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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

The Freenode to Libera incident is a great example of how using protocols allows for a community to mitigate most damage from bad actors both external and internal. I'm not saying damage wasn't done by Andrew Lee during his attempted coup. IRC as a whole lost many important FOSS projects due to Lee's channel take-overs. But most of the community of daily users just moved to the new digs and continues to carry on.

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Is it a good example? That incident was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for IRC. Most open source communities have moved to Discord now.

It is if you were a person who was using Freenode and wanted to keep talking to the same people you've known for the last 20 years like myself. Our community still exists.

Understandably the attacks put a sour taste in the mouth of many FOSS projects; especially those with corporate sponsors or aspects. 20 years of working fine not considered. But now we're seeing you get the same downsides with corporate services but none of the ability to effortlessly move. Going to Discord has been shown to have been a long term mistake even if it seemed nice in the short term.

why would you hedge yourself with a double-negative here? It was because of (open) protocols and not services that people could easily decamp and setup afresh.

Interoperability has always been paramount, but gets so easily forgotten.

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