Aside from not really knowing what Freenode is/was (a bunch of IRC servers?) none of that really makes clear what Andrew Lee is actually doing that is so objectionable.
As for the situation, if I understand correctly:
- Andrew Lee unexpectedly transferred control of the domain names without telling the community of maintainers who actually volunteer, unpaid, to keep the relay servers running.
- The maintainers perceived the company that now held the domain names as "sketchy." Andrew is the director of the company but it looked like its corporate filing status was out-of-date or something.
- In a damage control chat, Lee explained that the domain names were transferred because someone at the sketchy company had a plan to "decentralize ownership of the domain name" (which sounds kind of ridiculous up-front?). Lee also made references to proposals he'd never proposed to those folks which documented the transfer, and other such things... there was apparently also some reference to Freenode costing "millions of dollars" which the maintainers did not appreciate -- responses with the emotional tone of "you mean our donated compute and time that we don't get paid for is costing you millions? how?? and if not, how dare you complain that the main burden is on you rather than on us?"
- And part of the problem is that Lee isn't, you know, a peer of these volunteers running his own Freenode server and having conversations with them on a daily basis, so he came across as a domineering outsider.
For these reasons it looks like the volunteers have basically decided to flee the one domain name and start up a separate one, in the hopes that the users get the message and head on over to the new domain.
It might just be that there's no affordable legal recourse.
I guess you were arguing morally, just pointing out this isn't legally true everywhere.
Sounds like you forgot about the very expensive conference freenode staff organized with rasengans money
> Freenode is a non profit organization that benefits from support from Private Internet. It is not owned by Private Internet. We are serious fans of IRC and the open source community, so it makes sense for us to divert profits to orgs like freenode among others.
> To be clear, we also donate to other orgs: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/companies-we-spo... Our new merged company will continue to do the same as we are in fact the same company going forward - just much better resourced.
They're all a bunch of shady scammers. I don't understand why people trust the freenode staff either, since they evaded or demured when challenged about selling freenode to scammers years ago.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210520103526/https://freenode....
"The rumors of a 'hostile takeover' are simply untrue - I've been the guardian and owner of freenode since 2017, when Christel, the former owner approached me and asked if I was interested in purchasing it, as we had in previous years discussed this."
It doesn’t appear he was lying, because by all accounts he owned it personally.
Said promise is in writing, but only has a few chats message, nothing official (they are a bunch of volunteers doing that for a couple decades as friends, hard to fault them).
Christel seemed to sell out, and when she got kicked out of her op at freenode by other staff Lee came out of the shadows.
Since the volunteers previous could do this, and were promised that nothing was going to be changed it was pretty upsetting.
Then one other person comes in saying Andrew said he could be a mod now, please grant permissions.
- a few years ago, the previous head-of-staff ('christel') became an employee of Andrew Lee's company
- sometime last year they left the company and also stopped being active as a staff member
- the rest of the staff elected a new head ('tomaw')
- Andrew Lee didn't recognise tomaw as christel's successor (and maybe tried to appoint his own choice of successor)
So I think it isn't so much about anything Lee has done, so much as the fact that he's no longer taking a hands-off role, as (the staff apparently think) he promised.
Also perhaps that his claim to be in a position to take charge is based more on his ability to pay for lawyers than a solid legal foundation (it's clear that he bought something, but not so clear what, and not clear that it was the seller's to sell).
I think the underlying problem is that freenode's previous parent organisation was dissolved in 2013, apparently without setting up an official successor.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130322063238/http://blog.freen...
Is this really correct? As far as I understand tomaw tried to claw back freenode assets from rasengan which initiated this whole mess.
Maybe if he’s your actual boss and you are being paid.
Free isn’t enough to deal with this kind of shit (when you can set up and own your competing server in a few seconds).
Of course this isn't stopping him essentially staging a coup by ejecting the original volunteer staff and replacing them with a staff of his choosing.
Freenode is a community project that is in the process of being co-opted by a shady organisation.
Where is this motive made apparent?
edit: s/add/ads/
[0] https://freenode.net/ [1] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Freenode was managed by volunteers without any official organisation. A couple years ago, the person that the volunteers considered their "head" informally made a UK company that would own at least the name and domain name, merely out of a wish to have some legal structure instead of random staff users owning random parts of it. How much of it is owned by the company is very vague, staff are not on contract, servers are loaned without any paper signed by third parties, ...
Then recently, that head sold said company to Andrew Lee's company, who made the promise to the staff to not involve himself. Then that head pushed for profits ads on the website, with no warning nor explanation, and with the profits going to said company. Staff complained a lot, head is removed from the freenode staff and then removed from the board of the company she had sold.
Conflict of management erupts, and was justified freenode having no clear admin structure. But Lee comes out of it acting as if he was the boss and owner of the entire platforms, ask that servers and users data gets transferred to him. When staff rebels and refuse that, he "removes them", which ends up with the hilarious moment of him asking them to de-op themselves (remove their admin status) which he can't do himself since he doesn't even have the authority. On several occasion he claims that "the board of freenode voted to have you removed", while he means the board of his private company freenode ltd (which the staff have no relation of any kind with), and he is the only member of said board.
Most of staff agrees about a need for a proper structure, but refuse to see everything transferred to an opaque and for profit company. Lee argue that's it's the only solutions. Several head of major communities or projects hosted on freenode make the suggestion of transferring the control and data to an official not for profit like the FSF and Lee and staff being given the lead in the interim to a proper governance.
Lee reacts by trying to "bribe" some of them with admin powers and/or financial sponsorship for their project if they side with him, which goes terribly wrong, and them saying "Now I will never have anything to do with Freenode under Lee anymore".
That's a summary of the event as understood by me. It seems the governance issue was real, but it also seems one side is saying "it should be owned by a non profit with clear governance and clear rules for data protection" and the other side, Lee, is saying "all the data and admin privileges should be given to my for profit that doesn't report to anyone else than me".
Frankly, while there is gray on both side, his action made it pretty clear that I wouldn't want any of my data in his hands.
Not recently. In 2017. Why did freenode staff support (or at least refuse to engage in complaints about it) until now?
I second this sentiment. Can anyone summarize objectional actions that Andrew has either taken or committed to taking in the future?
As far as I can tell, he found a way to purchase legal rights to Freenode. And, he's communicated this control in a way that pissed off existing mods.
But, as a Freenode user, what I really care about is how this will impact me as a user. If the only potential impact this will have on me as a user is a smaller user base, there's a clear solution: don't leave?
From what has been revealed, Lee wiggled himself in from conference sponsorship side. He used this inroad to strike a secret ownership deal with a person who the rest of the crew reckons was not in position to decide. Freenode is not a commercial enterprise. It's more like a community soccer club sold to a sponsor by a guy who happened to be a secretary with a stamp - after the years you've been tending the lawn and volunteering with training.
Yes, they are understandably pissed off, as one would be with hostile takeover by some renegade crypto prince (yes he really claims he's a prince).
I know its a bit of semantics but I have found that many (if not most) of the loud and proud DT supporters are incredibly irritating. I find them just as bad or worse than the hyper politically correct/SJW crowd.