistically, most channels are moving to Libera and the people are remaining are people who haven't noticed yet. Going cold turkey will just give those people a WTF feeling without being able to do anything about it, and eventually they'll also leave since everyone else left.
      • J-Kuhn 5y ago
        Not to mention that the stuff is on top of hackernewes - anyone idling / currently on vacation / in coma can quickly figure out what is going on.
    • elaus 5y ago
      One reason could be to not destroy any goodwill that was left by some members. Hijacking channels sends a clear signal that Freenode can't be trusted to provide a stable and secure network.
• massysett 5y ago
  Just got a similar email from zsh mailing list.
• riccardomc 5y ago
  I fail to understand the strategy behind this. They're driving all users away. What is the plan? I'm genuinely baffled. Anyone know why?
  • indy 5y ago
    Bruised egos lead to bad decision making.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    Driving away the "free beer" guys to turn it to corporate chat so then VCs will invest and pump up their valuation to the moon and then dump it in the public markets and buy yachts?
  • gwd 5y ago
    One thing to remember is that nobody thinks of themselves as The Bad Guy. (Some people may come to believe that Previous Them was The Bad Guy, but that transformation is rare, and doesn't happen in the heat of the moment.) So when people do things that any clear-minded person would describe as Bad Guy behavior, they have to distort reality in order to maintain their Good Guy image in their own eyes. If Andrew Lee simply wanted to destroy Freenode, he could have just pulled the plug on the domain name and/or shut down all the servers. It's clear, however, that he wants freenode to continue operating, just under his control; which means he has a reason why what he's doing is the Right Thing to do. Which means all the people advocating that their channels move over to Libera are either deluded or evil and are destroying communities. So in his mind, he's fighting the Bad Guys by seizing control of channels where the Bad Guys are abusing their privileges to destroy communities. I mean yeah, it's easy for an independent observer to see that it's actually him who's abusing his power, and that those attempts will be counter-productive. But he's not an independent observer. We've all got a thumb on the scales when evaluating our own behavior; its just more noticeable in a situation like this, where the thumb is more like both arms and a foot.
    • immibis 5y ago
      It's a microcosm of a lot of real-world politics.
• irq 5y ago
  There’s a pretty salty rebuttal to this on https://freenode.net https://freenode.net. You can feel the hurt ego in the prose. It saddens me to see how far the original openprojects.net (renamed to freenode) has fallen since the early 2000s, when I was an admin/server sponsor.
  • CogitoCogito 5y ago
    From that link: "freenode has been the home for the entire FOSS community for over 20 years. Fracturing the community only hurts users and FOSS. Your users don’t wish to migrate. Stop forcing them." Does he mean "fracturing" the community as in people using multiple IRC servers? Isn't that sort of distributed nature an _advantage_ of FOSS? Why does everything need to be on one server?
    • immibis 5y ago
      Because he wants to control all of it.
    • geofft 5y ago
      That statement is also simply not true - no accounting of the "FOSS community" is complete without Debian and its influence - in particular the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which became the Open Source Definition, but also Debian itself as a technical work and everything downstream of it like Ubuntu. And Debian left Freenode for OFTC long ago.
    • izacus 5y ago
      There's small missing part of the story here - many channel owners have been adding full bans before leaving, meaning that noone was able to join the channel and talk about the topic anymore. Most of those channels got "taken over" and bans removed so people could continue conversing on that network if they would.
      • immibis 5y ago
        They took over a bunch of channels just for having the word "libera" in the topic. The actual criteria are something more than that, because there are some channels that had it in their topic but didn't get taken over. But that's approximately what happened.
• naikrovek 5y ago
  nice to see this freenode situation is finally calming down... /s
• tinco 5y ago
  If they would have simply done nothing, nothing at all then hardly anyone would have left. I wasn't planning on leaving freenode, there hadn't been any hard evidence of malice and I have no attachment to any staff. If there's enough users in an IRC channel to have a decent conversation, and there's someone actively banning spammers and trolls, then that's good enough. Now they went actively being aggressive about it, motivating me and probqbly most other previously disaffected people to make a decision. That user count will go down, he's an idiot for waving that banner so proudly.
• neolog 5y ago
  Off to Libera, the new home of the freenode community. https://libera.chat/news/welcome-to-libera-chat https://libera.chat/news/welcome-to-libera-chat
  • pmlnr 5y ago
    I'd much rather like see people/projects running their own irc/xmpp/matrix under their own domain so that this situation can never happen again to them.
    • mschuster91 5y ago
      The moderation workload providing a public platform, especially one that allows direct peer to peer communication, is intense. Spammers, trolls, 1337 h4xx0r scriptkiddies and other "for the lulz" types on one side - these make a ton of work as they're openly visible, diminish the value of the platform and are not shy of using some 10$ a hour rented botnet to essentially kick you off the Internet... and on the other side, criminals that want to fly "under the radar" for you and expose you as platform ops to some serious legal risk: child abuse and warez. There's a reason why there aren't many IRC servers/networks left over... it's incredibly expensive and taxing to run them, with users leaving en masse towards closed-source walls like Discord and Slack (which both have brazenly copied IRC principles!).
      • pmlnr 5y ago
        Those are all important points, though I wonder: with registration required, tied to email accounts, and if we were all running thousands of small irc/xmpp/matrix servers instead of one big system that is indeed simple to attack, would the dangers still be that serious?
        • mschuster91 5y ago
          > would the dangers still be that serious? Well... if you're the person that the server, domain name or association leadership is legally associated with, you are the person where the feds will knock on the door and raid if someone uses your server for pedo or warez content. A bigger entity like a foundation, corporation or university (hopefully) has financial resources to pay for lawyers, to institute compliance and screening procedures and other things, but average Joe Admin does not. This is something many German TOR operators had to discover the hard way - especially dealing with the stigma of cops showing up for a CP investigation...
• Fordec 5y ago
  Honestly, this is kind of a blessing in disguise. Before there was ambiguity between where to go, what had legitimacy or continuity of service issues for certain channels weighing up switching costs. This sort of stuff puts a line under things. Move voluntarily in a rush or move chaoticly under duress when your channel gets hijacked without notice.
