I send this email again, I didn't receive it back. Well possible that a majority didn't receive it, because spamfilters seem to hate the domain-ending "chat" (yeah that was poorly chosen I guess). In case you receive this emails now twice, I apologize for the inconvenience.
---- Hi all There is a new IRC channel #picolisp on the new IRC network irc.libera DOT chat - see their website on https://libera DOT chat/. This is a clone of the existing channel on the freenode network. The new channel has no logging set up yet. Some of the members of our small community who are most active on IRC are already present on this new channel (including Regenaxer). For the time being the freenode channel is active and still in use. After sending this email I will immediately delete my account on freenode and no longer use it (so no beneroth on freenode). I will be active in the new channel. I hope we will not end up with two channels but move entirely to libera DOT chat (and change the note regarding IRC on picolisp.com), but of course this is everyone's own decision. Short reasoning: * Two days ago, the entire staff of freenode resigned o staff = server administration, moderation and user support * They set up this new IRC network libera DOT chat * This resulted in emigration of many FOSS/programming communities from freenode to libera DOT chat * I believe it's the right thing to do the same o Also, I like to have quick access to other language and software communities on the same network Kind regards, - beneroth Backstory for the interested The background story, as always with such things, is some nice drama, with many views and information to be found on the internet. After some digging this is my current understanding of what happened, it might be wrong or incomplete, but this is the version which I found supported by multiple sources and chat logs, I list some links at the end. * The freenode.net IRC network is pretty old and beside GitHub the major community hub for FOSS communities, programming language communities and other programming-related culture for more than 20 years * The servers are donated, mostly by universities all over the world * The administration (permissions, user support, software maintenance, ...) was done by volunteers, which controlled all servers * The domain freenode.net was owned by a company, the Freenode Limited, owned by the then head-of-staff o as with most things on the internet, the domain is the root source of control for all services running under that domain * This company was set up primarily as legal entity to organize community events * The unpaid server administrators were not employed or otherwise associated with this company (besides the former owner who was a staff member) * The server infrastructure was not owned or donated to Freenode Limited * That company Freenode Limited was sold to a certain Andrew Lee in 2017 o Tech entrepreneur (VPN and stuff) o Crown Prince of South Korea (that's better than a blue tick on twitter) o Somewhat infamous for being involved (his company was aquired by) with Mt. Gox + Mt. Gox was the first big cryptocurrency exchange, which somehow "lost" most of their customers money and collapsed in 2014 # that money is still in use, this is visible from public bitcoin data, but it's unclear who owns it + Former head of Mt Gox later joined Andrew Lee's VPN company PIA as CTO (2018) + Mr. Lee sold PIA in 2019 * According to staff, they were not informed on the contents of the deal, but told that it would not affect the operation of the IRC network * Some domain incident made freenode staff set up 2FA for the domain account * Starting in 2021, Andrew Lee began to take influence o influencing the freenode.net website o contacting staff about administrator access and access to the domain account + apparently he never had setup 2FA for the domain access, so had no technical access to the domain even when being the legal owner o threatening some staff members with legal threats, accusing them of having taken over the network which he owns o apparently there was also a claim by Andrew Lee that he donated millions dollars to freenode, this money cannot be found anymore and the (unpaid volunteer) claim to not know anything about it (servers were donated anyway by other parties, so unclear what costs would be covered by these millions) * This events lead some staff to prepare resignments, some of the leaked in advance * Two days ago one of the staff announced his resignment with a global message to all users logged in at freenode at the time * Staff published the news about libera DOT chat * More and more resignment statements were published online at various places * By now all staff as resigned, some of them joined libera DOT chat project * freenode IRC network is now under full control of Andrew Lee and people he appointed * while IRC is generally to be assumed as public, the users passwords, email adresses and private messages are expected to be kept private. Former staff thinks this will not be upheld anymore. Freenode website, with a statement by Andrew Lee (rasengan) * https://freenode.net/ Statements by former staff * Overview with links to resign letters - it also has some more nuanced views and discussion in the comments! o https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409 * Notable resign letter (english) & comments on german IT news site by Fuchs (now staff at libera DOT chat) o https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt o https://www.heise.de/forum/heise-online/Kommentare/IRC-Netz-Freenode-ist-tot-es-lebe-Libera-Chat/Re-Paar-Korrekturen-und-Details/posting-38941060/show/ * Chat Logs with staff and Andrew Lee (rasengan) "discussing" (welcome to oldstyle harsh direct hahaha-only-serious talk and flamewars) o https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f323bd86bc096beb7bbe57fa835c1529acff463 o https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de News sites: * https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/ * German: https://www.heise.de/news/IRC-Netz-Freenode-ist-tot-es-lebe-Libera-Chat-6050724.html Wikipedia links: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_conflict * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Chat#Freenode * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrew_Lee_%28entrepreneur%29&oldid=1021364429c * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Internet_Access * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox
