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Leaving Freenode for a new network

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Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#261

Post by edm0nd »

rideontime wrote: post #252
marcan_42 wrote: post #236

Apparently London Trust Media, the company founded by Andrew Lee and which purchased Freenode, has now rebranded under the name "Imperial Family Companies". londontrustmedia.com now redirects to https://imperialfamily.com/ and it lists Freenode under Technology. Andrew Lee also claims to be the crown prince of Korea, which was no doubt the inspiration for this move: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/…

As someone who followed the Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange drama as it unfolded, I'm amazed anyone would hire him for a technical role.

If he lived anywhere else besides Japan, he would have done jail time for the amount of fraud he did. He deserved that and got off light IMO. Dude is a complete joke and useless.

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#262

Post by psy-q »

cheph wrote: post #232
aliljet wrote: post #19

Pointing the entire community to a new server (ircs://irc.libera.chat/) is going to cause a huge disruption, maybe destroy the community altogether. I can't help but wonder if there's no better way. What a tragedy.

I dunno who the "We" is in "We are founding a new network with the same goals and ambitions to support foss and likeminded communities: libera.chat." But if it is the same people who mismanaged freenode into this joke then maybe nobody should go there. Just a heads up. I think this Andrew Lee person would have a tough time being worse than them. How long until they sell libera.chat for a pack of magic beans? I give i…

They were the ones opposed to this sale. The sale was basically not a sale but a hostile takeover, and the former staff have now created a non-profit organization under Swedish law to hold the new network so that this kind of thing can't happen again.

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#263

Post by unixhero »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #120
gojomo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fully up on the controversy, but I suspect because it implied the "freenode IRC network" is something that can be "owned" - when it's more complicated than that. (A company can be owned, legally, sure, but an ongoing-set-of-relationships, & mostly-volunteer processes, is usually something more than property with neat property-title.)

Realistically, the infrastructure for the servers can be replace and when that is done there is a high chance >75% of the users remain. There will always be other people willing to volunteer. I remember the AOL ICQ IRC had volunteer opers and there is no way you can think that wasn't fully a for-profit setup.

People will overfor free if you give them power and status

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#264

Post by dang »

Looks like the relevant previous threads are:

Freenode resignation is official, not a draft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27205926 - May 2021 (10 comments)

The Freenode resignation FAQ, or: “what the fuck is going on?” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27169301 - May 2021 (8 comments)

I am resigning along with most other Freenode staff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153338 - May 2021 (262 comments)

Edit: oh - there's also this currently on the front page:

Welcome to Libera Chat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207734 - May 2021 (254 comments)

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#266

Post by ilaksh »

Sebb767 wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that the draft was censored and mentioned a buyer, while this one only talks about control. For me, it paints the situation worse. Still sad to see FreeNode fall. This will lead to a lot of split communities and dead links. EDIT: Fuchs finds some harsher words[0]: > In the past few weeks, this has changed[2], and the existance of a legal threat to freenode has become apparent. We cannot know th…

Freenode didn't fall. They just had to change to a new name.

It's a better name anyway.

People that are not able to adjust to a new name, you should feel sorry for them.

Dang should pin an announcement about the new domain for a few weeks. Or all the subreddits and other forums the maintainers use can do something like that. The word will get out.

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#268

Post by dang »

blibble wrote: post #15

I submitted this link under the title "freenode IRC network purchased by VPN company PIA" back in 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101538 it hit the top of the front page, and people complained about my use of the word "purchased" (including freenode staff now that seem to be extremely upset...): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14102030 needless to say the title was edited...

That's an interesting example because I don't think we'd edit the title that way now. We try to replace corporate-press-release tropes with more direct language; but of course only if we can be sure that it's true. If people in the thread were complaining about the word "purchased", that explains why we'd have changed your title. But I cringe a little to see that we put press release language like "joining forces" back in there.

Corporate press releases are sort of a special case: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... I sometimes say they're an exception to HN's title rule, but that's not really true. The rule is "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait", and the euphemistic, one-sided language of CPRs tends to be misleading (and sometimes is intentionally so).

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#269

Post by almostbasic »

ludocode wrote: post #77
danpalmer wrote: post #23

I don't know about the process of the sale/takeover of Freenode, but I'm a long time PIA user and have a fair amount of trust and goodwill for London Trust Media (the owner of PIA and now Freenode). - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors - They don't seem to get into the "snake oil privacy" marketing that so many VPN providers seem to be doing - They have been fairly open with how their tech…

> - PIA is much better designed for privacy than many competitors I used Private Internet Access for a long time. When they merged with Kape Technologies (resulting in the ludicrous situation of having Mark Karpelès as their CTO) I lost all faith in them and immediately switched to Mullvad. Having used both, I can tell you that Mullvad is far better designed. Mullvad has only account numbers, no usernames, emails or…

> - When they merged with Kape Technologies (resulting in the ludicrous situation of having Mark Karpelès as their CTO) I lost all faith in them and immediately switched to Mullvad.

This is not true. Mark was hired by London Trust Media and never worked for PIA. Since Kape acquired PIA in December of 2019, there is no connection at all between Mark and PIA.

Re: Leaving Freenode for a new network

#270

Post by IshKebab »

tazjin wrote: post #9

If this leads to a mass exodus from Freenode, it'll probably significantly reduce overall IRC usage. Communities will fracture, people will set up random splinter networks that will die off in a few months, and lots of open-source projects that already want to be using something Javascripty like Slack or Discord are going to use this as the motivating thing to make the switch. Personally I'm staying put on Freenode b…

IRC is already dying anyway. This will just speed up the process.
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