
Freenode sucks - jeff18
http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html
======
yan
"<bramm> and I hope you realize that you just completely pissed off one of the
most well known and respected people in the whole open source community"

Funny thing about respect, is it takes a while to build up and can be lost in
a heartbeat.

edit: what's interesting is how respectful the freenode admin was throughout
this whole transcript. If anything, kudos to freenode.

~~~
sailormoon
While it's true that Cohen acts like a bit of a douche, I think his point is
rock solid. 60 days expiration for lack of use is ridiculous. And the admin he
spoke to may have stayed polite, but his glib refusal to do anything to solve
an obvious problem, while endlessly reciting some BS rules out of some FAQ
somewhere as if they were unbreakable laws of physics, is a terribly attitude
and reminds me of the most disinterested, cynical bureaucrats I've ever had to
deal with.

And for what it's worth, I respect Cohen no less for what he said. I respect
him for his deeds, not for his kind and humble soul. If reading a few lines of
IRC logs, that he himself posted, is enough to make him lose your respect - I
would question whether that respect really meant anything in the first place.

~~~
bps4484
In addition to their deeds, I respect people for kind and humble souls. I can
understand being upset about the situation (and I agree with you that his
point is rock solid, the 60 day expiration is ridiculous), but the fact that
he 1) made the claim that he was famous, and 2) having had the time to calm
down and reread the conversation, thought there was nothing wrong with what he
said and posted it to his blog, makes me lose repect for him.

------
jeff18
For future reference, a good way to handle this would be:

"The #bittorrent channel on Freenode has been getting trolled hard lately and
I no longer have access to it due to the following policies that I think suck:
<insert policies>. After talking to a Freenode support member, they refuse to
budge on these so I have moved #bittorrent to irc.bittorrent.com, please join
us there!"

Wrong way to handle it:

Paste the transcript of you smacking a Freenode volunteer around with your 10
foot long e-peen.

~~~
judofyr
Even better way (IMO) to handle it: Register a new nick, ask a Freenode
support member to give him OP-access to #bittorrent. Ban trolls - have lunch.

~~~
SwellJoe
Except the FreeNode channel registration process takes months or years (I'm
not entirely sure it works at all for already claimed channels, even if the
prior claimant has no relation to the project, and there is no doubt of the
claims of the new person attempting to register). You'll starve to death if
you plan to have lunch _after_ ops are obtained.

------
SwellJoe
So, I'm not "one of the most well known and respected people in the whole open
source community" and I'm not as socially inept as Bram, but I, too, had some
issues getting things done on FreeNode, and I sympathize with his frustration.

The #webmin channel had been claimed by someone unrelated to the project, and
who we had no prior contact with; it wasn't a hostile thing, but they hadn't
logged in for months, weren't dealing with trolls and had opened access to the
topic to everyone (so the topic was being abused for all sorts of ridiculous
stuff). We were unable to contact the person directly, so I tried taking over
ownership of the channel through the official means. After a year of just
waiting (because I'd been warned it was a _very_ slow process, and I don't
spend a lot of time in IRC these days), I chimed in on the operators channel,
and spoke with a couple of folks. All were nice, friendly folks, but weren't
able or willing to do anything about solving our problems with the channel. I
believe in the end I was told that our application would be brought to the
front of the queue because of the ongoing problems, and how long we'd been
waiting. I don't know what, if anything, happened with that; it was at least 8
months ago. I never heard anything about it, anyway, and the last time I
logged in, I don't think we had ops on #webmin.

So, Bram is a bit of a douche. This is pretty well-known; anyone that has ever
met him or interacted with him knows that socially he is inept (and Asperger's
gets bandied about as the reason, though I don't think that really accounts
for lack of online social graces). I look past it because intellectually he's
brilliant, and ethically he seems solid, so two out of three aint bad; in
short, he means well, but he can be mean about it. Even in terms of helping
people, within the limits of his social graces, he is generous with his time
in helping folks use and understand his code. We all have our flaws, and the
FreeNode processes and policies and lack of staff to deal appropriately with
those process and policies can frustrate someone with the patience of Job.
Bram definitely does not have the patience of Job.

So, to sum up: A 60 day expiry on accounts is idiotic. The official channel
registration process, while well-meaning, is baroque and seems to leave a lot
of channels in a lurch of having no operator or an abusive operator for months
or years. Bram is kind of an asshole. But we still like FreeNode and we still
like Bram.

~~~
neoliminal
Look up Asperger's.

