The best I can piece together so far:

* freenode was run by elected volunteers.

* Lee stepped in to sponsor/fund the Freenode Live events

* Some assets were sold/transferred to Lee in the process of this

* Former staff admin leaves, new staff admin is elected

* New staff admin attempts to take control of assets they (reasonably) assume they should have control of

* Lee (reasonably) perceives this as control of assets being taken away from him - it's at this point we discover more about which assets were sold/transferred.

* Recent events driven by elected leadership discovering they're not actually leadership.

Essentially freenode has had a leadership vacuum for some time, and has been perfectly comfortable with that. But nature abhors a vacuum ..

You might note I have two groups marked as (reasonably) in opposite directions. As far as I can tell this is an information gap - what was sold/transferred was kept very, very quiet, so I do believe each side was behaving reasonably with the information available to them. So I believe what we're seeing this week, is what we would have seen during the actual sale, if these details were made remotely public at the time.

Here is a continuous quote (nothing omitted except the start/end of conversation) from a discussion between Andrew Lee and me from 2017:

[2017-08-03 11:48:56.616000] <rasengan_> justJanne: I like the way you think about a lot of things and doubly appreciate the fact that you share these thoughts so that others can know and understand the realities of them as well. But, I do want to emphasize that while I am in fact listed on some piece of paper for a couple of IRC networks, I am not in control of any. That's not only a promise made, and my word means so much, but it's a reality: I don't have an O.

[Editor's note: O, or +O, means that the person is operator and has administrative control over the network]

[2017-08-03 11:48:56.789000] <rasengan_> Whenever something comes up I don't get involved or don't even know. (ps: plz excuse my space bar i think there is something wrong wiht my driver)

[2017-08-03 11:49:37.530000] <rasengan_> But the thing is IRC has alwasy been a glorious thing. The infra has always been sposnored by companies or people. But the great thing about IRC i s you can always vote and let the networks and world know which you choose - by using /server.

[Editor's note: /server is a command used to switch from one network to another]

[2017-08-04 21:48:37.553000] <rasengan_> I'm fully confident though if PIA were to show any kind of negative intentions, people would /quit fast.

[Editor's note: /quit is a command to disconnect from a network]

His statements that he had no control and would never have it were believed by staff all those years, but due to experience interacting with him I never did and have warned against this very scenario ever since the sale (which prompted above interaction).

It always comes down to money or power.

Hi this is Andrew from the post and freenode.

Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that.

Secondly, staff claim there was a hostile takeover. I have owned freenode for years and was a great custodian as far as I can tell (only compliments from former staff some of which even flew into defcon and came to my house on my dime, internationally) - I intervened when a hostile takeover from the inside began taking place - my dns was cut and the internal structure was changing to a non democratic one. All of this is detailed in the post and screenshots for proof since there’s been a lot of falsehoods spread.

I had to step in and did just in time.

Hostile takeover by and from whom?

It was ran by the very staff that all left. No exceptions, all of them. So who exactly where they taking it away from?

The appointed heads were appointed by all of staff, democratically, as your very PDF proves from the meeting notes. It is you who tried to force in people in a leading position that staff were disagreeing with, so if there was a hostile takeover, it was yours.

You also never owned freenode, you owned Freenode Limited. You had zero involvement with the network, that was ran by volunteers in their spare time.

Also you have not been locked out from DNS either. One of your employees insisted on enabling 2FA, and you simply haven't had a key. For ages, mind, not just for the past few weeks.

But sure, blame your mismanagement of your own company on volunteers that had nothing to do with you or your ltd.

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?

Maybe that's exactly the problem: Lee was being a custodian in the background. Tomaw or whomever decides they want control, so starts spreading falsehoods about interactions with Lee / Lee's intentions. Because Lee is so hands off, these falsehoods gain a lot of traction before Lee is aware of them / can do anything about them and now we're here.

Not saying this is the reality, but it doesn't seem far-fetched given the IRC drama I've seen in the past. Certainly not any more far-fetched than the "Lee wants to takeover freenode" (the entity he already owned for years) angle.

> "Lee wants to takeover freenode" (the entity he already owned for years)

This is a thing that is confusing, because I've seen some claims that there are in fact two entities operating under the name "freenode": the IRC network itself, which is a federated collective owned by nobody, and Freenode Ltd, a company that basically just exists to register the domains and hold the trademarks, which passed from Chris to Lee in 2017.

It sounds like in March, Tom, the new head of staff for the IRC network, wanted to get more control over the limited company, and at the same time Lee, the owner of the limited company, wanted to get more control over the network.

I don't think tomaw had any interest in control over the limited company, but did want to exclude the limited company from control of the network.

