Freenode 'hostile takeover'

General
#22

I’m (still) using freenode and some of the old hands (sailfishos-porters) are also on oftc. I’m also on libera.

As I mentioned, I’m acquainted with one of the operators. All of the people of note left and only andrew remains. Are you suggesting that pdf of his clarifies what happened? I’ll grant, I would have called him out in 2017 and not let it slide so long. But I’ve also been involved when someone who had registered a domain (was the holder) tried to pull this scam while it was clear he was an ‘agent’. In the end, the org. dealt with it. In this case, Andrew was the org.

Anyway, tell me which ops at freednode you trust and recommend I talk to for their inside view?

The difference in org. structure if you wish to compare is pretty stark, today. For instance:
OFTC - Staff VS
The People - freenode

In addition, the abuse from freednode started pretty quickly (I was the second person to be on #sailfishos at libera and it was spammed badly).

https://www.devever.net/~hl/freenode_abuse

1 Like
#23

Some new context:

Freenode is now taking over channels, that say they migrated to libera in the topic. While that is their right to take back abandoned channels, it is imo unacceptable, that they do remove the migration notices on such short notice. If channels migrate away, you shouldn’t splinter their community by removing the pointers to the new channels, which were left behind. I just wouldn’t want staff, that makes such decisions, to operate my channels. (And this is ignoring that they also removed some of their policies against hate speech, racism, etc.)

We really should move to a different network, I don’t care which one, or just go all in on Matrix, where the room is independent of the server. The meson build system uses both now, with a first class Matrix room bridged to IRC instead of just a portal room.

#24

I vouch for Matrix too! It can be bridged very well with IRC as well

#25

I’m beginning to think I’ll commit to operating a matrix server for this. I’m in the process of deploying one anyway and I have some resources. ok. first debugging.

Perhaps someone with experience would be willing to co-administer a matrix server? i build a virt and invite others to do some administration? I mean, system administer, not just in the matrix instance. I’d also run bridges with matterbridge

#26

I already operate 2 Matrix servers. In general we don’t really need a server for this though, since anyone can use any server they like to connect. We would just probably want an alias on matrix.org, i.e. #sailfishos:matrix.org. The only issue would be running the bridges, but I have a Telegram bridge set up, that I can use. We can reuse the appservice-irc from matrix.org to bridge to oftc or libera and any other bridge I can set up on my server.

2 Likes
#27

Ok. It is federated after all :slight_smile: You’re right. There is no need to overcomplicate this :0 Thanks!

#28

Why pick Matrix over IRC, or IRC over Matrix, if you can have both? Quite some people already used #sailfishos through Matrix, but I think it might be nice if there would be an “official” linked channel, like I do for Whisperfish.

That way, nobody gets left behind, and the #sailfishos IRC channel can profit from Matrix’ features too (thinking Merbot 2.0, …). It could even be linked to Telegram if people are into that kind of torture :wink:

2 Likes
#29

Ah, after two days of matrix torture (why do the clients act as if they were video editing applications instead of chat?)… I’ve been sort of leaning to mirage, but frankly find all the clients a bit on the suck side o things. I wish I had the time to look a bluepill, but I seen that with everything on the SFOS side, it’s going to be libolm work.

Damn. In any case I have Nheko and Mirage and gomuks running and with the exception of pictures and stuff in the conversation (which I rarely have any interest in), I just can’t get friendly with any of these clients. Have I overlooked one (desktop)?

#30

Quaternion maybe? NeoChat? But in general it takes time to get used to a new chat client. I have never gotten used to IRC either.

#31

I think the idea of picking one over the other is which feature set you allow people to use. Limiting yourself to oneliners without any markdown is very limiting, so if you go Matrix first with an IRC bridge, IRC users will just have to deal with that.

#32

Tried quaternion but it doesn’t support crypto.

I’m going to try weechat, but know already that I won’t like it’s back buffer handling. So, I’ll have to write some code, I guess.

#33

Just tried neochat and that was a crash and burn.

for the time being I’m going to use gomuks. thanks for the recomends.

#34

For what it’s worth, irccloud just got klined on Freenode with no proper explanation given apart from “it was intentional”. This and related actions will make it much harder to use Freenode as a platform, since seemingly arbitrary things can ban you from the network.

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#35

Lol, apparently they just did a complete wipe of everything…

https://teddit.namazso.eu/r/linux/comments/o0263h/all_freenode_channels_and_users_gone/&theme=auto

3 Likes
#36

No. Way. I had noticed that sailfishos was ‘gone’ and sailfishos-porters still there. jeez.

EDIT: Hmm. Just checked. #Sailfishos-porters ‘appears’ to be there?

UPDATE: Ah, wrong.o- [Global Notice 3/3] When you connect, register your nickname and your channel and get started. It’s a new world. We’re so happy to welcome you and the millions of others. We will be posting more information in the coming days on our website and twitter. Otherwise, see you on the other side!

So, that’s a purge. Let’s get out of there. OFTC, Libera. Anywhere else.

2 Likes
#37

It’s not really a purge, but we still basically would need to register all nicks and channels again: Freenode commits suicide, is no longer a serious IRC network

Summary: Freenode is migrating to new services and a new ircd and as such has intentionally netsplit itself and dropped the services database.

#38

I meant purge in the sense of users/nicks, etc.

We should flag this for Jolla as no longer avoidable. Should I open a new ticket?

2 Likes
#39

Seems like most people found their way to libera now. It’s probably time to register those channels and move officially, since the registrations on Freenode are lost anyway…

#40

yeah, but I’m in freenodes porters channels and EVERYONE is still there. We’re just all ghosts. I’ll see if anyone hears my cries in the wilderness.

1 Like
#41

Announcement for moving the IRC channels away from Freenode: Sailfish OS IRC channels moved to oftc.net

1 Like