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“Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

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Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#211

Post by adam1210 »

ve55 wrote: post #209
wut42 wrote: post #122

Besides discussing what happened, I wonder what IS going to happen. Right now every staffer introduced by rasengan isn't known by much, seems to be very new to freenode (and even at some times, struggling with managing the services). Some of the new staffers seems to be previous operators of Rizon[1], also known as the 4chan of IRC, which is a dubious move. One of them also seems to have been fired from it[2]. On "Fr…

Worth noting that the Rizon-related tweet that you cited is most definitely false and zero opers have moved or been added that match that criterion recently.

As someone who is actually an operator on Rizon, I agree.

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#212

Post by Macha »

mkishi wrote: post #200
ex-fnstaffer wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mail server was working when the whole staff team resigned. What happened after then will have entirely been within the control of the freenode management, their administration, and their sponsors. Every ex-freenode staffer I have talked to has been exceptionally cautious about damaging the data and systems they tended for literal decades, and to my knowledge none were disrupted. I think here, you have to look to…

I'm having a hard time following anything. Andrew claims they brought a lawyer in after their access to the DNS was revoked and their request for that to be undone was denied. They supposedly have had access for 5 years without issues, and according to Tomaw it's something they'd "probably never do anything with." Why should Andrew accept that, even if the only thing Freenode Ltd. owned was the domain and name? If th…

I don't think tomaw was aware that freenode ltd owned anything apart from the freenode live conference, until the legal discussions happened. So from his point of view it would have been a case of "Why should the people we ran a conference with in 2017/2018 have access to our domain?"

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#213

Post by tallship »

danieldle wrote: post #160
rasengan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably would not be wise to guess or speculate and instead go by what I have actually said. The issue with services was because the previous team pulled our mail server and all its contents. We had to abruptly get everything in place. As for the decentralizing - that’s what I’m into and the way to do it on irc is by ending reliance on a central domain name for the connection. It’s not decided yet but is something I…

I see that you are spreading your falsehoods here, too. The issue with services was not due to the "previous team", but rather due to the sponsor pulling their box. The "previous team" had no access to them by that point. As you might have guessed, the sponsors had a gentlemen's agreement with previous staff and not with Freenode ltd. Now most of them obviously don't like sponsoring their boxes for your company, so t…

Yup. Abolootley!

For Andrew, the spoiled little boy with an empty toybox:

You own a brand. That's basically it. And then swing in like Tarzan to save the day from the sunshine and suddenly, all of the organizations that provided *Their* infra to *the cause*, *the spirit*, and *the philosophy* of giving back to the community took back their infra and..... suddenly the little boy realizes that his toybox is empty - Sure! Little boy owns that toybox, but all the toys inside were gracious contributions loaned to the hard working team of volunteers that no longer work for you.

Yup! we're taking back our boxes and wiping the data and repurposing those resources that We, the companies and individuals that made your little starship go, and we're using our property to reallocate those resources either to other noble causes or paying customers - of which you have neither (noble causes or paying customers Andrew).

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#214

Post by mynameisvlad »

pedrocr wrote: post #210
mynameisvlad wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just goes back to my point, though, what is "the network" and what can any one person or group of people hand over? The ssh keys to the servers? Sure, but that doesn't mean freenode ltd now owns the servers or the software running on them. They've just been given operational control over them (which I guess is exactly what Andrew wanted at the end of the day) but who exactly owns "the network" if that's even possi…

I'd say that if you control both the DNS and own the network data (chanserv/nickserv/etc) you own the network. You can at any point stand up an entirely different infrastructure, staffed by entirely different people, switch over to it and the users just migrate over as they reconnect. It would look like a really bad net split that doesn't resolve without reconnecting. The splintering network can just advertise a new…

Very good points. I had read your other comment saying the same and it makes a lot of sense; the service databases likely are the "true" network since everything else can be changed around it.

> The staff apparently didn't think they could just take a backup of the data and move it over to the new network.

