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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

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.
    - math-dev 5y ago
      In theory I agree, but imagine if you were running a large community and your number 2 just took it all away from you. I would pretty upset, even if in theory I should support all FOSS projects. Not to say this is the same situation here as from what I understand, the guys who did the most work are moving to LC. I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen to LC down the track, if it ever does, it will be an interesting case study of how they react. But yes, looks like LC is now the home of IRC and for the foreseeable future should be drama free.
      - immibis 5y ago
        It's not being taken away by the number 2. It's being taken away by thousands of individual decisions because they all agree that number 1 is a problem.
      - mattashii 5y ago
        > In theory I agree, but imagine if you were running a large community and your number 2 just took it all away from you. I would pretty upset, even if in theory I should support all FOSS projects. Insofar that I understand the issue, Andrew wasn't the one running a large community, he was the owner of the company holding the domain used by that community. The ones running the community were the oppers, who have since migrated to run LC.
  - throwaway525142 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”. I feel like only a non-open networks would forbid advertising that the project moved to another place. But completely unrelated to that, it seems that Freenode took control of communities that haven't moved to libera.chat: Allegro (https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/1397504457114636292 https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/139750445711463629...), Elixir (https://twitter.com/AmNicd/status/1397448111291879424 https://twitter.com/AmNicd/status/1397448111291879424).
  - soneil 5y ago
    I strongly disagree. If wikimedia choose to move their official presence to another network, it seems perfectly legitimate to inform legacy presences of the same. And it's certainly in the better interests of the community. Going to other channels and advertising the same would be spammy. For an analogy - say I have a repo on github. And I decide to move it to gitlab. Would it be fair for me to update the readme on github to say that the repo is now being maintained at gitlab? And would it be fair for github to take control of the repo so they can pretend it hasn't?
    - math-dev 5y ago
      I like your analogy to GitHub, and can appreciate / change my original viewpoint as a result to the channels aren’t the property of FN, so they don’t have a right on what to do with them
  - gerikson 5y ago
    It seems that many channels that just had "libera" in their topic got nuked (the one I was in certainly did). Even if it was in the form of "we're discussing a move, nothing's decided yet".
  - macksd 5y ago
    I disagree with this. Take the Apache Software Foundation, for instance. One of their mantras is "community over code". I love to keep unnecessary drama, ulterior motives and contention out of technical open-source projects, and the emphasis on healthy communication, decision making processes and consensus over purely technical concerns is nice. But let's imagine someone started a thread on an Apache mailing list and in good faith asked "would the community be better served by changing our infrastructure and governance?" If members of the Apache board came in and shut that down, I would take that as a clear signal that they valued their own brand / power / whatever over the community. It would be understandable from a human nature, but it would destroy a lot of the respect I have for them and their principles.

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.
  - math-dev 5y ago
    In theory I agree, but imagine if you were running a large community and your number 2 just took it all away from you. I would pretty upset, even if in theory I should support all FOSS projects. Not to say this is the same situation here as from what I understand, the guys who did the most work are moving to LC. I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen to LC down the track, if it ever does, it will be an interesting case study of how they react. But yes, looks like LC is now the home of IRC and for the foreseeable future should be drama free.
    - immibis 5y ago
      It's not being taken away by the number 2. It's being taken away by thousands of individual decisions because they all agree that number 1 is a problem.
    - mattashii 5y ago
      > In theory I agree, but imagine if you were running a large community and your number 2 just took it all away from you. I would pretty upset, even if in theory I should support all FOSS projects. Insofar that I understand the issue, Andrew wasn't the one running a large community, he was the owner of the company holding the domain used by that community. The ones running the community were the oppers, who have since migrated to run LC.
- throwaway525142 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”. I feel like only a non-open networks would forbid advertising that the project moved to another place. But completely unrelated to that, it seems that Freenode took control of communities that haven't moved to libera.chat: Allegro (https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/1397504457114636292 https://twitter.com/CriadorDeJogos/status/139750445711463629...), Elixir (https://twitter.com/AmNicd/status/1397448111291879424 https://twitter.com/AmNicd/status/1397448111291879424).
- soneil 5y ago
  I strongly disagree. If wikimedia choose to move their official presence to another network, it seems perfectly legitimate to inform legacy presences of the same. And it's certainly in the better interests of the community. Going to other channels and advertising the same would be spammy. For an analogy - say I have a repo on github. And I decide to move it to gitlab. Would it be fair for me to update the readme on github to say that the repo is now being maintained at gitlab? And would it be fair for github to take control of the repo so they can pretend it hasn't?
  - math-dev 5y ago
    I like your analogy to GitHub, and can appreciate / change my original viewpoint as a result to the channels aren’t the property of FN, so they don’t have a right on what to do with them
- gerikson 5y ago
  It seems that many channels that just had "libera" in their topic got nuked (the one I was in certainly did). Even if it was in the form of "we're discussing a move, nothing's decided yet".
- macksd 5y ago
  I disagree with this. Take the Apache Software Foundation, for instance. One of their mantras is "community over code". I love to keep unnecessary drama, ulterior motives and contention out of technical open-source projects, and the emphasis on healthy communication, decision making processes and consensus over purely technical concerns is nice. But let's imagine someone started a thread on an Apache mailing list and in good faith asked "would the community be better served by changing our infrastructure and governance?" If members of the Apache board came in and shut that down, I would take that as a clear signal that they valued their own brand / power / whatever over the community. It would be understandable from a human nature, but it would destroy a lot of the respect I have for them and their principles.