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 ?
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).
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 an outsider who hasn't used IRC or Freenode in over a decade, this situation is impenetrable. Neither the posts by the Freenode volunteers nor this post by Andrew paint a coherent narrative I can follow (maybe I'm just old).
Best I can gather, the flashpoint that triggered this series of events is a dispute over the control of the freenode domain name and DNS servers?
* Lee stepped in to sponsor/fund the Freenode Live events
* Some assets were sold/transferred to Lee in the process of this
* Former staff admin leaves, new staff admin is elected
* New staff admin attempts to take control of assets they (reasonably) assume they should have control of
* Lee (reasonably) perceives this as control of assets being taken away from him - it's at this point we discover more about which assets were sold/transferred.
* Recent events driven by elected leadership discovering they're not actually leadership.
Essentially freenode has had a leadership vacuum for some time, and has been perfectly comfortable with that. But nature abhors a vacuum ..
You might note I have two groups marked as (reasonably) in opposite directions. As far as I can tell this is an information gap - what was sold/transferred was kept very, very quiet, so I do believe each side was behaving reasonably with the information available to them. So I believe what we're seeing this week, is what we would have seen during the actual sale, if these details were made remotely public at the time.
Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that.
Secondly, staff claim there was a hostile takeover. I have owned freenode for years and was a great custodian as far as I can tell (only compliments from former staff some of which even flew into defcon and came to my house on my dime, internationally) - I intervened when a hostile takeover from the inside began taking place - my dns was cut and the internal structure was changing to a non democratic one. All of this is detailed in the post and screenshots for proof since there’s been a lot of falsehoods spread.
I think the flashpoint was the nasty lawyerese received by the newly-instated head of staff (tomaw) after he had been elected. The story is impenetrable because, from what I gather, the lawyerese contained a gag order not to discuss the contents of the letter.
I couldn't unravel it in a 10-minute skim, over lunch just now.
I speculate that one of the causes of this confusion (which is eerily familiar, from countless other disputes in community projects) is that people involved in community project disputes tend not enlist professional communicators to represent their perspective, and the disputes don't tend to be covered by investigative journalists. And outsiders just aren't interested to unravel it. Many individuals invest much of their lives into community projects, sometimes with little else left, and aren't prepared for suddenly being subject to the court of public opinion. And the public generally isn't invested enough in the matter, to work long to understand it.
Anyway, it sounds unfortunate that Freenode appears to be going through a rough time, and I hope good comes out of this period of its history.
FWIW, before Freenode started, lilo was on other networks, and I recall him asking how to create a nonprofit organization, which I assumed that was what became Freenode. I think the intent was to have a legal structure that would permit an IRC network to sustainably represent particular community interests.
It sounds like rasengan/Andrew Lee wanted a specific DNS change made which was objectionable to the staff, and that triggered the whole mess. I hadn’t seen it mentioned before but one of the chats from Thomas includes something about backing off from a DNS change.
From Freenode's own website in 2017: "Following discussion and deliberation we have decided to formally (and legally) ally ourselves with PIA. Freenode will continue to operate as a not-for-profit entity under the same management, with the same principles, but PIA's involvement going forwards will provide us with opportunities and resources that we could previously only dream of. PIA will provide an operating budget, mentorship and support that will allow freenode to implement some of the projects and ideas that have previously been on the backburner due to constraints in terms of volunteer time and resources." [1]
"The conversation ends up a monologue with me explaining decentralization to Thomas, who abruptly ends the conversation letting me know he’d like to speak later."
Agreed. Also not sure why he chose to point out someone putting a pause on a conversation. People aren’t obligated to talk with you when you want them to.
It’s clear from later messages that Thomas had other things going on and I’m sure that conversation was not helping.
Christel was the head of staff and created a limited corporation in the UK to manage freenode’s name and trademarks. What’s unclear is how much “freenode limited” owns in terms of the network itself.