I doubt we'll ever find out if it's because they believed freenode ltd owned the data or just didn't want to deal with the inevitable legal battle that would certainly ensue. Sad that often times it's just the person with the stronger legal team that wins in these situations.

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#215

Post by ilaksh »

rasengan wrote: post #88
ilaksh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you left out a few important things in that paragraph. There was at least one significant dispute. Something about a DNS change that would cause many people to leave. What exactly was that? Also, that Christel person or whatever their name, the fact that they apparently were kind of desperate for money at some point and so supposedly sold you something seems like you were taking advantage of them and the situ…

The DNS dispute is when I, who owned the domains, was cut off from the domains and simply asked for it back. As you can see I was approached by freenode to buy freenode please don’t twist it. Did you read the PDF with the screenshots?

Ok..so were you cut off from access or did your own employee decide to enable two-factor authentication, and since you had neglected to set that up for quite some time, you were locked out?

Because that's what I heard.

Lol.

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#217

Post by pen2l »

tptacek wrote: post #206
generalizations wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the PDF is inscrutable I was able to follow it pretty easily. What did you have trouble with?

Sure, if it's helpful: * Its central claim, that PIA or Lee or whoever directed a bunch of money to Freenode or people involved with freenode, isn't contested by anyone. There's no record to set straight there. * It spends the bulk of its time talking about a problem Lee seems to have with Thomas Welsey ("tomaw", I think?) --- but the logs with "tomaw" seem relatively civil? It's not really even clear what the proble…

> Why does this matter? It seems to be obvious to Lee why this is problematic, but it's not at all obvious to me.

There's "freenode" -- the network, the volunteers, and there's 'Freenode Limited' the company, which owns the Freenode domain and trademark. The latter were being held by christel, and she seemed to have sneakily sold them to Lee because she needed money (she seems to have lied to the rest of team about the details of transfer, the rest of the team only learned later about all that was handed over to Lee when lawyers got involved). By virtue of controlling the domain and having access to the website, Lee seems to have put ads on the site... this rubbed some folks the wrong way. They all had a foreboding feeling of things to come and tried to get the domain firmly under their control... to which Lee resisted. Lee does own the domain, he paid for it fair and square after all, so he's got that going for him...

But at this point that's the only thing he's got going for him.... because Freenode is an IRC network with community roots that wants to remain community-oriented and away from commercialization and pesky shell ads, so Freenode is no longer what it used to be, Libera is, and Lee is now left holding a dud.

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#218

Post by lonjil »

hannasanarion wrote: post #198
mam3 wrote: post #31

with all that i still don't know what freenode is lol

Congratz, you found the crux of the matter. There's a volunteer community called freenode, an IRC network called freenode, and a private company called freenode, and nobody seems to be able to agree on who owns what.

Well, the servers are owned by the sponsors, and the sponsors have informal agreements with the staffers who are no longer with Freenode. Freenode Ltd (which apparently will cease to exist in a few weeks due to Lee's lack of taking care of company admin) apparently owns the domain name. Lee owns Freenode Ltd. Other than that there is nothing to own.

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#219

Post by wut42 »

rasengan wrote: post #187
danieldle wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freenode didn't use 1m in the whole 20 years it existed. Infrastructure: all sponsored Staffers: all volunteers Development: all FOSS Third party services like GitHub: all sponsored so what exactly would it have used > 1m on, please?

This is not true. As a single example, conferences cost money to throw - significant money. We did two. The FOSS community loves these events to be clear.

The freenode live conference was another thing not supposed to be "part" of the network. Freenode Ltd was created for the conference purpose, not the network (according to what christel said at the time).

Re: “Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf]

#220

Post by Macha »

pandem wrote: post #190
rasengan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a personal message to tptacek who has a history of replying to my comments.

As the CEO do you happen to know where I can send a GDPR request? I tried policy@freenode.net which was mentioned on the website but it is not working. Address not found Your message wasn't delivered to policy@freenode.net because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail.

Sounds like the server sponsor for the server which the mail server was running on pulled their server.
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