SohumB

That's what contracts are for.

Networks differ massively on these points.

Of course. My intent with that post was not to get into a discussion about why Freenode was right or wrong in making their decision - like I said, I'm not a staffer, and I have no access to the information they presumably are making their decisions on.

My intent with that post was to point out that Freenode's reasons were significantly more nuanced than you claimed in your parent post, and to address your response to one of them using arguments that they, again, outlined while you were in the channel.

nenolod is not a freenode staffer. The impression I got was that freenode felt they were going above and beyond in offering an alternative webchat to mibbit users, which they didn't need nor particularly want to do.

I sat on the same channel you did, and I came away with a fundamentally different impression. The "make mibbit OS" were either jokes or a precursor to explaining why they prefer their client.

There seems to be a bit of miscommunication between mibbit and freenode here, where freenode believes that they tried extensively over at least a year to resolve this with mibbit and mibbit says they had no clue. I'd certainly be suspicious and not necessarily feel welcome to forgiving immediately if something like that happened.

And as for trust - I don't know either group. But from the patient way in which the freenode staffers explained what was happening and their rationale to everyone who entered #freenode to demand their mibbit back for (I think) the better part of twelve hours, that leaves me with far more respect for them than for axod at the moment, assuming certain things about his actions fit together like it seems.

You really do think the worst of everyone don't you. I wonder what that says about you?

That he's someone I'd hire to deal with network security.

It's not a question of "they don't trust Mibbit", it's just basic security practice. Anyone, even a freenode staffer running his personal project, would not have that trust extended to them.

Old scenario - people are using mibbit to very easily banevade - crap.

Scenario #1 + #2 - the proxy will be banned or the user refused connection. There is no distinction because they can trust the code they're running to report the IP correctly. Scenario #3 - "ah crap, you mean I have to reset my router instead of just refreshing mibbit?"

From freenode.net/policy.shtml : freenode may block access to users whose IRC clients run on hosts with open proxies, IIS servers or other categories of software determined to present special risk to our server environment.

You should probably point out here that nenolod was one of the non-freenode-staff members in #freenode at that point, presenting his personal opinion. It's about as germane to this discussion as me pulling up random person B's comment about how mibbit is <insert sleazy thing here>.

This is either deliberate FUD or an accidental misconstruing of what they said.

I'm not a freenode staffer, but I was in the channel while this discussion was ongoing. What they did say was that:

1) the WEBIRC protocol, which mibbit pushes heavily, is fundamentally not trustable unless you know exactly what code is running

2) there are additional incentives for a commercial enterprise to potentially abuse any level of trust given to it

3) that this discussion was a tangent from the actual issue, which was that mibbit has not been, for over a year, open to discussion and working with freenode.

Their own client is not less capable of preventing abuse, because they can integrate it into their network better (which I take to mean things like actually presenting a guaranteed IP address and similar things), which means that they can then reliably block abusive users using the standard IRC techniques.

Lisp. I've snagged a copy of On Lisp and of SICP, and am working through the 6.001 lectures.