That is kinda the problem; anarchically-organised community can not own a domain name, it falls always to some singular entity. And that is where the anarchy broke down when the community realized that they did not own the domain
Now this throws the ball to thomaw, who is, according to this pdf, “not capable with working with people in a suitable way”.
Also, while Andrew claims he supports decentralization, he also says he is “the owner” of freenode, which still smells really bad. It’s possible that Andrew himself also sent out bad signals to other staffs, which led to this drama.
When we are not happy with a situation, it is easier to pack your shit and leave quietly than to make a stink about it. Many years ago, I was not happy with my bonus after an acquisition so instead of raising a stink I made my own bonus by leaving for a higher paying job. Do yourself a favor: always leave on good terms and be helpful when your old company calls with questions.
What most fascinates me about this whole kerfuffle is your adamant refusal to take responsibility for anything. All I've seen from you is continued insistence that nothing is your fault, accompanied by pages of nigh incomprehensible "evidence" that doesn't seem relevant to anything that's actually happened.
The facts of note seem to be: (1) you are, for whatever reason, in charge of freenode; (2) the very first moment you attempted to make use of that position, you destroyed freenode.
That is a *catastrophic* management failure on your part, and the fact that I haven't seen so much as a "my bad" from you is appalling beyond words. Despite how much you claim to care about freenode, you are clearly more concerned with your own image.
The Ardour project has used Freenode for more than 16 years as our primary coordinating and realtime support platform.
I (the project lead) also used IRC back in the 80s and early 90s.
Here's what IRC is to me (I'm not speaking for everyone involved in Ardour):
* a protocol
* an accessible server
* a channel (or two), with a founder and at least one operator
If those things are all functioning, then I really don't care at all about anything going on "behind the scenes". I don't care who does what on the server, I don't care who owns the server, I don't care what the plan is for the ownership of the server. I don't care if there are controversial channels somewhere. I don't care if the server admins are fighting. I don't care where the servers are (*). I don't care about channel creation policies. I don't care about ANY of this, as long as those three things continue to function normally.
The only exception to this is when there is (as there was last year or the year before) a coordinate DDOS attack on the servers. In the situation, I do care that the server admins are competent and have the tools to do what needs to be done. In the case of that attack (which IIRC also somehow centered on Christel in some way), the Freenode admins did what needed to be done, and I thank them for it.
The service that Freenode offered the FOSS community was to make those 3 things available at no charge for our projects. This was (and remains) enormously valuable. But nothing else about Freenode is of importance to me. It could be owned by Google as long as those 3 things work in the right way. I prefer to be using an infrastructure maintained by people with some ideological preference that supports the work we do, but realistically speaking, on a day to day basis, it makes no difference. I'm the operator in #ardour, and as long as the network ops stay out, allow me to set channel modes and other policies, their existence is something I can remain almost entirely blissfully ignorant of.
I don't want to have to care about what is happening at Freenode at all. What we get from IRC is completely orthogonal to the beliefs and behaviors of anyone behind the scenes. I'd prefer that it remains that way, but it seems as if everyone behind the scenes is telling me that I'm supposed to care.
(*) anyone imagining that IRC has any degree of privacy doesn't understand IRC. Ergo, whether the servers are in the US, or the EU, or southern Africa makes no difference to the content that I'm willing to read or write on an IRC channel.
I think this right here reflects the reality of many or most of the channels on Freenode. I am one of the few operators of one of the larger channels on Freenode and it cost me otherwise productive work time (with no warning whatsoever) just to have to prevent the inevitable trolls from squatting on related channels and nicknames (for anyone wondering, we were helped with the channels, but not with nicknames, despite having logs to demonstrate these were registered by squatters). Now we are being "encouraged" to put more work into this matter which is, as far as I can work out, just some interpersonal drama and power politics. We have taken a "wait and see what happens" stance, which seems to be what most are doing, not only because it is unclear what is actually going on here, but because I otherwise have a lot of work to do (despite the time I spend on HN, I promise!).
