In case anyone was wondering (as I was) why the nationality of the founder matters: this is about a project called KiwiIRC, not about a New Zealander.
Which made me think: To a New Zealander, Kiwi is our word for ourselves (or the bird). You'll never see BritishIRC or AustralianIRC. It's odd to see a part of our national identity used like that.
(Not being too serious here: I also am well aware that our Kiwifruit exporters have done such a great job of branding that people overseas forget the "fruit" part, and just call them "Kiwis". So we did it to ourselves! Also, the bird came first)
Kiwi fruit is originally from China, its a Gooseberry.
The name kiwi fruit seem to have come from US servicemen stationed in NZ and Australia during WW2 similarly to how Americano became a name for a coffee drink which is just a diluted espresso since the Americans stationed in Italy were used to weaker coffee and found espresso too strong.
It was named 'chinese gooseberry' until Hort NZ rebranded it but they are unrelated botanically (European gooseberry is Ribes uva-crispa, Kiwifruit is Actinidia deliciosa).
This is so sad, I have no idea whats happening but it doesnt sound good. Ive always used freenode to ask questions and 90% of the time it has been great.
I did encounter some poeple with "issues" where weirdly, I guess because we all try to use our nick, the confrontations are harsher ( than on anonymous places like the chans).
I had one person convinced for 3 hours that I was for some reason a bad person because I asked a simple question about libraries, and well that was non stop abuse. I cant imagine how hard it is to be a dev.
On the other hand freenode is where I knew I could contact someone working at a big company who might be able to resolve an issue and also get the word out about something.
One fond memory I have is witnessing the first real Bitcoin crash a decade ago, I think it was from $50 down to $5 or something, and just before it happened these random nicks appeared in the channel and started trolling everyone.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to freenode, I wish I knew how I could help support it in the right way.
Worth noting that nearly the same thing happened to Snoonet in 2019 as well. Some choices that prawnsalad made caused some Snoonet staff members to step down.
A letter of resignation signed by three staff members with some context: https://archive.ph/2TpKi
If anybody is looking for a FLOSS web-based IRC client, I recommend checking out TheLounge.
No, prawnsalad did not make the choices you are referring to. Quote from the farewell letter:
"(Tiny bit of context, The Snoonet network was sold by its founder, didn't explain to the network staff, then I had to explain to the staff (i think roughly a year later) what had happened as clear possible, I still get blamed for selling the network though)"
I haven't followed on what actually happened, but this is only bad for IRC itself. And if we had IRCv3 + federation etc, maybe it wouldn't matter that much but we are not even close.
Christel, the previous freenode head of staff, sold freenode to andrew lee (then of PIA). This was downplayed at the time, both publicly and to staff, so this is effectively delayed drama that would have happened in 2017 otherwise.
Christel stepped down, new staff lead shut out Andrew Lee, not realising the depth of his ownership - helped by both Christel and Andrew Lee downplaying it in the past. When it became clear that "Freenode" was owned by Andrew Lee, and not the volunteer run organisation they believed it to be, drama ensued over whether she had the legal right to (probably yes), whether it was morally appropriate to (probably not) and what she actually sold (Freenode runs via volunteer staff on loaned servers, none of which freenode ltd owns or has contracts for, so it basically just owns a domain and a website).
After the legal discussions found that Andrew Lee did legally own whatever freenode itself owned, the staff all quit and formed libera.chat, their own network. Andrew Lee brought in new staff to freenode and some policy changes (notably allowing network ops to reclaim channels that were abandoned as redirects, and toning down the code of conduct portion).
What irks me is that the former staff could have said something along the lines of "it's come to our attention freenode is owned by a privately owned company, something we can't stand behind. Join us at Libera Chat to participate in a truly community-owned network" and everyone would still side with them.
Instead, they decided to portray this as a hostile takeover in order to gather further sympathy from the public at large without providing any evidence that Andrew actually planned this.
Christel could have cleared any misunderstandings to both sides, yet she is the only person who got anything out of this, with an acquisition and a salary, while Andrew is the target of a smear campaign after spending who knows how much money sponsoring freenode for years, and the staff and community had to create a brand new network after spending who knows how much time on running freenode for years.
the parent comment and this response are the fairest summary and characterization of the whole debacle.
there were misunderstandings on both sides on who owns what, and actions, while initially well-meaning that were influenced by suspicion and mistrust of the other side. mistrust that was caused by those early misunderstandings.
It doesn't help that various documents refer to the various actors either by their first name, last name, or screen name.
Andrew Lee <rasengan> currently controls the freenode domains and is being accused of a hostile takeover. The network was sold to Andrew Lee by Christel Dahlskjaer <christel>, who was head of staff until she resigned in March 2021.
The other side seems to be the "staff", which seems to have mostly moved over to the libera.chat side now. Among them <tomaw>, who was elected as head of staff after <christel>'s resignation.
