15:04 <@Fuchs> as it is clearly stated in my letter, this was a draft
that was not supposed to be published, but a draft from
a colleague that linked to mine got indexed by a search
engine and found
15:04 <@Fuchs> as of right now, none of us resigned, freenode is still
ran by the same volunteers that ran it for the past 2
decades, and the rest is rumours and hearsay, we'll gladly
officially communicate when we can, until then I'd suggest
taking any rants, pastebins, articles and the likes with a
grain of salt
OFTC was founded by people who didn't like how freeenode was run. but that was quite some time ago. i don't remember the details but there were some issues very early on, and the people responsible for those issues left long ago.
Sure you can, CTCP supports sending multiline messages. I even wrote support for them in an IRC lib I made once upon a time. No other client that I know of supports them, though.
IRC is a constant drama, all the way back to The Great Split[0]
Been involved with IRC a good 25 years, running a pretty popular blog about it "back in the days", i just couldn't be bothered keeping it up and updated because of all the constant fighting, arguing, bickering and people outright attacking each other all the damn time.
I'm not entirely sure what it is, but something about IRC gives people big egos, omnipotence fantasies which, again, leads to drama - i, myself, just concluded it wasn't worth my time anymore and moved on.
Mind you, this comes from someone who met his (former) wife on IRC, made great friendships with people all over the world - something i'm still grateful for to this very day.
Irc is banned on Brazillian servers, most ISPs will insta-cancel your contract if they detect you are running a IRC server.
Reason for that is that Irc drama attracts brazillian hackers and script kiddies like flies, having an irc server is like having a huge DDoS magnet, having a irc server is an excellent way to make a whole ISP crumble under attack.
Last major irc network we had went bankrupt because of their DDoS protection costs rising and rising and rising until they went in debt to stay online and until they couldn't pay the debts.
After a disagreement on IRC led to a 400mbps DDoS attack on my university (we shrugged it off, yay internet2) I decided it was time to stop using IRC. This was 20 years ago. I think I continued from a third party shell for a year or two but eventually moved on to web forums. Before I completely left I started ghosting my dns to avoid attacks but that was more effort than it was worth
> Reason for that is that Irc drama attracts brazillian hackers and script kiddies like flies, having an irc server is like having a huge DDoS magnet, having a irc server is an excellent way to make a whole ISP crumble under attack
Citation needed. Most ISPs ban IRC ports due to having a large amount of customers that are members of a botnet via a virus.
Is that really specific to IRC? I'm sure there's at least as much drama on Discord or large Whatsapp/telegram groups today.
Any community with sub-groups and a privilege system for ops/voice/... will generate drama.
It's not a fatality either, I've been on many smaller channels that were focusing on a specific topic and mostly used for technical discussions and the only moderator interventions were to kick spammers or update the /topic.
It saddens me a bit that IRC is so unpopular with newer generations, now the discussion has moved to proprietary, centralized solutions like Discord. Yet another nail in the free, distributed, decentralized, non-ad-driven, non-HTTP-based internet coffin.
> Is that really specific to IRC? I'm sure there's at least as much drama on Discord or large Whatsapp/telegram groups today.
The fact that anyone can start their own group limits tin god syndrome on those networks. IRC requires moderate technical skill and either running or paying for servers, which is enough of a hurdle that admins can get away with quite a lot of bad behaviour before being ousted.
Not that I disagree, but doesn't sound like that's the issue here? The issue is that there's been a hostile takeover of freenode.net so the admins have established an network on a new domain for its communities to migrate to, libera.chat.
Probably ok for most current irc use cases; but the mobile clients for Matrix suck. I’ve also had “eventual consistency” issues with the protocol.
Discord is probably the closest spiritual successor to irc (the types of communities using discord are the same types of communities that used irc in the past).
You say that like politics is a bad thing. The whole point of OS is to change the balance of power into the hands of the majority. OS fans have little respect for a forceful takeover by a rich entity. This is how it should be.
