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The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious, and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their way to construct a history that

The fact that this doesn't even mention Freenode is hilarious, and so awkward. Whoever wrote this had to really go out of their way to construct a history that isn't technically wrong, but, if you didn't know that Libera got its start as a fork of Freenode that almost everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible, you'd never figure it out.

hericium 4y ago
The text could actually mention Freenode because this wasn't really a "start from scratch" as stated: > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half
- phoe-krk 4y ago
  Technically speaking, Libera Chat did start from scratch. It isn't their fault that another IRC network was in the process of imploding at the very same time and many projects and people felt the need to move to a less deranged foundation, therefore fueling the effective userbase of Libera.
  - Shish2k 4y ago
    The instance of the software was started from scratch; the communities (which are the hard part) were largely cut & pasted
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
iforgotpassword 4y ago
Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it? When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.
- RL_Quine 4y ago
  It's had a bunch of guises as a website. For a while it was a blog filled with shouting about how removing the administrators will allow for real Free Speech and the future of everything will be freenode (and cryptocurrency, please buy our shitcoin maybe). https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode.... It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit, which nobody used. https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode.... It's now a wiki which refers to the network as "assmode" and implores you to instead join "pissnet" run by the Impeerial Family. https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode.net/view/Main_Page https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode.... Sort of the death knell of desperately trying to form a community.
  - 1propionyl 4y ago
    Someone was editing that wiki, but to be clear Pissnet is not affiliated with Freenode, though it was born from its collapse. It is a small but active community, and has a couple hundred servers. https://shitposting.space/network https://shitposting.space/network It's very hard to explain, but it is a real network that currently operates as an anarchic sandbox for doing weird things with IRC software/protocols and just generally goofing around. Pretty much every single active user is a netadmin. It's the network where you register a nick by linking your own server.
- gerikson 4y ago
  It's back on netsplit's top 100 list at #7: https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php I'm idling in the top 10 channels, it's semi-active in that people pop in and say stuff, but there's no interaction. Most connections are from old bots, or from community pages that haven't been updated.
  - myself248 4y ago
    > from community pages that haven't been updated. Yeah, I lurk in a community that _also_ has a Libera channel now, but they keep a bridge-bot in the old Freenode channel because all their old videos implore people to join them on Freenode. It gets a bit of traffic, meaning those folks might otherwise be lost without the bot, so I understand it. It just sucks.
abstractbeliefs 4y ago
Good, freenode is dead. Amen. I'm sure it doesn't help that the current owner of freenode is notoriously litigious.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Irc in general is in a slow death.
  - fps_doug 4y ago
    As fast as people who grew up with it die ;-)
    - jolmg 4y ago
      Slower probably. I doubt there aren't new people getting into IRC. You could've made your comment back when I just got into it, and IRC doesn't really seem any more dead now.
      - fps_doug 4y ago
        But maybe just as many as old folks leaving it for Matrix et al? Might just even it out in the grand scheme of things.
      - fullstop 4y ago
        Most of the people that I find on IRC are 40+.
  - ollybee 4y ago
    We are all in a slow death. Right now it and we are alive with a vibrant IRC community to be thankful for.
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    IRC as in the 1988 chat protocol, sure. IRC as a concept has never been healthier. Lots of alternatives, most proprietary, some libre, and more users than ever.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I wonder if they're afraid Lee might sue them if they did or something Edit: Or maybe they don't want to drag the whole drama into this celebration again :) Libera moved on so quickly that even after 2 months it felt like everything was in the distant past and the community was just as it had always been. But then it would have been better to not elaborate on the history. I agree it's a bit weird like this.
- RL_Quine 4y ago
  > This time, instead of this awful cycle of disempowerment of the people, it's time that the people of the world, together, plant the flag of the power of the people on the Internet. The internet changed everything and leveled the playing field. This cannot be taken away. By his own manifesto he wouldn't do that, and he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    > he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite I'm not sure that's actually true. Clearly he very much liked taking power away from a specific set of people. The guy really likes constructing this narrative where he's some sort of free speech savior, but when you look at his actions the opposite seems true. E.g. during the switch to libera if you had any mention of libera in the channel topic on freenode you'd end up with all the channel operators banned and replaced with friends of Lee. That's hardly a pro-free-speech thing to do.
    - RL_Quine 4y ago
      We need to standardize sarcasm punctuation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
      - Doxin 4y ago
        Oh whoops. The sarcasm seems obvious in hindsight. Apologies :P
resonious 4y ago
From the article, > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half, a number which has been mostly steady since. Seems pretty impressive when they put it that way!
saghul 4y ago
I don't see anything wrong with that. I've been part of a community which forked in the past and it was so cringe (at least to me) for one of the sides to keep explaining the origins and such on each and every presentation even 10 years later. Anyone who knew Freenode knows the story already, and does any newcomer need to know, on that very blog post? I'd say no.
- mgaunard 4y ago
  Because it's factually true and explains everything else.
FoxbrushTailwag 4y ago
Hi, one of the blog authors here, Fuchs. My initial draft did include a sentence about freenode in the first paragraph, but after a short internal discussion we decided to remove that, so I rewrote that part. Rather easy and quick, actually. Now on the why: Libera was a clear cut. Reasons for that are different per person affected, but include e.g. a lot of pain to see what has become of something we put years in, wanting to have a positive vibe / outlook and rather create than mourn et cetera. We always communicated and worked in that way, we also asked people who basically lifestreamed the decline of freenode, which looked a mixture of a bad trash tv novella and a dumpster fire, to please move it out of our main channel. The blog post basically just continues in that spirit. We are aware of our history, and people interested in it still can find the whole mess floating around on the web. Tech articles, discussions on social media, blog posts of various projects and users etc. I think history is "in our favour" and there is no need to try and hide it. The blog post, however, is about our Birthday and focusses on Libera.Chat, and not on the past that freenode was. Of course that makes the "from scratch" sound a bit wrong, but as some other user here already pointed out: it isn't that wrong. We built up everything from scratch, and that includes trust. We didn't know how many projects and communities would follow us and migrate over, especially not that early. We are of course very grateful that so many did, and for all the support we received during the very hard first weeks. But we could never be sure if it would go that well. Hope that clears up that part a bit :) Edit: removed a typo / half cut off sentence
- stavros 4y ago
  I agree that history is in your favor (and so does everyone else who moved to Libera), which is why it was a bit odd to not see Freenode mentioned at all. It's nothing bad, it was just a bit "hmm, I wonder why they did that".
  - FoxbrushTailwag 4y ago
    It seems to have confused some people, we also got some remarks in that direction on IRC and on Mastodon. I hope my answer cleared it up a bit.
kossTKR 4y ago
Mentioning it somewhere is good for history, but it's confusing and meaningless info for most people. People don't care, don't know and would rather have something "fresh", also from an internal perspective in the org.
hda111 4y ago
A fork would imply it had copied all user accounts and channels. But this didn’t happen.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hericium 4y ago

