“Setting the record straight on Freenode” [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by blibble » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #106

M2Ys4U wrote: post #82

This raised my eyebrow a little: >At this point, I reach out to prawnsalad, a known person in the IRC space who has relationships with many people. What Lee neglects to say here is that prawnsalad's work has been sponsored by Lee (via PIA) as far back as 2017.[0] I have no reason to suggest that prawnsalad has acted improperly,[1] but he's not necessarily a disinterested party here. [0] https://kiwiirc.com/blog/Kiwi_…

He didn’t improperly act as you said and was not interested in this situation other than for the benefit of irc. To be clear, I have sponsored so many FOSS projects in the past and it’s pretty common knowledge within FOSS — for example even freenode ;)

he didn't act improperly, you did by implying that he is a neutral party

which as your employee/patreon: he isn't

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

#122

Post by wut42 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

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 "Freenode is FOSS"[3] post, there's a paragraph about decentralization. This essentially seems to be another Lee's project, "Tower of Chats"[4][5], which is like a sort of super-network with multiple more-or-less independent servers.

Is Lee's plan to merge Freenode and ToC ? Or merge Snoonet/IRC.com with Freenode ? Or merge them all together onto ToC ?

[1]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395347865271246853

[2]: https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1395667119778500611

[3]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss

[4]: https://letstoc.com

[5]: irc.imperialfamily.com

(edited to fix links)

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

#123

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #117

tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.

Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.

Again: there's nothing about DNS in the meeting minutes that you just cited upthread.

I'm also a little confused. The PIA/Freenode announcement says "There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now." Why would you be involved operationally in any way with Freenode's administration? What would any reorganization have mattered to you? Wasn't the point of the structure you claim you had that Freenode's operators had self-determination?

These are still more instances of this PDF you've produced not really clarifying your position here.

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

#124

Post by fastball » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

barneygale wrote: post #108

fastball wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear (yet) if Lee actually made any mistakes.

> 1) In early 2021, the freenode website was altered to begin prominently > mentioning Shells, a company that Andrew co-founded [4]. > > This was not discussed among staff at the time. This caused some > disruption and considerable confusion among staff for months afterward, > as to how to handle user inquiries about it, of which we received many. > > Ultimately, christel chose to resign rather than explain the situa…

Does anyone have a Wayback Machine link showing what exactly this looked like?

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

#125

Post by wut42 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #117

tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing about DNS in the meeting notes that I can see.

Check the messages about the DNS in the pdf. Thanks Thomas for caring! You seldom seem to miss replying to my comments, and I appreciate it.

He asked you that the head of staff, a.k.a the only person really responsible and managing the network, to own the domain. This is a sensible request.

"announcing a new ircd and a partnership with OFTC" ? Dude. Solanum is an evolution of Seven, which needed to evolve; based on Charybdis. It's not _new_, it's just an _evolution_, and one that is badly needed (to support ircv3 features and much more).

OFTC is also working on that IRCd. This is not a mad partnership either. Two networks joining forces to develop and improve a proven IRC platform (Charybdis/Atheme) is not something insane at all.

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

#126

Post by Syonyk » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

ique wrote: post #107

tapoxi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC stays IRC, but how else does a network like freenode survive a giant schism? They need to differentiate from libera chat. Matrix has problems, but as the ecosystem grows we'll start to see improvements.

I’ve been using Matrix with Riot, now Element, for 5 years and it’s only ever gotten worse. You really shouldn’t expect to see improvements.

My main problem with Matrix (which I'm willing to work around because of the benefits of a federated, self hosted, encrypted chat system) is that it seems to assume everyone has a lot of high end, modern hardware, at all ends of the system.

Synapse is fine until someone on the homeserver starts joining a bunch of rooms, then you'd better have a lot of RAM for it.

And Element, while a perfectly good client, is the standard "bloated electron app" option that chews 700MB of RAM and lags, entering text, on a Raspberry Pi 4.

There are alternatives, but they tend to have weird issues, at least last time I messed with them, in how they handle some of the corner cases of encryption.

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

#127

Post by rasengan » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #121

rasengan wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn’t improperly act as you said and was not interested in this situation other than for the benefit of irc. To be clear, I have sponsored so many FOSS projects in the past and it’s pretty common knowledge within FOSS — for example even freenode ;)

he didn't act improperly, you did by implying that he is a neutral party which as your employee/patreon: he isn't

He’s not my employee and I said he’s friends with both sides. I would say that makes him neutral.

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

#128

Post by rasengan » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #120

rasengan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone named christel somehow sold you an IRC network 5 years ago, unbeknownst (until recently) to the people operating the IRC network on their own servers. This is false [1]. The PDF clarifies a great many of the unanswered questions and verified that despite former staff attempt to say I was lying, all I did was spoke the truth and helped when asked. Please review the PDF. Lastly, I also run servers on freenode…

You keep saying this, and people keep telling you they have read the PDF. Perhaps it's helpful for you to hear this stated plainly: the PDF is inscrutable, and does not say clearly what you seem to believe it does. The announcement you link to here is itself clear as mud and has been quoted by your opponents. It says Freenode and PIA are "joining forces", "in the same family", but "continue to operate as a not-for-pr…

> There will be few noticeable changes in terms of day-to-day operations, the freenode project will continue to operate with much the same structure and volunteer base as it does now."

And it absolutely did until it didn’t (as per the meeting agenda notes) as you can see.

Thanks for helping to make that part clear.

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

#129

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

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…

There's the further detail of Handshake, which Lee appears to be deeply involved in, which is a cryptocurrency that in essence claims the DNS roots as its own (part of the marketing strategy of Handshake appears to have been some sort of "airdrop" --- I'm not a cryptocurrency person and may be using that term wrong --- of coins to open source projects; I don't know if that's connected to the FOSS donations Lee keeps referencing).

I've seen more than one person on HN express confusion about what "decentralizing" means in the context of Freenode's DNS, which seems to be the core of the controversy here, and do wonder myself whether this has something do with Handshake.

(Handshake is a deeply silly project, but it's not at all clear to me whether it is or isn't implicated in this drama).

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

#130

Post by blibble » Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

yannoninator wrote: post #47

hmmm, the crown prince of korea owning freenode is just as believable as the queen of england contributing to the linux kernel.

I wouldn't be surprised if he sets up Linux Limited then started claiming he (the "Linux board") owns the kernel