  • jchw 5y ago
    I think it’s unambiguous: neither. Libera.chat hasn’t done something this boneheaded, but given how this all went down we should simply not be supporting these networks. The prawnsalad farewell is probably the best evidence: https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953 https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c164679...
    • capableweb 5y ago
      > The prawnsalad farewell is probably the best evidence: As someone who uses IRC daily but has no part in the drama, why would the user's "prawnsalad" evidence be trusted above others? I'm trusting nothing I read right now, but I'm happy to hear why you think some should be trusted over others.
      • jchw 5y ago
        prawnsalad was a true neutral party that had no bad blood with either side, and a great contributor to IRC in general, as the leader of kiwiIRC and someone who contributes to IRCv3. On the other hand, who are you? edit: Perhaps it is wrong of me to assume you are immediately discarding this evidence based on the message and thus my derisive tone is unwarranted here, but when I originally read your message the way it came off to me was "We're all moving to Libera.chat, and I really don't want to have to hear any dissent that maybe neither party should be trusted, so I'm just going to throw out suspicions without reading this." It's not like I personally know prawnsalad, but I am kind of flustered by this response because it feels so dismissive when it's clear many were happy to trust the Libera.chat owners at face value despite everything. edit 2: I would feel too dishonest changing the wording after the fact but I apologize for the rudeness.
• zaarn 5y ago
  I like the double speak of both "condemning cancel culture against users refusing to leave" while at the same time cancelling people who want to leave. Pick one, you can't have both.
  • immibis 5y ago
    Believe it or not, this kind of thing is a fascist tactic, applied on a small scale.
    • dTal 5y ago
      This isn't hyperbolic. The battle lines are a deeply fascinating "animal model" of real political tendencies. I've noticed a marked political split between those who stayed on Freenode and those who moved to Libera. You can probably guess which side is which - the side that stayed is the side afraid of change.
  • masklinn 5y ago
    > you can't have both. Of course you can. That’s perfectly standard conservative (and more so fash) tactic: you have rights, “they” have duties. or in a more flowery langage > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
    • baryphonic 5y ago
      Edit: deleted
      • watwut 5y ago
        1.) It would help if cops arrested rioters and not like journalists or random activists that done no violence at those riots. 2.) It also absurd to try to apply current American two party system dichotomy and right-left split on to WWI Russia. Nevertheless, claim that contemporary right wing in united states does X is not proven false by claiming that Bolsheviks doing that too in 1918 in Russia. It is quite normal for multiple anti-democratic movements using the same strategies, really, despite them otherwise having different ideologies.
• RealStickman_ 5y ago
  Seems like emacs also suffered a similar fate and is moving to librera. https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/nl70vo/emacs_is_on_liberachat/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/nl70vo/emacs_is_on_l...
• syntaxing 5y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean when your Freenode channel gets hijacked? As in the original admins does not have any control anymore?
  • kekebo 5y ago
    Basically, yes. Here's a log of how that may look like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27287039
    • syntaxing 5y ago
      Whoa, that’s interesting. Seems like they made a bot to do this anytime a channel mentions Libera
  • q3k 5y ago
    Yes. For any #foo that contained `libera.chat` in the topic, #foo was grabbed from all existing chanserv ops and is now managed by freenode-placeholder-account. A +ifm ##foo was set up: No one who's still on #foo can speak there, and any attempt to join redirects to ##foo. In addition, a ##foo got created if it didn't exist. If created, it is also managed by freenode-placeholder-account.
    • syntaxing 5y ago
      Wow that’s crazier than I thought, thank you for the explanation!
    • im3w1l 5y ago
      > A +ifm ##foo was set up: No one who's still on #foo can speak there, and any attempt to join redirects to ##foo. I'm not super familiar with irc, what is the significance of this? What does creating a second channel accomplish?
      • Jemaclus 5y ago
        The ## implies "unofficial" channel, so if you have #lego and ##lego then #lego is the "official" channel that is claimed by the official Lego corporation, and ##lego is unofficial people helping out. The +ifm refers to channel "modes". +i is "invitation only", meaning that you can't join a channel you haven't been invited to. This isn't good for FOSS things, because anyone should be able to join. +f generally is anti-flooding, so you get kicked out of the channel if you send more than X messages per Y period of time, and +m is "moderated" or "mute" meaning that everyone in the channel can see what is being said, but only people that have been approved can actually chat. Again, not really conducive to the spirit of FOSS.
• Offpics 5y ago
  I have flashbacks from old forums. When someone got modded with a username from some anime (for context, rasengan is an attack from Naruto) you knew they are probably young and immature, and slowly will opress whole community with their power for attention.
• unixhero 5y ago
  This is ridiculous. Ircops need to know better than this.
  • isatty 5y ago
    ircops and drama? Tale as old as time.
    • dtgriscom 5y ago
      True as it can be...
• greatgib 5y ago
  The stupid hijackers of Freenode are pushing themselves for a huge streisand effect. If they did nothing for some times, probably a lot of persons and projects would not even have noticed and liberachat could have been slow to gain the critical mass of users. But now, it is like if all the users and projects have a big incentive to move and completely exit freenode as fast as possible.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    Why are people still using IRC? Aren't there better, more private/secure channels? I understand that many of these channels are intentionally private, but IRC is still unencrypted in transit, so everything is exposed and users have no anonymity.
    • pteraspidomorph 5y ago
      Daemon and client implementations have effectively supported SSL/TLS for many years now. You can't control whether server links are encrypted (that's up to the owners; in a competently run network they will be) but all major networks have one or more encrypted connection ports. 6697 is a typical choice. On mIRC, prefix the port number with a + to use SSL. Newer protocols are more feature rich and don't have some of the legacy drawbacks of IRC, of course.
    • l-p 5y ago
      > but IRC is still unencrypted in transit TLS is an option, not ideal but better than no TLS at all.
      • agumonkey 5y ago
        Seen a few people pushing it. That said I keep having the good old plain data link
    • OldGoodNewBad 5y ago
      Nothing is better than IRC.
• fosshost 5y ago
  Fosshost.org has moved all of its channels to Libera with immediate effect. We no longer support the Freenode network by its current management and or leadership. It is such a shame that it has come to this. Thomas, CEO - Fosshost.