The text could actually mention Freenode because this wasn't really a "start from scratch" as stated: > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half

phoe-krk 4y ago
Technically speaking, Libera Chat did start from scratch. It isn't their fault that another IRC network was in the process of imploding at the very same time and many projects and people felt the need to move to a less deranged foundation, therefore fueling the effective userbase of Libera.
- Shish2k 4y ago
  The instance of the software was started from scratch; the communities (which are the hard part) were largely cut & pasted
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

iforgotpassword 4y ago

Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it? When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.

RL_Quine 4y ago
It's had a bunch of guises as a website. For a while it was a blog filled with shouting about how removing the administrators will allow for real Free Speech and the future of everything will be freenode (and cryptocurrency, please buy our shitcoin maybe). https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode.... It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit, which nobody used. https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode.... It's now a wiki which refers to the network as "assmode" and implores you to instead join "pissnet" run by the Impeerial Family. https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode.net/view/Main_Page https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode.... Sort of the death knell of desperately trying to form a community.
- 1propionyl 4y ago
  Someone was editing that wiki, but to be clear Pissnet is not affiliated with Freenode, though it was born from its collapse. It is a small but active community, and has a couple hundred servers. https://shitposting.space/network https://shitposting.space/network It's very hard to explain, but it is a real network that currently operates as an anarchic sandbox for doing weird things with IRC software/protocols and just generally goofing around. Pretty much every single active user is a netadmin. It's the network where you register a nick by linking your own server.
gerikson 4y ago
It's back on netsplit's top 100 list at #7: https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php I'm idling in the top 10 channels, it's semi-active in that people pop in and say stuff, but there's no interaction. Most connections are from old bots, or from community pages that haven't been updated.
- myself248 4y ago
  > from community pages that haven't been updated. Yeah, I lurk in a community that _also_ has a Libera channel now, but they keep a bridge-bot in the old Freenode channel because all their old videos implore people to join them on Freenode. It gets a bit of traffic, meaning those folks might otherwise be lost without the bot, so I understand it. It just sucks.

abstractbeliefs 4y ago

Good, freenode is dead. Amen. I'm sure it doesn't help that the current owner of freenode is notoriously litigious.

