Show HN: Decentralized, Mutable, Serverless Torrent Swarm Websites

Hi, so I’m Andrew Lee and can definitely comment on this as I’m directly involved:

> For example, it implies that Lee was the person providing for freenode, when in fact he was just one of many donors: most servers in the network were donated by non-profits

You’re right, there were other server donors who provided servers on the network. However, the donations I provided were on a different order of magnitude financially. I provided many servers, of course, but also 7 figure funding [1]. That said, I’m definitely thankful for the server providers who were providing servers to us and continue to.

> Also, it says Freenode was "taken over" by Christel

All documentation both publicly and internally would refute this - Christel was fully in charge and the former staff was aware since it was explicitly written in the onboarding documents and on the website. Also, Tomaw was fully aware of this as well as of my ownership of freenode.

> Also, most of the drama took place after this article was published.

Again, untrue. Tomaw and I were in discussion and he was holding the network hostage for over a month prior to the article. prawnsalad of KiwiIRC and Snoonet was mediating and had had enough of Tomaw [2].

> All in all, Freenode's story is one of a collective project run by volunteers on their donated time/hardware turned into a top-down startup.

I think there is a misconception of the difficulty in running an IRC network. Given I have been a staff member off and on of other networks and continue to be on several, including on the coding teams, I can assure you that nobody would say this is a difficult time consuming thing. It’s not like open source code contribution.

Secondly, several members received monetary benefits - from me - in the form of flights, hotels, etc. like at DEFCON for example. The same people have looked me in the eye and said thank you before turning around and making up stories in a brazen attempt to slander me to take freenode. Not very upstanding people.

I think it’s pretty clear what they cared about when you review Libera months later and see that it’s a closed group run by the former freenode staffers, and they are now the oligarchs of Libera.

Finally, stop trying to force or pressure people to leave freenode. You’re acting like the Libera staff who actually spent months writing open source projects with the same falsehoods asking them to leave. It’s a form of censorship but worse it’s bullying.

As for me and freenode, we have been in legal discussion to truly decentralize the network and give it to the people - and that is what is happening. I have always been the custodian and financial supporter supporting freenode, even when the former staff was facing legal action from users who they had harassed, so this isn’t outside of my resume and track record - I obviously care about it deeply.

Freenode will belong to the people where it belongs, not the former staffers hands.

[1] http://techrights.org/2021/05/22/freenode-misinformation-or-...

[2] https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c164679...

I don't think that Facebook and Twitter are a bad thing at all. I think there is confusion as there is a massive power struggle and a lack of information on our side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI).

Also, I don't know what you mean by "average Joes." I don't think any person is less competent than another, and I would rather help to give access to information to the people, frankly, if I thought someone did have less information.

I'm a little confused by your position on people, and afraid of your position on freedom of information and equality.

i remember dreaming about something like this almost 20 years ago, when understanding torrents drew me into learning about networking and computing generally. huge props, it fills me with a warm feeling to see that these systems are not just possible but manifest.

Only the 'DNS' though right? Just the full-in-for-everything should be less as it does not work. But thanks for the correction.

> just because they can have weapons somehow is not a reason to make it very easy and legal.

Laws have costs and benefits. When the benefits are not actually realized in practice, that's relevant.

> Firearm are not defense tools. If someone shoot you, I don't see how it will save your life or protect you.

If someone is trying to kill you and you kill them first, this is more likely to lead to your survival than if you just let them kill you. And if this is more likely to happen, they are more likely to not attempt to kill you at risk to their own life.

This is especially relevant for people in bad neighborhoods where the police can't be expected to do this job or provide an effective deterrent, and many of the victims are people who have a criminal history.

An obvious and common case being where you get caught committing a crime, are pressured into testifying against someone else to avoid going to prison for ten years instead of one, and then you get out of prison and they or their people are after you.

> I live in a country that ban guns, and I'm not aware of a reason why it would affect anyone's life negatively. There are certainly less death by firearm though.

Ban red cars and there may be fewer accidents involving red cars, but is that really the right metric?

Firearms are aggressively prohibited in Mexico and they have an even bigger homicide problem than the US. There is a high rate of firearms ownership in Canada, and they don't. The reason for this difference is where we should direct our attention.