The whole freenode kerfluffle

https://ariadne.space/2021/05/20/the-whole-freenode-kerfluffle/

by g0xA52A2A • 5 years ago

152 122 5 years ago

javajosh• 5 years ago

Hi, I don't really use freenode, but even after your explaination, I don't understand what Andrew's big sin is - that he wants to keep IRC like it was when he loved it in his youth? Okay, but what specifically does that mean - what is the down-side? So far all I've read is that freenode is owned by someone, and now he's exerting control that others don't like, but no details of what that control is.

BTW, "Let's..." is not misspelled. "Kerfluffle[sic]" is, but it's a misspelling I prefer, so good on ya!

ivanbakel• 5 years ago

and now he's exerting control that others don't like, but no details of what that control is.

From my understanding, that's the point. The volunteers who ran Freenode were told that Andrew would be completely unable to exert any control over the server - and now that has turned out to not be the case. The taking of control itself was a betrayal of a previous agreement, and produced a status quo that the freenode people weren't happy with.

There's also allegations of forced advertising and "changes to network operations" on the Libera Chat website[0], which may have been significant to some of the volunteers.

[0] https://libera.chat/

q3k5• 5 years ago

The problem is that he wants to change freenode into something different [1] than it is, and he attempts to execute this on basis of 'I own freenode limited so you have to do as I say' [2]. Complete with supposed legal threats in case of non-compliance.

This is something that works for companies with a clear ownership structure and typical employer/employee power dynamics, but not for volunteer-driven communities like freenode - in which people worked for free to build something that they believed in, and under the impression of the community being fully self-governed. What do you expect from these volunteers now, to just continue working for free on something that they now don't agree with, and with a person who obviously cares more about control than the service itself?

This likely doesn't impact me or you directly. But indirectly, if I see _all_ staff flee from a project that I interacted with, I'm following them. After all, these are the people that made and maintained Freenode into what it is today, the name is just a technicality.

[1] "On Decentralization", https://archive.is/NH1LN ; https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss

[2] https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd...

zelon882• 5 years ago

This is something that works for companies with a clear ownership structure

The ownership structure is clear, it is just unpopular within the community. There seems to be this sense of entitlement among Freenode developers and volunteers. You never had equity, but you thought you did. Whether or not that is the result of being misled is irrelevant. You have no stake. That's what "volunteers" are. Non stakeholding contributors. You contribute so long as the direction of the business is compatible with your morals. Nobody owes you a community.

Why is anyone surprised that this napkin diplomacy failed?

roflc0ptic5• 5 years ago

The behavior, as I understand it, is that Lee and company behaved mendaciously, taking what was a community/volunteer "staff" run enterprise and legalistically maneuvering to turn it into his own fiefdom without consent or even a modicum of transparency.

Maybe this will have no operational effect, but it registers as terrifically unethical and destructive - he's predictably alienated and driven off most of the people running freenode. When people behave unethically and destructively in one scenario, it's easy to expect them to behave unethically and destructively in other scenarios. It's unacceptable from a governance perspective.

Moving away from freenode is simple risk mitigation.

bitshiftfaced• 5 years ago

Fiefdom? What do you mean?

feb• 5 years ago

Fiefdom is especially funny when you know Lee was crowned king of Korea a couple of years ago:

* https://nextshark.com/korea-crown-prince-andrew-lee/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

chrisseaton2• 5 years ago

'Kerfluffle' is a hilarious misspelling - sounds like a brand of marshmallow fluff.

bargle0• 5 years ago

Imagine an ad campaign where disagreements were solved by fluffer nutter sandwiches.

roflc0ptic5• 5 years ago

I get the sense that it's not a mispelling in the sense that Ariadne doesn't know how kerfuffle is spelled. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I also think that the comparison to Ariadne's bunny plushie - i.e. a fluffy thing - is related. Kerfluffle can be read as a portmanteau of kerfuffle and fluffy - a kerfuffle caused by Lee's need for a soft, fluffy thing to protect his ego. Dunno. Deep exegesis that could be entirely off base - maybe it's just a typo.

rootusrootus• 5 years ago

I've heard a lot of people pronounce it that way. So much so that I figure it may actually be like 'irregardless' now.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

I don't understand what Andrew's big sin is

Lee founded Private Internet Access [1]. They had a history of being sketchy [2] and inexplicably hired Mark Karpeles.

