有人听到最近关于 Freenode 的事情了吗？

新闻公告
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See freenode now belongs to Andrew Lee, and I’m leaving for a new network. (kline.sh):

Some time ago, Christel, the former head of freenode staff sold freenode ltd (a holding company) to a third party, Andrew Lee, under terms that were not disclosed to the staff body. It turns out that this contract did indeed intend to sell the entire network and it’s holdings, a fact hidden from the of staff. Mr Lee at the time had promised to never exercise any operational control over freenode.

In the past few weeks, we began to realise this had changed, and Mr Lee has sought to assert total legal control over the network, including user data. Despite our best efforts, the legal advice the freenode staff has obtained is that the contract signed by the previous head of staff cannot be fought with a reasonable likelyhood of success.

As a result, Mr Lee will shortly have operational control over the freenode IRC network. I cannot stand by such a (hostile) takeover of the freenode network, and I am resigning along with most other freenode staff. We know that many of our users and communities also do not want this, as you have made clear directly to Mr Lee in #freenode and through letters.

对此事的回应：

See Welcome to Libera Chat | Libera Chat:

We’re excited to announce the launch of Libera.Chat, and welcome you to a next-generation IRC network for free and open source software projects and similarly-spirited collaborative endeavours.

Most of our staff have joined us from freenode, and we intend to continue its legacy. It was a privilege to provide the FOSS world with a collaborative platform.

When freenode announced that it was joining with Private Internet Access in 2017, the domain name, as well as unspecified other “assets”, were sold to one Andrew Lee via a holding company. Staff were uncertain but assured that PIA was to have no operational influence.

In early 2021, that changed. New advertising was pushed onto the freenode website without warning. The head of staff at the time ultimately resigned rather than explain. In the time since, there have been changes to network operations for which we have received no explanation.

This was the writing on the wall. As a precautionary measure, we began laying the groundwork for what would become Libera.Chat. Our legal home is a non-profit association in Sweden, with all our staff holding equal stakes, and we will never accept corporate control.

Control of freenode infrastructure will soon be transferred to Freenode Limited and its agents. This means your data will soon be available to their personnel. We don’t know these people; neither do most of you. We can’t claim that this is a good or even acceptable outcome, and are loath to entrust your data to a third party, but it appears that we have run out of options.

Together we have built and participated in great communities with IRC, and hope to continue that journey with you on Libera.Chat. We have courageous ambitions for the future of IRC and the communities that we cherish. Please join us on this adventure.

kde-community 邮件列表上的以下议程讨论了此事：
https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006888.html

Freenode 的工作人员建议社区拒绝继续使用 Freenode ，切换到其他自由的 IRC 网络服务（例如他们正在建设的 Libera.Chat 或者 Debian IRC 使用的 OFTC）。

Martix 和 Libera.Chat 的桥接工作正在进行中：

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影响大不大？不需要换吧

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如同上面所述，原先的许多员工表示抗议并辞职，开始建设 Libera.Chat ，它在法律上属于瑞典的一个非盈利组织，以防止它和 Freenode 一样被公司控制。在 On freenode's independence.md · GitHub 中，许多原先使用 Freenode 的社区表示了他们的抗议并宣布迁移到 Libera.Chat。
问题似乎是，在 Freenode 发生的故事是，Freenode 基础设施的控制权很快就会移交给 Freenode有限公司及其代理人。Freenode 辞职的员工说，

这意味着你的数据很快就会被他们的人员使用。我们不认识这些人；你们大多数人也不认识。

现在，据说 Freenode 已经被盈利机构控制，并且它已经受到了它的大量员工和社区用户的抗议，它将在很大程度上失去它曾有的工作人员和社区用户，所以，很有可能发生的情况是，对于社区而言，Freenode 不会和从前一样了。

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From On freenode and its commitment to FOSS - freenode

Andrew Lee (rasengan) 的反方意见：

On freenode and its commitment to FOSS

rasengan on 2021-05-19

Dear freenode,

First and foremost, I want to thank the hard working staff for keeping freenode running during these challenging times. Without you, this wouldn’t be possible.

On Recent Events

Since 2013, I have been a major sponsor of freenode providing servers and funding through one of my companies. I have no intention to stop this in the future. The rumors of a ‘hostile takeover’ are simply untrue - I’ve been the guardian and owner of freenode since 2017, when Christel, the former owner approached me and asked if I was interested in purchasing it, as we had in previous years discussed this.

