The whole freenode kerfluffle | Hacker News Reader

The whole freenode kerfluffle

ariadne.space

152 pointsg0xA52A2A133 comments

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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

Personal attacks are off-topic on hackernews.

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

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

Click 2005. Observe Y axis.

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

Those same networks are still functioning with much less proportionate overhead.

They're also much more technically competent. Look at how the different networks handled the cross-protocol exploit a few years back where a well crafted link could cause the browser to connect to irc and spam. Most other networks required a PING/PONG on connect so they weren't vulnerable. Of the networks that didn't, they were able to mitigate that within minutes to hours by either a simple configuration change or a firewall rule. Freenode was unable to do anything for months. Their solution was to rewrite their entire ircd and tell people not to complain about the spam.

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

> 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.

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.

> 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.

IRC == drama since the dawn of time.

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.

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.

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.

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

/mode #unix +k NOHELP

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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

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.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

Hi, I don't really use freenode, but even after your explaination, I don't understand what Andrew's big sin is - that he wants to keep IRC like it was when he loved it in his youth? Okay, but what specifically does that mean - what is the down-side? So far all I've read is that freenode is owned by someone, and now he's exerting control that others don't like, but no details of what that control is.

BTW, "Let's..." is not misspelled. "Kerfluffle[sic]" is, but it's a misspelling I prefer, so good on ya!

>and now he's exerting control that others don't like, but no details of what that control is.

From my understanding, that's the point. The volunteers who ran Freenode were told that Andrew would be completely unable to exert any control over the server - and now that has turned out to not be the case. The taking of control itself was a betrayal of a previous agreement, and produced a status quo that the freenode people weren't happy with.

There's also allegations of forced advertising and "changes to network operations" on the Libera Chat website[0], which may have been significant to some of the volunteers.

[0]: https://libera.chat/

The problem is that he wants to change freenode into something different [1] than it is, and he attempts to execute this on basis of 'I own freenode limited so you have to do as I say' [2]. Complete with supposed legal threats in case of non-compliance.

This is something that works for companies with a clear ownership structure and typical employer/employee power dynamics, but not for volunteer-driven communities like freenode - in which people worked for free to build something that they believed in, and under the impression of the community being fully self-governed. What do you expect from these volunteers now, to just continue working for free on something that they now don't agree with, and with a person who obviously cares more about control than the service itself?

This likely doesn't impact me or you directly. But indirectly, if I see _all_ staff flee from a project that I interacted with, I'm following them. After all, these are the people that made and maintained Freenode into what it is today, the name is just a technicality.

[1] "On Decentralization", https://archive.is/NH1LN ; https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss

[2] https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...

> This is something that works for companies with a clear ownership structure

The ownership structure is clear, it is just unpopular within the community. There seems to be this sense of entitlement among Freenode developers and volunteers. You never had equity, but you thought you did. Whether or not that is the result of being misled is irrelevant. You have no stake. That's what "volunteers" are. Non stakeholding contributors. You contribute so long as the direction of the business is compatible with your morals. Nobody owes you a community.

Why is anyone surprised that this napkin diplomacy failed?

^^^ this

If there isn't a legal entity, the thing can't be protected. If there is a legal entity, and you're not officially part of it, then you're not part of it when it comes to scenarios like this.

Yes, it sucks. Yes, the internet is different from 20 years ago. (Yet one still can't own a domain in the sense of owning a book, just rent a domain for some time, so certain things haven't changed, but this is offtopic.)

I've been where the former freenode staff is now. I was part of a community site a long time ago, where the actual owners decided to close it down, and there was absolutely nothing I could do, despite being a contributer, an organiser, etc - in essence, a volunteer - for them, because I wasn't on any paper, anywhere.

Thank you!

I also want to point out that this is normal free-market stuff. The community is obviously strong enough to leave this company practically high-and-dry, and it is also obviously strong enough to maintain it's own fork if it chooses to do so. This is just iteration at work. If the new Freenode owners can't fix their mistakes; they will fail. So what. If the old Freenode developers are serious, they will succeed.

I am not surprised. I don’t think any human on earth could give these “volunteer” “staffers” a command which they would obey.

I don't understand the scare quotes here, and I believe you are talking out of ignorance for the situation here.

Counterpoint: Business equity does not confer ownership over labor. In this particular case, all you own from your equity is...

