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Comment by rasengan | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the PDF? It’s actually really clear there. Lots of defamatory and false comments were made by the former staff - which are proven to be false in the document.

In terms of the ownership, it was on the main blog and website for the past 4 years [1].

Also checkout http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/

Thanks!

[1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

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I read the whole PDF and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say it doesn't really make anything clear at all.

Your claim of ownership over Freenode isn't news; it's one detail that both sides of this controversy seem ready to agree on: someone named christel somehow sold you an IRC network 5 years ago, unbeknownst (until recently) to the people operating the IRC network on their own servers.

What is the PDF meant to clarify beyond that?

> someone named christel somehow sold you an IRC network 5 years ago, unbeknownst (until recently) to the people operating the IRC network on their own servers.

This is false [1]. The PDF clarifies a great many of the unanswered questions and verified that despite former staff attempt to say I was lying, all I did was spoke the truth and helped when asked.

Please review the PDF.

Lastly, I also run servers on freenode and have for years preceding the acquisition.

The PDF puts to rest all the falsehoods and uncertainties in my opinion but please let me know if there is something I missed!

[1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn

I'm also not great at following this whole thing. When did you acquire Freenode or how?

The ownership chain of Freenode was

1. Rob Levin/Lilo, personally

2. Open Projects Network

3. ???

4. PDPC

5. Christel, personally

6. freenode ltd.

7. Andrew Lee (via freenode ltd)

After PDPC, what christel personally owned to transfer to freenode ltd to sell to Andrew Lee is... hard to define. A domain and a website, sure. But christel didn't own the servers, did not employ people, and does not have any agreement with the users, something which continued into freenode ltd. And apart from the users, operators, servers, and domain, it's not clear what an IRC network is to own.

It seems to have been 2017 (hopefully I recall the year correctly), by transfer of legally owned/registered assets (all that comes to mind immediately that was under non-volunteer ownership is a couple of servers and a domain name or two, but maybe I'm mistaken about that). Of course, I'm not on any side of this, especially not the "inside" (wherever that may be), and I've just read some of the stuff being published by both sides.

In my estimation, the biggest potential problem for Freenode policy that I see is based on the the statements by some departing staffers that indicate the parent company may collect and monetize user data. That would be a pretty shitty outcome. I asked a current (post-split) Freenode staffer about improving privacy measures on the network, and got very encouraging responses, though. Of course, a single staffer is not exactly an ironclad indication of policy. Perhaps the only way to really know how it'll hash out is to wait and see. I plan to keep an eye on the Freenode privacy policy.

You keep saying this, and people keep telling you they have read the PDF. Perhaps it's helpful for you to hear this stated plainly: the PDF is inscrutable, and does not say clearly what you seem to believe it does.

The announcement you link to here is itself clear as mud and has been quoted by your opponents. It says Freenode and PIA are "joining forces", "in the same family", but "continue to operate as a not-for-profit entity with the same management". That could mean anything. In particular, the first sentence after the subhed "what's next" reads "There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now."

> There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now."

And it absolutely did until it didn’t (as per the meeting agenda notes) as you can see.

Thanks for helping to make that part clear.

Again: it's not clear from anything you've said why those meeting notes were problematic for you, since the one thing announced terms of the arrangement between PIA and Freenode do seem to make clear is that you were not to be operationally involved in Freenode.

> the PDF is inscrutable

I was able to follow it pretty easily. What did you have trouble with?

Sure, if it's helpful:

* Its central claim, that PIA or Lee or whoever directed a bunch of money to Freenode or people involved with freenode, isn't contested by anyone. There's no record to set straight there.

* It spends the bulk of its time talking about a problem Lee seems to have with Thomas Welsey ("tomaw", I think?) --- but the logs with "tomaw" seem relatively civil? It's not really even clear what the problem here is.

* The public announcement from Christel and the IRC logs make it pretty clear that the Freenode operator community believed Lee was to have no operational role managing Freenode. What seems to have upset Lee here is a reorganization of Freenode's operational management, and something about who has the login for Freenode's DNS. Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me.

Subtextually: there's the additional problem of "what the hell does it mean to own an IRC network?" Neither Lee nor his company appear to run all the Freenode servers. Those servers are the actual IRC network. It's not that IRC's nature makes it impossible to own a network, but rather just that whatever it is Lee means by "owning" it, the onus is on him to explain it.

This PDF would be better if it stated clearly up top what the problem was, what the competing claim was, and why Lee's claim is right. Then, all these random chat logs should just be supporting appendices.

I'm not saying Lee is wrong about any of this. I'm saying that I do not understand what he is claiming in the first place.

> Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me.

There's "freenode" -- the network, the volunteers, and there's 'Freenode Limited' the company, which owns the Freenode domain and trademark. The latter were being held by christel, and she seemed to have sneakily sold them to Lee because she needed money (she seems to have lied to the rest of team about the details of transfer, the rest of the team only learned later about all that was handed over to Lee when lawyers got involved). By virtue of controlling the domain and having access to the website, Lee seems to have put ads on the site... this rubbed some folks the wrong way. They all had a foreboding feeling of things to come and tried to get the domain firmly under their control... to which Lee resisted. Lee does own the domain, he paid for it fair and square after all, so he's got that going for him...

