TL;DR (libera.chat version): In May 2021 Andrew Lee (legal owner of freenode.net) started to take over Freenode. Not liking that, unsure of the future, Freenode Staff resigned and moved to libera.chat.
TL;DR (freenode.net version): In April 2021 Tom Wesley (Head of Freenode Staff - a group of volunteers managing freenode services) tried to take over Freenode DNS. Andrew Lee disagreed. They went to lawyers. Tom lost. So Freenode Staff moved to libera.chat and set up everyone against Andrew, thus destroying Freenode. Andrew took over of what's left.
[1] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
[2] https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48
[3] https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
[4] https://freenode.net/static/files/on-freenode.pdf
[5] https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/f569c5e4727d21eb939fff99cb9dc84c
[6] https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953
[7] https://coevoet.fr/freenode_leave.txt
- https://libera.chat/news/welcome-to-libera-chat
- https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409
- amdj: https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491
- Fuchs: https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt
- kline: https://www.kline.sh/
- jess: https://gist.github.com/jesopo/45a3e9cdbe517dc55e6058eb43b00ed9
- Md: https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_461
- niko: https://coevoet.fr/freenode.html
- edk: https://gist.github.com/edk0/478fb4351bc3ba458288d6878032669d
- emilsp: https://gist.github.com/pinkisemils/39d4ded8b1639b6f39dcab15618649f5
- mniip: https://mniip.com/freenode.txt
- Swant: https://swantzter.se/freenode-resignation/
- JonathanD: https://gist.github.com/JonathanD82/6518b93708e0aaf4b8f92c8e7200816d
- https://freenode.net/news/freenode-is-foss
- https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/88549ec34ee32d01629354e4075d2d48
- https://freenode.net/static/files/on-freenode.pdf
- https://gist.github.com/realrasengan/f569c5e4727d21eb939fff99cb9dc84c
- https://freenode.net/news/for-foss
- Darren Whitlen (prawnsalad, founder of KiwiIRC): https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c1646791c61953
- https://paste.sr.ht/~ircwright/7e751d2162e4eb27cba25f6f8893c1f38930f7c4
- https://paste.sr.ht/blob/4f5c7a6b3f6adb4697572f8cd77582fa16a123de
- https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2021q2/006909.html
- https://i.imgur.com/5EVJtm2.png
- https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/19/freenode_staff_resigns/
- http://techrights.org/2021/05/21/freenode-facts/
- https://hackaday.com/2021/05/22/irc-will-never-die/
- http://techrights.org/2021/05/22/freenode-ads/
- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ev8y/freenode-open-source-korea-crown-prince-takeover
- https://www.techradar.com/news/major-open-source-projects-abandon-freenode-following-hostile-takeover
- https://betanews.com/2021/05/28/irc-fedora-ubuntu-linux-libera-freenode/
(more links welcome!)
(Everything below is my personal understanding. Remain sceptical when reading it.)
This how an argument about some minor thing can destroy the community. This example should probably be in books, in the chapter "Things you should not do".
There was Tom Wesley (tomaw, Head of Freenode Staff). And there was Andrew Lee (rasengan, legal owner of freenode.net).
It all started as an argument between Tom and Andrew of whether DNS owner should have access to DNS. But it turned into a war. Eventually the argument was so heated, that Tom would rather destroy freenode.net but not let Andrew control the DNS[6]. They went to lawyers. Tom lost. So he did destroy freenode and moved to libera.chat.
March 2021. Christel resigns (why?) and Tom becomes the new Head of Freenode Staff.
April 2021. Andrew is locked out of DNS access. Tom refuses to give it back. They go to lawyers. Tom lost.
May 2021. Freenode Staff resigns, moves to libera.chat, and sets everyone against Andrew (why?) destroying freenode.
Believing that Andrew is "a hostile entity"[3] and that "Freenode will not be a safe place"[1], most major channels leave. Some lock their channels (see "Channels takeover incident" below). Andrew takes over what's left.
NB: According to the links I have Andrew started to take over Freenode AFTER Freenode staff decided to leave. If you have ANY links saying that Andrew was taking over Freenode before April 23 (when libera.chat was registered) - please, post them in the comments, I'll add them to the list.
Historically Christel Dahlskjaer was the owner of the freenode.net domain.
Also Christel Dahlskjaer was the Head of Freenode Staff - a group of volunteers managing the servers.
In 2017 Christel sells freenode.net domain to Andrew Lee, but remains the Head of Freenode Staff.
March 2021. Christel resigns (why?) and Tom Wesley (tomaw) becomes a new Head of Freenode Staff.
April 3, 2021. Tom ask[4] if Andrew doesn't mind for Tom to own the domain. Andrew wants to discuss. Tom says "later".
A few days later Andrew finds out he's locked out of domain access. Andrew asks to get it back. Or at least give his admin (kevinp) access to it. Tom refuses.
April ~10, 2021. Andrew asks Darren Whitlen (prawnsalad, founder of KiwiIRC) to talk to Tom. They all talk, with Darren as a mediator. Tom "agrees not to change anything on the website or domain"[4].
April 18, 2021. Freenode Staff publishes "Changes to the organisational structure of freenode" blog post with changes to the team, switch to a different IRCd, partnership with OFTC.
April 19, 2021. Andrew asks WTF. They try to talk. Conversation fails. Darren says "I couldn't get both sides working"[4][6]. They go to lawyers.