In the end, it seems what happened is that christel sparked a huge misunderstanding between freenode staff and Andrew Lee by making misleading statements to both parties and lying to hide the fact that she had sold freenode to get herself out of financial troubles.
It's worth noting that, unlike the integral chatlogs published earlier displaying Andrew's questionable views on Freenode, this PDF is full of heavily-snipped logs without context.
The only thing that's clear to me, after this, is that the whole governance structure was never properly defined and codified. It all seems to have been based on gentlemens agreements.
So my understanding of the situation (not an insider, just following the drama):
1. Way back when, Freenode was started by Rob Levin/Lilo. At some stage a legal entity needed to exist, which was Open Projects Network initially.
2. After some drama about misappropriation of funds, Freenode staff seperated themselves (all involved then having moved on by the time of the current drama) from OPN. [1]
3. Still realising the need for a legal entity, they formed PDPC . This had a structure and eventually christel was the leader of said structure.
4. Many years pass
5. The decision is made that PDPC is not providing enough value, when the cost of maintaining the non-profit is Freenode's primary expense. So it's dissolved[2][3]. At this stage, Freenode ceases to exist as a legal entity, but the network still exists. The domains etc. were likely under the personal control of christel at this point.
6. Many more years pass.
7. Due to reasons not definitively answered as christel has made no statements to this point, PIA steps in. They set up freenode ltd as a legal body for this. freenode ltd acquire freenode from christel as part of this, but what's publicly communicated[4] is that it's a partnership, and later downplayed to a sponsorship, including in public by christel[5]. This appears to have been what the staff was informed also. christel also becomes a PIA or LTM employee.
8. A few more years pass. During this time, PIA seperates from LTM via the Kape acquisition [6]. It's LTM which keeps the freenode stake, and Shells is the new LTM company that is the public facing sponsor.
9. Christel puts up a Shells sponsorship on the homepage which is unknown to the rest of the team as to why. When questioned, she leaves. Andrew Lee portrays this questioning as harassment, the libera.chat team portray it as asking "Hey, why is this sponsor there?"
10. Christel resigns. The staff, figuring that Freenode is still a volunteer run group, appoint a new leader, tomaw, who begins taking control and limiting access to Freenode resources to the staff.
11. Andrew Lee claims to own Freenode. After some legal back and forth between tomaw and Andrew Lee, the libera.chat team accept that Christel sold what she owned to Andrew Lee legally, though what she owned is unclear due to the dissolution of PDPC years prior.
12. The staff and Andrew Lee try to negotiate. The staff point out that Freenode is a volunteer run network running on volunteer provided servers, none of which are owned by a freenode entity, and also that it breaks previous public statements and promises to assert control. Andrew Lee points out he is the legal owner and it is inappropriate to remove his access.
13. The staff split off to form libera.chat
So, the points of conflict:
1. Both sides at this point accept that christel sold what she legally owned to Andrew Lee. What did she legally own to sell? The domain and the website for sure, but what is Freenode? The IRC servers are provided on a volunteer basis by server owners with no commitment, the channels are "owned" by the communities in them. So what does it mean to own Freenode?
2. Was Christel in the right to sell things to Andrew Lee? Again, legally, the answer appears to be yes - without PDPC, she did own the assets personally, so could sell them, but morally she was the owner because she was representing the freenode volunteers and in this she didn't appear to have their participation, knowledge, or agreement.
3. Should freenode have a corporate owner? The idea is that it's a volunteer run group, so it feels weird to have a corporate owner. This is a big point of confusion for people who are going "So the owner took control, I don't see why there's a problem here". The issue was there should never have been an individual owner, but because of the costs involved in PDPC and its shutdown, there effectively was. The legal structure became divorced from the community structure at this point. This is considered to be a "So what?" by some people, while it's inherently a problem for others.
Very good summary (commenting as another outsider).
> So what does it mean to own Freenode?
