Freenode Apologizes as Prominent Open Source Projects Switch to Libera Chat (ubuntu.com) 122
Slashdot reader AleRunner writes: Ubuntu has announced that, with immediate effect Ubuntu's IRC channels are moving to libera.chat. The move follows a "hostile takeover" of Ubuntu's namespace by Freenode's new management that appears to be happening to many other distributions including Gentoo as well as other projects that have used Freenode [including channels associated with the programming languages Raku, Elixir, and Haskell].
For Ubuntu, and many other FOSS projects, Freenode has long been one of the major official forms of communication... With IRC channels often used for important system advice, and project communication, this becomes not just an inconvenience but even a security problem. For this reason Ubuntu's replacement network, libera.chat has a more clearly open organisational structure than Freenode had before being taken over.
"All told, it appears something like 700 irc.freenode.net channels have been seized and re-permissioned," reports The Register, "supposedly because the channels mentioned Libera Chat in violation of Freenode's advertising policy."
Wednesday Freenode owner Andrew Lee posted a blog post explaining that "in retrospect, we should have handled the action of closing down channels slightly differently..."
"The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later...
"We believe we should have done this in a much more communicative way to circulate the right message and keep things transparent which of course did not happen. As we move forward I'd like to fully assure you that we will be working in complete commitment to restore projects, namespaces and channels that were closed on accident as a part of this event and we welcome them to use freenode as before as their very own homebase.
"Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I'm willing to admit that I was wrong with Tuesday's move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused."
For Ubuntu, and many other FOSS projects, Freenode has long been one of the major official forms of communication... With IRC channels often used for important system advice, and project communication, this becomes not just an inconvenience but even a security problem. For this reason Ubuntu's replacement network, libera.chat has a more clearly open organisational structure than Freenode had before being taken over.
"All told, it appears something like 700 irc.freenode.net channels have been seized and re-permissioned," reports The Register, "supposedly because the channels mentioned Libera Chat in violation of Freenode's advertising policy."
Wednesday Freenode owner Andrew Lee posted a blog post explaining that "in retrospect, we should have handled the action of closing down channels slightly differently..."
"The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later...
"We believe we should have done this in a much more communicative way to circulate the right message and keep things transparent which of course did not happen. As we move forward I'd like to fully assure you that we will be working in complete commitment to restore projects, namespaces and channels that were closed on accident as a part of this event and we welcome them to use freenode as before as their very own homebase.
"Lastly, there are no excuses for this, and I'm willing to admit that I was wrong with Tuesday's move and apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused."
Too late, fuck off, goodbye (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's that.
New place run by nicer people anyway.
Re:Too late, fuck off, goodbye (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the channels were taken over, not for spamming but just mentioning Libra Chat. There are multiple irc networks, in some cases it might be recommended by user to go to OFTC to get help. It seems that is no longer allowed on Freenode. I do not see a problem in a project, informing its users that they are moving to another network. Some liked the old staff, they are a known quantity, were as the new staff have made questionable choices. The takeover of 700 channels kind of proves, to me, that the new owners cannot be trusted because they are bad actors or incompetent actors. So it is time to move.
The sale of Freenode irc is questionable but would require expensive litigation to resolve. Something the old Freenode staff do not have or do not want to spend, so Prince Lee will get the network. It is much cheaper to start over.
Re:Too late, fuck off, goodbye (Score:4, Insightful)
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There were actually a ton of bots joining random channels spamming that everyone should move to libera.chat
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How does taking over a channel's administration solve that problem, exactly? As opposed to a kickban?
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I wasn't justifying anything, just clarifying that the OP was talking about bots spamming.
Re:Too late, fuck off, goodbye (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm unaware of this new definition of spam that suddenly considers messages authorized by channel ops and directed to channel users that want the information to be spam.
Instead, spam appears to consist of "channel content that server op disapproves of for self-interested reasons that conflict with channel op and channel users."
This is akin to Microsoft deciding that all email mentioning iCloud and directed to my own email address is spam. Which would set off a firestorm.
Care to cite support for and explain your position?
The definition of spam... (Score:1)
Everything that survives does so by selling something. The people pushing pills for your weener are at least upfront about it.
I'm not denying that the attention bandwidth problem is at all real. I'm saying that it's most often an excuse for shutting down your enemies.