  • account42 5y ago
    What changed? https://fosshost.org/news/freenode https://fosshost.org/news/freenode
• fosshost 5y ago
  Fosshost.org #fosshost has taken the decision to move all of its channels from freenode to libera with immediate effect. It is such a shame that it has come to this, but we had no option. Best, Thomas CEO - Fosshost
• simias 5y ago
  I'm very sad for the loss of Freenode and one more nail in IRC's coffin (which is probably more nail than coffin by weight now). That being said reading the various IRC logs and blog posts surrounding this issue I can't help but see echoes of some of the more toxic sides of "hacker culture". Diplomacy and human skills are for sissies, we're HACKERS we only care about TECH and if you're offended then you're a PC snowflake, it's just WORDS, focus on the issue, not the way it's framed. A horde of wannabees Linus and Theo. And then people wonder why FLOSS projects need a code of conduct...
  • cpach 5y ago
    Good point. It’s way too easy for techies to underestimate the importance of “soft” skills. Do this at your own peril.
    • watwut 5y ago
      This is not about soft skills. It is about ideology and values.
      • cpach 5y ago
        You do have a point there. Another lesson from this debacle could be this: If you shit on people, they might revolt and cut all the ties to you and your affiliates :D
      • simias 5y ago
        I disagree. I haven't taken the time to dig deep enough into this Freenode drama to really understand where everybody stands and as such I don't have a firm grasp of the various ideologies and values of the different sides. However it's painfully blatant to me that many of the participants seem to be making things worse by lacking a modicum of diplomacy and soft skills.
        • watwut 5y ago
          You lack soft skills when you are clueless what you are doing. If you are asshole fully knowing what you are doing, or if you take pleasure on doing harm or if you think being aggressive makes one right kind of person, the issue is ideology amd values. "I will offend you and if you object you are PC snowflake" is not lack of soft skills. It is ideology - one that specified who has right to object and who is lower on hierarchy.
• math-dev 5y ago
  Meh, something smells _funny_ about all this. I still don’t know what in particular Freenode did wrong, looks like it was a group of admins/volunteers who just wanted to have control over the network that they have dedicated many hours to supporting. To some extent, that’s fair - if they contributed the most to the network. I’m always a bit cynical when I hear too many posts/comments about the “community” etc, I’ve seen first hand how many community insiders in the FOSS movement pat each other on the back and put down the work of fresh starters who are trying new things. And now looks like the migration to libera chat will definitely take place. Me personally I’m just going to quit IRC, too much drama over nothing. Take everything with a grain of salt, I’ve learnt not to believe everything on the internet, especially it subtly involves peer pressure (which inevitably themes of “community” bring up). I don’t care at all about Freenode, this is just an observers view of what’s happened.
  • q3k 5y ago
    > I still don’t know what in particular Freenode did wrong Even if nothing worrying happened with Freenode until now, this thing totally is 'doing something wrong'. Blindly taking control of any channel that has 'libera.chat' in its topic should be enough of a reason to never trust them again. This is now how you manage a community. I don't want to use this network.
    • math-dev 5y ago
      (Correct if my assumption is mistaken, I’m not 100% sure) If a channel is actively posting to migrate to another network, that isn’t appropriate. It’s like all facebook groups posting “Hey lets move to twitter now”. At the end of the day, the “community” has spoken and looks to be moving over. I see so many negative posts on this thread against Andrew & Freenode, I can understand if they are upset and react in the way they have re banning such libera.chat messages.
      • capableweb 5y ago
        > If a channel is actively posting to migrate to another network, that isn’t appropriate. It’s like all facebook groups posting “Hey lets move to twitter now”. Which, in the spirit of FOSS, should be ok. Going to https://freenode.net/ https://freenode.net/ right now shows the tagline "freenode exists for FOSS" but limiting people from changing IRC server by blocking messages or changing topics feels very much against the spirit of FOSS. > I see so many negative posts on this thread against Andrew & Freenode, I can understand if they are upset and react in the way they have re banning such libera.chat messages. I think this is why many are moving away from Freenode as well. You don't want a supposedly impartial network to start banning users and channels left and right because they get upset. You want to have a stable network for your projects channel, and right now it seems Libera is a much better place for just that.
• swe_guy 5y ago
  Watching this from ##ob-freenode-policy-feedback on Libera, it relays the drama channel from freenode. This is just an unbelievable move. Absolutely nuking the network for a completely nonsense reason. Reverse PR moves.
• okoslaatoo 5y ago
  this has something to do with it https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee...
• koheripbal 5y ago
  Why are people still using IRC? It has no encryption, no privacy. Even if your client uses encrypted comms, the other clients are not, so everything is easily surveilled. I'm surprised people are still using IRC at all.
  • nicoburns 5y ago
    Why do you post on HN? It's not encrypted either. In fact, it's very explicitly publicly available. IRC is the same. It is and always has been public. And for many use cases that's a benefit not a drawback.
  • capableweb 5y ago
    People generally use IRC for public conversations, not for private ones. IRC is a open protocol, has a ton of different clients for different needs, almost every big FOSS project has it's own IRC channel and it requires minimal resources to run (and if you really need to, the protocol itself is really easy to implement). What's not to like with IRC? I'm surprised people are using Slack and Discord instead of IRC for development talk.
  • jfrunyon 5y ago
    This is false. Many, many IRC clients implement encryption, both in one-to-one and group (channel) forms. That's the beauty of IRC. The client can support almost anything it wants to. And if you don't like one client... there's another one for you to try! You want to see everyone's memes inline? Clients can do that. You want to see emoji? Clients can do that. You want to have encryption, or voice, or send files? Clients can easily at the very least negotiate that over IRC. Edit: And by the way, most servers offer a mode that allows you to require that everyone joining be using TLS, or of course you could run your own server and simply have it only listen for TLS!
• wut42 5y ago
  This happened to #elixir-lang too, and they decided to move to libera.chat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288673
• speeder 5y ago
  So, I just woke up, came to say good morning on IRC to my friends and... Find this instead. https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/1397504457114636292 https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/139750445711463629... WTF rasengan!
  • craftinator 5y ago
    Maybe he'll go back to evangelizing PIA under it's new shady owners, and leave freenode to rot.
    • depingus 5y ago
      Are you talking about Private Internet Access the VPN? If so, got anymore info on this?