Why are you acting like a mediator between two conversations you were never part of, it's like you are trying to play devils advocate. You aren't helping the discussion, if you know you know, if you don't you don't.

I'm not trying to mediate a conversation I was never a part of, I am trying to mediate this conversation, right now. There are a lot of people in this thread who also don't have intimate knowledge of these goings on and yet are automatically taking one side's word for it with zero evidence. You don't see that as a problem?

Did you read the PDF? It’s actually really clear there. Lots of defamatory and false comments were made by the former staff - which are proven to be false in the document.

In terms of the ownership, it was on the main blog and website for the past 4 years [1].

Also checkout http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/

Thanks!

[1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

I read the whole PDF and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say it doesn't really make anything clear at all.

Your claim of ownership over Freenode isn't news; it's one detail that both sides of this controversy seem ready to agree on: someone named christel somehow sold you an IRC network 5 years ago, unbeknownst (until recently) to the people operating the IRC network on their own servers.

What is the PDF meant to clarify beyond that?

> someone named christel somehow sold you an IRC network 5 years ago, unbeknownst (until recently) to the people operating the IRC network on their own servers.

This is false [1]. The PDF clarifies a great many of the unanswered questions and verified that despite former staff attempt to say I was lying, all I did was spoke the truth and helped when asked.

Please review the PDF.

Lastly, I also run servers on freenode and have for years preceding the acquisition.

The PDF puts to rest all the falsehoods and uncertainties in my opinion but please let me know if there is something I missed!

[1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

You keep saying this, and people keep telling you they have read the PDF. Perhaps it's helpful for you to hear this stated plainly: the PDF is inscrutable, and does not say clearly what you seem to believe it does.

The announcement you link to here is itself clear as mud and has been quoted by your opponents. It says Freenode and PIA are "joining forces", "in the same family", but "continue to operate as a not-for-profit entity with the same management". That could mean anything. In particular, the first sentence after the subhed "what's next" reads "There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now."

> the PDF is inscrutable

I was able to follow it pretty easily. What did you have trouble with?

Sure, if it's helpful:

* Its central claim, that PIA or Lee or whoever directed a bunch of money to Freenode or people involved with freenode, isn't contested by anyone. There's no record to set straight there.

* It spends the bulk of its time talking about a problem Lee seems to have with Thomas Welsey ("tomaw", I think?) --- but the logs with "tomaw" seem relatively civil? It's not really even clear what the problem here is.

* The public announcement from Christel and the IRC logs make it pretty clear that the Freenode operator community believed Lee was to have no operational role managing Freenode. What seems to have upset Lee here is a reorganization of Freenode's operational management, and something about who has the login for Freenode's DNS. Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me.

Subtextually: there's the additional problem of "what the hell does it mean to own an IRC network?" Neither Lee nor his company appear to run all the Freenode servers. Those servers are the actual IRC network. It's not that IRC's nature makes it impossible to own a network, but rather just that whatever it is Lee means by "owning" it, the onus is on him to explain it.

This PDF would be better if it stated clearly up top what the problem was, what the competing claim was, and why Lee's claim is right. Then, all these random chat logs should just be supporting appendices.

I'm not saying Lee is wrong about any of this. I'm saying that I do not understand what he is claiming in the first place.

> Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me.

There's "freenode" -- the network, the volunteers, and there's 'Freenode Limited' the company, which owns the Freenode domain and trademark. The latter were being held by christel, and she seemed to have sneakily sold them to Lee because she needed money (she seems to have lied to the rest of team about the details of transfer, the rest of the team only learned later about all that was handed over to Lee when lawyers got involved). By virtue of controlling the domain and having access to the website, Lee seems to have put ads on the site... this rubbed some folks the wrong way. They all had a foreboding feeling of things to come and tried to get the domain firmly under their control... to which Lee resisted. Lee does own the domain, he paid for it fair and square after all, so he's got that going for him...

But at this point that's the only thing he's got going for him.... because Freenode is an IRC network with community roots that wants to remain community-oriented and away from commercialization and pesky shell ads, so Freenode is no longer what it used to be, Libera is, and Lee is now left holding a dud.

This is the only explanation I've read so far that makes any sense, thanks!

> PIA or Lee or whoever directed a bunch of money to Freenode or people involved with freenode, isn't contested by anyone.

Because many of the things presented by Andrew Lee (rasengan) seem to be distortions and half-truths, the statement above deserves some scrutiny.

Andrew Lee claims to have donated an amount greater than 1 million (assuming US dollars) to Freenode.

As far as I can tell, this was not to Freenode the IRC network, it was for the FreeNode Live conferences. This conference took place in 2017 and 2018, and had approximately 250 attendees in 2017 and 150-200 attendees in 2018.