What I don't fully understand is the structure of the Freenode network. There's the domain/website, presumably under control of Andrew. There are the individual servers, which as I understand it are under the control of their independent owners/maintainers, some of which are also "staff" but others aren't. There is the nickserv database that is likely under control of Andrew Lee now, although it's unclear on what infrastructure it runs, who owns it, who pays for it, where it is, etc.
I think the issue is that it's unclear what was actually sold to Lee (possibly just a domain name and a website), because the IRC servers themselves are loaned to the network and are run by volunteers. And when the sale happened, it was downplayed to the other staff members so they believed something not quite the same as what really happened during the sale.
The question is really... what is an IRC network, and what constitutes ownership of it? If all the people who own and run the IRC servers themselves change their banner from Freenode to Baznode, and tell people to start connecting to irc.baznode.com instead, then perhaps the entity that owns freenode.com doesn't really own an IRC network?
(I know that's not what happened, as Freenode-the-IRC-network is still running as-is, but just presenting it here given that it could happen based on how the servers are run.)
> I think the issue is that it's unclear what was actually sold to Lee (possibly just a domain name and a website)
Looks like Lee legally owns something. I am not exactly sure what it is? Something much less than the entire IRC network. Some kind of account to something. First Wesley had revoked Lee's access, and then returned it. Anyway, when Lee asked for this access to whatever it is that he owns, it was seen as an attempt to a hostile takeover.
"I was locked out of the account"
"Finally, tomaw voluntarily handed back all of the accesses"
Wesley didn't revoke Lee access. The domain drama was just a misunderstanding about a 2FA/config thing that happened months ago -- it is documented in the email that Lee's published from Wesley: https://web.archive.org/web/20210519213611/https://gist.gith...
(edit: Maybe that when all this drama started, Wesley held on giving access again.)
That's sad, but I hope the website does not go down. The online web client is fantastic. There are still a few niche communities that still use irc chat clients and having it in a browser tab makes that connectivity possible.
Unfortunately I see this in a lot of projects lately, especially cryptocurrency, where winning has nothing to do with technical excellence and logic, but silencing what they perceive as opponents or people that dare question their argument.
It has turned into cult mentality, like mentioned in this post going as far as to find anything... often completely unrelated to the initial discussion, in order to try to discredit their viewpoints. It is simply a away to silence people that challenge them, even though in a healthy community constructive criticism should be considered a positive thing to help improve.
what I'm learning here is that IRC hasn't changed in 20+ years.
there are pockets of wholesome communities, and the overall IRC "culture" has been pretty toxic in my experience. it has always been far easier to find a drama queen on IRC than it has to find a person with normal reactions and thought processes.
there's just something about IRC that either brings out that side in people, or attracts that type of person, or both.
it really is sad. it could be such a useful resource, and maybe it is. maybe I just had back luck 20 years ago. I don't miss IRC, I do know that.
Looking now at my experience of hanging out in IRC 20 years ago, it looks the same. Very low entry barriers, toxic hierarchical culture by design (even codified in client UI conventions, putting channel ops at the top), lack of safe space unless you cut yourself off the community, lack of commercial incentives to develop moderation and grow user base, perceived lawfulness and so on and so on.
At that time, rdv, a co-founder of Snoonet, was hired at LTM as (among other titles) "Community Relations Manager", and announced to the staff that he could now "offer LTM's resources to Snoonet; the same resources provided to Freenode", while reassuring that "the idea is to keep IRC networks in tact and operational as they always were". His goal at LTM was to "protect and keep in tact what matters most: underground communities".
bloodygonzo, a staffer, precised to the staff that "LTM has bought Snoonet and will officially cover snoonet and make sure we have the legal and administrative aid of LTM. LTM has agreed to leave snoonet as is and continue to allow us to run things as we see fit.".
noeatnosleep (who worked at LTM, at a role to safeguard LTM's investment) then the head of staff (allegedly not installed in this post by a general consensus), commented on [hn](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376571): "LTM provides servers for us, with no asks or meddling".
prawnsalad says to the staff that "so yea, snoonet.org will still be independant as mcuh as it can be. the branding, the communities here, etc, wont change. and noeatnosleep is still running that side of thigns to grow snoonet".
It is also worth noting that during theses years, it has been asked to the staff to give server access to unknown people at random times, and that rdv had been expelled from the network due to very questionable behavior, and noeatnosleep has left the staff. Dates for theses events are unknown to me.
Make your opinion, and any resemblance to other current events is fortuitous.
Which made me think: To a New Zealander, Kiwi is our word for ourselves (or the bird). You'll never see BritishIRC or AustralianIRC. It's odd to see a part of our national identity used like that.
(Not being too serious here: I also am well aware that our Kiwifruit exporters have done such a great job of branding that people overseas forget the "fruit" part, and just call them "Kiwis". So we did it to ourselves! Also, the bird came first)