In April of this year, after Christel had resigned, I was approached by the new Head of Staff, tomaw, who asked if he could have ownership over the domains. I responded with my wish to decentralize the network. Subsequently, I learned I was locked out of the account a few days later. When I asked for access back, I was denied and suddenly a story that I was attempting a hostile takeover began to spread.

At this point, I became worried about the safety of freenode – it was odd that freenode limited, represented by me, was locked out of freenode’s accounts when I used to have access the whole time. After subsequent attempts to get access back, I resorted to reaching out through an attorney.

Finally, tomaw voluntarily handed back all of the accesses to freenode limited. This is good news, as freenode will continue to run as it had with the support it has always had. Furthermore, tomaw and I have engaged in civil discussion as we are both in agreement as it relates to wishing for freenode to continue to be what it has been. I am optimistic these discussions will end with a positive result for the community – which is the most important participant here.

We’re doing this for you, as we have until now and as we will in the future.

On Decentralization

We’re going to provide more voted representation across all sectors for the freenode userbase and groups that call freenode home. Additionally, we will be opening up the server-link process to be much more inclusive, albeit, by vote (like some of the other larger networks). Finally, in order to remove the strong reliance on a centralized network, we are currently reviewing decentralizing policies including potentially revisiting the nomenclature of servers on freenode (end reliance on a single domain name).

On Sponsorships and Logos

As I have been funding freenode since 2013, there has been a logo of one of my companies or a company I’m involved in on the website. In general, FOSS projects have historically struggled to obtain funding and often times simply showing sponsors on the website helps to alleviate this to some degree. This is no different here. Every company that has appeared on the freenode website has provided financial sponsorship or servers or both to freenode. I want to send a clear message to those who disagree - you’re not helping FOSS, and your behavior of ritual defamation is toxic at best. We want to encourage sponsors to help open source developers and communities to be sustainable, not the opposite.

On the Future and Other Communities

I encourage the community to reach out and engage in discussion with the staff in #freenode-staff-discussion at anytime in order to provide input on the future of freenode. For all of the communities who are on the fence about what to do, please rest assured. Freenode is freenode, and it exists for the sake of the FOSS movement.

Yours truly,

Andrew Lee (rasengan) Chairman, freenode limited

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怪不得前两天在 lobste.rs 上看到Libera.Chat我还在奇怪一个irc服务怎么这么多关注，原来是这个背景。

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IRC - Debian Wiki 话说debian的大部分irc channel 都在 OFTC上，这就很机智

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这次社区的迁移中，似乎也有不少社区正在认真地考虑 Martix。

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Debian IRC 是在2006/06/04 搬到 OFTC 上的：
Debian – News – Debian IRC Network moves to OFTC

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lwn.net 的报道：
Upheaval at freenode [LWN.net]
Turmoil at the freenode IRC network [LWN.net]
其中的一则评论报告说：

To further help future historians, concerning the Andrew Lee self-own of May 2021:

Hugo Landau (“hl”) has now published a follow-up, detailing the (apparently fully automated) mass-seizure of (reportedly) 700+ channels, the resulting collateral damage, and the various ways in which Lee’s iteration of Freenode violated its own policies and the rights of longtime users, through the way that mass-seizure got carried out.

Landau’s conclusions strike me as worth quoting verbatim:

"It seems to me that the findings above at this point only hasten the urgency of evacuating Freenode. Even if a channel finds the Hotel California-style attitude that Freenode’s new custodians are taking to the prospect of any channel leaving Freenode to be acceptable (and I cannot imagine why they would), since Freenode now sees fit to enforce this via automated systems based purely on heuristics, no channel is necessarily safe. Even channels which have been registered for years, which are in continuous use and which are wholly compliant Freenode policies can have their registrations seized and the channel forcibly shut if they offend an automated system’s heuristic.

Privacy implications. Furthermore, it should be noted that this automated channel takeover system, in taking over some channel #x, configures a channel forward to ##x. However, it has been noted that since channels do not have +s (secret; hide from channel listings) by default, by creating ##x for every channel #x which is seized by this automated system, this reveals publicly in the channel listings the existence of channels which otherwise would have been secret and concealed from public channel listings. So the above is not only a disaster in its own terms, it also may have had the effect of revealing the existence of numerous unlisted channels and undermining their privacy. Not only that, because people attempting to join the original channel #x get automatically forwarded to the channel ##x, anyone can determine who attempts to join the original channel simply by joining ##x, allowing the members of a secret channel to be leaked."

现在 Freenode 的情况似乎不太好。