      • craftinator 5y ago
        Yes, that VPN. I don't have any hard info, links and such, but after reading a number of discussions on HN and actually debating with Andrew a bit about it back in 2019, I ended up dropping them because I no longer had faith in their trustworthiness. From what I remember of it, PIA hired Mark Karpeles as their CTO. Mark has a somewhat sordid history, and was involved with Kape (KAPE maybe?), which has a history with malware and privacy violations. The whole thing was murky, but I got the impression that Andrew was really dodgey about it, kept spewing canned PR statements about how Mark is a "really great guy" and how they were all so excited, and I believe the company actually changed hands. This is completely heresay on my part, I never did any real research, just got some bad impressions about the whole thing and switched to Mullvad. Actually, did dig up a relevant link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679682
        • speeder 5y ago
          The same Mark Kerpeles that almost went to jail because he stole MtGox customers money to buy a castle for his mom?
• nathias 5y ago
  I hope he set all the topics to: t4k30v3r by l33
• speeder 5y ago
  This also just happened to Allegro. Also I am not part of Allegro core team but I DID contributed in the past (including just regular old bug testing). https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/1397504457114636292 https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/139750445711463629...
• brightball 5y ago
  Well, that proves that the previous threads weren’t an overreaction.
• beprogrammed 5y ago
  The worst part of this debacle is now I have to abandon PIA. I had no idea this was that guy.
  • mst 5y ago
    PIA was sold in 2019 and have explicitly said they have nothing to do with him anymore and have no idea wtf he's thinking.
    • segfaultbuserr 5y ago
      PIA is an independent operation from Andrew Lee now? Interesting.
• johnchristopher 5y ago
  I am not following the whole story but how does the crime profit anyone ? Who wins what ?
  • immibis 5y ago
    It's not rational. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27288630
    • johnchristopher 5y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
• raverbashing 5y ago
  Reality comes at you fast. Good that the "freenode" maintainers are displaying their intentions upfront and that the projects are moving quickly.
• swiley 5y ago
  At least you can switch networks. With apps like discord you don't even have that option when the admins misbehave.
  • mumblemumble 5y ago
    You still can, it's just that you have to switch apps too. Which undoubtedly creates more upheaval, and I am guessing that a lot more people would get left behind in the process. But still, it's not like communities that don't use IRC are helpless.
    • mbreese 5y ago
      However, this does reinforce the idea that: protocols > programs But you can’t get funding for managing a protocol.
      • Pet_Ant 5y ago
        Protocols are better than programs because they give users power. Programs are better than protocols because they don’t give users power. It’s a matter of perspective.
        • mbreese 5y ago
          You’re right, of course. But I think that if your goal is to build a robust system, protocols win. If you want to monetize your users, then you absolutely need that walled garden and ease of use that a program provides. If you have a protocol based application, then you can only really monetize the service, not your users. For example, only a few email providers have enough users to sell ads (Gmail). There are far more providers that sell the service as opposed to advertising to users. Although, I will admit building a robust protocol is difficult. It is much easier to iterate a feature set if you only have to worry about one implementation. But this is a trade off between short term gains at the expense of the long term. Email for all its warts will still be around in 10 years. Can we say the same for Slack?
      • 5y ago
• matheusmoreira 5y ago
  How to destroy your reputation in a few easy steps! It's over for Freenode. The biggest channels have already moved to Libera. The Arch Wiki for example doesn't even mention Freenode anymore. Hopefully it won't take long for everyone else to move as well.
  • thatwasunusual 5y ago
    Are there articles available that sums up "this Freenode drama"? I've just seen the headlines, and haven't really bothered before now that I see they are acting up as (even bigger?) assholes.
    • cptskippy 5y ago
      Hackaday had a good write-up: https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-network/ https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta...
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • bennyp101 5y ago
      https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee... seems to have a pretty simple summary
      • tzs 5y ago
        All quotes below are from that Ars article. > Contract or no contract, staff and developers of Freenode maintain that it wasn't actually possible to sell the network—the staff is all volunteers, and the infrastructure itself wasn't owned by Dahlskjaer in the first place. So who did own the infrastructure, and where did they stand on all of this? > Freenode has been the world's largest IRC network since 2013, with roughly three times as many users as its closest competitor, IRCnet. ... > 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. Is there something wrong with IRCnet? Usually when the largest X does something that gets a lot of users to leave they go to X's largest competitors since those are already up and running and experienced. In this case, though, it seems like the brand new Libera.chat is where most are going.
• sillysaurusx 5y ago
  People are starting to call it "Leenode" to honor Freenode's legacy. RIP one of the epic IRC servers. It's strange that the downfall of the server is very similar to the downfall of a business. It's eerie how similar the mismanagement is. Or at least, what I saw at some past companies.
  • pluc 5y ago
    If Game of Thrones were an IRC network
  • chaorace 5y ago
    What I find more interesting is how singlehandedly Libera ate Freenode's lunch. You might expect all of these FOSS communities to splinter apart, but they all seem to be gravitating toward the same place. I wonder what the story behind that is?
    • haasn 5y ago
      This is not true, many are moving to OFTC. But the obvious answer is, Libera is run by the ex-freenode staffers, and runs on the same software. (Unlike OFTC) So Libera is basically Freenode's spiritual successor with a different name.
      • c0l0 5y ago
        I don't see that (some communities opting for libera.chat, some for OFTC) as a problem, though. Recent events show that some amount of IRC network diversity can only be a good thing.
      • est31 5y ago
        While you are right that Libera is ran by former freenode operators, it's not 100% the same software. When you connect to freenode the server tells you it's running ircd-seven-1.1.9, while libera tells you it runs on solanum-1.0-dev. OTC says hybrid-7.2.2+oftc1.7.3.
        • 5y ago
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  The end of a certain Internet epoch, I should say.
  • vvpan 5y ago
    I do not think the so. The URL did not make the era, the communities did. If a community is strong enough they'll just move. So everything is still on. It's like if software forks an renames it's still the same thing.
  • eloeffler 5y ago
    This whole scandal actually makes me want to dive into IRC again after a long time just because it shows me how many commited people are active there and how much I was probably missing. I don't want to say it was a good thing that it happened, just that from my perspective it shed new light on IRC and some others might feel so, too.