I don’t have a connection to Freenode. But I can recognise a bad actor when I see one.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)

[2] https://telegra.ph/Private-Internet-Access-VPN-acquired-by-m...

michaelmrose4• 5 years ago

He sold pia to an adware company and didn't bother to inform customers.

tootie• 5 years ago

They seem to be attributing a lot malice to his actions that isn't evident. This is the most low stakes power play I've seen play out. Just talk to the guy directly instead of stomping off.

michaelmrose4• 5 years ago

Why are you assuming no private communication happened? They aren't paid anything so setting up a new service with a domain not controlled by the disagreeable party seems to be the rational choice. What are they losing exactly?

rcxdude4• 5 years ago

Nothing about the reasons behind his actions are evident, despite repeated questioning. The answers he gives don't add up (a lot of vague mumbling about improving freenode by making it distributed, which seems completely counter to his actual actions).

that_guy_iain3• 5 years ago

Bribes of oper and money? Aka offering someone a job as a staff member? Am I understanding that correctly?

q3k5• 5 years ago

Offering a job position can be bribery. It's not a stretch to interpret that particular chat log as exactly that.

that_guy_iain3• 5 years ago

Bribery for what? What would they be getting other than someone to do staffer work for them?

inshadows• 5 years ago

Whoa! There are now money in IRC?

that_guy_iain3• 5 years ago

The ex-Freenode staff seem to be saying there is. I am also confused.

blibble• 5 years ago

if he's truthful in saying he funded freenode with more than a million dollars... seems like it

I wonder where that money went, especially considering the hosting for all the IRC servers is donated by its sponsors (ISPs)

speeder3• 5 years ago

I read the log.

That Shane person, literally told Ariadne she would have power to ban whoever she wants, screw with people she doesn't like, punish her enemies...

She replied she have no enemies, he tried to point out that is still a good power to have and whatnot.

She then explained to him that banning someone from Freenode can damage that person career if they are involved in FOSS community, considering how many important projects communicate only there and all.

Later in the conversaion I saw something I interpreted as a kind-of threat too, when in a passing remark Shane mentioned her sexual fetishes.

Then he implied that certain Linux distros have advantages in Freenode, and Alpine could have it too...

I think you get the point, it is not just a job offer, the way he was writing looked like more someone trying to imitate characters in the Godfather movie.

toyg2• 5 years ago

It largely read like a hamfisted attempted at persuasion, I'm honestly not as scandalised as Ariadne seemed to be. This is par for the course in any political setting: help me and I'll help you.

The foul smell simply comes from the way that guy Shane communicates - the short sentences, the somewhat-juvenile form, it feels like you're talking with an excited and vaguely sinister teenage salesman. I think he misjudged the type of person he was talking to, Ariadne clearly is not the stereotypical IRC kid.

enriquto2• 5 years ago

So freenode has suffered a hostile take over by the korean imperial family. No shit! On vit une époque formidable.

rsynnott• 5 years ago

Well, no, not the Korean imperial family. There is, obviously, no Korean imperial family anymore. Lee is a pretender.

enriquto2• 5 years ago

all monarchs are illegitimate pretenders if you think about it.

nickysielicki• 5 years ago

I was a PIA customer precisely because I knew they donated to freenode (among other things; ie: financial sponsorship for WireGuard).

Doesn’t seem to me like staff are fully aware of what they’re destroying and how there will never be another real dominant IRC network. Freenode was it. Slack and discord have killed IRC for a lot of things already, and this is now the final nail in the coffin. “Libra”-whatever will not last long, and neither will freenode without staff.

Is all of this worth it? Did he really do anything that bad? Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will? Isn’t there a reasonable explanation for trying to put some of these things in LLCs and formal organizations, etc.? Someone has to own the domain, right?

It doesn’t sound to me like he was asking for a lot of effort.

Anyway, too late to cry about it, it’s done and over with now. RIP to IRC. I guess I’ll see you guys on Discord! I love the modern internet!!!

mlatu• 5 years ago

Someone has to own the domain, right?

Why not an association then? Why must it always be someONE who owns something? Communal property is the way forwards, not setting up fences.

jlokier3• 5 years ago

It is already owned by an association, a non-profit called Freenode Limited.

RIMR• 5 years ago

This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand.

If the Freenode volunteers and users move to Libera Chat, then Libera Chat becomes the new Freenode.

