The Freenode resignation FAQ, or: “what the fuck is going on?”

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92 points·kgm··8 comments

If freenode does get renamed or reincarnated as a different network, it won't be the first time projects on the network had to migrate to a new domain. Prior to freenode.org, it was known as opn.net (though I never really understood the reason for the change). We survived that change in names, and we can survive another one.

It’s funny to me that it seems like all online communities fray and fall apart. IRC was one of the big first ones and has had this kind of drama since almost the beginning. [0]

So I wonder if there’s even a golden path that keeps a community together and still interesting and useful enough to attract new members.

[0] https://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html

How hard would it be to rename everything and get a different domain? I assume it is pretty hard to do that?

Maybe Freenode could become Freednode. Or Freenet. Or Fossville. FreeOfLeeNet

From the draft resignation letters, looks like if this does happen it will be libera.chat .

It should be like one line in the IRC server config to change the hostname, then update a few lines to link to other servers in the network, probably new certificates for that, update a few domain name references in the MOTD, maybe edit firewall rules, probably also the round-robin/load balancer config, wait for DNS propagation. The longer-lasting pain will be for channel operators who didn't advise their users where to connect if Freenode goes down, or set up fallbacks.

Glad to hear that IRC is still full of drama!

keeps it free and alive

I think it is especially ironic that this happens to freenode because of how strict it has been about enforcing "official" channels and ## for non-official ones.

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