5 ms·

Letter to Freenode – Post Mortem of May 25, 2021

47 points by nneonneo 5y ago

ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
This reads less like a post-mortem and more like a Soviet press release. It's generally never a good sign when your post-mortem starts off by casting blame towards a claimed conspiracy of anonymous foes seeking to harm you based on evidence that you refuse to reveal. It's also missing an accounting of the actual decision made to takeover the communication channels of open source communities without their consent.
- arpa 5y ago
  Reads like something Put(it)in or Lolkashenka says to justify their actions. "Actions of hostile foreign powers on our soil has forced us to shoot/beat/arrest our citizens." The only difference is that they didn't wait for 10-20-30 years to admit they were wrong; but even that admitting is half-assed and insincere. Yeah, Leenode, you're effed.
- rasengan 5y ago
  It's not a claim [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    ...that instance is a single person acting in support of freenode, after having not committed anything for years, with a rather lot of folks disagreeing. If anything, it looks like a badly-executed conspiracy in freenode's favor against the wishes of the community.
    - gerikson 5y ago
      Some expansion on the commit here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27300829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27300829
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    Your reply does not meaningfully address any of the points of the post it is replying to. Namely, a link to a HN post about a single commit to a single project does nothing to provide specifics underlying the below claim: > "While group contacts from the channels did not contact freenode staff directly, we were rather surprised when we received reports of unpleasant elements operating in the background and influencing these projects, namespaces and channels with false information in order to harm freenode’s administration and staff members’ images and paint a false narrative altogether." It's also missing an accounting of the actual decision made to takeover the communication channels of open source communities without their consent.
ddingus 5y ago
The trust is gone. Making mouth noises and putting words on pages won't help much. Want it back? Start by dissolving the entity created post fact. The root trouble here is someone thought, somehow owning the open work of many was a good idea, and it is not. That work was done because it was needed and the use value to everyone was high. This did not indicate money should change hands, particularly hands having little to nothing to do with the value or the work! You won't catch me on Leenode again. Edit: On second thought, don't! It will not help at this point and maybe it is best for everyone to carry on as they see best. Over time, most will center on the lower risk, higher value, higher trust option. As they should.
keutoi 5y ago
This reads like an example for 'too little, too late'.
- bigiain 5y ago
  Too little, too late, no clue. Lee will never be trusted again by all the FOSS project irc communities he's fucked over, and is unlikely too be trusted by other FOSS irc communities he hasn't (yet?) fucked over but who are watching on in horror. WHo would ever bother starting a community relying on infrastructure he has any control of? Who would stay on that infrastructure after this? So far as I can tell, only people who don't actually care about "community" or the people in them. The sort of people who'd talk about "representing your brand" on irc. Freenode is dead. It just hasn't stopped writhing around in it's death throes yet. Brand representatives and their ilk do not bring any value to irc. The people who do create value in an irc channel don't need to put up with this sort of manipulative shit. (And this is why you should build your FOSS chat communities on open protocols and platforms like irc and not locked up in places like Slack or Discord. Lee _thinks_ he has the power/ownership of the communities the way those platform "owner" do, but he totally doesn't. He's trying as hard as he can to introduce friction to communities moving off shitty-freenet, but in reality there is very very little friction. He can try and "trap" newbies who follow old links of discussions directing them to freenet, but there will be nothing of value in those channels for newbies once the community that used to be there is gone.
tptacek 5y ago
Just to be clear: when a project that had been using an official #named channel in Freenode decides to move to another IRC network, and posts the location of the new channel in their Freenode channel's /topic, that isn't "spam". Freenode doesn't own these communities. Freenode's "president" has no say whatsoever about where those communities choose to congregate.
- rasengan 5y ago
  As I noted, things aren't exactly as they appear [1]. Make no mistake, FOSS is under attack. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538
  - tptacek 5y ago
    When a FOSS project updates its own website to clarify that they want nothing to do with you, we don't have wonder what's going on.
    - rasengan 5y ago
      > When a FOSS project updates its own website to clarify that they want nothing to do with you, we don't have wonder what's going on. Yes. Edit: To be clear, what I'm pointing out is that it's not in fact entire projects that are trying to move, but instead, few people who have infiltrated many projects.
      - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
        Which of those projects consider you to have the unilateral authority to decide how they govern themselves? Which of these communities individually selected you to be their guardian and protector and final say on self-governance?
      - adreamingsoul 5y ago
        Which projects have been infiltrated? Who are these people?
ilaksh 5y ago
"certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam" -- that's just a lie, he was shutting down the ones that had libera.chat in the topic. I flagged this post because it's just nonsense.
- immibis 5y ago
  This post should get more attention though to help dig freenode's grave further
adreamingsoul 5y ago
I’m somewhat amazed with how fast the reputation and trust of Freenode has been ruined.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Interesting, isn't it? Prior to Leenode, freenode was one bedrock thing, like email, some archives, other basic pieces. I used it a lot, and on occasion still hop on to have a chat, get pointers to info. Sad to see this happen, but the interesting bit to me is just hoe much depends on humans being good, or at the least mutually considerate and respectful to one another. The closed platforms damp down on this some. Notable and thought provoking dynamics in play here. Open protocols matter, but so do the people. Matter more than some, many of us might expect?
  - abstractbeliefs 5y ago
    Thankfully, the open protocol means it's just a one-line change to move over to irc.libera.chat , run by the same people as ran freenode until last week, carrying on in the same spirit. https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/
  - xena 5y ago
    The people are the soul of the network. The communities are almost incidental. The people are what make it go.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      Truth. I just had a stray thought about all this. For those of us around early, these basics are evident. And as older pieces get impacted by the growing mess, a lot gets put into question. The early net was the people. They cared and they had broad agency to do the right things. Now that it's more economically driven, we've got growing issues, and we've got some real advancement. It's not all bad. But... maybe making more people, somehow, is an answer to the issues. When I was brought online, it was late 80's via BBS gateways at first, then a unix shell account and PPP later on, in 1990-1, right in there somewhere. At that time, the sysadmin was kind of bringing people up, holding discussions, teaching, helping, and the same thing happened in various places. Each of us got a sense of how special it all was, and our conduct mattered. I know for me it did. We don't do that anymore, or if we do, it's onboarding to some closed thing or other, each seeking to own the people, to prevent agency, prevent what we had started with.
TheChaplain 5y ago
I'm sure most of HN are tired of this debacle by now, but I still find these posts useful, in the sense of a lesson on how to not do things a certain way.
malka 5y ago
sounds like PCC PR to me.
lervag 5y ago
> Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I’m willing to admit that I was wrong with yesterday’s move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused. This type of wording fascinates me. Why does he not write "..., and I admit ... and apologize"? Writing "..., I'm willing to admit ... and apologize" does not, to my understanding, mean the same. Or am I being too sensitive here?
- rntksi 5y ago
  You have to be careful of the wording when you're legally representing an entity. See all speeches by CEOs and Chairpeople that's 2 pages long but actually doesn't affirm or confirm anything. That, and being the Crown Prince I guess.
wut42 5y ago
>The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying The intent doesn't really matters. What matters is how the actions are perceived, and to many people, including the ones who were trusting freenode to host their FOSS community, felt this as a takeover/hijack.
kuschku 5y ago
As lead of one of the projects affected by Lee’s actions, I'm very disappointed. #quasseldroid on Freenode was hijacked yesterday. We got control back, under the condition that we don't discuss other networks, or where the channel has moved. Network staff insisted they'd be allowed to redirect or hijack the channel whenever they'd like. As we had no method of warning our users on the channel itself (as that's banned by the new policy), we had to choose an in-client solution. That's why this warning message was added. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2YSI9FWUAASBKU?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2YSI9FWUAASBKU?format=jpg&name=... Originally we planned to have a channel on freenode and libera, but due to these deceptive actions from freenode staff our only official channel is now on libera.chat [Same thread is also available on twitter: https://twitter.com/quasseldroid/status/1397824671173730304 https://twitter.com/quasseldroid/status/1397824671173730304] (Before I get even more complaints: Yes, the warning can be disabled in the client settings for users who'd like to continue using freenode without any warning. The popup only shows up when the warning banner is clicked on, usually only the banner is shown)
- enriquto 5y ago
  > As we had no method of warning our users on the channel itself (as that's banned by the new policy) OK, I may understand that "zombie" channels (were nobody can talk and the topic points elsewhere) are not allowed. But this is extremely callous! What about freedom of speech? To hell with them. What's next? They hijack the channels of projects that mention another IRC network on their project websites?
  - jasonpeacock 5y ago
    I'm tired of this bad take: > What about freedom of speech? This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech - the government is not limiting what can be said. There's plenty of other speech opportunities, as shown by the channel already moving to another network. You have no (US) rights to force a platform to host you. At best (worst?), they are breaching a contract and you can sue them for damages but I don't know if any channels actually signed such contracts with Freenode?
xena 5y ago
This is not a post-mortem. This is ""damage control"", and a poor attempt at it. I've seen better ""damage control"" from skidnets that got caught running a DDOS C&C server.