Gigachad 4y ago
Irc in general is in a slow death.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  As fast as people who grew up with it die ;-)
  - jolmg 4y ago
    Slower probably. I doubt there aren't new people getting into IRC. You could've made your comment back when I just got into it, and IRC doesn't really seem any more dead now.
    - fps_doug 4y ago
      But maybe just as many as old folks leaving it for Matrix et al? Might just even it out in the grand scheme of things.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      Most of the people that I find on IRC are 40+.
- ollybee 4y ago
  We are all in a slow death. Right now it and we are alive with a vibrant IRC community to be thankful for.
- denkmoon 4y ago
  IRC as in the 1988 chat protocol, sure. IRC as a concept has never been healthier. Lots of alternatives, most proprietary, some libre, and more users than ever.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I wonder if they're afraid Lee might sue them if they did or something Edit: Or maybe they don't want to drag the whole drama into this celebration again :) Libera moved on so quickly that even after 2 months it felt like everything was in the distant past and the community was just as it had always been. But then it would have been better to not elaborate on the history. I agree it's a bit weird like this.

RL_Quine 4y ago
> This time, instead of this awful cycle of disempowerment of the people, it's time that the people of the world, together, plant the flag of the power of the people on the Internet. The internet changed everything and leveled the playing field. This cannot be taken away. By his own manifesto he wouldn't do that, and he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite.
- Doxin 4y ago
  > he wouldn't want to be a hypocrite I'm not sure that's actually true. Clearly he very much liked taking power away from a specific set of people. The guy really likes constructing this narrative where he's some sort of free speech savior, but when you look at his actions the opposite seems true. E.g. during the switch to libera if you had any mention of libera in the channel topic on freenode you'd end up with all the channel operators banned and replaced with friends of Lee. That's hardly a pro-free-speech thing to do.
  - RL_Quine 4y ago
    We need to standardize sarcasm punctuation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
    - Doxin 4y ago
      Oh whoops. The sarcasm seems obvious in hindsight. Apologies :P

resonious 4y ago

From the article, > Starting from scratch, we managed to gain around 50 000 users in just a month and a half, a number which has been mostly steady since. Seems pretty impressive when they put it that way!

saghul 4y ago

I don't see anything wrong with that. I've been part of a community which forked in the past and it was so cringe (at least to me) for one of the sides to keep explaining the origins and such on each and every presentation even 10 years later. Anyone who knew Freenode knows the story already, and does any newcomer need to know, on that very blog post? I'd say no.

mgaunard 4y ago
Because it's factually true and explains everything else.

FoxbrushTailwag 4y ago

Hi, one of the blog authors here, Fuchs. My initial draft did include a sentence about freenode in the first paragraph, but after a short internal discussion we decided to remove that, so I rewrote that part. Rather easy and quick, actually. Now on the why: Libera was a clear cut. Reasons for that are different per person affected, but include e.g. a lot of pain to see what has become of something we put years in, wanting to have a positive vibe / outlook and rather create than mourn et cetera. We always communicated and worked in that way, we also asked people who basically lifestreamed the decline of freenode, which looked a mixture of a bad trash tv novella and a dumpster fire, to please move it out of our main channel. The blog post basically just continues in that spirit. We are aware of our history, and people interested in it still can find the whole mess floating around on the web. Tech articles, discussions on social media, blog posts of various projects and users etc. I think history is "in our favour" and there is no need to try and hide it. The blog post, however, is about our Birthday and focusses on Libera.Chat, and not on the past that freenode was. Of course that makes the "from scratch" sound a bit wrong, but as some other user here already pointed out: it isn't that wrong. We built up everything from scratch, and that includes trust. We didn't know how many projects and communities would follow us and migrate over, especially not that early. We are of course very grateful that so many did, and for all the support we received during the very hard first weeks. But we could never be sure if it would go that well. Hope that clears up that part a bit :) Edit: removed a typo / half cut off sentence

stavros 4y ago
I agree that history is in your favor (and so does everyone else who moved to Libera), which is why it was a bit odd to not see Freenode mentioned at all. It's nothing bad, it was just a bit "hmm, I wonder why they did that".
- FoxbrushTailwag 4y ago
  It seems to have confused some people, we also got some remarks in that direction on IRC and on Mastodon. I hope my answer cleared it up a bit.

kossTKR 4y ago

Mentioning it somewhere is good for history, but it's confusing and meaningless info for most people. People don't care, don't know and would rather have something "fresh", also from an internal perspective in the org.

hda111 4y ago

A fork would imply it had copied all user accounts and channels. But this didn’t happen.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]