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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just tried to do this to reclaim a channel you stole from its community. Your staff greeted me with nothing but silence. Your aim is very clearly to establish a fiefdom, and damn those who get in the way.
"And you're, what, a petty thief with delusions of standing? Sad little king of a sad little hill."
The official go channel (#go-nuts) on freenode had in the topic "we're also on libera.chat, if freenode dies" (or something very close to that, quoting from memory, I don't log IRC) and yet it was shut down due to "policy violation", forwarded to ## namespace and the topic removed.
I for one just wanted things to be quiet. I understand it's frustrating to have channels pointing to a different network and users on your network trying to get people to leave. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, your intentions are good, how on earth was that just now considered a good move? Any basis for arguing you're acting in good faith you've pretty much destroyed at this point.
Your attempts to give this a positive spin on freenode.net[1] aren't very convincing either.
Not a fan of old Freenode staff. But the best alternatives definitely seem to be libera.chat and oftc!
It’s like you went out of your way to make the worst possible decision at every step. All you had to do was nothing, and let the people go who wanted to go. But now people are going to actively fight you.
Look, I've found Freenode to be insularly run for the longest time and was no fan of the old staff. That said, this is bullshit. Being frustrated about having topics call out a new network is frustrating, surely, but you should not seize channels with no notification from their owners and move them to the off-topic namespace. You've hurt so many more than just the staff. Grow up.
We've banned this account. Personal attacks like this aren't allowed here, regardless of whom you're attacking. You may not owe the other person better or feel that you do, but you owe this community much better if you're participating here.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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.
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."
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.
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)
> 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.
To be fair to the libera folks, it seemed that they expected to have more time (or even avoid this entirely) and got caught off guard when the resignation drafts became public.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Channels that hadn't even moved were taken over, such as #elixir-lang. They only had a mention "Also see <channel> on <network-that-shan't-be-named>" in the topic. Well, they have moved now.
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.
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.
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.
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
Definitely can’t reference other places to buy an item from your eBay or Amazon posting.
Hell Amazon won’t even let you sell at a lower price elsewhere, and they have web scraping automation setup to catch you and hide your listings if you do…
A non-strawman version would be, basically let individual communities and their leaders decide for themselves what their future free-as-in-freedom comms platform is, without unsolicited technical interference from their current comms platform.
Imagine if your e-mail provider learned you were considering switching to another provider, and without warning, locked you out of your e-mail account, and then used it to advertise a new e-mail account, created by them, in your name, that you have no control over, to all your acquaintances, saying that you aren't actually switching providers, and the new e-mail account is the real one.
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!
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.
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?
I complained vigorously about the acquisition to freenode staff at the time, due to rumors that Lee and Falkvinge had acquired freenode in order to attempt to surveil private security issue discussions between Bitcoin developers in order to further the high profile cryptocurrency scams they were participating in.
I was consistently gaslit by freenode staff. The current story that this sale is all a surprise is a direct lie. At the time I got nothing but platitudes about how PIA just had freenode's best interest at heart, etc.
I'm sure not every staff member was in on it but the claim that it was Christel is just not true. I don't see how anyone regards freenode staff as trustworthy at this point.
The time for long time freenoders to defend freenode was in 2017.
You were gaslit through heavily controlled communication? Say it ain't so, that must have been awful.
I can't believe someone would use money to take over a productive communication forum to manipulate the information there for their own gain. What kind of awful dishonest person would participate in something like that?
I would expect anyone knowledgeable enough to work on bitcoin that wanted to keep a secret wouldn't be talking about private things over IRC of all places.
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.
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.
> (I mean, it's an IRC channel, the servers might diverge in features and reliability but there's usually not much difference)
You'd be surprised. This actually strengthens the point you're making elsewhere: people can, and will, debate such choices endlessly. It's because they care about the community, about making things better for themselves and for everyone. This is textbook bikeshedding - there's no ill intent, just scope insensitivity. Debating important issues and debating trivialities takes the same amount of effort, and expands to fill available time of participants.
I'm not sure what the best solution is, but the one I know works is to put a time limit on such issues, to prevent them from consuming more attention and resources than they deserve. That is, if consensus can't be reached in a short time, a preset choice must be made by default. If you reach that point and get strong pushback, you take the other option.
That's what happened during the decision-making process, but then one got shut down. Now new users joining #newsboat will be directed to ##newsboat, which is completely out of control of the #newsboat ops. They won't be directed to libera.chat.
It's not bike shedding to make sure interested parties all get heard. My community didn't switch before this cluster fuck because we were waiting for someone who's important but only online for a weekend every few weeks or so. Just because you don't care, doesn't make it unimportant.