    • ryukafalz 5y ago
      Yup, there are lots of great communities still on IRC. :)
    • rubin55 5y ago
      I can definitely recommend it. #algorithms, #haskell, #python, #java.. amazingly great + skilled communities. I learned so much from people there.. A quick "hey, how would you do this in $language" gives you like 5 responses which give you an immediate deep understanding of what's possible, how you could go about it, which versions of the given language support such an aproach, etc.
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    I think after a few years of Discord and Slack, I am happy to get back to IRC (ok, I never left). Sure, different feature set and I like some of the stuff modern alternatives bring to the table. But they also bring a lot of disadvantages.
• rascul 5y ago
  I'm skeptical about the 700 number. I'm in some of those channels and they have not (yet) been taken over. Others have been. Others might be soon.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Is it just that the folks who took over freenode are stupid and short sighted, or is there an actually rational reason behind their actions?
  • teekert 5y ago
    Yeah I’m following this from the sidelines but by now I’m really wondering what the Freenode staff was expecting and what their goals are?
    • wchar_t 5y ago
      I'm probably wrong, but from what I can tell rasengan was the only person behind this. He nuked channels and then disappeared, leaving his utterly confused staff to listen to the music from all the upset users/chanops.
  • mercer 5y ago
    My impression is that rasengan (Andrew Lee) does really seem to care about IRC, and he does see himself as the 'good guy', but his thoughts on how to make it all work clash with the somewhat more anarchic volunteer-based way Freenode worked, as the most charitable interpretation. Slightly less charitably, it comes across as a rich dude wanting, expecting, and/or being used to being boss, and being (legitimately) confused as to why this is causing so much trouble from his volunteer underlings. It's hard to be a prince in this world...
    • geofft 5y ago
      Even under the charitable interpretation, he "cares about IRC" in a way very different from how any of the projects that use Freenode care about IRC. Ask Gentoo or Ubuntu or Wikipedia what they want out of an IRC network, and they'll probably say, hm, more stability and less spam, I guess. Ask Andrew Lee what he wants abut IRC and this is what he says (from https://irc.com/ https://irc.com/): > Refreshed mobile apps, intuitive web apps, friends lists, working team support, video calls and file sharing. All within a few taps of the mobile device as people have come to expect.
• rplnt 5y ago
  Well they certainly make the decision easier for everyone. I wonder what is their motivation? Do they just want to get rid of the irc and reuse the "brand" for something else?
  • cmsj 5y ago
    Hubris, they believe freenode is the home of FOSS projects. They literally say that in the latest (and frankly, quite ridiculous) post on their website: https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://freenode.net/news/for-foss > freenode has been the home for the entire FOSS community for over 20 years. > Freenode is freenode, and freenode is FOSS They see those of us who are moving our project channels elsewhere, as "an illness".
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      But what is the point of removing ops and some of the other things I’ve heard they’ve done? How does that further their mission?
      • pjc50 5y ago
        Silencing dissent.
      • techrat 5y ago
        It doesn't. It's the desperate actions of an entitled child. Lee was never fit to run an IRC network and now everyone can see how.
      • cmsj 5y ago
        They see us as trying to fracture their community, even though these are our communities. Ironically, by forcing us to keep the freenode channels open, they are fracturing our communities. Or, at least they are for me, because I'm not going to back down and move the official one for my project back from Libera. I might have done if they had acted responsibly, but taking the channel away with no notice, convinces me that these are not people I want to rely on in any capacity. I am grateful to freenode for the platform it has provided to this point, and I thank all of the volunteers who kept it running.
• that_guy_iain 5y ago
  Lets be serious. Libera is a direct competitor for the userbase of Freenode. If you went on to some message board and posted hey come to my message board we're over there. Even though the message board makes no profit, that is still someone's project and they will not take kindy to taking their userbase and will delete the message. Expecting otherwise is just acting entitled. Honestly, the entire freenode nonsense is just a bunch of people acting super entitled over an IRC network they don't pay for and is basically their hobby. From what I can tell it basically all came down to the fact the staffers got pissed they couldn't control the domains which they didn't pay for. The fact they expect someone who bought the domains just to give the domains to them is nothing but entitlement.
  • linuxftw 5y ago
    I'm 100% with you. What's Freenode supposed to do, let all their channels become pointers to some other server run by a hostile group who's actively defaming them? The outrage mob only wants to be outraged, they're incapable of considering both sides.
    • cmsj 5y ago
      Freenode could have reached out to channel founders and asked us to leave the channels open, and allowed us to indicate that they are now unofficial channels. Instead they just revoked our access to them and overwrote the channel topics. Beyond that, yes, they are supposed to let projects decide where they want to be.
      • linuxftw 5y ago
        Freenode could have done things differently, 'channel founders' (as if that denotes some kind of status) could have done things differently. Seems like one side provoked a fight, the other side responded, and now the initiators of the fight are calling foul.
        • cmsj 5y ago
          What should I have done differently? I chose to move the official IRC channel for my FOSS project to a different server, so I registered the new channel on the new server, and updated the topic in the old channel to say it was no longer the official channel and where the new one is. There's nothing provocative about that.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  I already disconnected from Freenode since receiving a large amount of spam a few days ago. I've been idling in #gentoo on libera.chat as soon as it was announced. It saddens me to disconnect from Freenode after all these years. But, ultimately, it's just a name. The spirit will live on. Although it might be weakened.
  • beermonster 5y ago
    If everyone jumps ship it will be the same community in all but name. I was going to wait until the weekend to jump, but all these stories hitting HN have made me get my arse in gear :)
• cmsj 5y ago
  This happened to me. I maintain a pretty small macOS open source application and our IRC home was on freenode. I decided to move it to Libera, so I updated our website/docs accordingly and set the topic on the freenode channel to point at Libera. At ~5am UK time today both myself and the other channel founder were removed from the ACLs and the topic was set to one like that shown in the LWN article. I was able to get founder access back by asking nicely (through gritted teeth) on #freenode-services and now I am trying to work out how I indicate to users that they should look elsewhere, without freenode taking any further action.
  • p_l 5y ago
    Put in a bot that responds to every user who has spoken for the first time in X timeframe with NOTICE about moving to new location?
