Hi, so I’m Andrew Lee and can definitely comment on this as I’m directly involved: > For example, it implies that Lee was the person providing for freenode, wh

Hi, so I’m Andrew Lee and can definitely comment on this as I’m directly involved: > For example, it implies that Lee was the person providing for freenode, when in fact he was just one of many donors: most servers in the network were donated by non-profits You’re right, there were other server donors who provided servers on the network. However, the donations I provided were on a different order of magnitude financially. I provided many servers, of course, but also 7 figure funding [1]. That said, I’m definitely thankful for the server providers who were providing servers to us and continue to. > Also, it says Freenode was "taken over" by Christel All documentation both publicly and internally would refute this - Christel was fully in charge and the former staff was aware since it was explicitly written in the onboarding documents and on the website. Also, Tomaw was fully aware of this as well as of my ownership of freenode. > Also, most of the drama took place after this article was published. Again, untrue. Tomaw and I were in discussion and he was holding the network hostage for over a month prior to the article. prawnsalad of KiwiIRC and Snoonet was mediating and had had enough of Tomaw [2]. > All in all, Freenode's story is one of a collective project run by volunteers on their donated time/hardware turned into a top-down startup. I think there is a misconception of the difficulty in running an IRC network. Given I have been a staff member off and on of other networks and continue to be on several, including on the coding teams, I can assure you that nobody would say this is a difficult time consuming thing. It’s not like open source code contribution. Secondly, several members received monetary benefits - from me - in the form of flights, hotels, etc. like at DEFCON for example. The same people have looked me in the eye and said thank you before turning around and making up stories in a brazen attempt to slander me to take freenode. Not very upstanding people. I think it’s pretty clear what they cared about when you review Libera months later and see that it’s a closed group run by the former freenode staffers, and they are now the oligarchs of Libera. Finally, stop trying to force or pressure people to leave freenode. You’re acting like the Libera staff who actually spent months writing open source projects with the same falsehoods asking them to leave. It’s a form of censorship but worse it’s bullying. As for me and freenode, we have been in legal discussion to truly decentralize the network and give it to the people - and that is what is happening. I have always been the custodian and financial supporter supporting freenode, even when the former staff was facing legal action from users who they had harassed, so this isn’t outside of my resume and track record - I obviously care about it deeply. Freenode will belong to the people where it belongs, not the former staffers hands. [1] http://techrights.org/2021/05/22/freenode-misinformation-or-misunderstandings/ http://techrights.org/2021/05/22/freenode-misinformation-or-... [2] https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953 https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c164679...