Freenode IRC resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s crown prince
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The Ubuntu (for me, Lubuntu) teams are all migrating to Libera. I've disconnected from freenet and configured Libera with all the authentication and channels.
Dahlskjaer incorporated Freenode Limited in August 2016, contacted Lee about a possible acquisition in March 2017, and finalized the sale in April 2017. That's hardly immediately, and evidence to support Lee's involvement with the incorporation isn't currently public.
> Escalation in April
Before any of these events, Lee's long held access to freenode's DNS account was revoked and requests for that to be reverted were declined, along with threats that staff would quit if the revocation was not honored.
> A week after Lee's effectively public announcement of ownership and de facto dictatorial operation of Freenode, the staffers who resigned from Freenode created Libera.chat as a replacement.
Libera Chat was created April 23rd, before any control was transferred to Lee, 5 days after Fuchs' post and 7 days before the testnet was shutdown. It was only publicly announced on May 19th.
- Shells' logo goes up on February 25th.
- tomaw assumes his position as head of staff on March 21st.
- Lee's access is revoked anywhere April 5th-18th, not to be regained until May.
- Fuchs publishes the reorganization announcement on April 18th.
- Lee gets lawyers involved on April 19th.
- Libera Chat was created and its bylaws were written on April 23rd.
- tomaw takes down the testnet and swantzter reverts Fuchs site changes (by force-pushing them out of existence) on April 30th. Presumably under Lee's request.
- Lee appoints kevinp as head of infrastructure on May 11th.
So the narrative that Libera Chat was created because of Lee's active network control is fading the more information we gather. Staff planned, registered and wrote the bylaws for Libera Chat after Lee's request for his access back. That's the only evidence they provided. All other evidence of Lee's supposed hostile actions happened at least 7 days after Libera's inception and should only be seen as a post-rationalization.
[1]: Event #16150837732 at http://web.archive.org/web/20210525011039/https://api.github...
Had staff said "It's come to our attention freenode is owned by a privately owned company, something we can't stand behind. Join us at Libera Chat to participate in a truly community-owned network," everyone would still gladly side with and support them.
Instead, they are portraying someone as a hostile actor when there is no evidence of that. This casualty is dishonest — Christel sought Andrew out for the sale, not the other way around, and Andrew never tried to exert control in 9 years of direct or indirect sponsorship.
If you have evidence to suggest Andrew intentionally tried to gain control before his DNS access was revoked, please let me know as I've been compiling an extensive timeline of events [1].
South Korea is a republic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lee_(entrepreneur)
Neither the Republic of Korea or the DPRK have a monarchy at this moment in history.
this is a core violation of A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace[1], and everything about what has happened is a political aggression against core held beliefs of some (often early, often technical) of the internet. it is absolutely a hostile takeover.
> In 2017, Christel Dahlskjaer—who was, at the time, head of Freenode staff—created a corporation, Freenode Ltd., which she immediately sold to Lee
saying, "That's hardly immediate". but this is going from a peaceful, organized, well running multi-decade old community (since 1995 under it's original domain irc.linpeople.org) to an owned, private entity, then sold, in ~7 months. everything about this radical theft is immediate, all of the time-scales are radically short here. this is absolutely a well coordinated theft, and it's done by propertiests, by owners, claiming & taking from the free & community. at a lightning pace.
By all accounts, Christel herself incorporated and reached out to Andrew looking to sell it. Christel backstabbed the community, that much is clear. But Andrew himself never tried to manipulate the network at any point. So much so that from 2017 to 2021 no one protested Freenode Limited's involvement.
That's my only issue with the situation. Let me be extra clear: I believe freenode/libera.chat should NOT be owned by a private company. But to paint this as "Andrew is evil and trying to control us!" is disingenuous.
Just say it like it is: let's liberate the community at Libera Chat. Don't try to manipulate people into despising someone who sponsored the project for 9 years.
Again: please, if you have any evidence that Andrew intervened in the community's affairs other than sponsoring it and letting Christel and the staff free to manage it as they pleased, since 2012, let us know.
Andrew has unilaterally decided to make all channel policies draft[2]. Andrew has unilaterally changed the rule for channel take-overs, & performed a takeover (ironically for a HN bot!!! how meta-recursively high-drama!). Andrew has unilaterally decided that racial, ethnic, religious, & gender-related invectives are now ok[3] on freenode. Andrew has unilaterally changed the entire staff line up[4].