I'm curious to see if Libera develops a spam problem or some other abuse problem - or claims to have one, or maybe tru
Decentralize, don't re-centralize (Score:5, Interesting)
https://matrix.org/ [matrix.org]
Re: Decentralize, don't re-centralize (Score:2)
Usenet (Score:3, Insightful)
Matrix-shamtrix. Usenet was — and remains — the decentralized means of communication for groups of people, large and small. And your computer, likely, even already has the client for it, because NNTP is such a (very) well-known protocol.
Usenet in the present tense? (Score:2)
Something about the server peer connections?
Something about spam?
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This and everything else you wrote can be repeated about the IRC just as well.
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Not any more decentralized than IRC, and not designed for real-time communication, but rather forums (e.g. you would connect to an nntp server, download what you wanted and then you had it online). Also not designed for security, meaning information can get into the network without any sort of integrity assurance.
Basically, a modern chat solution (like matrix) is a combination of IRC and NNTP requirements. Both providing real-time communication but also preserving chat history and being able to send someone
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I agree, that IRC complements Usenet. But I'd argue, the support-needs of Ubuntu and similar enterprises neither need the "real-time" promise of the IRC, nor use it, where available.
There remains a perfectly-functional comp.unix.bsd hierarchy, for example, where announcements are made, questions are asked and answered. comp.lang.* are alive and well too.
The centralized model — like that of the StackExchange — works
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I agree, that IRC complements Usenet. But I'd argue, the support-needs of Ubuntu and similar enterprises neither need the "real-time" promise of the IRC, nor use it, where available.
In my experience, the real-time behavior is really desired. You could make the rational argument that they don't need it, but people want it.
You can choose to only trust PGP-signed postings on all or some of the forums. No problem...
Like a huge amount of other things awkwardly bolted on, that's no where near as nice as it being embedded in the platform. Notably, people I communicate with on Matrix I have gotten them *all* to do key exchange with me. Of those same people, I only ever got one to bother to do PGP in any communication channel with me. And he even stopped because he wanted to use the b
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Not for tech-support needs... You cannot expect an expert to be available for you 24x7 — not even, when you have a support contract.
Like "Matrix" is on the Internet?
Now, that's a subset! Have you tried getting people to install Matrix just to communicate with you? What's your success rate there?
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Not for tech-support needs... You cannot expect an expert to be available for you 24x7 — not even, when you have a support contract.
But once you *have* someone's attention, you don't want to be crafting messages, pushing you rmessage, waiting for the other party to bother getting the data, and repeating the process each time. You want a "type question, get response, type follow-up question, etc).
Now, that's a subset! Have you tried getting people to install Matrix just to communicate with you? What's your success rate there?
Pretty high, they just use their browser. A javascript client in a browser availing itself of local storage can actually have offline e2e encryption keys in a way the service provider isn't able to mess with.
And then, of course, comes the question, whether you can even trust Matrix' encryption — an inevitable dilemma with all proprietary software, that's nice and easy for as long as your usage of it remains within, what the engineers envisioned.
The source code is in the open, and debugging tools can validate the browser client is acting as promised, and that the mechanisms of proof are handled at the endpoint rather than on their servers. It's not proprietary. It's an open standard with open clients and servers.
Yeah, with Usenet you have that option too... Which is, kind of, my point.
You cannot have e2e encryption automatically with nntp when a user goes to a browser for a web gateway to nntp.
Re: Decentralize, don't re-centralize (Score:2)
Or, you know, something without centralized authentication (does it still have that?) that's been around for ages like Jabber/XMPP.
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Aww. Cute how they apologise retrospectively. (Score:1, Insightful)
So predictable, the language.
Pretty bad move (Score:5, Interesting)
I was originally hoping to see if this would all fizzle out and the new freenode wasn't really a bad thing. But with all eyes on Freenode they did pull out a (metaphorical) gun and shoot themselves in the foot. My opinion has been solidified.
A channel I had control over was also affected. I'm keeping it up in a "seized" state for posterity.
Sigh...
The fun when an org burns themselves to the ground (Score:5, Insightful)
These kinds of unforced errors where someone flash burns an organization to the ground because they think their completely commodity product is somehow indispensable to their users and their users won't just leave en-mass if you abuse them for your own benefit....