I think this is the very crux of the issue. Andrew claims to own Freenode in its entirety, even though its not very clear what that means. And that claim apparently rubbed the staff, tomaw in the forefront, in a very wrong way. As far as I can tell, the staff thought that Freenode the network was collectively "owned" if at all, so Andrew waltzing in and claiming singular ownership naturally resulted conflict.
[1] In fact I've worked with him in the past, and have met him many times in a social context IRL. I was involved with KiwiIRC until shortly before PIA sponsored his work.
No it isn't. It would be surprising if Elizabeth II bothered to personally write kernel code, but it's hardly unbelievable.
Unless you're being absurdly pedantic about England-the-kingdom technically not existing because it's actually part of Great Britain/the UK now, but if so, you should probably say that.
more like Franz of Bavaria, who claims to be rightful King of England of the line of Stuart but is in fact just a guy with a bunch of inherited wealth, just like Andrew Lee.
[+] [-] wut42|4 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] tptacek|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] ve55|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasengan|4 years ago|reply
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 have put out and requested for comments.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|4 years ago|reply
Best I can gather, the flashpoint that triggered this series of events is a dispute over the control of the freenode domain name and DNS servers?
[+] [-] soneil|4 years ago|reply
* freenode was run by elected volunteers.
* Lee stepped in to sponsor/fund the Freenode Live events
* Some assets were sold/transferred to Lee in the process of this
* Former staff admin leaves, new staff admin is elected
* New staff admin attempts to take control of assets they (reasonably) assume they should have control of
* Lee (reasonably) perceives this as control of assets being taken away from him - it's at this point we discover more about which assets were sold/transferred.
* Recent events driven by elected leadership discovering they're not actually leadership.
Essentially freenode has had a leadership vacuum for some time, and has been perfectly comfortable with that. But nature abhors a vacuum ..
You might note I have two groups marked as (reasonably) in opposite directions. As far as I can tell this is an information gap - what was sold/transferred was kept very, very quiet, so I do believe each side was behaving reasonably with the information available to them. So I believe what we're seeing this week, is what we would have seen during the actual sale, if these details were made remotely public at the time.
[+] [-] rasengan|4 years ago|reply
Long story short, former staff were upset about a logo but the logos were there since the start. I wanted to share that.
Secondly, staff claim there was a hostile takeover. I have owned freenode for years and was a great custodian as far as I can tell (only compliments from former staff some of which even flew into defcon and came to my house on my dime, internationally) - I intervened when a hostile takeover from the inside began taking place - my dns was cut and the internal structure was changing to a non democratic one. All of this is detailed in the post and screenshots for proof since there’s been a lot of falsehoods spread.
I had to step in and did just in time.
[+] [-] tremon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|4 years ago|reply
I speculate that one of the causes of this confusion (which is eerily familiar, from countless other disputes in community projects) is that people involved in community project disputes tend not enlist professional communicators to represent their perspective, and the disputes don't tend to be covered by investigative journalists. And outsiders just aren't interested to unravel it. Many individuals invest much of their lives into community projects, sometimes with little else left, and aren't prepared for suddenly being subject to the court of public opinion. And the public generally isn't invested enough in the matter, to work long to understand it.
Anyway, it sounds unfortunate that Freenode appears to be going through a rough time, and I hope good comes out of this period of its history.
FWIW, before Freenode started, lilo was on other networks, and I recall him asking how to create a nonprofit organization, which I assumed that was what became Freenode. I think the intent was to have a legal structure that would permit an IRC network to sustainably represent particular community interests.
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corobo|4 years ago|reply
A thought occurs -- this is probably the last big IRC network drama
[+] [-] ilaksh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barneygale|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jgilias|4 years ago|reply
1. Christel sells 'something' to Andrew while under apparent financial distress.
2. Tomaw somehow learns that Andrew is willing to take over operational matters and tries to act against it.
3. Andrew keeps pushing his authority using titles such as 'Board of Freenode' and 'Chairman of Freenode'.
4. Volunteers actually running Freenode don't feel like working for free for a for-profit company and leave to found Libera.chat.