47 points by nneonneo 5y ago

This reads less like a post-mortem and more like a Soviet press release. It's generally never a good sign when your post-mortem starts off by casting blame towards a claimed conspiracy of anonymous foes seeking to harm you based on evidence that you refuse to reveal. It's also missing an accounting of the actual decision made to takeover the communication channels of open source communities without their consent.

arpa 5y ago
Reads like something Put(it)in or Lolkashenka says to justify their actions. "Actions of hostile foreign powers on our soil has forced us to shoot/beat/arrest our citizens." The only difference is that they didn't wait for 10-20-30 years to admit they were wrong; but even that admitting is half-assed and insincere. Yeah, Leenode, you're effed.
rasengan 5y ago
It's not a claim [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  ...that instance is a single person acting in support of freenode, after having not committed anything for years, with a rather lot of folks disagreeing. If anything, it looks like a badly-executed conspiracy in freenode's favor against the wishes of the community.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    Some expansion on the commit here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27300829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27300829
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  Your reply does not meaningfully address any of the points of the post it is replying to. Namely, a link to a HN post about a single commit to a single project does nothing to provide specifics underlying the below claim: > "While group contacts from the channels did not contact freenode staff directly, we were rather surprised when we received reports of unpleasant elements operating in the background and influencing these projects, namespaces and channels with false information in order to harm freenode’s administration and staff members’ images and paint a false narrative altogether." It's also missing an accounting of the actual decision made to takeover the communication channels of open source communities without their consent.

ddingus 5y ago

The trust is gone. Making mouth noises and putting words on pages won't help much. Want it back? Start by dissolving the entity created post fact. The root trouble here is someone thought, somehow owning the open work of many was a good idea, and it is not. That work was done because it was needed and the use value to everyone was high. This did not indicate money should change hands, particularly hands having little to nothing to do with the value or the work! You won't catch me on Leenode again. Edit: On second thought, don't! It will not help at this point and maybe it is best for everyone to carry on as they see best. Over time, most will center on the lower risk, higher value, higher trust option. As they should.

keutoi 5y ago

This reads like an example for 'too little, too late'.

bigiain 5y ago
Too little, too late, no clue. Lee will never be trusted again by all the FOSS project irc communities he's fucked over, and is unlikely too be trusted by other FOSS irc communities he hasn't (yet?) fucked over but who are watching on in horror. WHo would ever bother starting a community relying on infrastructure he has any control of? Who would stay on that infrastructure after this? So far as I can tell, only people who don't actually care about "community" or the people in them. The sort of people who'd talk about "representing your brand" on irc. Freenode is dead. It just hasn't stopped writhing around in it's death throes yet. Brand representatives and their ilk do not bring any value to irc. The people who do create value in an irc channel don't need to put up with this sort of manipulative shit. (And this is why you should build your FOSS chat communities on open protocols and platforms like irc and not locked up in places like Slack or Discord. Lee _thinks_ he has the power/ownership of the communities the way those platform "owner" do, but he totally doesn't. He's trying as hard as he can to introduce friction to communities moving off shitty-freenet, but in reality there is very very little friction. He can try and "trap" newbies who follow old links of discussions directing them to freenet, but there will be nothing of value in those channels for newbies once the community that used to be there is gone.

tptacek 5y ago

Just to be clear: when a project that had been using an official #named channel in Freenode decides to move to another IRC network, and posts the location of the new channel in their Freenode channel's /topic, that isn't "spam". Freenode doesn't own these communities. Freenode's "president" has no say whatsoever about where those communities choose to congregate.

rasengan 5y ago
As I noted, things aren't exactly as they appear [1]. Make no mistake, FOSS is under attack. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299538
- tptacek 5y ago
  When a FOSS project updates its own website to clarify that they want nothing to do with you, we don't have wonder what's going on.
  - rasengan 5y ago
    > When a FOSS project updates its own website to clarify that they want nothing to do with you, we don't have wonder what's going on. Yes. Edit: To be clear, what I'm pointing out is that it's not in fact entire projects that are trying to move, but instead, few people who have infiltrated many projects.
    - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
      Which of those projects consider you to have the unilateral authority to decide how they govern themselves? Which of these communities individually selected you to be their guardian and protector and final say on self-governance?
    - adreamingsoul 5y ago
      Which projects have been infiltrated? Who are these people?

ilaksh 5y ago

"certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam" -- that's just a lie, he was shutting down the ones that had libera.chat in the topic. I flagged this post because it's just nonsense.