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Re:The fun when an org burns themselves to the gro (Score:4, Insightful)
1-has to be a commodity product.
2-replacement has to deal with the same BS that the original did.
Re:The fun when an org burns themselves to the gro (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, while Zuck appears to be a sociopath, he does not appear to be a dummy. He parlayed a modest contract programming job into one of the largest private fortunes on the planet, something that wouldn't have happened if wasn't a smart but unprincipled prick.
Re:The fun when an org burns themselves to the gro (Score:5, Insightful)
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and he wont be smart enough to keep whats left
Based on what? By all accounts he's a financial genius and capable of monetising many things including those which were losing money. I'm no fan of the sociopath but I'm nowhere near shortsighted enough to think that he isn't incredibly smart.
That's easy. (Score:3, Informative)
Someone just needs to fix DNS and build a replacement for email that isn't a protocol from the stream age of computing.
Facebook only has a business case because the last useful protocol anyone built was the web, and email was cool back when everyone was hooked to a single mainframe.
Just build a namecoin blockchain DNS, a modern offline capable message and room protocol on top of that with state of the art encryption and signing AND a useful reference implementation of a FOSS client and then Facebook will go
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In what world do you live? If you shit-canned all his assets but cash and investments, he's set forever.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You know things are bad when you can't even make your BS explanation sounds convincing:
As you are aware, over the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing an increasing amount of spam from other networks intending to mislead and influence long term running projects, namespaces and channels into moving to another new network which was formed parallel to freenode. 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.
Long story short, rich guy recognizes that Freenode has huge name recognition but no book value, and figures there's a money making opportunity.
So rich guy gains control of Freenode through dubious means but doesn't actually grasp that the value of his acquisition depends entirely on maintaining the goodwill of the users, goodwill that is quickly lost when the means of his acquisition are revealed.
An exodus of the users predictably starts, and true to form the rich guy engages in a heavy handed unethical means of damage control, making the situation even worse.
The upside of the whole thing is that projects will ensure their new infrastructure are not susceptible to such shenanigans in the future.
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The upside of the whole thing is that projects will ensure their new infrastructure are not susceptible to such shenanigans in the future.
How will they do that when fundamentally this isn't a technological problem, but a people one?
Re: Wow (Score:1)
Who cares? Moving servers is trivial.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
The upside of the whole thing is that projects will ensure their new infrastructure are not susceptible to such shenanigans in the future.
How will they do that when fundamentally this isn't a technological problem, but a people one?
By ensuring the new infrastructure is not susceptible to such shenanigans in the future.
From the sounds of it Freenode didn't have a lot of funding and the corporate/governing structure made it possible for the "head of staff" to sell it off without anyone knowing.
So the projects need to make sure the sponsors are sufficient (and reputable) and have their lawyers review the paperwork to make sure it can't be secretly sold off.
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Well that's the thing, it actually didn't. From all available information, there *was* no legitimate sale (christel did not actually own the network), but it was enough of an excuse to legally strongarm the remaining staff into handing over the network, under threat of ruinous lawsuits.
In other words, the takeover was accomplished by
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A big part of the freenode issue is the legal definition of control. It's basically a legal dictatorship, and that's why they decided to move to libra - it MIGHT be possible to legaly dispute the many promises that were broken to effect the changes, but they've got strong legal backing for their control, so there's a good chance they'll throw a lot of money at it and still lose.
Libra on the other hand has a much m
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't seem like you use IRC, or you would be aware of the amount of spamming that was going on from Libera.
You mean official channels for projects informing their users that they were moving the official channel for their project to Libera?
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't seem like you use IRC, or you would be aware of the amount of spamming that was going on from Libera.
Those spam messages weren't from Libera.
Just trolls trying to stir things up
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Re: Wow (Score:2)
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It doesn't seem like you use IRC, or you would be aware of the amount of spamming that was going on from Libera.
It doesn't seem like you use the internet much lol. I mean.. as soon as you say you can't mention Libera on the servers and will get K-lined if you do... people are going to scream libera at you. Welcome to the internet.
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
You can mention libera all over the place. We were having discussions about Libera on several channels with no ill effect. The only channels that were being taken over were the channels that changed their message to say they're shutting down and moving to Libera. Those are two separate things. But there's a lot of FUD being spread about.
