Fwd: The status of freenode (the IRC network used by KDE)

[Zoltan Padrah]

FYI, about the Freenode IRC

Apparently soon  #ktechlab should be migrated from Freenode to libera.chat.

I haven't been active there since quite a while, but I was wondering if it
would make sense to integrate the #ktechlab IRC room with Telegram or
Matrix application... For example, KDE's Akademy attendees room / group has
such integration.


Best regards,

 Zoltan



---------- Forwarded message ---------
Feladó: Christian <kde at fuchsnet.ch>
Date: 2021. máj. 19., Sze, 11:34
Subject: The status of freenode (the IRC network used by KDE)
To: <kde-community at kde.org>


Dear KDE community,

KDE has been using the free services of the freenode IRC networks for a
little
bit more than two decades, and hopefully happily and successfully so.

During the last few weeks, freenode was a bit in troubled waters due to
what
was perceived as a potential serious threat of a takeover of  the network
Due to that, a good amount of us who have been building and running
freenode
for the past decades prepared their resignation letters.
Some of these got leaked a few days and made it to the hackernews frontpage
and various other sites. The leaks included a personal draft of a
resignation
letter.

Due to this leakage, Andrew Lee (former PIA/LTM, now shells.com)
learned of the new situation and asked democratically elected
freenode volunteers to step down from their position, as seen in the
logs linked on [4] [5] [6]
Therefore making the takover attempt and some details public.

Included in these logs are also logs from third party users that show
that associates from Mr Lee, namely the user rdv / nirvana, contacted
various people and offered them oper access on the new network
for money or revenge. It sickens me to the stomach to see our community
that we built in the last 20 years to be lost to this kind of management.
As you can imagine, the community was unhappy as well and we got loads
of feedback. Thank you very much, this means a lot to us. We've also seen
channel ops standing up to the potential new management, see e.g. [7]

I tried my very best both to not drag KDE into this situation plus to keep
the network running as I helped running it for the past 10 years, and to
keep
your data safe in the hands of the volunteers that curated it for decades.

As you can imagine, this whole mess makes me even less want
to spend any of my volunteering  time for the potential new management,
and I wouldn't want to be responsible for sensitive user data under that
management, either.

Therefore I resigned from my volunteer position as a freenode staffer,
along
with some colleagues, and I assume a lot more will follow.
I had all my access removed, so that I could not hand
it or any data over to a third party, even if I wanted or if I were forced
to.

My resignation letter, along with some details, can be found at
https://fuchsnet.ch/freenode-resign-letter.txt


Big thanks to the KDE community for having been with us for more than
twenty
years, and despite IRCs shortcomings and new solutions available still
being
part of the freenode IRC network.

Kind regards,

Christian  (commonly known as Fuchs)





---------- Forwarded message ---------
Addedndum about future, from the regignation letter:

Where will we be going from here?

We are founding a new network with the same goals and ambitions: libera.chat.
It is backed by a swedish non-profit which lets us hold the name,
domain and various other assets to avoid a hostile corporate takeover.
It allows us to continue to operate the network  as unpaid, neutral volunteers.
It allows us to ensure that your personal data does not end up as an
asset to some company that could consider monetizing it.

You can connect to the new network at `irc.libera.chat`,
ssl port 6697 (and the usual clearnet port.

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