I always say to people that say YouTube brings the worst in people that its, just, well.. people. IRC was just like that in the 90s as soon as enough people were sat in a channel it just became factional.
<@kline> whats best is for everyone just to sit tight and wait for it to pan out, freenode isnt going to implode overnight no matter what random pastebins say
<@Fuchs> as it is clearly stated in my letter, this was a draft that was not supposed to be published, but a draft from a colleague that linked to mine got indexed by a search engine and found
<@Fuchs> as of right now, none of us resigned, freenode is still ran by the same volunteers that ran it for the past 2 decades, and the rest is rumours and hearsay, we'll gladly officially communicate when we can, until then I'd suggest taking any rants, pastebins, articles and the likes with a grain of salt
Why would someone who wrote that email draft now say his own email was "rumours and hearsay"?
That just makes the whole thing sound even sketchier.
Also, geez, how can anyone who's an IT professional in 2021 think they can put something on the public internet without auth and keep it private? Really?
It's possible when writing this the author was not in possession of the full facts, and misunderstood the situation.
Also at the time of writing it wasn't intended to be kept private, it's explicitly a message intended to be published at some point. It just never was and the situation changed, it's just an oversight.
1. That's what a draft is: A non-final document, which may never be used. Drafting a resignation and then not using it isn't unusual.
2. The internet is much bigger than you think. The document is probably more likely to be found and publicized from your drawer at home than being found on a random server on the internet. People fight for visibility for a reason.
Only when several documents link to each other, the risk of being found goes up...
According to https://p.haavard.me/ the pastebins expire after 24 hours. But most URLs in the pastebin already are 404, which likely means that someone pasted an old text file for an issue that happened some time ago.
The, often corrupt, sell off of community assets feels like a constant in human society.
From government kickbacks from oil companies down to community sporting clubs there is a tragic phenomena where if you have corrupt individuals in charge at a single point in time then there is a chance for an irreversible loss of a public good.
Here's a link about a community club in Australia where one of the directors ended up owning the clubs assets after some bad decision [0].
Nah, the standard playbook is to keep firing a bunch of employees who run the resource until service degrades, then complain about how badly mismanaged the resource is and extol how perfect it would be to have it be managed by a private company, then you have a friend start a company where you have a nice big share, have the company buy the resource with the support of the people, profit.
it would help, but referenda are at the mercy of the media. if you have a nasty corporate-controlled media, which we very much do in the UK, then people will still happily vote away their community property.
In the UK we had a referendum for more direct democracy. Something like 65% voted against, with a low turnout. Brilliant
Readit News
https://freenode.net/people
Edit: Also compare to the staff listed in this deleted freenode blog linked by @gwd below.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210423231439/https://freenode....
Edit 2: Who is OFTC and how do they fit in?
IRC is a constant drama, all the way back to The Great Split[0]
Been involved with IRC a good 25 years, running a pretty popular blog about it "back in the days", i just couldn't be bothered keeping it up and updated because of all the constant fighting, arguing, bickering and people outright attacking each other all the damn time.
I'm not entirely sure what it is, but something about IRC gives people big egos, omnipotence fantasies which, again, leads to drama - i, myself, just concluded it wasn't worth my time anymore and moved on.
Mind you, this comes from someone who met his (former) wife on IRC, made great friendships with people all over the world - something i'm still grateful for to this very day.
But it wasn't made to last, sadly.
[0] http://www.irc.org/history_docs/TheGreatSplit.html
Reason for that is that Irc drama attracts brazillian hackers and script kiddies like flies, having an irc server is like having a huge DDoS magnet, having a irc server is an excellent way to make a whole ISP crumble under attack.
Last major irc network we had went bankrupt because of their DDoS protection costs rising and rising and rising until they went in debt to stay online and until they couldn't pay the debts.
Citation needed. Most ISPs ban IRC ports due to having a large amount of customers that are members of a botnet via a virus.