    • cmsj 5y ago
      I don't have a source I can cite, but I'm hearing indirectly that freenode's current policy is that a bot doing something like that is not allowed :/
      • p_l 5y ago
        Any method of mentioning that the channel isn't an official channel anymore is illegal by new policy
        • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
          Ironic that the network's name has the words "free" in them. The way Andrew Lee is acting, he sounds like he's more the North Korean version of Korea...
          • jackson1442 5y ago
            You mean the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Yup, sounds about right.
• marcodiego 5y ago
  And that is why free-whatever (society, software, people...) needs immunity from arbitrary take-over from companies and governments too.
  • baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    Easier said than done.
    • marcodiego 5y ago
      FSF, GNU and wikipedia come to mind. They may not be that easy but certainly possible. Actually, sometimes simply making the content easily available is enough. No image was lost from openclipart because they were all previously easily available.
      • Biganon 5y ago
        What about RMS's recent scandal? He was certainly the face everyone associates with the FSF, and even though he can be removed, it still hurts the foundation's reputation
        • marcodiego 5y ago
          You're right. But I still can git-clone gnu nano, all of its dependencies and compile it on my own hardware. If fsf ever goes belly-up one still can do so with any source they ever made available. Users of software supported by FSF are immune from any kind of FSF takeover. But indeed, FSF has to consider if RMS does more harm than good or put him in a position where he can do no harm.
        • raxxorrax 5y ago
          It is a scandal in the eyes of people that want to be offended in my opinion. He called Epstein a rapist. The witch hunting did cost much more reputation and I fear that isn't recoverable.
        • jrochkind1 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 5y ago
  I was quite relaxed about the whole thing and was willing to give Lee a chance, but mass purging channels and forwarding them to ## namespace, and deleting their topics... #go-nuts had libera.chat mentioned in the topic... saying that they were on libera.chat as well "if freenode dies". Suddenly every user was forwarded to ##go-nuts, the topic empty, #go-nuts invite only ; that certainly is a classy way. This was the official golang support channel, no warning, nothing. Can you understand what kind of breach of trust that is? How can you host a support channel on Freenode for any kind of official project, if that's what they're doing? I was k-lined on Freenode for repeatedly pointing out in one of the hijacked channels what had happened. This is _not_ something I ever considered doing, but it was so unfair. People being forwarded to an unofficial support channel not realizing what had happened. Freenode staff are very aggressive about taking over channels in order to limit exposure to this whole fiasco. And they go way overboard. From the beginning my impression was "this is ops fighting, and who knows what's true, hopefully things will calm down", but the way Lee handles this? Like a privileged, rich, socially inapt teenager. Every new ounce of information released on freenode.net reads like what I would have written with 16. https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://freenode.net/news/for-foss is this the person you would entrust your official support channel for an OSS project with? I still don't know what's true and what's not. And I can see both sides of this. Libera will first have to prove itself, and so I hope channels will also consider switching to OFTC (which promises far less trouble, and more stability at this point), but Freenode definitely is not trustworthy anymore. It's pretty much as simple as that.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  I wonder what their goal is with this. Freenode users are not regular people, like Whatsapp users, who will just bend over and let stuff like this happen. All of them can very easily move to another network. It makes me wonder if the people doing the hostile takeover even understand what they are taking over. Do they think they have a Discord/Slack/Whatsapp?
  • tremon 5y ago
    Why would you say that? Freenode users are just regular people, they just have freedom. How much freedom did Whatsapp users have to choose a different provider after Facebook bought the company?
    • gowld 5y ago
      Freenode users are far more technically savvy than than the vast majority of Slack/Discord/WhatsApp users.
      • globular-toast 5y ago
        And more strongly principled and aware/care about issues like security as well.
    • pferde 5y ago
      Yes, (ex-)Freenode users are just regular people, but it is a self-selected group of people who value freedom, and are willing to put some extra effort in keeping it. That is, I think, what grandparent post meant by "Freenode users are not regular people, like Whatsapp users, who will just bend over and let stuff like this happen."
    • djao 5y ago
      If WhatsApp users want to switch en masse to a new platform, they have to manually reconstruct their chat groups and their contact lists, install an entire new app, learn how to use the new app, work around any features that WhatsApp had which are now missing on their new platform, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. If IRC users want to switch to a new server, just use the /server command. Done. Maybe you have to re-register your nick or channel. But the client is the same, the interface is the same, everything stays the same.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  Does anyone have a decent summary of the entire history of this? I am not really part of the open source world, but from all the activity this seems like a very significant moment.
  • 0xBA5E64 5y ago
    This covers the gist (eheh) of it: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af4...
  • zmatt 5y ago
    https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-network/ https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta...
• xena 5y ago
  I was inspired to write my thoughts about this: https://christine.website/blog/epilogue-2021-05-26 https://christine.website/blog/epilogue-2021-05-26
• kortex 5y ago
  For anyone out of the loop, "Liberia Chat" has nothing to do with Liberia (the country). Also, I found it amusing when I typed "freenode" into the search bar, "freenode drama" was the first suggested phrase. https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/
  • blendergeek 5y ago
    > For anyone out of the loop, "Liberia Chat" has nothing to do with Liberia (the country). Please note: The new chat system is Libera Chat, not Liberia Chat.
  • KingOfCoders 5y ago
    "Liberia Chat" or "Libera Chat" ? :-)
  • psy-q 5y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/accidentallyliberian/ https://www.reddit.com/r/accidentallyliberian/
• jcranmer 5y ago
  Actually, it's somewhat worse than the headline mentions. It seems that the script targets channels that merely mention Libera in the topic. The topic of an affected channel I was in said: "See also #foo on irc.libera.chat" (as we hadn't decided whether or not to move). And everyone in the channel was banned from both the #foo and the ##foo channels on Freenode. Needless to say, Freenode kindly decided for us whether or not we should move to Libera for good.
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    That’s both a hilarious way to sabotage the IRC server you just paid money for, and a good way to help others sabotage other channels.
    • dspillett 5y ago
      They've learned nothing from classic films. The would-be empire is tightening its grip, and more & more channels are slipping through their fingers.
      • henvic 5y ago
        It seems to be the act of a loner. RIP freenode.
