[cookguyruffles]

Speaking as an IRC lifer, every article I read about this fails to actually make any kind of cohesive point about what's going on and why it is bad. Explain like I'm 5 please?

Who controlled nickserv/chanserv before this Andrew fellow? It seems there is some leap to "omfg he's taking control of services!" without mention of who is /losing/ control. It seems perhaps a large chunk of story is missing here.

Meanwhile I'll probably continue using Freenode until it starts serving Viagra ads during connection or something similarly tangibly evil. Right now I just see a bunch of dumb IRC drama. It's a chat network, come on.

[pmlnr]

IRC == drama since the dawn of time.

[andrew_]

Who else recalls the self-flagellation that was required in order to get any kind of help in #cplusplus or #programming? Took a lot of humility and you had to eat a lot of crow back in those days. ah, seeking help on EFNet - the old rite of passage for young programmers.

[Karrot_Kream]

Yeah I'd only briefly hang out in the bigger programming channels because of the toxicity. When I was on IRC I would usually stick with a tight-knit group of friends in a private channel. Once IRC started waning, my friends and I left.

[kazinator]

I remember being kicked off #unix in Efnet sometime in 200x because I posted the controversial idea that work on IRC began in 1988 and I first compiled a client and got on in 1993.

[CapriciousCptl]

Isn't it crazy how you remember getting kicked/banned 20 years later? Around the same time (early 200x) I was temp-banned from #cpp or #c++ or whatever after being accused of asking a homework question. I had been active in the channel for awhile by then and simply didn't have homework because I was self-learning with everything I could find.

It just stuck with me because I idolized the people in that room at the time.

[cout]

Sounds like something we might have done in #c. Eventually I learned how to act like an adult, some time after I became one.

[kazinator]

It's not crazy if it was for a totally laughable reason, like puffed up pricks in #unix with channel ops don't even know IRC history.

[ok123456]

/mode #unix +k NOHELP

[Stranger43]

Absolutely this brings back memories of the channel takeover battles that used to happen on EFNet back in the days before nickserv and chanserv, or for that matter freenode.net but that was kind of the EFNet culture and the actual ops rarely got involved with individual channels and communities struggles unless it affected the overall network stability.

Freenode was however supposed be run by adults and relatively drama free, i dont know really i kind of drifted away from IRC around the time freenode.net was formed.

[_ktx2]

I think I might be able to do this.

Prior to recent times there was a Freenode head of staff that was elected named Christel. Powers seem to have been delegated from her as she had control of the legal entity.

In 2013 Freenode was sold to PIA for undisclosed sums and terms. Supposedly this was to launch a conference called Freenode Live (why Freenode wanted a conference is beyond me.) It was stipulated that Freenode staff would be able to maintain strategic control of the network. At some point Mr Lee of PIA requested that the domains be transferred back under his control and some ads for shells.com popped up on the Freenode website. Between there and now is a mystery.

Freenode isn't really just FOSS, believe it or not. It's a lot of hobbyists, tinkerers, etc... The vast majority of users you meet on there aren't data scientists or software engineers. The culture is this very independent, almost Libertarian-esque ideals. My take is that Mr Lee came in and reminded them the buck stops with him and no longer honored Freenodes more democratic culture of voting.

It's worth explaining that Freenode got in this state because the original owner died and his brother tried to monetize the network. There's precedent in the idea that people (staff and users) do not want a for-profit network. It's viewed as a conflict of interest and a consolidation of power where power is "meant" to be distributed and already quite scarce. These users will often avoid Slack and object to open communities being run on proprietary for-profit platforms. The reason people don't get it, in my view, is a difference in cultural values that are fairly unique to certain areas of FOSS and Freenode, LiberaChat, and OFTC.

Basically you had an official system of authority enforced by legal means and one implicit system of authority which users were familiar with that ran the day to day operations of the network. Those came to a head, and the network operators put the problem on the users because they didn't know how to deal with it.

[mulmen]

What legal and organizational constructs can help maintain the original intent of a project even after the passing of the creator?

A foundation wholly owned by a public benefit company?

I don’t expect or even want Freenode to “innovate” or develop new lines of business. I just want them to run the network. I am reluctant to contribute to such an organization because I fear their success.

