It's over for Freenode. The biggest channels have already moved to Libera. The Arch Wiki for example doesn't even mention Freenode anymore. Hopefully it won't take long for everyone else to move as well.
Has the person who came up with this idea ever met people? This kind of thing regularly blows up private platforms, on an open protocol like IRC this was guaranteed to trigger a swift mass migration.
1) kick all users out and destroy reputation
2) ???
3) profit!
then probably yes.
Seeing the situation from the outside, it's obvious that what they're doing is self-defeating, but I suppose that they saw that they were hemorrhaging channels and users and saw the writing on the wall and decided to enact desperate measures in order to save the network.
Given the health of IRC in general there's probably not enough room for both Freenode and Libera to strive. One of them was bound to become irrelevant, and the momentum favored Libra even before this desperate move.
I'm afraid that we're just witnessing the death throes of freenode.
I agree that one will end up on top, and also that Freenode will likely die completely - but even when it comes to large FOSS-related networks, there were two active ones before this: Freenode and OFTC.
If you run FreeNode into the ground and cause all the users to flee, there's nothing left, just a name with negative brand value (like Enron).
Fast-forward today. All those channels are moving now, none left! Yesterday this could be considered a 55/45% split and had new FreeNode staff taken a win-trust-dont-rock-boat approach, I'm sure the network would've been fine.
Yesterday I was staying on FreeNode, because I don't really know the thinking behind all parties involved and could see the possible reasoning on both sides. Today I'm disconnected from FreeNode and on OFTC + Libera.
meanwhile the sycophants on his payroll are no doubt telling him he's doing a grand job
This could be a good starting point for further reading: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...
He was also declared crown prince of Korea by a member of royalty (no, Korea doesn't have Emperors anymore, it's meaningless for practical purposes).
From "The Freenode Resignation FAQ" at https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af4...
> [The new Freenode owner] Andrew was repeatedly asked in the "policy discussion channel" whether slurs, racism and transphobia are now permitted on Freenode. No answer has been forthcoming.
The new owner either will not answer, or will not take a side, in the Culture War. In response, a number of users have taken his non-answers as an answer, and are leaving.
This is about ownership and control. Andrew is trying to seize legal control over an organization run by volunteers. The volunteers (and everyone else) aren't happy with the way this was handled or the way Andrew is using his power to silence dissent.
[0] https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/korean-prince-andrew-lee...
Which is kind of hilarious when you compare it to this spectacle :b
The Empire of Korea has be defunct for 110 years (which is, sure, over 60, but it is weird to describe it that way.)
> My understanding is at this point they're basically a fashion brand.
The Royal Family Association seems to be something somewhat more substantial than that (but not an actual monarchy, nor does it seek restoration), but its worth noting that the person who named Lee heir and crown prince is not the person recognized as the current head by that association, but a competing claimant, who is also a monarchist seeking restoration.
I figured it was extra defunct after Korea was liberated in 1945 and Korea's first president made sure the monarchy wasn't going to come back by seizing their assets. Before then I figure there was a vague possibility that things would bounce back in their direction, although I'm probably wrong about that since my knowledge comes mostly from interpretive signs and Wikipedia :)
No, he’s not. South Korea is a democratic republic, not a monarchy (not even a Constitutional one.)
Lee is the adopted “heir” to a fictional and aspirational crown invented by a Korean monarchist who claims it for himself and wants to Korea to be a monarchy based on his (disputed; he is not the person recognized in that role by the association that has been the main custodian of the ex-royal house; he was one of two alternate claimants at the time the former head of the house passed, the other of which has since died without, AFAIK, any successor making a claim to inherit from her) claim to be the legitimate heir to the last emporer deposed in 1910.
The Bourbon pretender is hilarious though, because he inherited his ancestor’s complete inability to read the room.
The designated heir to the pretender, etc. And not even the most accepted pretender among those who think the lineage of that throne means something, but he is the only one actively seeking restoration after 110 years of the throne being defunct.
My favorite tit-bit from 19th century French history is that the Count of Chambord had a legit shot at becoming Henry V of France but blew it because he insisted (among other things) that the white flag of Bourbon France replace the tricolor.
For sure he has absolutely no idea about what people uses IRC regularly. I can picture him thinking about "users" in a general way, like "Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp ad-clicking users", so he's now struggling to keep them tied to the platform at any cost. Well, no. Thanks to his ignorance that is second only to his greed he's now going to rapidly lose everything. I'd bet a pizza that he'll likely sell at a loss in less than one year.
> Contract or no contract, staff and developers of Freenode maintain that it wasn't actually possible to sell the network—the staff is all volunteers, and the infrastructure itself wasn't owned by Dahlskjaer in the first place.
So who did own the infrastructure, and where did they stand on all of this?
> Freenode has been the world's largest IRC network since 2013, with roughly three times as many users as its closest competitor, IRCnet.
...
> A week after Lee's effectively public announcement of ownership and de facto dictatorial operation of Freenode, the staffers who resigned from Freenode created Libera.chat as a replacement.
Is there something wrong with IRCnet? Usually when the largest X does something that gets a lot of users to leave they go to X's largest competitors since those are already up and running and experienced. In this case, though, it seems like the brand new Libera.chat is where most are going.
I'd say they're just trying to rebuild their old house. Once all the dust settles in a few months, I expect Libera Chat will be pretty much the same as FreeNode was, with all the same channels being run by the same people, with the exception that I'll have to register a new account with NickServ.
I guess that gets into a semantic (or even existential) question: if it's in a different place, and the original house is still there (if damaged and usurped), even if it is built identically, is it the old house, or a new one?
But yes, that's also a perfectly reasonable way of analogizing Libera.chat, as I understand the situation.
A better analogy would be: Let's say you've been going to the same book club for 15 years now, but the cafe you've been meeting at has closed. So the group picks a new cafe and the book club continues. Not much has really changed; it's still the same people, meeting up regularly for the same person.
So just to continue extending the analogy chain, it's closer to there being a café where lots of book clubs hang out, with a hands-off owner or some kind of employee cooperative actually owning the business itself, but through legal shenanigans, someone else gains control of the café business, and wants to drastically change how it's run. The staff all walk out and work on starting a new café down the street, and several of the book clubs follow because they like the atmosphere.
All hardware was owned by various organizations acting as "sponsors". But at this point most of it might have been replaced by servers owned by Lee.
One of the sponsors, whose server hosted freenode's email server, pulled out shortly after the volunteers left.
In 2017
> Network staff quit in response and started Libera.
In 2021
Edit: that said, I was unaware of the statements from Lee that are linked to by an arstechnica article linked elsewhere in the comments. Honestly really not sure who to believe. For all I know (which is nothing first hand) this could be another group sabotaging things to boost their own new network over personal disagreement. Which I'm not suggesting is the case, but as someone not personally involved, all I see is conflicting hearsay.
That's when people on all sides pack up shop and leave.
like removing a subreddit's creator/moderators and taking over it.
This would be like if you found out the local little league basball had been sold. It's a community resource that only exists through the continued donation of time by the members. It's not something that should ever be "owned".
If he didn't change anything for the users (kids and parents across the US), but cleaned house in head office and installed his own management team, the local teams would continue running as they always had. The owner really would benefit from the goodwill of the community and really would "own" it in a meaningful way. Some grumbling idealists would start a new "really truly non-profit" competitor, but for most people the friction of switching would be too great. But if he interfered too much and made the players' experience worse, people and teams would find it attractive to move to the new competitor.
Communities consist of people, and you aren't allowed to own people, so you cannot own a community.
https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-sta...