The relevant parts as far as I can tell:

• the exact amount donated (1 million) has only been mentioned by Andrew Lee, and has not been verified by anyone else

• the amount donated is only for the two FreeNode Live conferences

• the FreeNode Live conferences seemingly have nothing to do with the freenode IRC network

• none of the money was every given to the people who donate the servers that run the freenode IRC network, or the operators that volunteer their time to run it

A lot of people seems to conflate the two. Andrew Lee's comments seem to encourage that ambiguity (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236734), presumably because it seems to legitimize his hostile takeover of freenode IRC.

His contribution to the Freenode Live conferences (whatever monetary amount that was) should not entitle him to freenode IRC, he has not given a penny towards that.

> There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now."

And it absolutely did until it didn’t (as per the meeting agenda notes) as you can see.

Thanks for helping to make that part clear.

Again: it's not clear from anything you've said why those meeting notes were problematic for you, since the one thing announced terms of the arrangement between PIA and Freenode do seem to make clear is that you were not to be operationally involved in Freenode.

I'm also not great at following this whole thing. When did you acquire Freenode or how?

The ownership chain of Freenode was

1. Rob Levin/Lilo, personally

2. Open Projects Network

3. ???

4. PDPC

5. Christel, personally

6. freenode ltd.

7. Andrew Lee (via freenode ltd)

After PDPC, what christel personally owned to transfer to freenode ltd to sell to Andrew Lee is... hard to define. A domain and a website, sure. But christel didn't own the servers, did not employ people, and does not have any agreement with the users, something which continued into freenode ltd. And apart from the users, operators, servers, and domain, it's not clear what an IRC network is to own.

It seems to have been 2017 (hopefully I recall the year correctly), by transfer of legally owned/registered assets (all that comes to mind immediately that was under non-volunteer ownership is a couple of servers and a domain name or two, but maybe I'm mistaken about that). Of course, I'm not on any side of this, especially not the "inside" (wherever that may be), and I've just read some of the stuff being published by both sides.

In my estimation, the biggest potential problem for Freenode policy that I see is based on the the statements by some departing staffers that indicate the parent company may collect and monetize user data. That would be a pretty shitty outcome. I asked a current (post-split) Freenode staffer about improving privacy measures on the network, and got very encouraging responses, though. Of course, a single staffer is not exactly an ironclad indication of policy. Perhaps the only way to really know how it'll hash out is to wait and see. I plan to keep an eye on the Freenode privacy policy.

Do you plan to waive your attorney-client privilege for your lawyers' communications and release them to the community? This would be a really lovely piece of transparency by you.

If not, why?

>There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now

It did until I was locked out of the dns and an internal reorganization and structure was put in place. The screenshots from former staff agenda is on the PDF.

I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.

The screenshots seems incomplete, which makes me doubtful to trust them. If you are able to show the full conversations it could enlighten me further, but truncated pictures and screenshots won't do.

The internal reorganization and structure seems a sensible thing to do (as an outsider it even looks like an improvement) and was agreed by all the staff. You weren't supposed to interfere so why a new structure and reorg would affect you ?

You also seemed to be annoyed by them improving the current IRCd. Why that would matter to you ?

There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.

Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.

Again: there's nothing about DNS in the meeting minutes that you just cited upthread.

I'm also a little confused. The PIA/Freenode announcement says "There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now." Why would you be involved operationally in any way with Freenode's administration? What would any reorganization have mattered to you? Wasn't the point of the structure you claim you had that Freenode's operators had self-determination?

These are still more instances of this PDF you've produced not really clarifying your position here.

He asked you that the head of staff, a.k.a the only person really responsible and managing the network, to own the domain. This is a sensible request.

"announcing a new ircd and a partnership with OFTC" ? Dude. Solanum is an evolution of Seven, which needed to evolve; based on Charybdis. It's not _new_, it's just an _evolution_, and one that is badly needed (to support ircv3 features and much more).

OFTC is also working on that IRCd. This is not a mad partnership either. Two networks joining forces to develop and improve a proven IRC platform (Charybdis/Atheme) is not something insane at all.

Hang on. If I'm following all this correctly, at that point the current head of staff had only held that role for less than a month. So the big demand here was that control over the domain name was transferred not to the community, or to some non-profit, but to some individual who'd seemingly been manoeuvred into place for the purpose of transferring that control to them. That certainly smells like a shady takeover attempt of some kind, even if the details are opaque.

The previous holder of that job, Christel, had access to the DNS account, why couldn't Tom?

Like, yeah, Tom was maneuovered into place to take control of the DNS account, because thats what a head of staff does. Do you think that each new US president shouldn't get the nuclear codes either?