Just because he says he's doing it for good, doing it to protect us, does not justify his having seized control & having made himself dictator of this network.
Whatever disagreement he had with Tomaw, he has overly personalized this as a conflict between Tom and himself. He's ignored the wider charge that he has taken over control. Is it evil? Well it would take us many years of evaluation to establish whether it was a good or bad take over, but we'd all prefer if he not take it over like this.
"Andrew [may or may not be evil] and trying to control us!" is definitely, for sure, 100% accurate.
[1] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/507/files#diff-3c00...
[2] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/514/files
[3] https://github.com/freenode/web-7.0/pull/513/files#diff-0e38...
There's no evidence this would have happened had the initial misunderstanding not taken place: staff asked Andrew to sign over the domain, consequently locked Andrew out and further announced a reorganization with partnership with OFTC. Andrew mistakenly sees this as a coup and fights back. While staff was acting in good faith, so was Andrew. This is no evidence Andrew would fight for control had they not refused to keep his access intact as it was for years.
I'm tired of begging for evidence of Andrew tampering with the network operations at any point from 2012-2021 PRIOR to both sides believing the other one had bad intentions.
Andrew indirectly or directly sponsored freenode since 2012 and owned it since 2017. Please, point me to a single instance of Andrew interfering with the network in this period and I'll believe your assertion that he set out to control freenode, as opposed to reacting to the staff locking him out of an account he's had access for years.
And for the record, I don't expect Andrew to be a good network operator. It was already established he isn't well versed with irc and general netiquette. That doesn't mean he set out to conquer freenode, and pointing out his failures after the network operation is on him isn't an argument for his intentions, only for his ineptitude.
> All of these happened after the debacle and both parties were left to deal with their own separate networks.
you keep beating the drum that this was Andrew versus the other guys, that anyone who didn't like what was happening was another guy, and thus irrelevant to freenode & of no concern. it's a poisonous way of looking at what had, until recently, been a community. Andrew was acting unilaterally against everyone, every user, & every helpful soul who wanted some assurance of continuity & the self rule they'd practiced for decades.
> This is no evidence Andrew would fight for control had they not refused to keep his access intact as it was for years.
one person did this. not they. a single person. and Andrew then acted against every man woman & child on freenode in response.
> announced a reorganization with partnership with OFTC
absurd poppycock. there's seemingly only Andrew's word that there was some deep conspiracy to more deeply engage with each other beyond the ongoing happenstance of the much much wider irc community collaborating on ircv3 and members of freenode & oftc (and both, such as tomaw) being involved in that work. which seems ridiculously sensical. Andrew seems to want to force some of his handbrake coinshit on freenode, to be the white knight who charges in & declares he has freed it from moderators & centralization (& codes of conduct). and it seems likely he's made a phantasm of the obvious & ongoing straightforward ircv3 development, either as a ghost he sincerely has made himself believe in, or as just more of a political gambit to further murky the waters.
> Andrew was acting unilaterally against everyone
When? After everyone resigned means nothing to the discussion at hand which is finding causality. That's not how time works.
> one person did this. not they. a single person. and Andrew then acted against every man woman & child on freenode in response.
Acted how? What did he do?
> absurd poppycock
Yes, and I said so: Andrew mistakenly sees this as a coup. We know that wasn't some conspiracy, that's very clear. But it wasn't to him: tomaw requested a domain transfer, locked him out of account by mistake, threatened half of staff would leave freenode when asked for access back, other staff posted about reorganization, talked about creating a new network... WE know there wasn't a coup. He didn't.
You say I am looking for evidence I care about, but all you care about happened after all the relevant events. Useless.
The actual facts of what happened whenever and however they did happen are the worst case nightmare for the community & there is no way that with him as leader the site can retain it's legitimacy ever.
I have two questions about this: how much did she make from the sale and who got the money.
What is the value in owning Freenode IRC?
What is Andrew Lee trying to achieve here?
From the outset, the most likely outcome seems to the one occurring. Disruption of the existing organisation following by splintering of the user base and forever declining relevance of the organisation.
But unless that was the goal, I'm confused as to why.