Oracle didn't kill Continuous Integration when they bought and destroyed the Hudson project. All the volunteers moved to the forked Jenkins project, the users followed. Jenkins is now the new Hudson.

Like Oracle, Andrew and Co. will end up holding the bag on a dead brand as the project moves elsewhere.

rocqua• 5 years ago

Point made was that there are succesful competing alternatives in slack and discord. Hence any damage to existing IRC communities is likely to see some users move towards IRC competitors, rather than another IRC server.

HajiraSifre• 5 years ago

This doesn't kill IRC. The name isn't important. It's just a brand.

Sure, but it will still negatively affect the number of users.

For example, I'm already aware of one community that decided to end their IRC presence altogether (and only keep their discord) rather than migrate their freenode channel to another network.

There will undoubtedly also be a number of individuals who decide to just quit IRC instead of moving.

myself248• 5 years ago

And I've heard of Jenkins, I've never heard of Hudson. So that's something. How long was Hudson dominant for?

Freenode has been the go-to name for IRC (in FOSS circles) for two decades plus. There's also OFTC which I don't know the whole story of, and there are some projects making their home on Efnet and elsewhere too, but the majority of everything has been on Freenode. To the point that I don't even /list anymore, I just blindly /join #name_of_project and almost always land somewhere useful.

This kills that. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to Libera. Some projects won't stay on Freenode and will move to OFTC. Some projects will stay on Freenode.

It fragments an ecosystem that was useful primarily because it was so universal, and the value of that universality is not conserved through fragmentation.

I wish I understood the complaint better, so I could make a better argument for projects to move, and hopefully restore some of that universality elsewhere. But as it is, I simply can't make sense of the complaints without a lot of backstory I don't apparently have. For all the volunteers to walk out, there must be something there, I just don't grok it.

monsieurbanana• 5 years ago

Hasn’t a few years of financial donation to various open source projects bought any good will?

Good will, sure, but the work of volunteer staff? Why would it?

chalst2• 5 years ago

If you're going to move from IRC, give Zulip a look.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123

syoc• 5 years ago

I like zulip a lot, but is it really comparable? IRC is built as a simple open protocol and the clients are tuned towards being able to join multiple servers at once. This is a hard requirement for mass adaptation in for example FOSS communities IMO. There is no way that people will bother logging into the zulip or mattermost instances for the 5-15 different FOSS projects they are interested in.

This means either a centralized solution like Discord or something like Matrix which is 100x more complex than IRC.

rcxdude4• 5 years ago

Apparently neither Andrew Lee or the freenode staff have any idea what happened to the money he apparently donated to freenode (the company has not filed its accounts as required and is in danger of being dissolved, which is legally Lee's responsibility but he seems to think the volunteer staffers who claim no knowledge of donated funds are responsible for it). Freenode mostly operates off of donated infrastructure and volunteer efforts, the expenses they have are basically minimal.

milliams• 5 years ago

"Let’s [sic] take IRC further"

Why the "sic"? Is there something wrong with contracting "Let us" in this way?

hesk• 5 years ago

I read that to mean that there is not "us" only "me".

IshKebab• 5 years ago

Nope. [sic] is definitely wrong there. Looks like it has been fixed though.

mjthompson3• 5 years ago

[sic] [sic] :)

fouc• 5 years ago

When freenode announced that it was joining with Private Internet Access in 2017, the domain name, as well as unspecified other “assets”, were sold to one Andrew Lee via a holding company. Staff were uncertain but assured that PIA was to have no operational influence.
In early 2021, that changed. New advertising was pushed onto the freenode website without warning. The head of staff at the time ultimately resigned rather than explain. In the time since, there have been changes to network operations for which we have received no explanation.
Control of freenode infrastructure will soon be transferred to Freenode Limited and its agents.

Seems like Andrew Lee is maneuvering to take control of the freenode irc network infrastructure. I would've assumed that the freenode irc network is comprised of volunteer servers.

techrat• 5 years ago

I would've assumed that the freenode irc network is comprised of volunteer servers.

It is.

That makes the whole situation that much more suspect, why someone like Lee should desire to take over a network not knowing that it consists of sponsor servers.

Seeing what happened with Snoonet (a desolate wasteland), I fully expect to happen to Freenode as well.

Shame. All for one man's ego.