He wasn't just asking for access to the DNS account - which it seems like, in fact, he already had and used to try and lock Andrew Lee and others involved in Freenode out - but for ownership of the domains to be transferred to him personally. Which would mean that in effect he would be the one who decided what Freenode was and who controlled it from then on, and if any other staff or users disagreed they could just pound sand. In particular, he appears to have rejected the idea of any kind of community ownership or control over the domain ownership.

It looks like he asked about the domain transfer, and from the transcript Lee didn't say "no", and then later --- it looks like a month later, from the transcripts the other Freenode ops posted --- Lee asked for an employee of Freenode Ltd to be given access to Freenode's DNS and IRCop status.

Here's a log; search for "kevinp":

https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...

This is all super weird.

> I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.

then why acquire freenode?

To be fair, volunteers on freenode also had lives outside of IRC.

Hi Andrew, thanks for participating in the comments here.

Will you consider disclosing the terms under which you purchased freenode? PDFs of executed documents, ideally?

That information is confidential in nature. That said tomaw has seen it and has handed freenode back over if that helps to understand what it’s content may have.

I really apologize for the inconvenience.

What are the terms of the confidentiality agreement? Who would need to sign off on terminating the confidentiality agreement, and would you consider doing so in order to help the public understand what's going on?

About the majority of the questions I will get back to you. In terms of the latter - I wish I could have simply posted it — so absolutely, yes.

Thanks. I'm glad to hear that -- I think the lack of transparency around the sale is making it hard for a lot of people (myself included) to make sense of this whole situation.

so you're willing to disclose it?

I'm sure the other side would also be open to it

if both sides are happy there should be no problem whatsoever

this would completely settle the debate

The other side might be christel, not the libera.chat ops.

I think it's just Christel needed money and this guy took advantage and no one or almost no one with admin/operational duties was informed. So I think the legality of this transaction was dubious.

But, I don't think it matters that much anymore. People just need to get the word out that the network has a new name.

so... she told Andrew that he now is the owner of freenode, whilst simultaneously telling the staff that he wasn't?

whilst Andrew paid her (seemingly in exchange for ownership)

not a bad deal for her... if that's a correct assessment then it certainly looks like that could be considered to be fraud

Yeah I've come to the same conclusion but idk why the staff didn't say this in the first place. They only said that they didn't know he was the owner.

Oof.

Confidentiality, NDA's, and other business tools like it are at complete odds with open source, free software, transparency, and honesty.

It's comments like this that cement the idea of getting off of Freenode to Libera.chat is the best thing we could do.

To say business tools and confidentiality are at odds with open source is comical at best. Some of us work on FOSS as a career. We still have to sign NDAs with customers, we still upstream patches to core components.

Throwing your toys out of the ring because business is business is why open source has a funding problem.

Why the heck would a IRC network, run by volunteer, with infra graciously provided by sponsors, have to sign NDAs with anyone? Everything about Freenode should have been transparent.

> To say business tools and confidentiality are at odds with open source is comical at best. Some of us work on FOSS as a career. We still have to sign NDAs with customers, we still upstream patches to core components.

It makes sense that credentials to services are confidential. But aside that, the whole point behind a bulk of free software and open source is that everything's done out in the open. You get to watch the meat grinder - and you can even operate it as well! The head butcher may have exacting quality controls, but again - its viewable.

And yes, many of us have NDA's. I have a few myself, only on the specific implementations of systems I build and/or maintain, and internal business things. I reviewed it with an attorney, and believed their limited scope was acceptable and reasonable.

> Throwing your toys out of the ring because business is business is why open source has a funding problem.

There's a few assumptions there.

1. I helped *migrate* people away from (un)Freenode to Libera.chat . I didn't throw them away - i helped move people over for a mostly seamless experience.

2. That open source/free software has a funding problem... That's just a troll statement - you're assuming business needs are the same as FOSS. They're not. And unlike closed source proprietary, once FOSS code has been written, everyone can share. But you knew that; and that's why I call it a troll statement. It's disingenuous at its core.

I do commercial FOSS work without an NDA just fine. Seems it might just be a problem on your side...

One of the companies I worked for tried to avoid NDAs whenever it could. They were apparently full of retarded requirements like giving the customer full access to all of our systems for security review on demand, which of course is at odds with every other NDA requiring us not to share the information on those systems.

I am not sure how lawyers can write these requirements without noticing how impossible they are. Then again I had to can a project that was signed of by the lawyers of at least three different companies, the software licenses involved made it impossible to build a commercial or open source project from it (GPL, AGPL and at least two conflicting commercial ones). So it might just be that they have as much understanding of technology as I have of Chinese.

The way you choose to handle business doesn’t invalidate what he said, and you shouldn’t take that as a dig.