Any community with sub-groups and a privilege system for ops/voice/... will generate drama.
It's not a fatality either, I've been on many smaller channels that were focusing on a specific topic and mostly used for technical discussions and the only moderator interventions were to kick spammers or update the /topic.
It saddens me a bit that IRC is so unpopular with newer generations, now the discussion has moved to proprietary, centralized solutions like Discord. Yet another nail in the free, distributed, decentralized, non-ad-driven, non-HTTP-based internet coffin.
The fact that anyone can start their own group limits tin god syndrome on those networks. IRC requires moderate technical skill and either running or paying for servers, which is enough of a hurdle that admins can get away with quite a lot of bad behaviour before being ousted.
Well yeah but with IRC you used to be able to perform hostile takeovers by knocking people offline strategically.
You can't really do that with Discord so the drama tends to stay as an argument rather than a DDoS battle
Surely this is selection bias, you don't hear about -no- drama.
I run an IRC network which hasn't had any real drama for 15 years... (Current global users: 322 Max: 1514)
I say that as an IRC user for at least 2 decades and a recent convert to Matrix.
Discord is probably the closest spiritual successor to irc (the types of communities using discord are the same types of communities that used irc in the past).
It seems the whole business, filled with young opinionated people, really invites these kind of dramas.
Do something, or vote.
Fixed that for you.
Dead Comment
I'd say it lasted.
But well, everything is political nowaday, and people apparently can't get political without creating drama. See: the last basecamp outrage.
I think you mean "polarized". And polarization is happening only in some societies, mostly in the anglosphere.
In many other places society was much more polarized 50 or 60 years ago.
<@Fuchs> as it is clearly stated in my letter, this was a draft that was not supposed to be published, but a draft from a colleague that linked to mine got indexed by a search engine and found
<@Fuchs> as of right now, none of us resigned, freenode is still ran by the same volunteers that ran it for the past 2 decades, and the rest is rumours and hearsay, we'll gladly officially communicate when we can, until then I'd suggest taking any rants, pastebins, articles and the likes with a grain of salt
Why would someone who wrote that email draft now say his own email was "rumours and hearsay"?
That just makes the whole thing sound even sketchier.
Also, geez, how can anyone who's an IT professional in 2021 think they can put something on the public internet without auth and keep it private? Really?
Also at the time of writing it wasn't intended to be kept private, it's explicitly a message intended to be published at some point. It just never was and the situation changed, it's just an oversight.
2. The internet is much bigger than you think. The document is probably more likely to be found and publicized from your drawer at home than being found on a random server on the internet. People fight for visibility for a reason.
Only when several documents link to each other, the risk of being found goes up...
Not saying it is so, but...
Don’t tell me nothing is going on and everything is alright.
Seriously, wtf?
Here is their 2017 blog about resignations:
https://freenode.net/news/recent-events-and-future-changes
According to https://p.haavard.me/ the pastebins expire after 24 hours. But most URLs in the pastebin already are 404, which likely means that someone pasted an old text file for an issue that happened some time ago.
I'm guessing stuff behind '/privat/' isn't supposed to be, er, public.. oops.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21679682
https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
From government kickbacks from oil companies down to community sporting clubs there is a tragic phenomena where if you have corrupt individuals in charge at a single point in time then there is a chance for an irreversible loss of a public good.
Here's a link about a community club in Australia where one of the directors ended up owning the clubs assets after some bad decision [0].
[0] - https://www.michaelwest.com.au/a-barilaro-affair-how-the-bar...
In the UK we had a referendum for more direct democracy. Something like 65% voted against, with a low turnout. Brilliant
https://freenode.net/news/recent-events-and-future-changeshttps://dis.tinychan.net/read/prog/1455902643
[1] https://fuchsnet.ch/privat/fn-resign-letter.txt
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210423231439/https://freenode....
https://libera.chat/
https://twitter.com/liberachat
Their twitter was created last month.
Seems like there was an attempt at damage control more than anything else.