Except the ops were literally sending server announcements a few days ago saying that "any mention of Libera.chat would result in a k-line". This is all examples of the new freenode overlords have no damn clue what they're doing. I'm sure the announcement was in reaction of spammers... but the fact that they literally don't understand the streisand effect is worrying. Anyway, our open source project made the call to leave for oftc. We haven't looked back.
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Except the ops were literally sending server announcements a few days ago saying that "any mention of Libera.chat would result in a k-line".
I hang around in a fair few channels & have been keeping an eye on the reactions to the unfolding events for kicks. Outside #freenode I've seen no such thing. I have seen plenty of "typo squatter" trolls jumping in & out of channels with inflammatory false announcements - such as the one you claim.
On the network, the only genuine announcements I've seen have been network wide, on #freenode, or in the topics of "offending" channels.
Lee's attempts to strong arm his authority and will on the community
Historic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch closely friends. This is probably the last time we will see an old-school internet drama played out. They were commonplace in the 1990s and 2000s. This may be the last one. Worth watching to see how the genesis of the internet sorted out it's power problems.
The old dramas usually played out on usenet or irc. Even further back you could find them on fidonet.
Let's have a moment of silence for TYBO and the Digital Amish.
Carry on...
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Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I didn't really pay as much attention to the behind-the-scenes dramas back then, but I seem to recall a couple of gardening channels I liked to chat on that ended up moving to the then-new Undernet because of (vaguely remembered) similar nerd politics issues.
Side note - we talked about actual gardening, as in growing vegetables and fruit and stuff. This turned out to be rather confusing to certain people who apparently (and inexplicably) used "gardening" as a code word m
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Agreed...
In my case I was privy to all the fun on comp.sys.mail.admin (is that right?!?! too many years)
It was a great place to learn the vagaries of running a mail server. But the arguments between the mail admins and ISPs could only be described as "epic". Companies were made and destroyed... and they all sold out to corporate entities eventually.
There was the time when an open mail relay was considered "virtuous". These things changed.
Assholes take over, lose all customers (Score:3)
Not a new thing.
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*coughs in Oracle*
You can add ScummVM to the list of projects moved (Score:5, Informative)
The #scummvm group also just finished it's IRC channel to Libera.chat. We just couldn't trust Freenode anymore, for good reason.
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I was a bit worried about going to #scummvm, did not know what to expect. From it wiki:
ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic adventure and role-playing games
I may need to look into this further
Re:You can add ScummVM to the list of projects mov (Score:5, Informative)
I was a bit worried about going to #scummvm, did not know what to expect.
SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) is an ancient video game engine developed by Lucasfilm Games. It was notably used for the original Monkey Island trilogy: The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and The Curse of Monkey Island.
ScummVM lets you play some of those old SCUMM games on modern computers, or even phones. I tried it a few years ago, and it worked pretty well.
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They're great fit for touchscreen phones.
Also fun: Flight of the Amazon Queen and Loom
More projects need a forced move (Score:3)
I remember when Xfree86 died and Xorg took over, we finally got autoconfig instead of relying on Xfree86config. Openoffice.org and Mysql died when Oracle did their abuse as well.
Re: More projects need a forced move (Score:2)
MySQL didn't die. It's mariadb now
Re: More projects need a forced move (Score:5, Informative)
MariaDB was a fork of MySQL from the 5.x days. MySQL still exists, but I'm not sure if it has a significant userbase nowadays.
MariaDB (Score:2)
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I remember when Xfree86 died and Xorg took over, we finally got autoconfig instead of relying on Xfree86config.
Yes, and now we are getting wayland from freedesktop and a orphaned xorg. Probably locking out many BSDs. In Xfee86 there was a configure utility in tcl, but I forgot the name.
But I expect the move to liberachat will turn out much better
Well that confirms it (Score:4)
The last Slashdot story on Freenode looked like spat between a bunch of employees and their management. Lots of he said, she said kind of bullshit. One side (volunteers) had some better cited examples but ultimately it was a bunch of fingerpointing where volunteers said the new management was majorly malicious, and new management said the volunteers were crazy overreacting.
Well turns out new management appears to be batshit crazy not only malicious to its own volunteers, but to the active community at large. RIP Freenode 1998-2021
Darwin will settle this. (Score:2)
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Let's wait and see who survives.