[+] [-] rasengan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IncRnd|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
[+] [-] epsylon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjbwork|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxmcd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kgwxd|4 years ago|reply
Where's that monologue? Why cut it out?
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|4 years ago|reply
It’s clear from later messages that Thomas had other things going on and I’m sure that conversation was not helping.
[+] [-] wizzwizz4|4 years ago|reply
Was Christel ever the owner of Freenode? I thought Freenode was anarchically-organised.
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|4 years ago|reply
Are the staff leaving due to issue dating back four years, because the owner have been so hands off that nobody noticed before now?
[+] [-] zokier|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esjeon|4 years ago|reply
Also, while Andrew claims he supports decentralization, he also says he is “the owner” of freenode, which still smells really bad. It’s possible that Andrew himself also sent out bad signals to other staffs, which led to this drama.
[+] [-] slenk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmcgaha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmentor|4 years ago|reply
Let's get concrete: What assets does Freenode have, and who legally owns them?
[+] [-] blibble|4 years ago|reply
which has conveniently been omitted
without that this looks like gaslighting
[+] [-] fastball|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eevee|4 years ago|reply
The facts of note seem to be: (1) you are, for whatever reason, in charge of freenode; (2) the very first moment you attempted to make use of that position, you destroyed freenode.
That is a *catastrophic* management failure on your part, and the fact that I haven't seen so much as a "my bad" from you is appalling beyond words. Despite how much you claim to care about freenode, you are clearly more concerned with your own image.
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|4 years ago|reply
I (the project lead) also used IRC back in the 80s and early 90s.
Here's what IRC is to me (I'm not speaking for everyone involved in Ardour):
If those things are all functioning, then I really don't care at all about anything going on "behind the scenes". I don't care who does what on the server, I don't care who owns the server, I don't care what the plan is for the ownership of the server. I don't care if there are controversial channels somewhere. I don't care if the server admins are fighting. I don't care where the servers are (*). I don't care about channel creation policies. I don't care about ANY of this, as long as those three things continue to function normally.The only exception to this is when there is (as there was last year or the year before) a coordinate DDOS attack on the servers. In the situation, I do care that the server admins are competent and have the tools to do what needs to be done. In the case of that attack (which IIRC also somehow centered on Christel in some way), the Freenode admins did what needed to be done, and I thank them for it.
The service that Freenode offered the FOSS community was to make those 3 things available at no charge for our projects. This was (and remains) enormously valuable. But nothing else about Freenode is of importance to me. It could be owned by Google as long as those 3 things work in the right way. I prefer to be using an infrastructure maintained by people with some ideological preference that supports the work we do, but realistically speaking, on a day to day basis, it makes no difference. I'm the operator in #ardour, and as long as the network ops stay out, allow me to set channel modes and other policies, their existence is something I can remain almost entirely blissfully ignorant of.
I don't want to have to care about what is happening at Freenode at all. What we get from IRC is completely orthogonal to the beliefs and behaviors of anyone behind the scenes. I'd prefer that it remains that way, but it seems as if everyone behind the scenes is telling me that I'm supposed to care.
(*) anyone imagining that IRC has any degree of privacy doesn't understand IRC. Ergo, whether the servers are in the US, or the EU, or southern Africa makes no difference to the content that I'm willing to read or write on an IRC channel.
[+] [-] fapjacks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canjobear|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antimba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joepie91_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donatzsky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Macha|4 years ago|reply
1. Way back when, Freenode was started by Rob Levin/Lilo. At some stage a legal entity needed to exist, which was Open Projects Network initially.
2. After some drama about misappropriation of funds, Freenode staff seperated themselves (all involved then having moved on by the time of the current drama) from OPN. [1]
3. Still realising the need for a legal entity, they formed PDPC . This had a structure and eventually christel was the leader of said structure.
4. Many years pass
5. The decision is made that PDPC is not providing enough value, when the cost of maintaining the non-profit is Freenode's primary expense. So it's dissolved[2][3]. At this stage, Freenode ceases to exist as a legal entity, but the network still exists. The domains etc. were likely under the personal control of christel at this point.