- A handful of servers (which are cheap)

- A name and a logo

- Community goodwill, much of which has already been set aflame

If the people running Freenode leave, and the people who used Freenode leave, then you don't really have anything left.

FWIW I don't think you two are in disagreement. Even if the owner of the business owes the volunteers nothing (which imo is strictly true), the _value_ of the organization lies in the work and social connections of the volunteers. Them leaving is just part of business, and if the now evacuated Freenode eats crow for it, that's their problem given the volunteers did the work anyway.

The ownership structure was very much not clear to the volunteers. They had no contract with this company and as far as they knew the company (which freenode as a network predates) owned little to nothing of consequence. (and volunteers are very much stakeholders in any project, just usually not shareholders)

The owner has the 'clear right' to fire volunteers who were never paid and have already quit.

The behavior, as I understand it, is that Lee and company behaved mendaciously, taking what was a community/volunteer "staff" run enterprise and legalistically maneuvering to turn it into his own fiefdom without consent or even a modicum of transparency.

Maybe this will have no operational effect, but it registers as terrifically unethical and destructive - he's predictably alienated and driven off most of the people running freenode. When people behave unethically and destructively in one scenario, it's easy to expect them to behave unethically and destructively in other scenarios. It's unacceptable from a governance perspective.

Moving away from freenode is simple risk mitigation.

Fiefdom? What do you mean?

I'm no native speaker nor have I ever heard that word before. Looking online I found this definition:

fiefdom /ˈfiːfdəm/

a territory or sphere of operation controlled by a particular person or group.

"a mafia boss who has turned the town into his private fiefdom"

A fiefdom is the domain of a feudal lord. Like "kingdom" but where the lord could be a duke, earl, baron, ...

Historically, lords had nearly absolute legal authority over the peasants living in their domain.

'fiefdom' in English with the slightly redundant -dom suffix, simply 'fief' in French (a term commonly used), and closer to the root, 'feudo' in Italian and Spanish.

Yes, what the other commenters said. By exerting unilateral control, he's destroying the existing democratic governance mechanisms and making it a sort of rule by dictatorship. If you metaphorically treat freenode as territory, you can say that it's become Lee's fief, or fiefdom.

It’s when a manager or leader thinks they are the king or God of their little organization, and typically run it like a despotic ruler

The term 'fief' comes from Medieval land tenure, where it's land granted to a lord in exchange for feudal service. Pop medievalism holds that feudal lords had pretty unlimited rights (the reality is that it's far more complex), and so the term 'fiefdom' in modern contexts carries a connotation that the ruler of the fiefdom is ruling it tyrannically. Another element of the modern connotation is that a fiefdom is usually small, and the ruler is acting as if it's rather more important than it actually is.

In short, it's a backhanded insult.

> Another element of the modern connotation is that a fiefdom is usually small, and the ruler is acting as if it's rather more important than it actually is.

> In short, it's a backhanded insult.

[citation needed]

Not sure where you could get citations for general cultural references like this. For what it's worth, his description of it being an insult is exactly how I understand it to be used too. Someone who thinks they are more powerful or important than they really are. Native English speaker here.

Fiefdom is especially funny when you know Lee was crowned king of Korea a couple of years ago:

* https://nextshark.com/korea-crown-prince-andrew-lee/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

That is hilarious. Thanks.

'Kerfluffle' is a hilarious misspelling - sounds like a brand of marshmallow fluff.

Imagine an ad campaign where disagreements were solved by fluffer nutter sandwiches.

I get the sense that it's not a mispelling in the sense that Ariadne doesn't know how kerfuffle is spelled. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I also think that the comparison to Ariadne's bunny plushie - i.e. a fluffy thing - is related. Kerfluffle can be read as a portmanteau of kerfuffle and fluffy - a kerfuffle caused by Lee's need for a soft, fluffy thing to protect his ego. Dunno. Deep exegesis that could be entirely off base - maybe it's just a typo.

Kerfluffle is the way I say and spell the word. Wiktionary lists it as a variant:

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/kerfluffle

Oh, cool. Kerfluffle is so much cuter.

When you look at the etymology that's clearly a misspelling that has stuck somehow.

Lots of modern English words arose from misspellings (and mishearings) - if one becomes popular, it becomes an English word. That’s how languages evolve, otherwise we’d still be speaking Proto-Indo-European.