        • fellellor 5y ago
          The founder of Private Internet Access and also… the Crown Prince of South Korea it seems. XD
          • jcranmer 5y ago
            > the Crown Prince of South Korea it seems Alleged crown prince of the Joseon Empire. Which hasn't existed for ~110 years, and is based on an ennoblement by one of several contenders for the current head of the former imperial family, so it's an even weaker claim than most pretenders of former monarchies have.
• nonbinarycat 5y ago
  I heard a rumor that Freenode is planning to move to a subscription service, so those remaining channel operators will have to pay a small monthly fee to keep their channels intact. And that normal users will also be able pay for benefits like being able to add sponsorship messages to arbitrary channel topics, and things like that. Anyone know if this is true?
  • Macha 5y ago
    Seems totally unsourced and unlikely
• thanatosmin 5y ago
  The response on the freenode website is wild. https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://freenode.net/news/for-foss
• kjrose 5y ago
  Well. That's a good sign that whoever bought out freenode has no comprehension of group psychology or the fact that this behavior is more likely to lead to people leaving very rapidly. Barbara Streisand syndrome anyone? It is so clear that they thing the community owes them something when in reality the people who use the irc are the only reason freenode has any value. It's not that hard to spin up another irc server, it is hard as heck to get lots of people to join and use it.
• fitzie 5y ago
  if someone goes to libera and registers a bunch of channels and tells people to go to freenode, how would they respond? or if popular subreddits were shut down by their respective mods, you'd can be sure that the ops would come in an open it up again. I bet it would take less than a minute to get banned for bring up freenode on libera. if people want to leave freenode they should do that, its pretty rude to expect them to leave your abandoned channel as a memoral to your departure.
  • horsemans 5y ago
    > I bet it would take less than a minute to get banned for bring up freenode on libera. I'll take that bet. Give it a try.
  • SamBam 5y ago
    Why don't you try and find out what would happen, instead of making spurious accusations against the Libera staff?
  • darkarmani 5y ago
    > I bet it would take less than a minute to get banned for bring up freenode on libera. I'm sure just about anyone will take you up on that bet. Go for it.
• kjrose 5y ago
  I'd anyone remains on freenode after this, they deserve whatever comes to them. Irc servers are not that hard to start up and libéra is already in place. It's a matter of time now before they lose most of the users.
• est31 5y ago
  I think it's also admirable how quickly libera.chat has grown into a network of over a quarter of freenode's size (26%). freenode.net users as of 18:48 CEST 2021-05-25: > Current global users 69472, max 85052 libera.chat users as of 15:06 CEST, 2021-05-26: > Current global users 18337, max 18338 In particular, it's larger than OTFC now. Data as of 15:16 CEST, 2021-05-26: > Current global users: 18100 Max: 18101 As for the trends, they look good for libera.chat and bad for freenode. On 2021-05-20, the values were as following for libera.chat: > Current global users 11126, max 11130 And as following for freenode.net: Current global users 77159, max 83476 So freenode lost 7.6 thousand users (9.9%) while libera gained 7.2 thousand users (39%) within the last couple of days.
  • marcan_42 5y ago
    Especially considering that probably most of the current freenode users are idling or even orphaned bouncers. IRC is such that connection counts do not mean an actual person is behind the connection. But obviously everyone who moved to Libera did so actively. 18K active users vs 69K total connections is huge.
  • rektide 5y ago
    you might consider updating your hn profile. ;) (it currently lists oftc & fn)
    • est31 5y ago
      Good catch! Done.
  • WJW 5y ago
    Seeing the numbers spelled out like that really drives home how niche IRC has become. The largest network has less than 100k users on it. You can comfortably fit that many connections on a single server these days.
    • TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      The internet has moved to be mobile-first, media-rich, and optionally asynchronous. IRC didn't adapt, though I'm still hopeful for matrix.org.
• sicco 5y ago
  Given the amount of backlash this whole debacle has in the community, couldn't a crowdfunding to cover legal costs be successful enough to start a lawsuit? AFAIK funding is the main reason why a lawsuit isn't happening (https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461 https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461). Everyone should still move to Libera, but a lawsuit might bring some justice.
• tyingq 5y ago
  The Streisand effect is in full force now. The Google results if you search for "freenode" are now almost all about the drama. As is the freenode Wikipedia page.
• gowld 5y ago
  This is just Freenode applying Apple App Store policy regarding mentioning competitors. Freenode is creating a walled garden where they can control the user experience, and the new owners need to protect the value of their financial investment in the platform. It's also a hostile takeover. Hooray for capitalism.
  • Buttons840 5y ago
    Programmers who use IRC seem like a hard group to build a wall around.
• gowld 5y ago
  Is anyone tracking the migration from Freenode/Leenode to Libera? The numbers must be amazing to see.
  • erk__ 5y ago
    The best tracker is probably https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
  • xena 5y ago
    Here's the graph out of my prometheus: https://i.imgur.com/iUkkqAK.png https://i.imgur.com/iUkkqAK.png
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nednar 5y ago
  Not affiliated with either side, but I saw that nobody mentioned the blog post by freenode about this topic yet: https://freenode.net/news/for-foss https://freenode.net/news/for-foss Sadly, it doesn't mention what they actually changed in their policies or why. Just that in general they seem to feel tricked by OTHER parties kicking people from freenode channels for NOT going to Libera. My take: Instead of participating in the flame war, the best approach may just be to help both sides keep a voice, document what happens, support reasonable decisions. As long as both sides block and kick users there are no reasonable decisions to be made. Personally, I probably won't even open either chat tool until things calmed down. As a side note, I also want to remember the time when Matrix was trying to get users by building interfaces to other chat platforms and mirroring the communication in both platforms. That sounds like a reasonable decision to me.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    The new "Freenode" has little to no credibility and that post comes off as pure propaganda. Look at how the new "Freenode" has behaved and it is very clear... Official project channels should be able to ban users and move elsewhere. Freenode is welcome make new community channels on those topics. Trying to prevent or hinder official channels from moving is absolutely not acceptable behavior.
    • nednar 5y ago
      Please provide context. Assume that I have no clue what is going on. I know there's freenode, which provides IRC as a service since forever, and there is this new thing Libera. Otherwise I didn't have time to investigate anything.