Because leaving X% of the channel that relies on Matrix bridges behind, rushing admins of bots etc, and making people feel like you didn't even give them a chance to say something about it are all great things for a community.
This has been the major reason why #haskell didn't try to move more forcefully.
We'd like to get some of the old logging bots moved over, etc.
We have some number of users who connect from tor, from matrix, or from webchat that simply can't move right now. These are things being looked at from the libera.chat side, but that work isn't done.
I very much value those users being able to continue to ask and get their questions answered.
That said, we used to have like 3-4 server ops lurking in the channel, and 15-16 channel ops that were active on the server. We just don't any more. This makes me rather concerned from a spam perspective.
On the other hand, there are < 80 people in the channel now, so perhaps spam is less of an issue now that we're a much smaller target.
FWIW, there is some merit to raverbashing's argument. I know first-hand that maintaining a community of enthusiastic techies is just like trying to herd cats. They can, and will, debate the pros and cons until heat death of the universe. I know because in communities I've been part of, we could and did debate options endlessly - until someone with enough time on their hands just unilaterally implemented one and then everyone begrudgingly accepted it.
Some degree of "do-ocracy" may be necessary - when you can't get the people to decide, sometimes the best option is just to announce a choice and see if people follow you. If they put up resistance, you can revert the choice and pick the other option. But it usually turns out that the ones most eager to continue debating are the ones who actually care the least, and will accept whatever decision was made.
Libera is run by the same staff as ran freenode for years, until Andrew evicted them last week. We care about foss and if foss projects want to move from freenode, we will support them.
What's to stop, in 10 years, what happened to Freenode happening to Libera? Is there something concrete in place, or is it on trust? On trust is what happened with freenode.
Who runs Freenode and how it was managed was never really 100% clear, until now. On the other side, this is Libera:
> Libera Chat is a Swedish nonprofit organisation, feel free to read our bylaws. The organisation is run entirely by volunteer staff who are the members of, and have equal voting power in, the organisation. Libera Chat’s purpose is to provide services such as a community platform for free open-source software and peer directed projects on a volunteer basis.
So, as a common FOSS organization, Libera is governed by a non-profit instead of owned by a corporation. That step feels like a pretty good stopgap from enabling the same thing to happen again.
I'm glad to see the Libera folks _finally_ holding themselves accountable to some form of documented agreement (the Bylaws), though sadly it took a major, harrowing event like this. One of my major gripes with the old Freenode staff has always been how capricious their judgements were and how insular they were with each other (e.g. measurably treating the requests of admins in the "in-group" differently than the "out-group"), and having no definition of what it means to be a "member of the community". I'm still a bit dismayed that there seems to be no set of guarantees of due process offered to non-member network users, but I guess this is a start. I've thought about commenting on their Github repo but I'm afraid of the retaliation as the staff seem like an extremely passionate bunch.
And perhaps this is just an argument for a truly federated system, like Matrix. Rather than submitting to an operator, run your own infrastructure and federate with everyone else.
984 comments
[ 543 ms ] story [ 7698 ms ] threadand #elitedangerous: https://i.imgur.com/02X39YU.png
and #prjmistral: 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.
If they want people to use their network, they're not acting like it.
This is less about enforcing policy and more about angry, petty grievances.
If your channel was incorrectly marked in this, please let our staff know and we'll remediate it asap.
Thank you for your patience!
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.
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.
I was willing to give you a chance but now, that chance is gone. Thanks for nothing
"And you're, what, a petty thief with delusions of standing? Sad little king of a sad little hill."
Deprecated eh, you mean abandoned. Deprecated function removed immediately!
I for one just wanted things to be quiet. I understand it's frustrating to have channels pointing to a different network and users on your network trying to get people to leave. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, your intentions are good, how on earth was that just now considered a good move? Any basis for arguing you're acting in good faith you've pretty much destroyed at this point.
Your attempts to give this a positive spin on freenode.net[1] aren't very convincing either.
Not a fan of old Freenode staff. But the best alternatives definitely seem to be libera.chat and oftc!
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210525231635/https://freenode.... (archive link in case freenode.net gets edited)
It’s like you went out of your way to make the worst possible decision at every step. All you had to do was nothing, and let the people go who wanted to go. But now people are going to actively fight you.
Hope you're arrested and thrown in jail for that Mt. Gox shit.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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/
[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."
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/
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.
(Full disclosure I am NOT affiliated with the Matrix project in any way)
To be fair to the libera folks, it seemed that they expected to have more time (or even avoid this entirely) and got caught off guard when the resignation drafts became public.
For example, #newsboat members decided to move by June 5th, and we've been deciding between OFTC and Libera. Then this happened:
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....
and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27285802
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.
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.
But this kind of behavior really calls into question the suitability of Andrew Lee to be a leader/owner of a project like freenode.
Lee owns Freenodes servers and user data - althought illegitimately. You can't buy the ownership of a volunteer project like that.
They are managed by the volunteers though, and the sponsoring authorities don't get operator rights on the network.
"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.
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.
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.
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!
Still, freenode kicked us out anyway this morning. Luckily the Libera staff were able to process our registration quickly afterwards.
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.
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.
The messages are E2EE only in transit. They can always tweak clients for things like this.
Hell Amazon won’t even let you sell at a lower price elsewhere, and they have web scraping automation setup to catch you and hide your listings if you do…
Freenode would end up with a clean server, what a relaxed way to start into a new future.
Imagine if your e-mail provider learned you were considering switching to another provider, and without warning, locked you out of your e-mail account, and then used it to advertise a new e-mail account, created by them, in your name, that you have no control over, to all your acquaintances, saying that you aren't actually switching providers, and the new e-mail account is the real one.
These are the actions of a sociopath.
cheapie has coined the name "Leenode" for this abomination. Let's start using it!
<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.
So we now have the "so called freenode". Freenode in name only.
I was consistently gaslit by freenode staff. The current story that this sale is all a surprise is a direct lie. At the time I got nothing but platitudes about how PIA just had freenode's best interest at heart, etc.
I'm sure not every staff member was in on it but the claim that it was Christel is just not true. I don't see how anyone regards freenode staff as trustworthy at this point.
The time for long time freenoders to defend freenode was in 2017.
I can't believe someone would use money to take over a productive communication forum to manipulate the information there for their own gain. What kind of awful dishonest person would participate in something like that?
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:
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....
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
Do that to prevent a hostile party from doing it before you.
(I mean, it's an IRC channel, the servers might diverge in features and reliability but there's usually not much difference)
You'd be surprised. This actually strengthens the point you're making elsewhere: people can, and will, debate such choices endlessly. It's because they care about the community, about making things better for themselves and for everyone. This is textbook bikeshedding - there's no ill intent, just scope insensitivity. Debating important issues and debating trivialities takes the same amount of effort, and expands to fill available time of participants.
I'm not sure what the best solution is, but the one I know works is to put a time limit on such issues, to prevent them from consuming more attention and resources than they deserve. That is, if consensus can't be reached in a short time, a preset choice must be made by default. If you reach that point and get strong pushback, you take the other option.
Bike shedding is real.
We'd like to get some of the old logging bots moved over, etc.
We have some number of users who connect from tor, from matrix, or from webchat that simply can't move right now. These are things being looked at from the libera.chat side, but that work isn't done.
I very much value those users being able to continue to ask and get their questions answered.
That said, we used to have like 3-4 server ops lurking in the channel, and 15-16 channel ops that were active on the server. We just don't any more. This makes me rather concerned from a spam perspective.
On the other hand, there are < 80 people in the channel now, so perhaps spam is less of an issue now that we're a much smaller target.
Parent of the year, everyone.
Some degree of "do-ocracy" may be necessary - when you can't get the people to decide, sometimes the best option is just to announce a choice and see if people follow you. If they put up resistance, you can revert the choice and pick the other option. But it usually turns out that the ones most eager to continue debating are the ones who actually care the least, and will accept whatever decision was made.
Anyone wanting to move their community/project can read how to do so here: https://libera.chat/chanreg#how-to-register-as-a-project
Some background to the story: https://kline.sh/
> Libera Chat is a Swedish nonprofit organisation, feel free to read our bylaws. The organisation is run entirely by volunteer staff who are the members of, and have equal voting power in, the organisation. Libera Chat’s purpose is to provide services such as a community platform for free open-source software and peer directed projects on a volunteer basis.
You can see the bylaws here: https://libera.chat/bylaws
So, as a common FOSS organization, Libera is governed by a non-profit instead of owned by a corporation. That step feels like a pretty good stopgap from enabling the same thing to happen again.
1. unclear ownership
2. the only official structure being a for-profit, with over 50% owned by a single person
3. lack of transparency
The first two are solved by being a non-profit with equal stakes from all staffers. The latter is a work in progress: https://github.com/Libera-Chat/libera-chat.github.io/issues/...
And perhaps this is just an argument for a truly federated system, like Matrix. Rather than submitting to an operator, run your own infrastructure and federate with everyone else.
But now #newsboat has a pointer to ##newsboat, can you talk there?