The channels being 'taken over' are the channels that were telling people to use the other network. There's no point in Freenode existing if all the channels point to some other place.
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.
Sure, the communities have moved on.
This is what Lee did not understand. freenode was never something he could own.
freenode was communities of people. The servers were donated, provided by people in the communities who wanted a reliable network. The staff were members of those communities, developers for those projects, and all volunteers. The users never were freenode users, they were ubuntu, and debian, and ham radio, and gimp users.
There was nothing to OWN.
And now that someone who has no clue about any of this does, they leave in droves.
> something happened with Freenode, and the communities faded away, right?
It was a netsplit.
Freenode was sold to an heir of the former Korean monarchy. The idea that the network was even sellable did not resonate with several former staff calling it a hostile takeover, so Libera.Chat was formed as a moral successor.
The split caused a drop in user count from ~80k to ~45k. Some channels migrated to OFTC instead. See a user count history graph:
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.
Why do you think nearly the entire staff was against this? If it was a hostile takeover by a small 'non democratic' group, would you not expect that only that group would quit? Also, if you were the owner of freenode for so long, why does almost no-one in the chat logs which have been made public seem to be aware of you?
> If a channel is actively posting to migrate to another network, that isn’t appropriate. It’s like all facebook groups posting “Hey lets move to twitter now”.
I feel like only a non-open networks would forbid advertising that the project moved to another place.
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.
Below is the global message sent to all users, on reconnect all channels are unowned and whoever rejoined first is the operator, all nicks are unregistered.
10:20 -keitwo(~kei@freenode/staff/kei)- [Global Notice 1/3] We are moving past legacy freenode to a new fork. The new freenode is launched. You will slowly be disconnected and when you reconnect, you will be on the new freenode. We patiently await to welcome you in freedom's holdout - the freenode.
10:20 -keitwo(~kei@freenode/staff/kei)- [Global Notice 2/3] If you're looking to connect now, you can already /server chat.freenode.net 6697 (ssl) or 6667 (plaintext). It's a new genesis for a new era. Thank you for using freenode, and Hello World, from the future. freenode is IRC. freenode is FOSS. freenode is freedom.
10:20 -keitwo(~kei@freenode/staff/kei)- [Global Notice 3/3] When you connect, register your nickname and your channel and get started. It's a new world. We're so happy to welcome you and the millions of others. We will be posting more information in the coming days on our website and twitter. Otherwise, see you on the other side!
> At some point, the business world called, and I stopped spending time on IRC. And I haven't kept up, but I think something happened with Freenode, and the communities faded away, right?
There was some .. lets just call it, rather encouraged rebranding to libra.chat. And there is something else namesquatting the freenode name.
Sadly, we were forced to dissolve PDPC, freenode’s parent organisation.
When the organisation transferred across from the US to the UK we wanted to keep the organisational structure as close to what it had been before (change is scary, right?) — however, we made the conscious decision to no longer have any paid employees after Rob Levin passed away. This meant that everyone involved with the organisation were volunteers and we no longer had anyone who could invest the time and effort required to do fundraising and similar tasks, meaning that the organisation was unable to sustain the levels of donations required to obtain and maintain charitable status in the UK.
Due to the massive reduction in financial support we found ourselves in a position where being an incorporated organisation cost more than what we were able to bring in in donations and after years of operating at a loss it was decided that we would apply for the dissolution of the corporation in order to drastically reduce costs. The application has been processed and the organisation has been dissolved; to further reduce costs we have also discontinued the majority of infrastructure services for which the organisation paid, together with the reduced administration and organisational fees this means that we are now in a position where our outgoings are restricted to domain renewals! We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the organisation in the past, users, organisations and staff in particular, who have always been (begrudgingly?) happy to contribute towards the difference in order to cover the deficit.
What does this organisational change mean for freenode?
In practise it means very little, the PDPC has never been involved in the day to day operations of the network and there will be no changes to the way in which the network is run. freenode is staffed entirely by volunteers from all over the globe who contribute their time and expertise to keep the network up and running in between contributing to various other FOSS projects.
What about other PDPC projects, such as fosscon, geeknic, and the fossevents site?
These projects will continue as they have before, and we invite you to attend fosscon for real world talks and collaboration, to join a geeknic picnic or plan your own at http://geeknic.org, and to check out http://fossevents.org for events in your neighbourhood and around the world.
I appreciate the work you do and I still want to contribute
The best way in which to help the network is to contribute time — help out in #freenode or elsewhere on the network, assist users in finding answers to their questions and help us try keep the channel and network temperature at a nice, comfortable level which encourages collaboration!
If you are low on time but still want to help out you might be able to help us through your company or organisation by becoming a server sponsor (See “Hosting a server” for more information).
If you feel that one particular volunteer has helped you out and you want to say thank you — ask them if they have a preferred charity to which you could make a small donation! With time we might update our website to provide links and information of such preferences.
Alternatively, you may consider donating to one of the following projects:
Software Freedom Law Center
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Open Rights Group
Existing PDPC donor cloaks
Existing PDPC donor cloaks will remain valid for a full year, after which they will be converted to unaffiliated cloaks. Ongoing donations will be cancelled by us. If you have previously donated to PDPC you’ll still qualify for your donor cloak as normal. If you believe you’re due a cloak and we haven’t processed it yet please contact us.
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