zmmmspy

hi, and goodbye

The past few weeks has not been fun on IRC, the drama based on false information and assumptions has been insane. I've almost entirely been silent on the drama because I know the fallout that would happen if I spoke up.

A quick TLDR - I'm quitting all IRC development. KiwiIRC project lead, IRCv3 technical board, supporting the multitude of IRC networks, the lot.

Many people seem to think that I am supporting one side in everything that is going on, so just to be clear: I am not supporting any side of the current freenode drama - there is so much false information going around from everywhere that it is impossible to support anybody.

Woo freenode drama

zmmmspy

It appears that rasengan (Andrew Lee) of Private Internet Access believes that ownership of the company Freenode Ltd. gives him the right to unilaterally replace the current staff team.

We may have had our disagreements with staff, but freenode being run by a volunteer team, using servers provided by sponsors, is a key reason that we appreciate freenode.

As such, we do not believe that such a unilateral replacement by a corporate interest is appropriate.

If this attemped takeover by Andrew Lee continues, we will be advocating to move our communities elsewhere.

Context: Fuchs' leaked (not by him) draft resignation letter that caused Andrew Lee to come onto #freenode: https://fuchsnet.ch/privat/fn-resign-letter.txt

zmmmspy

All things come to an end.

I can't say I played a significant role in freenode, but I tried to do my part as a volunteer staff member, and had some fun along the way. But my involvement with freenode has to end due to what has come to light in these past months. What follows is a badly told story of what happened that made me stop volunteering my time at this network. And let's be clear about that, freenode the IRC network up until now has almost exclusively been ran by unpaid volunteers on donated hardware, sans some machines that were provided by PIA.

A long time ago, in 2016 a holding company for freenode was created, with the purpose of helping us to receive donations from PIA, for things such as freenode live. The head of staff promised that this would never have any impact on the way the network was operated. I was personally somewhat sceptical of the need for a conference for a network such as ours - conferences usually have a specific topic that is of common interest by it's attendees and thought t

zmmmspy

The Freenode resignation FAQ, or: "what the fuck is going on?"

Update 2

Freenode staff have stepped down. The network that runs at freenode.org/net/com should now be assumed to be under control of a malicious party. Andrew Lee will likely gain control over the NickServ database at some point.

I recommend that you move to libera.chat as soon as possible, as the former Freenode staff has left the network that exists on the Freenode domains, and so they can no longer guarantee the safety of your information or community there. Basically, libera.chat is the continuation of Freenode.

• kline: https://www.kline.sh/
• jess: https://gist.github.com/jesopo/45a3e9cdbe517dc55e6058eb43b00ed9

zmmmspy

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

My resignation from freenode staff
==================================

I joined the freenode staff in March 2019 [1].

Before I joined the staff, Freenode Ltd was sold [2] to a person named
Andrew Lee as part of a sponsorship deal. The informal terms of that