Plenty of words are like that. "Apron" was originally "napron" but due to confusion from "a napron" sounding like "an apron" it changed that way.

I personally have always said "kerfluffle", not kerfuffle.

Kerfluffle is a misspelling that has yet to be "standardized", which is why you will only find that misspelling in crowd sourced dictonaries where people have added definitions to justify their misspelling.

I've heard a lot of people pronounce it that way. So much so that I figure it may actually be like 'irregardless' now.

> I don't understand what Andrew's big sin is

Lee founded Private Internet Access [1]. They had a history of being sketchy [2] and inexplicably hired Mark Karpeles.

I don’t have a connection to Freenode. But I can recognise a bad actor when I see one.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

[2] https://telegra.ph/Private-Internet-Access-VPN-acquired-by-m...

He sold pia to an adware company and didn't bother to inform customers.

They seem to be attributing a lot malice to his actions that isn't evident. This is the most low stakes power play I've seen play out. Just talk to the guy directly instead of stomping off.

Why are you assuming no private communication happened? They aren't paid anything so setting up a new service with a domain not controlled by the disagreeable party seems to be the rational choice. What are they losing exactly?

Also, there has been plenty of private communication. We know because much of it has leaked.

Nothing about the reasons behind his actions are evident, despite repeated questioning. The answers he gives don't add up (a lot of vague mumbling about improving freenode by making it distributed, which seems completely counter to his actual actions).

Making it distributed? Isn't that any IRC network with 2 or more servers by definition?

Indeed, this is one of the ways in which what he says doesn't make much sense.

Lee expresses interest in decentralised/distributed alternatives to DNS so it does make sense. What doesn't make sense is the fact that I'm seeing a more-homogeneous set of ircops on multiple networks these days.

> When freenode announced that it was joining with Private Internet Access in 2017, the domain name, as well as unspecified other “assets”, were sold to one Andrew Lee via a holding company. Staff were uncertain but assured that PIA was to have no operational influence.

> In early 2021, that changed. New advertising was pushed onto the freenode website without warning. The head of staff at the time ultimately resigned rather than explain. In the time since, there have been changes to network operations for which we have received no explanation.

> Control of freenode infrastructure will soon be transferred to Freenode Limited and its agents.

Seems like Andrew Lee is maneuvering to take control of the freenode irc network infrastructure. I would've assumed that the freenode irc network is comprised of volunteer servers.

> I would've assumed that the freenode irc network is comprised of volunteer servers.

It is.

That makes the whole situation that much more suspect, why someone like Lee should desire to take over a network not knowing that it consists of sponsor servers.

Seeing what happened with Snoonet (a desolate wasteland), I fully expect to happen to Freenode as well.

Shame. All for one man's ego.

Snoonet was a desolate wasteland long before the PIA “merger.” Since then, Discord has largely eaten up subreddits for communication platform of choice.

It is, but the legal challenge would be expensive according to https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461

I hope this entire ordeal makes it all clear that when a company snatches up a community project, it'll be very likely with the intention to monetize it down the road, and I really think the changes being vaguely alluded to were oriented towards that.

I was a PIA customer precisely because I knew they donated to freenode (among other things; ie: financial sponsorship for WireGuard).

Doesn’t seem to me like staff are fully aware of what they’re destroying and how there will never be another real dominant IRC network. Freenode was it. Slack and discord have killed IRC for a lot of things already, and this is now the final nail in the coffin. “Libra”-whatever will not last long, and neither will freenode without staff.

Is all of this worth it? Did he really do anything that bad? Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will? Isn’t there a reasonable explanation for trying to put some of these things in LLCs and formal organizations, etc.? Someone has to own the domain, right?

It doesn’t sound to me like he was asking for a lot of effort.

Anyway, too late to cry about it, it’s done and over with now. RIP to IRC. I guess I’ll see you guys on Discord! I love the modern internet!!!

> Someone has to own the domain, right?

Why not an association then? Why must it always be someONE who owns something? Communal property is the way forwards, not setting up fences.

It is already owned by an association, a non-profit called Freenode Limited.

Nice downvote for looking up a simple legal fact, to address the misleading impression from the GP that an individual person holds the domain.

Perhaps this will be downvoted as well because the childishness is strong on this issue, but for the benefit of anyone who cares, the parent comment is at least technically correct (the best kind of correct).