~~~
SwellJoe
I'm familiar with the term. It's my understanding that face-to-face
communications are the most impacted areas of human interaction for folks with
this condition, and that online communications are easier for them, because
they're on mostly equal footing with the folks they're talking to (no one can
see anybodies facial expressions on the net, and so only the words themselves
matter). It's one of the reasons so many of them find their way into computing
and other fields that don't require direct human interaction. With Bram's
intelligence, I'm certain he would be capable of effectively simulating normal
human interactions online (and I've spoken to him online and he seemed
perfectly normal, though he probably wasn't in a frustrated mental state at
the time). He could have chosen to approach things with more civility,
regardless of whether he has Asperger's or some other condition that makes
human interaction in the real world difficult. The loosely realtime nature of
IRC allows time for thinking over what you're saying, considering the
implications, and thinking through how it will appear to others.

In short, I'm saying that I don't think Bram should get (or would be right to
expect) a pass for being an asshole to a volunteer on FreeNode, regardless of
whether he has Asperger's or not. Being an asshole isn't OK, even if you have
a condition that makes it easier to be one without noticing. It just means you
need to be more mindful of your behavior, since it's no one else's job to do
it for you.

~~~
neoliminal
While some people with Asperger's experience problems with face to face
communications and have an easier time dealing with people online, that's a
sweeping statement.

I know Bram and I don't think he would care if I said that face to face
communication is not a problem for him. In my time speaking with Bram both
face to face and online, his primary characteristic per Asperger's has been a
near complete lack of social fear.

Most humans get nervous in certain social situations. Bram does not. This will
certainly cause problems when faced with someone that social might wield
power, as an administrator, and Bram my have to pay for his lack of decorum in
these situations.

I'm not excusing Bram's behavior. There is no need to excuse it. It has
happened and he will pay whatever price is exacted. I'm simply explaining it.

------
j79
I'm particularly fond of this exchange in the comments:

3ricj: It's still just a damn IRC nick. register a new one and ask an channel
op to give you rights to the channel. Problem solved. Don't abuse volunteer
support people due to inflated self-importance. It's tacky.

Bram: If you'd spent the two minutes necessary to read the conversation you'd
know there is no fucking channel op, because I was the only one. Stop being an
ass.

Unfortunately Bram, there is only one person being an ass...

------
bramcohen
I'd like to clarify a few points around my post.

The reason I posted the log verbatim, me being pissed off and all, is that I
wanted to make very clear that I was accurately representing official freenode
policy, and that requesting help through support leads nowhere. My gripe is
with freenode policy, which is asinine, not with the particular person I spoke
to, who was merely being useless and patronizing.

The reason I got pissed wasn't because of the nick loss, which I find mildly
annoying, but because channel ops got blown away, causing me to have to deal
with this bullshit instead of just giving ops to someone else.

Yes I can be blunt. If you value the superficial affectation of politeness
over the essential point of what someone is saying, you can shove it. I don't
appreciate people saying that I'm this way because of asperger's, it just
causes other people to whine that they're being oppressed because they can't
criticize me. The whole line of argument is stupid. People are free to
criticize me for not being polite, and I'm free to respond that they're being
petty and superficial.

The whole 'it's free so you can't complain' argument is bullshit. There are
plenty of free things which are of negative value to society because they suck
up or distract resources which could be working on a much better alternative.
I've provided lots of support for free stuff myself, both via employees and
directly, and never have I claimed that a problem won't be fixed because the
person airing a legitimate gripe hasn't gone through arbitrary bureaucratic
processes, or that the person complaining should implement it themselves
because they're a programmer, or refused to acknowledge that some pain a user
experienced through no fault of their own really was unfortunate. And I always
prioritize up users who matter and problems which need immediate fixing.
That's the way you run things if you actually care about providing a valuable
service.

~~~
quxquuxcorge
You were a total douche about it. The other guy was actually a bit polite and
helpful.

>People are free to criticize me for not being polite, and I'm free to respond
that they're being petty and superficial.

This is you not getting it, possibly because you have Aspergers.

edit: Actually, fuck that. You're functional enough to understand what you're
doing.

~~~
Happypants6306
I didn't have any opinion of him as a person (yes I appreciate his work),
until I saw him spouting off about being important. Now I have a negative
opinion of his personality.

The whole aspergers thing is based on a self-diagnosis and the only reason he
wouldn't get diagnosed is out of fear not having it.

P.S. Somebody stole my nick, where can I cry about it?

~~~
vlabrecque
``P.S. Somebody stole my nick, where can I cry about it?''

Please learn to read. He is complaining about a policy he wasn't warned about,
a policy that _doesn't_ involve warning the user of upcoming expiry, and
finally, that doesn't in any way seem to take into account channel ownership.