immibis 5y ago
This post should get more attention though to help dig freenode's grave further

adreamingsoul 5y ago

I’m somewhat amazed with how fast the reputation and trust of Freenode has been ruined.

ddingus 5y ago
Interesting, isn't it? Prior to Leenode, freenode was one bedrock thing, like email, some archives, other basic pieces. I used it a lot, and on occasion still hop on to have a chat, get pointers to info. Sad to see this happen, but the interesting bit to me is just hoe much depends on humans being good, or at the least mutually considerate and respectful to one another. The closed platforms damp down on this some. Notable and thought provoking dynamics in play here. Open protocols matter, but so do the people. Matter more than some, many of us might expect?
- abstractbeliefs 5y ago
  Thankfully, the open protocol means it's just a one-line change to move over to irc.libera.chat , run by the same people as ran freenode until last week, carrying on in the same spirit. https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/
- xena 5y ago
  The people are the soul of the network. The communities are almost incidental. The people are what make it go.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Truth. I just had a stray thought about all this. For those of us around early, these basics are evident. And as older pieces get impacted by the growing mess, a lot gets put into question. The early net was the people. They cared and they had broad agency to do the right things. Now that it's more economically driven, we've got growing issues, and we've got some real advancement. It's not all bad. But... maybe making more people, somehow, is an answer to the issues. When I was brought online, it was late 80's via BBS gateways at first, then a unix shell account and PPP later on, in 1990-1, right in there somewhere. At that time, the sysadmin was kind of bringing people up, holding discussions, teaching, helping, and the same thing happened in various places. Each of us got a sense of how special it all was, and our conduct mattered. I know for me it did. We don't do that anymore, or if we do, it's onboarding to some closed thing or other, each seeking to own the people, to prevent agency, prevent what we had started with.

TheChaplain 5y ago

I'm sure most of HN are tired of this debacle by now, but I still find these posts useful, in the sense of a lesson on how to not do things a certain way.

malka 5y ago

sounds like PCC PR to me.

lervag 5y ago

> Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I’m willing to admit that I was wrong with yesterday’s move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused. This type of wording fascinates me. Why does he not write "..., and I admit ... and apologize"? Writing "..., I'm willing to admit ... and apologize" does not, to my understanding, mean the same. Or am I being too sensitive here?

rntksi 5y ago
You have to be careful of the wording when you're legally representing an entity. See all speeches by CEOs and Chairpeople that's 2 pages long but actually doesn't affirm or confirm anything. That, and being the Crown Prince I guess.

wut42 5y ago

>The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying The intent doesn't really matters. What matters is how the actions are perceived, and to many people, including the ones who were trusting freenode to host their FOSS community, felt this as a takeover/hijack.

kuschku 5y ago

As lead of one of the projects affected by Lee’s actions, I'm very disappointed. #quasseldroid on Freenode was hijacked yesterday. We got control back, under the condition that we don't discuss other networks, or where the channel has moved. Network staff insisted they'd be allowed to redirect or hijack the channel whenever they'd like. As we had no method of warning our users on the channel itself (as that's banned by the new policy), we had to choose an in-client solution. That's why this warning message was added. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2YSI9FWUAASBKU?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2YSI9FWUAASBKU?format=jpg&name=... Originally we planned to have a channel on freenode and libera, but due to these deceptive actions from freenode staff our only official channel is now on libera.chat [Same thread is also available on twitter: https://twitter.com/quasseldroid/status/1397824671173730304 https://twitter.com/quasseldroid/status/1397824671173730304] (Before I get even more complaints: Yes, the warning can be disabled in the client settings for users who'd like to continue using freenode without any warning. The popup only shows up when the warning banner is clicked on, usually only the banner is shown)

enriquto 5y ago
> As we had no method of warning our users on the channel itself (as that's banned by the new policy) OK, I may understand that "zombie" channels (were nobody can talk and the topic points elsewhere) are not allowed. But this is extremely callous! What about freedom of speech? To hell with them. What's next? They hijack the channels of projects that mention another IRC network on their project websites?
- jasonpeacock 5y ago
  I'm tired of this bad take: > What about freedom of speech? This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech - the government is not limiting what can be said. There's plenty of other speech opportunities, as shown by the channel already moving to another network. You have no (US) rights to force a platform to host you. At best (worst?), they are breaching a contract and you can sue them for damages but I don't know if any channels actually signed such contracts with Freenode?

xena 5y ago

This is not a post-mortem. This is ""damage control"", and a poor attempt at it. I've seen better ""damage control"" from skidnets that got caught running a DDOS C&C server.