It is a double edged sword - he's also bound (and may not have been the initiator).

Is it really a hostile takeover when it's supported by 100% of the staff who had been running freenode for decades, and the only person who didn't like it was you?

From what I've read it seems like you generally seem to have Freenode's interests at heart, but this seems like a complete communication failure. Most channels I've been a part of have moved to Libera Chat, so I don't think Freenode in its current form can recover from this.

Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? It would be nice to have a homeserver that people can rely on and isn't Matrix.org.

> * Maybe you should consider incorporating it as a nonprofit and potentially a technology switch to Matrix? *

Please don't. I like Matrix, I use it, but it's not IRC, and it's far, far more resource heavy (both in homeserver and in clients) than IRC is. You can run IRC on ancient gutless wonders, and it uses almost no resources. Matrix, especially the flagship Element client, is a resource hog. Start throwing rooms with thousands of users in, and it requires an awful lot of resources.

Keep IRC IRC.

One (or some) of freenode staff did make it clear that freenode was a platform rather than exclusively an IRC network, which suggested that they may have had plans to look into alternative platforms in the future. And the Matrix-IRC bridge went to prove that Matrix usage is increasing, although I understand that there are a lot of people who still insist on IRC.

I'm not a huge fan of Matrix's current design or implementation, but I use it and I can understand why others do.

IRC stays IRC, but how else does a network like freenode survive a giant schism? They need to differentiate from libera chat.

Matrix has problems, but as the ecosystem grows we'll start to see improvements.

I’ve been using Matrix with Riot, now Element, for 5 years and it’s only ever gotten worse. You really shouldn’t expect to see improvements.

My main problem with Matrix (which I'm willing to work around because of the benefits of a federated, self hosted, encrypted chat system) is that it seems to assume everyone has a lot of high end, modern hardware, at all ends of the system.

Synapse is fine until someone on the homeserver starts joining a bunch of rooms, then you'd better have a lot of RAM for it.

And Element, while a perfectly good client, is the standard "bloated electron app" option that chews 700MB of RAM and lags, entering text, on a Raspberry Pi 4.

There are alternatives, but they tend to have weird issues, at least last time I messed with them, in how they handle some of the corner cases of encryption.

I've used Matrix for the past couple of years for work chat system, and I personally think that the thing is a fad at best.

Synapse is simply awful as a server implementation, and the clients are just simply bloated.

But if you are looking for a good federated, self hosted, and encrypted chat solution, for my own private chat system; I've gone back to XMPP - I've settled on:

* ejabberd (which is in Erlang so just by definition is going to perform leagues better than Python) - prosody also works fine (especially for "lower end" servers) - though both need a bit of configuration at first install

* conversations.im on my Android phone

* dino.im on my desktop (which recently added calling capabilities back to phones: https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402 )

* (if you're on a Windows desktop): gajim.org is still making releases and works (including E2EE)

I do not know of a good iOS client for XMPP right now, but these three fully support OMEMO for E2EE and I've had no issues talking to others on them.

I used Riot/Element since back when it was still called "Vector" (these guys love their name changes)

It's ok but it's really aiming at the whatsapp/telegram crowd. Open a few hundred channels and it's overwhelmed, especially visually. You can set the channels to a higher-density view but not the channel list itself. You're scrolling forever.

Unfortunately Matrix is very tightly coupled with Element, it's the only client that really implements everything.

I'd love something like Quassel (which is what I use for IRC now) for Matrix. Native app, excellent performance and features.

fwiw Synapse has got progressively better, especially in the last 6 months. Element performance has certainly got worse over time though and we are working on that now.

If Libera.chat gets 60% of the users, freenode would still be the second largest IRC network. I think there will be a enough inertia among people/projects who don't follow hacker news or internet trends for the remainder of freenode to retain an audience.

The bigger question is if they retain enough server sponsors, who may be paying more attention. They might defect to libera.chat or OFTC, or just decide the whole business is not worth their while.

Why wouldn’t freenode survive? The people that want to go can go. The people that stay, stay.

Or please do. It would kill freenode dead and then there would be no debate about whether channels should stay on freenode or move to libera.

One of the main points of matrix is that every server should be compatible and form a federation with others. What is the point of moving people onto a specific server?

With IRC freenode has a control structure that can enforce their rules/guidelines, this breaks with matrix.

I think the big concerns with matrix.org centralisation are:

* If matrix.org went away tomorrow, is there enough capacity in the rest of matrix for users to migrate to.

* Federation only exists when a channel has users from multiple homeservers on it - how many small/medium channels only exist on matrix.org?

* People's identities are tied to their home server. You would be userfoo:matrix.org - if matrix.org went away, how would you find all your contacts again?