It's a bad protocol. That's all.

------
cmelbye
While I agree that he was being a complete jerk to the volunteer, there is
some truth to this. Freenode has a policy of reserving the "main" channel
namespace (only one hash like #bittorrent or #wikipedia) to officially
registered groups. This process is carried out by filling out a long form and
waiting for approval. Due to lack of volunteers willing and able to clear out
the queue, it takes maybe half a year at minimum. It's nice that Freenode has
a system for officially registering groups, but they really should not be
actively enforcing rules relying on that if they have no plans to reliably
process the gigantic queue.

------
ErrantX
I have to say Freenode came of rather well here. Bram... not so much. :P

 _< bramm> and I hope you realize that you just completely pissed off one of
the most well known and respected people in the whole open source community_

Sounds like he's possibly completely pissed off a large portion of the Open
Source community :)

~~~
jrockway
Indeed. Bram has written some good software, but he's no more important than
the thousands of other people that have written good software that I use
everyday.

------
metaforth
If you read the comments one reason FreeNode is in disarray is because Rob
Levin who ran the site died in a bicycling accident a few years ago.

In fact the chaos and drama at FreeNode might be the real story here.

[http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html?thread=1000554#t...](http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/72298.html?thread=1000554#t1000554)

Fragglet writes (in the comments):

"This shouldn't be surprising to anyone with any experience of Freenode.
Freenode is a perfect example of how open source projects tend to acquire the
personality of their founder. In the case of Freenode, that founder was Rob
Levin, famous for his online begging over wallops and for being completely
incompetent in general. Levin's incompetence, begging and dictatorial style
where he branded everyone who disagreed with him a "troll" gradually alienated
all the sensible and technically skilled people from the network staff until
the only people left were his equally incompetent sycophantic underlings.

"When Levin died several years ago as a result of his own stupidity (riding a
bike without a helmet), they took over. I haven't heard of mquin before but it
looks like the cycle continues.

"Your best option is to close the Freenode channel and move to OFTC, the staff
of which consist mostly of the sensible and technically skilled people who
left Freenode."

Here are some links with more details,

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/>

[http://antisec.wordpress.com/2006/06/27/eyeballing-rob-
levin...](http://antisec.wordpress.com/2006/06/27/eyeballing-rob-levin/)

------
BjornW
Although I've only seen a part of a presumably actual conversation (haven't
tried to confirm it using other sources) I do find the attitude shown by Bram
Cohen to be something I would not have expected from 'one of the most well
known and respected people in the whole open source community'. It actually
saddens me to see an open source programming 'role model' of mine behave like
a spoiled child

I do understand the frustration surrounding the policies, yet I also
understand Freenode which is offering a free, gratis service. A more humble
approach would probably have yielded a quicker result and IMHO was more
appropriate.

ps: If Bram Cohen is not really happy with Freenode, he, as 'one of the most
well known and respected people in the whole open source community' probably
has other options to create a #bittorrent irc channel according his wishes.

~~~
jeff18
The source for the transcript is Bram Cohen's official blog.

------
notauser
A better title would have been 'Bram Cohen loses Freenode nick, complains' as
generally articles here take the title from the link where possible and try
not to editorialize when it isn't.

...but it would probably be better still if Internet drama was kept as far
away from HN as possible.

~~~
jeff18
On the contrary, I find stuff like this highly interesting and consider myself
a hacker. I found the comments between Calacanis and Aaron Wall the most
awesome stuff I read on Hacker News in the past week, to be honest, and the
way I found those was by looking at the HN top rated comments.

It would be interesting to hear other hacker's feelings before we decide what
is best for the community.

------
ellyagg
I can't believe he thinks it's a good idea to post this conversation.
Apparently he's not aware that several of his lines are straight parodies of
the Bad Guy in popular entertainment.

------
dschobel
Bram Cohen's Aspergers is well-publicized
([http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b41050468...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm))
and essential context for anything you read about/by him.

~~~
markpercival
"Cohen never sought a formal diagnosis but turned his considerable attention
to the matter"

Self-diagnosis. Are you fucking kidding me?

Just because you were picked on in highschool and are a huge pain in the ass
to work with, doesn't mean you have Aspergers.

Guess what, Bram Cohen's probably just an asshole who writes good software.

~~~
dschobel
Watch any of his talks or speak to anyone who has ever worked with him.

It's not just about being rude but genuinely not understanding the socially
correct behaviour to his own detriment.

Exhibit A: not realizing that it is a bad idea to post a chat transcript of
you dressing down a volunteer to a free service.