But at this point that's the only thing he's got going for him.... because Freenode is an IRC network with community roots that wants to remain community-oriented and away from commercialization and pesky shell ads, so Freenode is no longer what it used to be, Libera is, and Lee is now left holding a dud.

This is the only explanation I've read so far that makes any sense, thanks!

> PIA or Lee or whoever directed a bunch of money to Freenode or people involved with freenode, isn't contested by anyone.

Because many of the things presented by Andrew Lee (rasengan) seem to be distortions and half-truths, the statement above deserves some scrutiny.

Andrew Lee claims to have donated an amount greater than 1 million (assuming US dollars) to Freenode.

As far as I can tell, this was not to Freenode the IRC network, it was for the FreeNode Live conferences. This conference took place in 2017 and 2018, and had approximately 250 attendees in 2017 and 150-200 attendees in 2018.

The relevant parts as far as I can tell:

• the exact amount donated (1 million) has only been mentioned by Andrew Lee, and has not been verified by anyone else

• the amount donated is only for the two FreeNode Live conferences

• the FreeNode Live conferences seemingly have nothing to do with the freenode IRC network

• none of the money was every given to the people who donate the servers that run the freenode IRC network, or the operators that volunteer their time to run it

A lot of people seems to conflate the two. Andrew Lee's comments seem to encourage that ambiguity (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236734), presumably because it seems to legitimize his hostile takeover of freenode IRC.

His contribution to the Freenode Live conferences (whatever monetary amount that was) should not entitle him to freenode IRC, he has not given a penny towards that.

Do you plan to waive your attorney-client privilege for your lawyers' communications and release them to the community? This would be a really lovely piece of transparency by you.

If not, why?

>There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now

It did until I was locked out of the dns and an internal reorganization and structure was put in place. The screenshots from former staff agenda is on the PDF.

I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.

There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.

Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.

Again: there's nothing about DNS in the meeting minutes that you just cited upthread.

I'm also a little confused. The PIA/Freenode announcement says "There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now." Why would you be involved operationally in any way with Freenode's administration? What would any reorganization have mattered to you? Wasn't the point of the structure you claim you had that Freenode's operators had self-determination?

These are still more instances of this PDF you've produced not really clarifying your position here.

He asked you that the head of staff, a.k.a the only person really responsible and managing the network, to own the domain. This is a sensible request.

"announcing a new ircd and a partnership with OFTC" ? Dude. Solanum is an evolution of Seven, which needed to evolve; based on Charybdis. It's not _new_, it's just an _evolution_, and one that is badly needed (to support ircv3 features and much more).

OFTC is also working on that IRCd. This is not a mad partnership either. Two networks joining forces to develop and improve a proven IRC platform (Charybdis/Atheme) is not something insane at all.

Hang on. If I'm following all this correctly, at that point the current head of staff had only held that role for less than a month. So the big demand here was that control over the domain name was transferred not to the community, or to some non-profit, but to some individual who'd seemingly been manoeuvred into place for the purpose of transferring that control to them. That certainly smells like a shady takeover attempt of some kind, even if the details are opaque.

The previous holder of that job, Christel, had access to the DNS account, why couldn't Tom?

Like, yeah, Tom was maneuovered into place to take control of the DNS account, because thats what a head of staff does. Do you think that each new US president shouldn't get the nuclear codes either?

He wasn't just asking for access to the DNS account - which it seems like, in fact, he already had and used to try and lock Andrew Lee and others involved in Freenode out - but for ownership of the domains to be transferred to him personally. Which would mean that in effect he would be the one who decided what Freenode was and who controlled it from then on, and if any other staff or users disagreed they could just pound sand. In particular, he appears to have rejected the idea of any kind of community ownership or control over the domain ownership.

It looks like he asked about the domain transfer, and from the transcript Lee didn't say "no", and then later --- it looks like a month later, from the transcripts the other Freenode ops posted --- Lee asked for an employee of Freenode Ltd to be given access to Freenode's DNS and IRCop status.

Here's a log; search for "kevinp":

https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a...

This is all super weird.

The screenshots seems incomplete, which makes me doubtful to trust them. If you are able to show the full conversations it could enlighten me further, but truncated pictures and screenshots won't do.

The internal reorganization and structure seems a sensible thing to do (as an outsider it even looks like an improvement) and was agreed by all the staff. You weren't supposed to interfere so why a new structure and reorg would affect you ?

You also seemed to be annoyed by them improving the current IRCd. Why that would matter to you ?

> I don’t wish to be on irc 24/7 contrary to what people might or might not think.

then why acquire freenode?

To be fair, volunteers on freenode also had lives outside of IRC.

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