Hacker News Reader

Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what the big deal with all this Freenode drama is. It just got renamed to Libera, update your host files and you're done.

View on HN

The drama is that whenever someone attempts to tell people that on Freenode, their channels get taken over and/or they get banned.

My comment was a rather tongue-in-cheek take of how Libera is carrying on the spirit of Freenode, and we should just consider Freenode a random other network that somehow got Freenode's name by accident.

At this point, if you haven't heard of it through other means then you're Out Of The Loop (yeah I suppose if you were on a coma for the past months and only read IRC and no discussions anywhere else...)

But I agree, it's a bit of needless drama, especially when continuing on Freenode has shown to be untenable.

I do wonder why the Libera staff didn't kick off the network with a copy of the Freenode user/channel database. Perhaps the Freenode legal entity has a claim to it?

What good would that do, if the users aren't connecting to the network?

> What good would that do,

It would save both staff and users a lot of time from having to re-register accounts, channels, and projects/communities.

> if the users aren't connecting to the network?

I don't understand this part, sorry.

If your users are on Freenode and don't know about your network, having the structure there doesn't do much good. It doesn't take much time to register nicknames/channels anyway, certainly not enough to risk a lawsuit from Freenode.

A commitment to privacy and principles.

Fundamentally there was no viable way to get permission from the freenode user base for that in a way that was morally acceptable.

(I'm sure there were legal reasons too but I don't believe the question ever got as far as that being relevant)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com