~~~
makmanalp
Not understanding social contract is not necessarily Asperger's. Also, exhibit
A could also be seen as not caring, there is no proof that he did not realize.

------
dylanz
6 months? That's pretty lame, and I'd be a bit peeved as well. Having to go
through that entire process of re-registering, etc, just to get an account
back and admin'ing that group? I'm glad this isn't a global policy on email
addresses or website registrations!

~~~
Gonsalu
Actually, it's 60 days.

~~~
kitt
If you become a supporter and give a donation for the service, you can keep
your nick even if you don't log in. So, instead of complaining about a free
service, he could have made a tax-deductible donation and not had any of these
problems. Alas, lots of "could haves" in this whole episode.

------
jay_cee
The difference between being an asshole and an Aspie is clear; assholes are
completely resistant to hearing about a better way to handle something, and
Aspies, go "gee, that didn't occur to me, and I was just looking at it this
way, but next time I'll try that." I know Bram pretty well, and when something
doesn't work, he listens to his friend's suggestions and tries to add them to
his social algorithm. Maybe he doesn't do this too publicly, but would you? In
casual everyday life he never throws around status, when he meets people he
doesn't say anything other than, "I'm a programmer" if asked. He really
usually gets embarrassed by recognition and tries to downplay it. However, I
think we've all behaved less than humbly when pushed to our boiling point. The
trigger is frequently just the straw that breaks the camel's back, and we all
can get pissy. It doesn't meet my high spiritual standards for myself when I
lose my temper, but it happens. Jeff18 who posted an actually good suggestion
on how to handle this situation, would be really good working with Aspies.
That is exactly what they need, and what teachers spend most of their time
doing with AS children, modeling different solutions. It was very helpful.

------
wedrifid
There is a lesson Bram needs to learn. If you wish to avoid being considered a
'douche' you have to better optimise your statements to undermine your oponent
and remove their credibility. He could have posted a factual account of his
unpleasant experiences with Freenode that included a sincere warning to any
other organisers of official projects. Instead he overemphasised the
importance of showing both sides of the story.

If you are going to be negative then it is important to do it well and do it
ruthlessly. Don't try to be fair or direct. Play to the crowd and ruthlessly
take the moral high ground or it will be taken from you, as is the case here.
It is a little ironic but if Bram had been more of a Machiavellian 'meanie'
then he would not have been been labeled a 'meanie'. Some of the posts here
provide good advice on ways he could have done that.

It seems clear that Bram's misfortune warrants a warning for all potential
users of the Freenode servers. Hopefully this is not missed due to Bram's
neglect of political expediency.

------
z8000
Why not just do what Shaquille O'Neal did for Twitter?

<http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ>

Look Bram, you can even yell in your nick too!

    
    
        /nick THE_REAL_BRAM
        /join #bittorrent
        /privmsg #bittorrent :Trolls, please stop. It's me, Bram.

------
Gonsalu
If anything, this just goes to show the quality support you get from Freenode
volunteer admins.

You act like a douche, you should be treated like a douche; "essential
context" of suffering from Asperger syndrome or otherwise.

------
jayliew
Taking a step back as an impartial observer,

(1) Sure, Freenode's policy can be improved, because a significant amt. of
users think it is a bit stifling. The admins need to figure out how to engage
the users.

(2) In this situation, there are solutions more optimal than douche-baggery.
If he wanted his nick back, being nice increases his odds. Bram can use a
class in negotations 101.

OK - Let's move on with our lives now, don't you need to prepare for the
3/3/2010 YC deadline? If you are bored - there are plenty of single founders
looking for co-founder.

------
josefresco
Asperger and 'being a meanie' can sometimes be confused. I know Bram's
diagnosis isn't official but it seems obvious to most that meet him that's
he's a little different.

Edit: Okay I just RTFA and Bram does seem very douchy. If I was the admin I
would have handed his ass to him 1/4 of the way through the conversation when
he threw his first insult.

And I would have invited him to make a stink in public ... just spell my name
right.

~~~
BigZaphod
We're all a little different. That doesn't give him a free pass to be an ass,
IMO.

Edit re: your edit - lol! :P

------
BigZaphod
Interesting.... _logs into Freenode_ Yay! My nick is still registered. I don't
think I've logged in for over a year.

------
redwax
There was a problem and someone not solving it - to many this is the douchery.

Jobsworth.

I would be honoured to have Bram Cohen ask me for some help and given his
heroic efforts on behalf of the network I would go above and beyond.

Seems Bram just camly stated the facts and the sysop just kept replying rules
trump all.

Ashbergers Mashbergers for IRC this is probably the most dainty little flame
ever.

PS Bram Cohen rules teh internets

