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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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?

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)

^^^ 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.

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

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.

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 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.

Fiefdom? What do you mean?

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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

>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/

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

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

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.

Oh, cool. Kerfluffle is so much cuter.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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