It's pretty strange to me that there are still channels hanging around instead of moving to libera.chat, but it is actualky probably good that they are kicking them out. Doing everyone a service, this way pretty soon no one will be able to be confused about which is the correct network.
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.
(Correct if my assumption is mistaken, I’m not 100% sure) 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”.
At the end of the day, the “community” has spoken and looks to be moving over. I see so many negative posts on this thread against Andrew & Freenode, I can understand if they are upset and react in the way they have re banning such libera.chat messages.
The reason they're going to Libera.chat is because the former Freenode staff set it up—moving to another existing IRC network would mean, essentially, abandoning your own house and coming to someone else's and asking to be allowed to set up in there, while what they're doing is trying to build their own new house.
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.
To be fair, I rejoined most of the channels on Libera AND stayed in the Freenode channels to keep an eye on them (until they wiped all accounts overnight, didn’t re-register).
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:
I meant I had assumed the libera.chat staff still had admin status in freenode, and had been behind this move, but apparently they all got removed a week ago.
So much this. Yesterday I did a walk through the ~44 channels I frequent on FreeNode and came up with about 20ish that where moving to either OFTC or Libera. I left those channels, keeping ~24 channels that were not likely to move off of FreeNode.
Fast-forward today. All those channels are moving now, none left! Yesterday this could be considered a 55/45% split and had new FreeNode staff taken a win-trust-dont-rock-boat approach, I'm sure the network would've been fine.
Yesterday I was staying on FreeNode, because I don't really know the thinking behind all parties involved and could see the possible reasoning on both sides. Today I'm disconnected from FreeNode and on OFTC + Libera.
Many rooms have 500+ people in them. Heck, I think FreeNode was ~70000 peeps? I'm pretty sure almost all of them are pretty pissed off about the developments of today in particular. I was in wait-and-see mode yesterday. From the 44 channels I was in, about 20 moved to Libera and the others seemed to have the intention to stay on FreeNode. Today all of those channels packed up shop. I took a look in #freenode-services and I can't blame them either.
Yesterday I would have stayed on FreeNode. Today, fuck it. OFTC and Libera for me.
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.
Some channels I was in on Freenode were hesitant to move, but they were then taken over by Freenode staff in the wave of channel hijackings (for example, because they had topics like "We're discussing whether to move to Libera, please <bla>") which expedited the move for all of them.
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.
Freenode's management changed. Libera.Chat is a new organization with new servers not associated with Freenode -- but many organizations that had previously maintained IRC channels on Freenode are moving to Libera.Chat.
Someone "bought" Freenode, kicked out the existing staff, who formed Libera chat as a result. The new owner of Freenode then speedran self-destruction of the site, first banning every channel that mentioned libera in its topic, and then wiping all of chanserv and nickserv and starting from scratch.
This is very reminiscent of the "ban everyone who mentioned libera in its topic" phase of the self-immolation, which prompted a lot of people who had previously been hesitant or only considering whether to move to libera basically having the choice made for them.
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