The domain at the centre of this controversy is owned by an incorporated non-profit association registered as a company limited by guarantee, not by a "someone".

This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand.

If the Freenode volunteers and users move to Libera Chat, then Libera Chat becomes the new Freenode.

Oracle didn't kill Continuous Integration when they bought and destroyed the Hudson project. All the volunteers moved to the forked Jenkins project, the users followed. Jenkins is now the new Hudson.

Like Oracle, Andrew and Co. will end up holding the bag on a dead brand as the project moves elsewhere.

Point made was that there are succesful competing alternatives in slack and discord. Hence any damage to existing IRC communities is likely to see some users move towards IRC competitors, rather than another IRC server.

> This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand.

Sure, but it will still negatively affect the number of users.

For example, I'm already aware of one community that decided to end their IRC presence altogether (and only keep their discord) rather than migrate their freenode channel to another network.

There will undoubtedly also be a number of individuals who decide to just quit IRC instead of moving.

And I've heard of Jenkins, I've never heard of Hudson. So that's something. How long was Hudson dominant for?

Freenode has been the go-to name for IRC (in FOSS circles) for two decades plus. There's also OFTC which I don't know the whole story of, and there are some projects making their home on Efnet and elsewhere too, but the majority of everything has been on Freenode. To the point that I don't even /list anymore, I just blindly /join #name_of_project and almost always land somewhere useful.

This kills that. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to Libera. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to OFTC. Some projects will stay on Freenode.

It fragments an ecosystem that was useful primarily because it was so universal, and the value of that universality is not conserved through fragmentation.

I wish I understood the complaint better, so I could make a better argument for projects to move, and hopefully restore some of that universality elsewhere. But as it is, I simply can't make sense of the complaints without a lot of backstory I don't apparently have. For all the volunteers to walk out, there must be something there, I just don't grok it.

> Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will?

Good will, sure, but the work of volunteer staff? Why would it?

If you're going to move from IRC, give Zulip a look.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123

I like zulip a lot, but is it really comparable? IRC is built as a simple open protocol and the clients are tuned towards being able to join multiple servers at once. This is a hard requirement for mass adaptation in for example FOSS communities IMO. There is no way that people will bother logging into the zulip or mattermost instances for the 5-15 different FOSS projects they are interested in.

This means either a centralized solution like Discord or something like Matrix which is 100x more complex than IRC.

I can well imagine Zulip failing for FOSS for as stupid a reason as users finding juggling user accounts tiresome, but the Zulip codebase offers servers plenty of flexibility in authentication options.

https://fmcthanos.zulip.com/help/configure-authentication-me...

Apparently neither Andrew Lee or the freenode staff have any idea what happened to the money he apparently donated to freenode (the company has not filed its accounts as required and is in danger of being dissolved, which is legally Lee's responsibility but he seems to think the volunteer staffers who claim no knowledge of donated funds are responsible for it). Freenode mostly operates off of donated infrastructure and volunteer efforts, the expenses they have are basically minimal.

> "Let’s [sic] take IRC further"

Why the "sic"? Is there something wrong with contracting "Let us" in this way?

I read that to mean that there is not "us" only "me".

Nope. [sic] is definitely wrong there. Looks like it has been fixed though.

[sic] [sic] :)

Reposting my comment from a earlier thread.

This story is just so unclear and leaves me full of questions. It’s a complete mess, despite the numerous semi-official statements trying to clear things up.

Things I’m wondering about:

- why was freenode being sold in the first place?

- for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale?

- Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves?

- why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network?

- Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold?

Can anyone please help me understand?

> - why was freenode being sold in the first place?

> - for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale?

> - Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold?

It was to organize and sponsor a live conference ("Freenode #live").

The contract is not public, and not even (now former) freenode staff knows the terms. See the first two paragraphs here: https://gist.github.com/edk0/478fb4351bc3ba458288d6878032669...

> - Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves?

It was mainly to support the conference, so this was a success. It's unknown if any other money was exchange.

> - why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network?

There is a tentative explanation in the OP, but we may never know the actual reasons unless we are Andrew Lee himself.

Bribes of oper and money? Aka offering someone a job as a staff member? Am I understanding that correctly?

Offering a job position can be bribery. It's not a stretch to interpret that particular chat log as exactly that.

Bribery for what? What would they be getting other than someone to do staffer work for them?