Apparently Tom lost. And something else happened, because:
April 23, 2021. libera.chat domain is registered. Freenode Staff prepares to leave, I suppose. But it'd take a while to set up all the software.
April 30, 2021. Freenode Staff removes the "Changes to the organisational structure" post.
(Fuchs said it was "removed without explanation". Amdj says "Andrew insisted that we remove a blog post". But the actual push removing it was done by Swant, head of web development, who moved to libera.chat with the others.)
May 10, 2021. Tom sends email[5] to Andrew apologising that DNS access was "inadvertently revoked", and saying that "my main aim is to work with you and ensure the community and the project in general continues as it has for so long" (not sure how that was possible, given that entire staff have already written resignation letters).
May 11, 2021. Some resignation letters drafts leaked.[7] Andrew asks to give infrastructure access to his admin (kevinp).
May 19, 2021. Resignation letters are officially published. Letters are written in a FUD-style ("hostile takeover", "a hostile entity", "no one knows what is actually going on", "I suspect it is only going to get a lot worse", "I fear for service continuity", "I fear for the safety of our users") and set everyone against Andrew Lee.
May 20, 2021. Major spamwave over all freenode channels and private messages mentioning libera.chat. Channels start leaving.
May 25, 2021. Channels takeover incident. See below.
It all worked fine for years until Christel left in March 2021 (and Tom became the Head of Staff).
Did she know what's going to happen, and that's why she left? Did she do something to cause the split? Did someone else do something to her, making her quit and causing the split?
Andrew Lee says[2]: "Tomaw's team attacks christel, who had run Freenode since early 2000, and she resigns, unable to deal with the persistent harassment."
Amdj says[3] that "we were lied to, by both Andrew and Christel". Which looks like there was a disagreement between Christel and Freenode Staff. Mniip resignation letter also mentions that "this created a lot of controversy". It could be they made her leave.
But Amdj also mentions[3] "She left us with a 14-paragraph e-mail about it, and signed off with us on good terms at the time." Which implies that was not the case.
Then why did she leave?
-
Why did Christel leave? What was in her "14-paragraph e-mail"?
-
Why didn't Tom give Andrew access to DNS?
He knew[4] Andrew's a legal owner. And Tom would still have access, Andrew just asked to add himself, right? -
What exactly happened between April 19 and May 11?
Why Freenode Staff decided to leave and set everyone against Andrew, destroying Freenode? Why haven't they, for example found some good successors for themselves, or managed both projects at the same time?
Prawnsalad mentioned that the argument was so heated that Tom was "willing to have freenode destroyed because he wanted to "win" an argument over DNS access". But when Tom lost, why haven't he just given access to DNS and that's it?
TL;DR: On May 25 freenode admins tried to quickly "fix" blocked channels. But they broke a lot of other channels in the process.
In their latest post they noticed that some channels have put "we've moved to libera.chat #xxx" in the topic, and blocked the channel, preventing anyone to talk in it, or even kicked all the users to force them to move.
New freenode staff thought it's unfair. If someone wanted to stay at freenode, they should be able to stay and talk. If nobody can talk in a channel then is not a channel anymore - it's just a billboard advertising another network.
So they came up with a "great" idea: "Let's fix it up quickly! Write a bot that redirects all blocked #xxx channels to open ##xxx, then users would be able to talk. Everybody would be grateful for that".
And they totally screwed it up. Not only they have not notified the owners about it in advance. But also the bot they wrote was buggy and broke a lot of active and open channels.
Andrew Lee apologised for that many times. He said that people affected should just ask the staff in #freenode, and they'd give the channel back.
Then they were giving the channels back to their owners for the rest of the day.
Who started that "takeover bot"? Andrew Lee (rasengan) did. Or at least that's what he said.
In the end of the day, in many conflicts, it doesn't matter so much who is wrong or right - not even who is left or right - but more "whom do you trust the most". When one has chosen to trust one of the parties in a conflict, it can be difficult or impossible to understand the arguments of the other part.
This is the most biased summary I've seen so far.
It's all down to the point of view. If you regard Freenode as a property of rasengan, then the first line above may be correct. Juridically, yes, apparently he has bought the domain name from Christel, and hence he has the juridical right to define what freenode.org should be. How much of the infrastructure he actually owns is another question - I don't know the answer to that one (rasengan claims he has spent a lot of money on running freenode, the other side claims that most of the hardware comes from donations from various other companies)
Freenode was not a product, but a community - even more, a collection of communities. I think a majority of participants on Freenode considered Freenode not to be some piece of property owned by one person, but more like free public infrastructure. I think most channel opers and open source project maintainers considered that when they had a channel on Freenode, the channel was owned by the project community or the project manager, not by rasengan. From that point of view, it's much easier to support tomaw than rasengan.
Freenode was not run by employees, but by unpaid volunteers. It's my understanding that all of them decided to leave, and all of them wrote their personal reason why they left. It is difficult for me to imagine that all of them supported a "hostile takover run by tomaw". Though, in the end of the day, in many conflicts, it doesn't matter so much who is wrong or right - not even who is left or right - but more "whom do you trust the most". When one has chosen to trust one of the parties in a conflict, it can be difficult or impossible to understand the arguments of the other part. It's not completely unlikely that they all chose side simply because they trust tomaw more than rasengan, and not due to the realities on the ground.