False, see this snippet from #freenode:

    15:04 <@Fuchs> as it is clearly stated in my letter, this was a draft
                   that was not supposed to be published, but a draft from
                   a colleague that linked to mine got indexed by a search
                   engine and found
    15:04 <@Fuchs> as of right now, none of us resigned, freenode is still
                   ran by the same volunteers that ran it for the past 2
                   decades, and the rest is rumours and hearsay, we'll gladly
                   officially communicate when we can, until then I'd suggest
                   taking any rants, pastebins, articles and the likes with a
                   grain of salt

This is why we can't have nice things.

IRC is a constant drama, all the way back to The Great Split[0]

Been involved with IRC a good 25 years, running a pretty popular blog about it "back in the days", i just couldn't be bothered keeping it up and updated because of all the constant fighting, arguing, bickering and people outright attacking each other all the damn time.

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but something about IRC gives people big egos, omnipotence fantasies which, again, leads to drama - i, myself, just concluded it wasn't worth my time anymore and moved on.

Mind you, this comes from someone who met his (former) wife on IRC, made great friendships with people all over the world - something i'm still grateful for to this very day.

But it wasn't made to last, sadly.

[0] http://www.irc.org/history_docs/TheGreatSplit.html

<@kline> whats best is for everyone just to sit tight and wait for it to pan out, freenode isnt going to implode overnight no matter what random pastebins say

<@Fuchs> as it is clearly stated in my letter, this was a draft that was not supposed to be published, but a draft from a colleague that linked to mine got indexed by a search engine and found

<@Fuchs> as of right now, none of us resigned, freenode is still ran by the same volunteers that ran it for the past 2 decades, and the rest is rumours and hearsay, we'll gladly officially communicate when we can, until then I'd suggest taking any rants, pastebins, articles and the likes with a grain of salt

It looks like this is just a draft so far. Most of the links are dead and one explains that it's also just a draft: https://fuchsnet.ch/privat/fn-resign-letter.txt.

That URL, https://p.haavard.me/407 is a pastebin text.

According to https://p.haavard.me/ the pastebins expire after 24 hours. But most URLs in the pastebin already are 404, which likely means that someone pasted an old text file for an issue that happened some time ago.

For those like me who weren’t aware of the context, the third party referred to in the article appears to be Private Internet Access (PIA)

The, often corrupt, sell off of community assets feels like a constant in human society.

From government kickbacks from oil companies down to community sporting clubs there is a tragic phenomena where if you have corrupt individuals in charge at a single point in time then there is a chance for an irreversible loss of a public good.

Here's a link about a community club in Australia where one of the directors ended up owning the clubs assets after some bad decision [0].

[0] - https://www.michaelwest.com.au/a-barilaro-affair-how-the-bar...

Is this from 2016?

https://freenode.net/news/recent-events-and-future-changes https://dis.tinychan.net/read/prog/1455902643

Now would be an excellent opportunity for those people to move to Matrix.

IRC was good, and I still use it, but even I as a 51 years old greybeard unix/linux accolyte realise that IRC has had its day.

If any of these chaps are reading this, move to Matrix - it'll be more resilient than IRC.

I was acquaintances with Rob Levin before he perished in a bicycle accident. I think it’s safe to say that his presence has been missed, and this is just one more way in which it is missed.

I'm shocked - shocked - that a shady VPN company would ruin a community resource like that.

what freenode needs here is for users and projects to roundly reject andrew lee. If the userbase pulls together and stays the course, the network can survive, or at least remain whole enough to move to their new IRC network as soon as it's available.

Best of luck.

So, I know that this letter was apparently a draft and wasn't meant to be published, and the people involved have not made any decisions yet—I'm assuming this just means they wanted to sync up their resignations and someone accidentally messed up, and it's not like the content of the letter itself is wrong or untrue. So with that in mind I'm curious if anyone here knows more details about these things that are being alluded to:

> Sadly, some time ago, a holding company, Freenode Limited, was sold or transferred in some way to a third party by our previous head of staff

Apparently the third party is called Private Internet Access (PIA), according to other posts. Who's the previous head of staff, and how did they have the authority to sell Freenode Ltd.? How long ago did it happen? Was this ever announced or discussed among other staff, and are the exact details of the deal even known by anyone else?

Someone else also asked this, but, what are the "recent changes"? To what end is the third party company exerting control?

It feels to me like someone was at some point put in charge of Freenode, and then decided they could make a buck off of it. If that's the case then the "hostile takeover" already happened long ago the moment that person decided to sell it. But there are so many unanswered questions here that I can't be sure of anything. It's a totally vague and confusing letter, and it alludes to all sorts of troubling things without ever clearly stating exactly what they are.

Maybe in a little while all the drafts get published and we'll actually learn exactly what's going on. But then maybe there's something I'm missing, so if anyone knows please let me know.

Why are all the gist.* urls returning 404, they seem accessible through the wayback machine though.

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

You might want to consider to shut down the clearnet port, since users will send their account passwords and all their communication inkl private messages in plaintext over the internet. I don't think that this is a good idea.

I just checked with the current freenode staff (as I'm sure a bunch of you have). I'm not sure what is going on; but the freenode staff are all in the usual place and most assuredly have not resigned.

(edit: At least, they certainly haven't resigned as of yet.)

Continuing this story from 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17696035

Well, it did get written, and nobody writes messages like that unless there is a great deal of smoke and quite possibly a good sized fire. Time will tell.

I can't seem to connect to irc.libera.chat. I keep getting "bad password" constantly, even though I am not sending one.

Just about every internet community I've been involved in has been taken offline or taken over by corporate interests and ruined in one way or another. I feel like some kind of vagrant as I move from place to place just trying to find people like me. So many friends have been lost over the years.

This resignation appears to have gone unannounced:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20210515030713/https://p.haavard...

I went to the Freenode site and read the description and I still don’t know what Freenode is. Sometimes trying to understand the tech world is like zooming into the Mandelbrot set.

But what I like about this feed is that I am constantly being exposed to new things.

> After some rushed-through recent changes, it appears that things are changing, and that the holding company, under external control, is now exerting some control over the network via legal means.

What changes exactly? And whats the point in this message ?

Beyond the staff not resigning, I have to say it's weird to see discord flourishing when you have IRC.

You cannot add favorite channels to discord, it's hard to browse, electron is clunky, and discord is centralizing all that data.

Why this submission suddenly disappeared from HN front page?

How naive can you be that a company has acquired something you volunteer for and you don’t think you work for that company?

What do people think volunteering is? Play time?

All of the IRC channels I used to visit had very high signal to noise ratios, but I ultimately abandoned the platform for two reasons:

1) Penetration testers relentlessly scanned my IP address every time I connected.

2) Endless PMs pleaded for help recovering accounts with "forgotten" passwords on various servers.

I never fell victim, but got tired of feeling like a target.

"wrong password" error when connecting to irc.libera.chat

history repeats itself.

wish the entire staff godspeed with the new network.

Damn. This doesn't seem good, at all!

For the love of god, pipe this into fmt please

Hilariously, many of these people were repeatedly saying that this would never ever happen.

Not really a huge surprise after the network was sold to a VPN company