I don't typically back the horse that shits on both his owner as well as all the people placing bets on him.
freewhat? (Score:2)
freenode? wait...my memory fades....wasn't that some kind of irc thing once before librachat? sort of like AOL or myspace was...
Interesting Matrix angle here (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than waiting matrix.org to setup a bridge, which they already seem to have their hands full with the freenode bridge, Libera made the interesting choice of setting up a bridge and homeserver under the libera.chat domain. Its setup in such a way that its trivial to join irc channels, just join the matrix channel #:libera.chat. There's no name-mangling or namespace shenanigans, and the server name is a nice reminder of what irc network you're interacting with.
Its so easy in fact, that I suspect Libera will become as much a Matrix network as an IRC network, if not more so.
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Only if Keanu Reeves starts using it.
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we could use a blockchain chat (Score:2)
there are some forum solutions (like Steem/Hive) around but an actual chat would be useful. (there's no need to store assets on the blockchain itself - just the messages, so space is not an issue. and, there are a few dapp-friendly blockchains around already.) for someone reason no one bothered yet. it's not even impossible to make it work with IRC...
There was a company named SourceForge... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was well loved among the FOSS community.
Then the original management/founders sold it, and along came new owners/managers...
They did some changes that were considered shitty by the community.
They stood their ground, and SourceForge began to slowly decline...
Only the sale of the company and the arrival of new Owners/Managers reversed the dick moves, and somewhat restored a little bit of faith of the FOSS comminity in SourceForge...
So, I'd sugest to wait until FreeNode's change of owners and Managers to see how things play out.
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There's nothing to own here but the domain name. The server hosting is donated, the admins and channel ops are all volunteers.
The mistake the new idiot Lee made was assuming the value was in the userbase when the value was the volunteers. And the volunteers didn't like this "explanations" for heavy handed tactics. They started leaving and advertising their channels were moving to new locations so confused users didn't result.
The Lee did the same thing he did before, he employed heavy handed tactics against
Need a name change. (Score:2)
Freenode - gone the way of Hudson/CentOS 8 /Java (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not just killing the goose that lays the golden egg but taking the last example of the species and vapourising it. Hudson did this and Jenkins arrived immediately. Oracle did this with Solaris, MySQL and the JRE.
Freenode is now wholly worthless and the person most obviously behind it is persona non grata, effective immediately. Donors of servers / bandwidth / hosting to Freenode - pull it because you won't gain glory by association. Andrew Lee hasn't covered himself with glory here and has terminated any reputation he retained with extreme prejudice, whatever you might choose to say about the libera.chat admins.
Meh, who cares? Some of us still use IRC daily - to be honest, I'm surprised more projects like Ubuntu, Alma Linux and co didn't just move to OFTC.
Absolute BS (Score:5, Informative)
For those that don't know, many channels these days have bots that link disparate communities together: Most commonly this is between Discord, Slack, and IRC. Some channels stood up an additional one on Libera. But because "Libera" was in the channel's topic, the Freenode admins stripped channel ownership and banned everyone.
Why? Because their claim was "If you move to Libera, you've given up all rights to the channel namespace on Freenode--and it's now our property to take."
The worst part? The channel I was in hadn't even completely moved to Libera. The expectation and thought was that many would move, but due to the channel being a larger channel with web presences that linked to Freenode, we would maintain it and support communications across the networks.I can definitely assure you, this action by the current Freenode administration sealed that deal. Seriously, his "apology" is such BS. The very first paragraph is bullshit.
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This action also destroyed the python-fr channel. It had libera! in the topic and had for quite a long time. I don't think they even thought through the results of their bot just looking at the topic for a certain word and destroying the channel based on it. It was a lot of work to get the python channels moved over and because of freenode's behavior we also could not put it in the topic.
Amazing example of shooting yourself in the foot. Others can learn from his example. Before this we had only discussed mo
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Because their claim was "If you move to Libera, you've given up all rights to the channel namespace on Freenode--and it's now our property to take."
To be fair, there was some basis for this. The Freenode policies required that the primary channel for a registered project remain open to maintain the registration. There was no rule against mentioning Libera—other than the restriction on advertising, which IMHO doesn't really apply to topical notices regarding project management such as a change in servers—but many of the projects were not only changing their topics but also arranging to block users from joining, which (in the primary channel)
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That policy requirement did not exist until Andrew Lee added it no more than 2 hours before deploying his channel hijacking bot.