Operyl• 5 years ago

Snoonet was a desolate wasteland long before the PIA “merger.” Since then, Discord has largely eaten up subreddits for communication platform of choice.

sp332• 5 years ago

It is, but the legal challenge would be expensive according to https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461

aliljet• 5 years ago

So, is this the first bifurcation? OFTC or Libera. Yesterday, I thought it was just Libera.

ocdtrekkie• 5 years ago

OFTC has existed a long time, it's an option for projects that want to presumably just step out of this present drama entirely. Libera is the new Freenode, in terms of management staff and likely rules and policy.

kemonocode• 5 years ago

I hope this entire ordeal makes it all clear that when a company snatches up a community project, it'll be very likely with the intention to monetize it down the road, and I really think the changes being vaguely alluded to were oriented towards that.

jpswade• 5 years ago

Do I miss IRC drama? No I don’t think so.

josteink• 5 years ago

Reposting my comment from a earlier thread.

This story is just so unclear and leaves me full of questions. It’s a complete mess, despite the numerous semi-official statements trying to clear things up.

Things I’m wondering about:

- why was freenode being sold in the first place?

- for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale?

- Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves?

- why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network?

- Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold?

Can anyone please help me understand?

progval• 5 years ago

- why was freenode being sold in the first place?
- for what was it sold? For money? And who was paid for the sale?
- Why was a volunteer-run IRC network even registered as a business which could be sold?

It was to organize and sponsor a live conference ("Freenode #live").

The contract is not public, and not even (now former) freenode staff knows the terms. See the first two paragraphs here: https://gist.github.com/edk0/478fb4351bc3ba458288d6878032669...

- Did whatever freenode was sold for go back to support the IRC-network? Or did someone weasel it away for themselves?

It was mainly to support the conference, so this was a success. It's unknown if any other money was exchange.

- why would anyone buy and IRC network? What did they expect to gain by owning the network?

There is a tentative explanation in the OP, but we may never know the actual reasons unless we are Andrew Lee himself.

cookguyruffles• 5 years ago

Speaking as an IRC lifer, every article I read about this fails to actually make any kind of cohesive point about what's going on and why it is bad. Explain like I'm 5 please?

Who controlled nickserv/chanserv before this Andrew fellow? It seems there is some leap to "omfg he's taking control of services!" without mention of who is /losing/ control. It seems perhaps a large chunk of story is missing here.

Meanwhile I'll probably continue using Freenode until it starts serving Viagra ads during connection or something similarly tangibly evil. Right now I just see a bunch of dumb IRC drama. It's a chat network, come on.

ok1234565• 5 years ago

There is no real problem.

The freenode "staffers" just don't like the fact that someone was able to win the irc game (i.e., gaining more power) without following their invented arbitrary bureaucracy and dedicating their life to idling in the right set of channels.

This whole thing is really off topic and should be taken to ##wrongplanet .

michaelmrose4• 5 years ago

Every organization in which the people have real autonomy and power is literally an invented arbitrary bureaucracy. You just invented a really long way to describe civilization.

People don't like it when money trumps all other factors in a concern that perceptively wasn't for sale and threats and dishonesty don't help either.

It appears that nearly everyone involved believes there is a problem including Lee who now needs new paid staff to run what is likely a dwindling community. It sounds like you have an ax to grind personally.

mjthompson3• 5 years ago

I know you'll get downvoted but the last line did make me laugh.

Edit: delete some things I'm probably not qualified to comment on

pmlnr2• 5 years ago

IRC == drama since the dawn of time.

kazinator2• 5 years ago

I remember being kicked off #unix in Efnet sometime in 200x because I posted the controversial idea that work on IRC began in 1988 and I first compiled a client and got on in 1993.

andrew_• 5 years ago

Who else recalls the self-flagellation that was required in order to get any kind of help in #cplusplus or #programming? Took a lot of humility and you had to eat a lot of crow back in those days. ah, seeking help on EFNet - the old rite of passage for young programmers.

Stranger43• 5 years ago

Absolutely this brings back memories of the channel takeover battles that used to happen on EFNet back in the days before nickserv and chanserv, or for that matter freenode.net but that was kind of the EFNet culture and the actual ops rarely got involved with individual channels and communities struggles unless it affected the overall network stability.

Freenode was however supposed be run by adults and relatively drama free, i dont know really i kind of drifted away from IRC around the time freenode.net was formed.

_ktx2• 5 years ago

I think I might be able to do this.

Prior to recent times there was a Freenode head of staff that was elected named Christel. Powers seem to have been delegated from her as she had control of the legal entity.