Points 1 and 2 would be addressed by more capacity and more independent homeservers, point 3 would require some sort of multi-homing.

1. About 30% of the visible users on Matrix are on Matrix.org. So, yes.

2. Almost all public rooms seem to have users from other servers.

3. Account portability/multihoming is in the works at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2787

One thing which is unambiguous, both from your timeline and Thomas's: you were the first to contact a lawyer and send a gag order. He then responded with his own lawyer and his own gag order. And frankly, it doesn't seem at all reasonable that confidentiality would be necessary if the dispute is really just about a domain name account and a logo. Overall, it's hard to parse a coherent narrative from anything here, but a bare reading of the few unambiguous facts doesn't look good for you, from where I'm sitting.

I have no association with freenode or any major IRC channels, unless you count the GT Linux Users' Group (which is exactly what it sounds like).

That's fine. We've already switched quite a few rooms to Libera.chat due to this debacle. More are moving as we speak.

I don't know who's right or who's wrong. What I do know is that a LOT of volunteer IRC OPs left en masse for "reasons". I know a few of them, and am inclined to trust them. I'll talk with them after the dust settles.

I know how to read the room, even though I don't have all the information. I helped migrate the rooms I'm frequent in. So far, it's been pretty smooth over on Libera.

Technology has almost never been about the tech - it's about the people. Always has been.

The logs posted over at

https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18926720&cid=61404...

Seem to indicate that the staff were unitedly and firmly against this. It's suspicious having the entire team against one person. I still don't get the whole picture but claims when made by an entire staff usually have merit.

It is ritual defamation [1]. This has been apparently going on for quite some time [2].

[1] http://techrights.org/2021/04/29/ritual-defamation/

[2] https://phanes.silogroup.org/vae-victis/

It's pretty funny that your one-two punch here consists of accusing the Freenode operator community of defaming you, and then following up with a post that does little more than accuse them of assisting stalkers and abusers.

Link #2 is a low-level, disrespectful and rude document - filled with personal attacks and insults.

How can you expect to gain any sympathy posting something that is phrased like that?

Despicable.

Hey <scrutinizer80>,

I'm the author at that blog. I was made aware of this thread in another medium and thought I'd chime in.

I completely get why it would be advantageous to try to discredit people who disagree with you on the internet, but it's not always the most fruitful approach.

Without rehashing old wounds by diving too far into specifics, this is a situation that has been brewing since at least 2008 when I was targeted for cyber-lynching after a very damaging encounter with someone later diagnosed with NPD and their resulting smear campaign and it's tangent offshoots.

I would encourage you to read about these types of campaigns, their dynamics, and how it affects people who are targeted by them. There are others who were targeted by the same people. In my case it was a revolving door for a bit as one campaign provides fuel for another and it kind of follows you for a bit. Someone sees a smear another made, and uses that to rehash it or make their own in a new context. Others not aware of what's going on (and sometimes they _are_ aware of what's going on) join in. Some do it because they think it's funny, some do it because their naivety is being exploited, or feel obligated to out of social ties to primary and secondary actors.

Those types of situations become messy and ambiguous as it unfolds; to the target it seems like it's coming from everywhere. Some of the staff at Freenode at one point or another became involved -- along with several members of other communities that maintain a presence on Freenode and are socially connected to many of the staff. While only some participated directly, there were others who engaged in victim-blaming, gaslighting, and generally enabled the abuse while punishing the target.

I did something a little different than most people who are targeted by these campaigns -- I found a way to fight back and I never stopped trying to have it addressed. I refused to see myself as a victim and I fought, and I fought hard, and I fought for a very long time. There was absolutely some "cloak and dagger" on my part, and over the years I've had to let alot of all of this go for my own sanity, but I still want to see justice for authority figures who not just allowed it, but facilitated it and in some cases participated in it. I don't want any of them in authority positions in /any/ community, particularly freenode.

For a while I didn't realize how some of the dynamics worked in these. The targets are baited to an extraordinary extent, and then what are normal reactions to being baited like that are then used to justify the initial baiting in an endless cycle. So, before I adapted to it I inadvertently fed into it a bit. I fed too much into it, and I did that too many times.

Some years ago, I eventually settled on a "sanctions-focused" adversarial model, and this allowed me to work out an agreement with Freenode and OFTC after I found a way to build something they really did not want me to build, called (humorously) "IRCThulu". A staffer approached me and worked out an agreement that worked for both networks that basically consisted of me being left alone to develop my projects of interest (hobby which later became career) with access to both networks and me not escalating the issue any further to sweep it under the rug.