[kodah]

Agreed. I think this is the attitude of much of the community. I was trying to wrap those points in objectivity and a way outsiders can understand.

[dpedu]

> In 2013 Freenode was sold to PIA for undisclosed sums and terms.

Sold by who? Christel alone? The brother-of-original-owner? What exactly was sold? The name? Server data?

[speeder]

There is a contract where seemly Christel sold everything, even stuff that was not hers to start with, to PIA.

That contract was hidden until recently, and seemly some of the staffers had to pay lawyers with money of their own pocket to figure out what is going on.

What made people realize how bad it was, is when the "owner" started to demand passwords for control of the servers, including ones that are not directly controlled by freenode, saying he has legal right to demand that.

[kodah]

I don't know the specifics, but from what I gathered it was the IP, trademarks, and infrastructure. Basically the whole thing.

[wott]

> It's worth explaining that Freenode got in this state because the original owner died

Didn't this original owner also have a very er... "personal" way of managing funds?

[gwillen]

My sense has been that the things we need to know are mostly pretty clear. There are things we don't know, but it seems that Andrew Lee is the _reason_ (or a reason) that we don't know many of those things.

- Who controlled nickserv/chanserv? I'm not sure, but my impression is that it was probably christel (who was head of Freenode staff) until she resigned, then tomaw (who became head of Freenode staff at that time), until he was served with threatening legal papers ordering him to deliver them to Andrew Lee.

[ok123456]

There is no real problem.

The freenode "staffers" just don't like the fact that someone was able to win the irc game (i.e., gaining more power) without following their invented arbitrary bureaucracy and dedicating their life to idling in the right set of channels.

This whole thing is really off topic and should be taken to ##wrongplanet .

[michaelmrose]

Every organization in which the people have real autonomy and power is literally an invented arbitrary bureaucracy. You just invented a really long way to describe civilization.

People don't like it when money trumps all other factors in a concern that perceptively wasn't for sale and threats and dishonesty don't help either.

It appears that nearly everyone involved believes there is a problem including Lee who now needs new paid staff to run what is likely a dwindling community. It sounds like you have an ax to grind personally.

[ok123456]

Nah. I've seen much larger IRC networks run with a fraction of the officiousness and ornery behavior from freenode "staffers".

It's not a general problem with civilization needing "law and order" or whatever.

[Macha]

Isn't Freenode the largest IRC network by a significant margin?

https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php

[pop11]

Click 2005. Observe Y axis.

[Macha]

I'm not sure early 00s IRC networks are a success story of light touch, politics free organisation.

[michaelmrose]

Do you mean that you had an issue with freenode staff and now enjoy their discomfort.

[ok123456]

Personal attacks are off-topic on hackernews.

[mjthompson]

I know you'll get downvoted but the last line did make me laugh.

Edit: delete some things I'm probably not qualified to comment on

[q3k]

> It does strike me as odd that people who run servers don't get o-lines, but a random group of people do?

IIUC it's the staffers/opers that actually run the servers - monitor health, manage the OS, perform software updates, manage ircd, debug issues, cordon broken machines, etc. That's the bulk of the work in order to keep the things actually running. The alternative, providing a server in exchange for powers on the network would clearly be an exchange, not a donation.

Plus, I'm pretty sure many machine donors don't want the extra work of maintaining the entire IRC/software stack, and are quite happy to exchange some spare organizational resources to a good cause. I know I would much rather donate spare rack capacity than to also spend hours maintaining yet another service.

[mjthompson]

I edited my comment after posting it to get rid of some of the commentary, since on reflection, I really don't know enough about them to offer an opinion. But thanks for clarifying that.

Are these staffers appointed by the community or by other staffers? I would have expected it to be a democratic process. Otherwise it does give off an elitist vibe that ok alludes to.

[q3k]

> Are these staffers appointed by the community or by other staffers? I would have expected it to be a democratic process. Otherwise it does give off an elitist vibe that ok alludes to.

I don't know, but I honestly don't care that much about it. My limited contact with staffers was excellent, they were helpful and never came off as arrogant (even when people did stupid shit), so effectively I couldn't care less about whether they were democratically elected or not.