6. Many more years pass.
7. Due to reasons not definitively answered as christel has made no statements to this point, PIA steps in. They set up freenode ltd as a legal body for this. freenode ltd acquire freenode from christel as part of this, but what's publicly communicated[4] is that it's a partnership, and later downplayed to a sponsorship, including in public by christel[5]. This appears to have been what the staff was informed also. christel also becomes a PIA or LTM employee.
8. A few more years pass. During this time, PIA seperates from LTM via the Kape acquisition [6]. It's LTM which keeps the freenode stake, and Shells is the new LTM company that is the public facing sponsor.
9. Christel puts up a Shells sponsorship on the homepage which is unknown to the rest of the team as to why. When questioned, she leaves. Andrew Lee portrays this questioning as harassment, the libera.chat team portray it as asking "Hey, why is this sponsor there?"
10. Christel resigns. The staff, figuring that Freenode is still a volunteer run group, appoint a new leader, tomaw, who begins taking control and limiting access to Freenode resources to the staff.
11. Andrew Lee claims to own Freenode. After some legal back and forth between tomaw and Andrew Lee, the libera.chat team accept that Christel sold what she owned to Andrew Lee legally, though what she owned is unclear due to the dissolution of PDPC years prior.
12. The staff and Andrew Lee try to negotiate. The staff point out that Freenode is a volunteer run network running on volunteer provided servers, none of which are owned by a freenode entity, and also that it breaks previous public statements and promises to assert control. Andrew Lee points out he is the legal owner and it is inappropriate to remove his access.
13. The staff split off to form libera.chat
So, the points of conflict:
1. Both sides at this point accept that christel sold what she legally owned to Andrew Lee. What did she legally own to sell? The domain and the website for sure, but what is Freenode? The IRC servers are provided on a volunteer basis by server owners with no commitment, the channels are "owned" by the communities in them. So what does it mean to own Freenode?
2. Was Christel in the right to sell things to Andrew Lee? Again, legally, the answer appears to be yes - without PDPC, she did own the assets personally, so could sell them, but morally she was the owner because she was representing the freenode volunteers and in this she didn't appear to have their participation, knowledge, or agreement.
3. Should freenode have a corporate owner? The idea is that it's a volunteer run group, so it feels weird to have a corporate owner. This is a big point of confusion for people who are going "So the owner took control, I don't see why there's a problem here". The issue was there should never have been an individual owner, but because of the costs involved in PDPC and its shutdown, there effectively was. The legal structure became divorced from the community structure at this point. This is considered to be a "So what?" by some people, while it's inherently a problem for others.
[1]: https://www.theregister.com/2003/01/29/buy_a_piece_of_net/
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403441
[3]: https://freenode.net/news/bye-bye-pdpc
[4]: https://freenode.net/news/pia-fn
[5]: https://freenode.net/news/freenode-pia-changes
[6]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ng5pzj/freenode_now_...
[+] [-] zokier|4 years ago|reply
> So what does it mean to own Freenode?
I think this is the very crux of the issue. Andrew claims to own Freenode in its entirety, even though its not very clear what that means. And that claim apparently rubbed the staff, tomaw in the forefront, in a very wrong way. As far as I can tell, the staff thought that Freenode the network was collectively "owned" if at all, so Andrew waltzing in and claiming singular ownership naturally resulted conflict.
[+] [-] M2Ys4U|4 years ago|reply
>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_IRC_gets_sponsored_by_PrivateI...
[1] In fact I've worked with him in the past, and have met him many times in a social context IRL. I was involved with KiwiIRC until shortly before PIA sponsored his work.
[+] [-] yannoninator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhickey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blibble|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a1369209993|4 years ago|reply
Unless you're being absurdly pedantic about England-the-kingdom technically not existing because it's actually part of Great Britain/the UK now, but if so, you should probably say that.
[+] [-] wut42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hannasanarion|4 years ago|reply