I shouldn't have taken the compromise because I knew how these people would act when there was no visibility on them; when that staff member was recently fired they immediately took to trying to shut down all of my work and ability to engage again under false pretenses. Tom Wesley and Doug Freed at OFTC, Fuchs and Jess at Freenode participated directly in this and it was immediate. I initially thought this might be related to my participation in the counter-campaign to defend Richard Stallman. I currently believe it is more closely related to or compounded by a power struggle in the network where my story coming out would be problematic.

I don't think alot of people can do what I did; at the time I didn't have as many legal resources or funding necessary to fight something like that as I do now. By the time I did it was too late to pursue justice in a courtroom.

So, I used the tools I did have available.

In any case, yes, there is animus on my part towards these people. I believe that they deserve justice, and I believe that I am entitled to it as well -- and I see them leaving Freenode as the closest thing I can get to that. The exclusionist gatekeeper mentality that comes with their culture has been the most poisonous and unharmonious element of the F/OSS community since its inception. Not just in my case, but in most cases. I've found others who were in similar situations. Not all of them fared as well. I ended up in a pretty good spot, but there are others out there who need help and aren't getting it. There is one in particuarly that I am thinking of as I write this, and it pains me that I don't know how to help him. I tried to a little, but when I point out what's being done to him, people just find a way to shut it down. I can't help him yet because I don't know how.

I am genuine, and I believe this, so much so that I am willing to identify myself in a conversation with someone who is using an anonymous user on a posting board, which exposes me to further retaliation and smearing by not just yourself but any random person who thinks it's funny to stir up drama who will read this response or has a political interest or takes offense who was directly or indirectly involved and wants to reshape reality to their interests.

-C

Thanks for your elaborate reply. I don’t know the details of your personal dispute with the (ex)Freenode staff individuals and I don’t think it matters right now. These things happen in practically all large communities on/off-line. It’s human nature. My issue was with Mr. Lee using your post as a means to redeem himself with the community. That blog post as genuine as it may be for you is phrased in a derogatory, childish way and shouldn’t be presented to people who are not involved with the social inner-workings of IRC. It’s bad strategy on Mr. Lee’s part and indicates a lack of judgement and dubious conduct.

I do believe you’re genuinely hurt, and quite possibly some of the staff have indeed wronged you. Yet the way your words were used by another who is not you, to publically defame people does you a disservice. Your reply to me has made it more than clear that you’re perfectly capable of explaining your position in a civil manner. Having that blog post online puts you in a bad light, however right you may be.

You’ve expressed your support of Richard Stallman which is basically supporting his right to be an a-hole and not to publically destroy his life. Now put your money where your mouth is and stand for those individuals’ right to be a-holes in your eyes and still have a life free of public personal humiliation.

All the best & No hard feelings, Scrutinizer.

The disappearance of this blog post makes me think there's been a realization of some sort, perhaps that the post closely resembled accounts of "gang stalking", posted by individuals suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? I wonder if you realize in turn, how close you are to organized stalking yourself.

Thank you for taking the time, Andrew.

I have noticed this pattern in many online communities which are controlled by one or small group of people, I think it's straight from the playbook.

I agree and you’re very welcome!

> Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that.

https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/489

"since the start."

That commit is replacing the logo and link of the previous sponsor Private Internet Access with one for Shells instead, and looking at the Wayback Machine that previous logo and link has been there since about April 2016[1] in the same location with the same level of prominence. (The one in the top-right corner underneath the Wayback Machine's toolbar, not the "Private Internet Access" entry in the footer which seems to have disappeared with the switch to Shells.) So in reality, this isn't some shocking new intrusion of corporate logos that began in 2021 despite ex-Freenode staff succesfully spinning it that way, it's something that's been going on pretty much since he purchased Freenode Inc half a decade ago. (Actually, maybe even before he did. Not 100% sure of the exact timeline.) The only thing that's changed is which sponsor and logo exactly is featured. Apparently somehow no-one thought to check if this key, easily-verified claim is actually true until I ended up stumbling on the old PIA logo by accident when looking for the new sponsor's one.

In fact, thinking about it I seem to remember some discussion of the fact that the PIA logo had been added at the time and that it was something to do with their funding of Freenode Live, and that no-one much seemed to care back then aside from a few trolls of the sort Freenode has always attracted under all its owners.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160413123025/https://freenode....

There were actually plenty of concerns about the PIA involvement and logo at the time, but they were largely dismissed by others with the usual "what are you complaining about, it's just business" rhetoric.

And that's how we ended up here.

I think you left out a few important things in that paragraph.

There was at least one significant dispute. Something about a DNS change that would cause many people to leave. What exactly was that?

Also, that Christel person or whatever their name, the fact that they apparently were kind of desperate for money at some point and so supposedly sold you something seems like you were taking advantage of them and the situation rather than getting involved from the goodness of your heart.