In fact the freenode policies (especially the group registration policy) make it quite clear that primary channels are reserved for use by projects:
"Primary channels are reserved based on a formal or informal claim, external to IRC, to a specific project group, or trademarked name."
"Primary channels do not expire with inactivity, though they can be claimed at any time by a represen
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The language about the primary channel remaining open is indeed new as of May 25th. Before that there was only the statement on the Group Registration page (dating back at least a year) that "By registering your group, you are indicating that you are maintaining an official presence on the network." One could reasonably read that to indicate that by closing the channel and moving discussion off Freenode the prior operators were failing to maintain an official presence, and thus forfeiting their group regist
Fuck em (Score:2)
Non-apology. (Score:3)
Re:IRC is an ancient piece of shit (Score:5, Funny)
Because Discord is a modern piece of shit?
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Welcome to the internet.... here's your Tylenol...
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Just want to be sure, as someone on both IRC networks, are you implying that the spam on freenode (ranodm user joins channel, shouts "MOVE TO LIBERA!" or words to that effect, and promptlyleaves) is being done by the new libera administration? Or are you referring to something else?
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Seriously, the exact same childish language and behaviour exhibited in the chats and resignations from the admins is echoed in the spam, and they're the ones who benefit from the spam.
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Who else would it be from except for someone with skin in the game?
Absolutely anyone with a grudge against Freenode's new management. Anyone who's channel was taken over. Any former member of staff. A jilted lover. A former business partner from the last time they tried to use a scam to take over someone else's business. Could be almost anyone in the world.
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Tell me, how do you take over a 'business' if there is no 'business'? . Anyways, no point in giving any heed to an AC with a clear bias.
Re:From and IRC user (Score:5, Insightful)
ChanOps have a right to advertise that they are moving their channels for their projects to another network.
Freenode has no inherent right to keep users or cause projects grief because they choose to migrate their channels to another network over the new owner's douchebaggery. It's not spam by any stretch of the imagination to inform users on an old service that you are moving to a new one rather than leave them confused.
How much is the current "owner" of Freenode paying you to simp for him? Do you think Github has a right to hold projects hostage and say they can't advertise the move to another host?
Quit kissing ass. The rich boy thought he was special. Turns out he's not and his new toy is dying as people leave in droves and now that his antics have been brought to light, Freenode will continue to shrink and decay.
Any network that promotes that kind of heavyhanded censorship and attempt to control the narrative will not win favor with anyone anyway. RIP Freenode.
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Freenode used to HELP channels move to different services. The ops never cared before if you had your channels on their network or not. There was no reason for anyone to believe that the new leaders of freenode would take an action like destroying 700 channels and then justifying it after the fact by changing the rules.
Freenode cuts its own throat. It is pretty trivial to move to another IRC server and this action forced a lot of projects to move and it forced others to make the decision. #python was not hi
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And why would you take the channels over? Only reason I can think of is to cause confusion and try to cause hassle for people switching to a network that hasn't been usurped by dicks.
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What is your connections to freenode? You seem to have a dog in this hunt...
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I don't trust people who tell me what I need to do because they say it's the best thing to do without giving any concrete evidence besides 'because i say so'.
sorry, do you like being a frightened sheep controlled for who knows why?
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Sorry, I am not a frightened (or any other kind of) sheep.
I did not see any 'spam' on freenode chats that I was in. It just seems like you are way overreacting, in a manner that suggests you have some personal stake in freenode. That's all.
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The people over reacting were the ones leaving in droves with no proof of anything. If you read the resignation letters, most of the admins didn't even know why they were leaving.
The only 'personal' stake I have in freenode is that groups I belong to are now fractured, with a bunch of people leaving without knowing why and simply because others were leaving. It's bad for the communities and it's hard to trust Libera admins when they say they care about the communities but they're the ones caus
Why is freenode still useful to YOU? (Score:1)
How many of the channels you frequented left regardless of your bleating about libera spam?
Thats two questions. Please answer both.
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be raving. insulting and mocking people, and interpreting things in a rather forced manner. It's Saturday night - have a beer or something and chill. It really does seem that you have some sort of attachment to freenode.
Re: (Score:3)