Influence over the community's perception that freenode is still freenode, and that things are stable, because some staff is still on their side, and because an influential project (Alpine) stayed with freenode.

Whoa! There are now money in IRC?

The ex-Freenode staff seem to be saying there is. I am also confused.

if he's truthful in saying he funded freenode with more than a million dollars... seems like it

I wonder where that money went, especially considering the hosting for all the IRC servers is donated by its sponsors (ISPs)

I read the log.

That Shane person, literally told Ariadne she would have power to ban whoever she wants, screw with people she doesn't like, punish her enemies...

She replied she have no enemies, he tried to point out that is still a good power to have and whatnot.

She then explained to him that banning someone from Freenode can damage that person career if they are involved in FOSS community, considering how many important projects communicate only there and all.

Later in the conversaion I saw something I interpreted as a kind-of threat too, when in a passing remark Shane mentioned her sexual fetishes.

Then he implied that certain Linux distros have advantages in Freenode, and Alpine could have it too...

I think you get the point, it is not just a job offer, the way he was writing looked like more someone trying to imitate characters in the Godfather movie.

It largely read like a hamfisted attempted at persuasion, I'm honestly not as scandalised as Ariadne seemed to be. This is par for the course in any political setting: help me and I'll help you.

The foul smell simply comes from the way that guy Shane communicates - the short sentences, the somewhat-juvenile form, it feels like you're talking with an excited and vaguely sinister teenage salesman. I think he misjudged the type of person he was talking to, Ariadne clearly is not the stereotypical IRC kid.

Shane is not a teenager, neither Ariadne, Freenode is not a kiddie thing, Freenode founder was already adult when he founded it, they had a 503 setup in the US with all the bureaucracy, had to move to UK for legal reasons, had visits from the FBI (it is mentioned in one of the logs).

Offering tools to ban your enemies, while you know the network even had FBI involved in it, doesn't sound to me like childish behaviour.

I never said he was a teenager, I said he came off as one.

Presenting an alternative user perspective here, I would go on freenode, but only for sports channels (really, and how that happened is because on reddit before they started promoting discord, there was a window where IRC was advertised for sports chat, usually during game nights).

Freenode wasn't only for technology channels, though they were absolutely the majority.

My experience with freenode has been a positive one, the sports channels had the same crowd of regulars and there were no real issues.

Freenode was very nice, especially compared to the shower that EFNet was in the 90s and I am sorry to see that the freenode network is having troubles now.

IRC is a great technology, it's too difficult for the average user to understand, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Do I miss IRC drama? No I don’t think so.

Seems like this may have been avoided if Freenode had just registered as an actual nonprofit that could have held/owned the domain and infrastructure.

Ironically, that is in fact what happened. It's called Freenode Limited, and it's a registered nonprofit which holds the domain.

The trouble is the people who have left are unhappy with how it was done.

This is like reading about the political intrigue of an ant colony. (jk ant colonies are fascinating)

So, is this the first bifurcation? OFTC or Libera. Yesterday, I thought it was just Libera.

OFTC has existed a long time, it's an option for projects that want to presumably just step out of this present drama entirely. Libera is the new Freenode, in terms of management staff and likely rules and policy.

I've been on Freenode since 2006.

I've been known as 'imode' for a couple of years now.

I called out Lee, and he took my nickname away. There are already abuses of power going on, and he has no legal authority over any of the infrastructure.

imode: Nick/channel is temporarily unavailable

  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Information on imode (account imode):
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Registered : Oct 05 03:45:24 2016 (4y 32w 6d ago)
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Last seen  : (about 0 weeks ago)
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Flags      : HideMail, Private
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): imode has enabled nick protection
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): *** End of Info ***
  - You are now known as imode

You're still in services DB and I'm able to use your nick. The "temporarily unavailable" error is literally that; your nick was probably recently protected by services, in which case you'd have to `/ns release` for it back.

So freenode has suffered a hostile take over by the korean imperial family. No shit! On vit une époque formidable.

Well, no, not the Korean imperial family. There is, obviously, no Korean imperial family anymore. Lee is a pretender.

all monarchs are illegitimate pretenders if you think about it.

The word pretender ("to reach/stretch out") in this context simply means a claimant for a position that is occupied or gone. It has nothing to do with the modern connotation of someone making something up.

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