How can you own something like Freenode which is a completely volunteer effort that doesn't make money?

And what would be the point of "buying" it if you were not trying to monetize it? And if you were then how would that be in the spirit of "Free"node?

How is it "just in time" if the majority of the projects already left?

The DNS dispute is when I, who owned the domains, was cut off from the domains and simply asked for it back. As you can see I was approached by freenode to buy freenode please don’t twist it.

Did you read the PDF with the screenshots?

"If you make me do this I'll lose half the staff" "for a pointless dns change you'll probably never do anything with"

That sounds like a specific change was requested which was controversial.

> As you can see I was approached by freenode

You were approached by christel.

Ok..so were you cut off from access or did your own employee decide to enable two-factor authentication, and since you had neglected to set that up for quite some time, you were locked out?

Because that's what I heard.

Lol.

I am not twisting anything. If I had not read the PDF then how would I know christel was desperate?

Why is it so important for the Freenode community that you own the domain? Because as far as I can tell, the Freenode community moved to Libera.chat and made a much nicer website that doesn't have an ad on it for some kind of unrelated VM service prominently featured on the home page. And they have moved the chat rooms also.

Thanks Andrew, and very good that you prepared enough evidences to counter those issues raised by drama queens. All the free software is protected by copyrights, foundations, and so is the infrastructure. Somebody has to pay for it. Somebody does have assets, be it foundation or private individual or a group of individuals, but somebody is always considered owner of the assets and those assets have to be protected.

Thanks for doing the work, and I kind of feel it unfair and totally unjust to you as a protector and supporter of the IRC network. It is free because of people like you and others.

IMHO, all that drama was staged, planned.

The reason why such networks have to be held under legal entities is funding number one, as to keep networks financed by sponsors, and protection number two. Legal entities are formed under country's laws and in case of trouble it is legitimate to use laws to protect assets. You have not done nothing wrong in doing so.

Keep doing well!

it's free because the actual sponsors (the ISPs) paid for the servers and the staff volunteered their time to support the network

Mr Lee coming along and secretly giving christel a salary on the side would likely have had no effect on the operations of the IRC network had it not happened (bar maybe christel spending less time on IRC...)

I think the flashpoint was the nasty lawyerese received by the newly-instated head of staff (tomaw) after he had been elected. The story is impenetrable because, from what I gather, the lawyerese contained a gag order not to discuss the contents of the letter.

These letters were sent both ways. That’s why I was unable to speak until now.

Who sent them first, and why?

I couldn't unravel it in a 10-minute skim, over lunch just now.

I speculate that one of the causes of this confusion (which is eerily familiar, from countless other disputes in community projects) is that people involved in community project disputes tend not enlist professional communicators to represent their perspective, and the disputes don't tend to be covered by investigative journalists. And outsiders just aren't interested to unravel it. Many individuals invest much of their lives into community projects, sometimes with little else left, and aren't prepared for suddenly being subject to the court of public opinion. And the public generally isn't invested enough in the matter, to work long to understand it.

Anyway, it sounds unfortunate that Freenode appears to be going through a rough time, and I hope good comes out of this period of its history.

FWIW, before Freenode started, lilo was on other networks, and I recall him asking how to create a nonprofit organization, which I assumed that was what became Freenode. I think the intent was to have a legal structure that would permit an IRC network to sustainably represent particular community interests.

Freenode doesn't have any sort of non-profit. Freenode Ltd was created much later and only for organising Freenode Live.

Libera.Chat does have a non-profit, however, according to the announcement.

Looks like this PDPC charity might've been what lilo ended up doing to try to make Freenode sustainable (though my guess is that it didn't "own" Freenode)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Peer-Directed_Project...

Christel only legally owned anything of Freenode to sell to Andrew Lee because she took it over in the dissolution of PDPC. If PDPC never legally owned Freenode, it would be owned by... Rob Levin's estate? So I think PDPC did own Freenode in some form.

It sounds like rasengan/Andrew Lee wanted a specific DNS change made which was objectionable to the staff, and that triggered the whole mess. I hadn’t seen it mentioned before but one of the chats from Thomas includes something about backing off from a DNS change.

I was cut off from the domains 2 days after tomaw asked me to give him ownership. So I was asking to revert a change not make a new one.

In a weird way I sort of like the drama, reminds me of the old wild westy IRC days haha

A thought occurs -- this is probably the last big IRC network drama

The drama is "interesting" but it becomes disgusting when I realise that this affects people who just want a stable communication platform and don't care about the politics.

Yeah interesting in the same sense as watching a nature documentary and seeing the natural lifestyle of animals including being eaten by other animals

Interesting doesn't imply good

The posts by the volunteers were quite coherent. This one by Lee is not.