In 2013 Freenode was sold to PIA for undisclosed sums and terms. Supposedly this was to launch a conference called Freenode Live (why Freenode wanted a conference is beyond me.) It was stipulated that Freenode staff would be able to maintain strategic control of the network. At some point Mr Lee of PIA requested that the domains be transferred back under his control and some ads for shells.com popped up on the Freenode website. Between there and now is a mystery.

Freenode isn't really just FOSS, believe it or not. It's a lot of hobbyists, tinkerers, etc... The vast majority of users you meet on there aren't data scientists or software engineers. The culture is this very independent, almost Libertarian-esque ideals. My take is that Mr Lee came in and reminded them the buck stops with him and no longer honored Freenodes more democratic culture of voting.

It's worth explaining that Freenode got in this state because the original owner died and his brother tried to monetize the network. There's precedent in the idea that people (staff and users) do not want a for-profit network. It's viewed as a conflict of interest and a consolidation of power where power is "meant" to be distributed and already quite scarce. These users will often avoid Slack and object to open communities being run on proprietary for-profit platforms. The reason people don't get it, in my view, is a difference in cultural values that are fairly unique to certain areas of FOSS and Freenode, LiberaChat, and OFTC.

Basically you had an official system of authority enforced by legal means and one implicit system of authority which users were familiar with that ran the day to day operations of the network. Those came to a head, and the network operators put the problem on the users because they didn't know how to deal with it.

dpedu• 5 years ago

In 2013 Freenode was sold to PIA for undisclosed sums and terms.

Sold by who? Christel alone? The brother-of-original-owner? What exactly was sold? The name? Server data?

wott2• 5 years ago

It's worth explaining that Freenode got in this state because the original owner died

Didn't this original owner also have a very er... "personal" way of managing funds?

mulmen• 5 years ago

What legal and organizational constructs can help maintain the original intent of a project even after the passing of the creator?

A foundation wholly owned by a public benefit company?

I don’t expect or even want Freenode to “innovate” or develop new lines of business. I just want them to run the network. I am reluctant to contribute to such an organization because I fear their success.

gwillen• 5 years ago

My sense has been that the things we need to know are mostly pretty clear. There are things we don't know, but it seems that Andrew Lee is the _reason_ (or a reason) that we don't know many of those things.

- Who controlled nickserv/chanserv? I'm not sure, but my impression is that it was probably christel (who was head of Freenode staff) until she resigned, then tomaw (who became head of Freenode staff at that time), until he was served with threatening legal papers ordering him to deliver them to Andrew Lee.

jefurii• 5 years ago

Seems like this may have been avoided if Freenode had just registered as an actual nonprofit that could have held/owned the domain and infrastructure.

jlokier3• 5 years ago

Ironically, that is in fact what happened. It's called Freenode Limited, and it's a registered nonprofit which holds the domain.

The trouble is the people who have left are unhappy with how it was done.

imode• 5 years ago

I've been on Freenode since 2006.

I've been known as 'imode' for a couple of years now.

I called out Lee, and he took my nickname away. There are already abuses of power going on, and he has no legal authority over any of the infrastructure.

imode: Nick/channel is temporarily unavailable

wowaname3• 5 years ago

  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Information on imode (account imode):
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Registered : Oct 05 03:45:24 2016 (4y 32w 6d ago)
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Last seen  : (about 0 weeks ago)
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): Flags      : HideMail, Private
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): imode has enabled nick protection
  - NickServ (NickServ@services.): *** End of Info ***
  - You are now known as imode

You're still in services DB and I'm able to use your nick. The "temporarily unavailable" error is literally that; your nick was probably recently protected by services, in which case you'd have to `/ns release` for it back.

0xbadcafebee• 5 years ago

This is like reading about the political intrigue of an ant colony. (jk ant colonies are fascinating)

Sunspark• 5 years ago

Presenting an alternative user perspective here, I would go on freenode, but only for sports channels (really, and how that happened is because on reddit before they started promoting discord, there was a window where IRC was advertised for sports chat, usually during game nights).

Freenode wasn't only for technology channels, though they were absolutely the majority.

My experience with freenode has been a positive one, the sports channels had the same crowd of regulars and there were no real issues.

Freenode was very nice, especially compared to the shower that EFNet was in the 90s and I am sorry to see that the freenode network is having troubles now.

IRC is a great technology, it's too difficult for the average user to understand, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The whole freenode kerfluffle

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