#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.
All my chat networks I care about have migrated to Libera or Matrix. And I agree freenode is circling the drain.
I was also banned and Klined, but I am not sure this was a free node action...
I was immediately able to reconnect to a different freenode server. And have not been bothered since. It definitely feels like a rouge operator just banned everyone on their node.
However despite this happening several days ago, there is no statement from freenode, so IDK.
Actually, it's somewhat worse than the headline mentions. It seems that the script targets channels that merely mention Libera in the topic. The topic of an affected channel I was in said: "See also #foo on irc.libera.chat" (as we hadn't decided whether or not to move). And everyone in the channel was banned from both the #foo and the ##foo channels on Freenode.
Needless to say, Freenode kindly decided for us whether or not we should move to Libera for good.
I'm glad someone else in the comments posted this link: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php which clearly indicates freenode is tanking and libera is matching it but upwards. In a month it'll be overtaken; I think there may be a lot of inertia from people who have a load of irc channels open but don't actively interact with it, as well as old webpages pointing to the freenode servers. But it's a matter of time, nobody will promote freenode anymore, all IRC communities will or have migrated, etc.
Not that I disagree, but doesn't sound like that's the issue here? The issue is that there's been a hostile takeover of freenode.net so the admins have established an network on a new domain for its communities to migrate to, libera.chat.
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."
If it wasn't already obvious, this basically confirms that Freenode is no longer a good place to be. Most projects are migrating to libera.chat while some are migrating to OFTC.
Notice that in some cases, channels were banned for merely advertising that they also run a channel on libera.chat. Not that they are moving to libera.chat, that they ALSO run a channel there. It's a very basic attempt at suppressing people wanting to leave and trying to convince others.
And you're correct, there is no point to freenode existing.
the freenode irc network disappeared overnight, but everyone just updated their links to point at libera.chat instead, which has almost all of the same projects, active users, etc.
It was essentially just an infrastructure change, which is the nice thing about open protocols and server implementations. Libera has 40k users and over 1000 foss projects that were on freenode.
the freenode userbase and community is alive and well, just under a new link
Every channel on Freenode that mentioned 'libera' in any capacity has been joined by a bot, had the topic renamed, ownership removed, all users deopped/unvoiced and all bans cleared.
Something that was against Freenode policy... until yesterday.
They also nuked private channels that were being used for Wikimedia and Wikipedia's editor communications.
This Twitter drama is strikingly similar to Freenode. A rich guy bought it, people started moving to Libera.chat in small numbers and advertising their new channel on Freenode in the topic. There wasn't a huge exodus, though.
Then this new owner started taking over channels and kicking everyone out that had mention of a Libera.chat channel in its topic, forcing everyone to move all at once.
I haven't heard of anyone still on Freenode since then.
That particular incident was the moment when the staff all resigned.
They had already seen it coming and had made preparations. All the important things have moved to a new domain:, see: https://libera.chat/
Once the dust settles, basically what's effectively left to say is that everything that made freenode great will be renamed to libera.chat; whilst an imposter will (sadly) be left in control of the old freenode.net name.
The story has been breaking over the past few days.
Wikipedia has links to news stories:
Freenode was “acquired” a while back, people were looking on it dubiously.
Then last week (or the week before) volunteer staff resigned en masse saying that the new owners were planning on taking control of the project’s direction. A number of projects using freenode for chat started looking at alternative just in case.
As GP notes, this looking around was done in the heat of all the resignation, but was not necessarily a done deal for all projects, after all nothing has changed yet.
Today, freenode highjacked / locked hundreds of channels mentioning libera (the alternative network set up by some of the resigning staff) out of nowhere, proving that the network most definitely could not be trusted anymore.
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!
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.
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