...
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://boingboing.net/2021/05/19/freenode-irc-staff-quit-after-new-owner-seizes-control.html
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff quit after new owner "seizes" control of network | Boing Boing ] - boingboing.net
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new
management ??? The Register ] - www.theregister.com
...
Wow.
...
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://boingboing.net/2021/05/19/freenode-irc-staff-quit-after-new-owner-seizes-control.html
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff quit after new owner "seizes" control of network | Boing Boing ] - boingboing.net
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new
management ??? The Register ] - www.theregister.com
...
Wow.
Yeah, it's quite a quagmire. I'm pretty upset about it. I've spent most
of my free time the last two days trying to figure out exactly what went
on, if I should do anything, and how to do it.
As far as I can tell it started when the holding company Freenode LLC
was set up. IRC nerds aren't the best at legal bullshit so help from rasengan was brought in and he ended up on the board. Later christel
wanted out for undetermined reasons and sold the freenode llc holding company to rasengan. At that time there was a lot of anxiety on freenode
(I was there) over the new corporate ownership; rasengan/Andrew Lee has
a lot of other for-profit businesses. But we, and staff, were assured
that he was just doing this because he loved IRC (which I still believe)
and that he'd stay out of server operations.
At this point rasengan owned the holding company that owned the domain
name. Everything else, the servers, the DNS control accounts, etc were
owned and operated by staff. That includes setting up the relationships
for third parties to donate servers to freenode.
With christel's departure the staff got together and decided to vote
tomaw as the new freenode leader to handle server operations. Things
were okay for a while.
Then there was a hiccup with rasengan putting a little ad/link for one
of his for-profit companies on the freenode website. That acted as the catalyst for tension and tomaw asked for full control of the domain name.
Things became more tense when, after some time of freenode staff contributing to the dev of an updated IRCd they made a post about it on
the blog about switching to it. This was a problem for rasengan since
his overarching goal with IRC.com and ownership of IRC networks (like snoonet running on IRC.com resources) is to set up a truly distributed
IRC where any server can peer to any other and easily switch networks.
He'd put in a significant amount of money into developing this IRC.com
IRCd, I've heard. And this provided his motivation to opposing the
staff's switch to their modified IRCd for future operations.
This was now rasengan interering directly in the operations of the
freenode network. And the heated debates this caused eventually lead to litigation by rasengan against tomaw. At this point it was obvious that christel/rasengan's statements about the sale were just words and that
now legal means were going to be used to take control of the operation
of the servers.
They drafted their various resignation letters, some got leaked early on
the 16th. At this point I got involved as a regular user on #freenode
and talked to rasengan there and on Hackernews forums. I also talked to
the staff. Even then I personally hoped for reconciliation. But
apparently it wasn't possible. Legally, Freenode LLC (if not actual freenode, the people and servers) was owned by rasengan. So the staff decided to resign in mass.
I've been a user on freenode for about 20 years and this breakup is
painful for me. But personally I think that libera represents the ideals
and people that make up freenode far more than Freenode itself does
anymore. I'm trying to move but it's going to take a long time to let everyone know what's going on. Most, reasonably, don't care about
network drama.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing you all on libera.chat going forwards.
On 05/19/2021 08:24 PM, Ant wrote:
...
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://boingboing.net/2021/05/19/freenode-irc-staff-quit-after-new-owner-seizes-control.html
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff quit after new owner "seizes" control of network | Boing Boing ] - boingboing.net
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new
management ??? The Register ] - www.theregister.com
...
Wow.
On 2021-05-21, superkuh <superkuh@superkuh.com> wrote:
Yeah, it's quite a quagmire. I'm pretty upset about it. I've spent mostWill be interesting to see what happens. Sorry to hear this.
of my free time the last two days trying to figure out exactly what went
on, if I should do anything, and how to do it.
As far as I can tell it started when the holding company Freenode LLC
was set up. IRC nerds aren't the best at legal bullshit so help from
rasengan was brought in and he ended up on the board. Later christel
wanted out for undetermined reasons and sold the freenode llc holding
company to rasengan. At that time there was a lot of anxiety on freenode
(I was there) over the new corporate ownership; rasengan/Andrew Lee has
a lot of other for-profit businesses. But we, and staff, were assured
that he was just doing this because he loved IRC (which I still believe)
and that he'd stay out of server operations.
At this point rasengan owned the holding company that owned the domain
name. Everything else, the servers, the DNS control accounts, etc were
owned and operated by staff. That includes setting up the relationships
for third parties to donate servers to freenode.
With christel's departure the staff got together and decided to vote
tomaw as the new freenode leader to handle server operations. Things
were okay for a while.
Then there was a hiccup with rasengan putting a little ad/link for one
of his for-profit companies on the freenode website. That acted as the
catalyst for tension and tomaw asked for full control of the domain name.
Things became more tense when, after some time of freenode staff
contributing to the dev of an updated IRCd they made a post about it on
the blog about switching to it. This was a problem for rasengan since
his overarching goal with IRC.com and ownership of IRC networks (like
snoonet running on IRC.com resources) is to set up a truly distributed
IRC where any server can peer to any other and easily switch networks.
He'd put in a significant amount of money into developing this IRC.com
IRCd, I've heard. And this provided his motivation to opposing the
staff's switch to their modified IRCd for future operations.
This was now rasengan interering directly in the operations of the
freenode network. And the heated debates this caused eventually lead to
litigation by rasengan against tomaw. At this point it was obvious that
christel/rasengan's statements about the sale were just words and that
now legal means were going to be used to take control of the operation
of the servers.
They drafted their various resignation letters, some got leaked early on
the 16th. At this point I got involved as a regular user on #freenode
and talked to rasengan there and on Hackernews forums. I also talked to
the staff. Even then I personally hoped for reconciliation. But
apparently it wasn't possible. Legally, Freenode LLC (if not actual
freenode, the people and servers) was owned by rasengan. So the staff
decided to resign in mass.
I've been a user on freenode for about 20 years and this breakup is
painful for me. But personally I think that libera represents the ideals
and people that make up freenode far more than Freenode itself does
anymore. I'm trying to move but it's going to take a long time to let
everyone know what's going on. Most, reasonably, don't care about
network drama.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing you all on libera.chat going forwards.
On 05/19/2021 08:24 PM, Ant wrote:
...
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://boingboing.net/2021/05/19/freenode-irc-staff-quit-after-new-owner-seizes-control.html
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff quit after new owner "seizes" control of network | Boing Boing ] - boingboing.net
04:14PM <AfterShock> https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/
04:14PM <URL> [ Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new
management ??? The Register ] - www.theregister.com
...
Wow.
| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
| Location: | Fayetteville, NC |
| Users: | 65 |
| Nodes: | 6 (0 / 6) |
| Uptime: | 03:55:30 |
| Calls: | 862 |
| Files: | 1,311 |
| D/L today: |
791 files (9,088M bytes) |
| Messages: | 264,528 |