• tapland 5y ago
  This has been going on for some time. Snoonet was the first (attempted?) victim with mods being hired by Private Internet Access and London Media Group (Lee's founded companies) and some weird corporate IRC 2.0 plans. Sad to see they got freenode now =/ But yeah moving to Snoonet and mentioning that in topic was not a ToS violation back in the day.
  • duckfang 5y ago
    Mentioning Libera.chat was a ToS violation as of last night. The IRCOP bots that swept doing the de-op, de-voice, de-ban, rename-topic, rename room was the initial pass. Then they updated their website to say that.
• mcherm 5y ago
  Ok, now I'm done with this "controversy". There is no longer even the slightest doubt in my mind who has the higher ground now.
• mabbo 5y ago
  Surely by now Mr Lee can see that he's made a mistake, right? Like, how bad do things have to get before he can say "Maybe it's me and the actions I've taken?". What kind of goals could he even have where this is the outcome that was desired or expected? At this point, to not recognize an error has been made would take a level of narcissism and sociopathy that I cannot imagine.
  • Foxboron 5y ago
    The network operators are calling project owners "brainwashed" in the #freenode-services channel. I think they are at the moment following titanic all the way to the bottom. Edit with full quote: > 14:44:44 lionman@ : LeShadow: We dont support adverts/invites/spam for networks we don't affiliate that force users to move even they want to stay with freenode. The users have been forced by many people and ops (brainwashed), even they didn't want to.
    • fundamental 5y ago
      Taking a look around their remaining service level channels it sure seems like trolls have taken over. Either that or people have such a strong disconnect with the events that they cannot actually understand why people would have concerns or objections.
      • Foxboron 5y ago
        I think it's a strong disconnect along with the staff selling lies wholesale. It's weird. I do wonder when Andrew is going to realize that the 68K users he has is mostly idle connections or small private irc channels.
  • wut42 5y ago
    Tried to talk. I'd have been better by pissing in a violin.
• dethos 5y ago
  Is it a good time to move chat to a federated setup? Something like Matrix.
  • ValentineC 5y ago
    Could you elaborate more on your statement/question? Isn't IRC already federated by design?
• debacle 5y ago
  As an outside observer, I really didn't believe that IRC could cause this level of drama.
  • rubin55 5y ago
    Many rooms have 500+ people in them. Heck, I think FreeNode was ~70000 peeps? I'm pretty sure almost all of them are pretty pissed off about the developments of today in particular. I was in wait-and-see mode yesterday. From the 44 channels I was in, about 20 moved to Libera and the others seemed to have the intention to stay on FreeNode. Today all of those channels packed up shop. I took a look in #freenode-services and I can't blame them either. Yesterday I would have stayed on FreeNode. Today, fuck it. OFTC and Libera for me.
• dang 5y ago
  All: there was a thwack of threads about this, including several on the front page (yikes). I've merged them hither. That means there are 800+ comments and to read them all you need (stamina, and) to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27286628&p=3 (Sorry for the interruption. Comments like this will go away when we turn off pagination. Yes, you're right and we know.) There is also the following thread from the other side, which I've unflagged, but not merged: Freenode Exists for FOSS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27283964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27283964 - May 2021 (20 comments)
• clarge1120 5y ago
  "WTF is going on with FreeNode?" From my read it looks like Culture War. > Andrew was repeatedly asked in the "policy discussion channel" whether slurs, racism and transphobia are now permitted on Freenode. No answer has been forthcoming. The new owner either will not answer, or will not take a side, in the Culture War, so a bunch of users are leaving.
  • kbelder 5y ago
    I have a hard time believing that a business will go out on a limb to take over an open network, with the plan to expand it and commercialize it, while also thinking "let's make it more like 8chan".
• varispeed 5y ago
  If users can just switch to another platform, then acquiring something like this is pointless. Years ago company I know bought a service - something like Instagram, but it was built on some open source project. The former owner setup a new platform and had most users moved over after the sale. So the company essentially got left with dead accounts and a spaghettised open source project...
• moepstar 5y ago
  The drops in the graphs speak volumes, i wonder how they'll look in a week or something... https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
• mike-cardwell 5y ago
  I was lurking in #ledger on Freenode, via the Matrix bridge. There was some discussion in there the other day to ask if anyone cared to move the channel to Libera. I didn't take much notice. This morning I noticed a stream of garbage telling users to move and making the channel read-only. I didn't really pay much attention to it other than to leave the channel, so I don't have the logs anymore. After reading this, I assume they got kicked off for mentioning Libera. That's totally idiotic. I've unregistered my nick and dropped the bridge. I'll wait until a Matrix bridge exists for Libera and rejoin #ledger there.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• SkyMarshal 5y ago
  It’s really unfortunate that Andrew Lee is killing the thing he loves, and that he can’t seem to see it.
• munro 5y ago
  Interesting policy update from diffing the police page on Arvive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20210513234811/20210523063448/https://freenode.net/policies https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20210513234811/202105230634... > For abandoned project channels that have moved or are no longer available to the public, you may request the ownership of the channel be transferred to you. Please make said requests in the #freenode IRC channel.
• zzo38computer 5y ago
  Their hijacking everything on Freenode and that stuff is now why I will no longer use it and now use Libera instead. This script to try to block everything, it is very bad. (It is not necessarily the only reason, but it is the major one.) We see these complaints about Freenode, and about moving to Libera instead, anywhere, including on Freenode, Libera, HN, Mastodon, Usenet, ifMUD, and probably even more.
• bjourne 5y ago
  Damn. I was quite skeptical about this whole libera thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27208073 This kind of abuse proves that the split was warranted.
• ldavison 5y ago
  With so much drama on I-R-C, Freenode is now trash thanks to L-E-E
• scrps 5y ago
  IANAL Are there any IP claims against freenode that could be made by any FOSS project that has an official channel that has been taken over? I know legally freenode can deny services but in this case they are literally taking over projects public representation. Edit: spelling
• fastball 5y ago
  > In a 2013 interview with ProPrivacy, Lee was asked what his goal in life was, and where he saw himself in the next 50 years. He said that he wanted to ease “pain, suffering and stress” by harnessing technology. In the next five decades, meanwhile, he hoped to either be alive or be known as a man “who helped bring happiness to the world”. Swing and a miss. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/3124523/real-life-k-drama-how-did-andrew-lee-go-tech https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/312...