I come from a time when IRC servers (inside each network, Freenode being one) were usually sponsored by universities, ISPs, foundations, etc. This mindset of "competitors" and business cost of hosting some IRC chatter as if it's on a 2021 datacenter scale is quite frankly absurd.

I doubt there are more IRC users now than in 1997, and in 1997 no one would care if an efnet channel linked to a dalnet channel.

My $0.02.

You missed the part where all of the channels who moved were given reason to move.

Nobody makes like a tree and leaves unless they're just pissed off with the way things are now. People don't enjoy making work for themselves.

So no, Leenode wasn't meant to let their channels become pointers, they should have not taken several actions which caused Libera to need to exist in the first place.

The great thing is, the visitors are what make the communities on IRC, so if people want to move server, they just do, there's no need to even talk about it other than to inform visitors that Leenode is actively trying to prevent communities from notifying their users that they've left for greener pastures.

I don't really care to get involved with the whole debacle, I'm just someone who goes to odd communities for specific subjects from time to time. Other than dropping my account on Leenode and recreating it on Libera, I'll just update my server URL and carry on with my life.

Freenode could have reached out to channel founders and asked us to leave the channels open, and allowed us to indicate that they are now unofficial channels. Instead they just revoked our access to them and overwrote the channel topics.

Beyond that, yes, they are supposed to let projects decide where they want to be.

What should I have done differently?

I chose to move the official IRC channel for my FOSS project to a different server, so I registered the new channel on the new server, and updated the topic in the old channel to say it was no longer the official channel and where the new one is.

There's nothing provocative about that.

> …don't expect them to keep your empty channel with a pointer elsewhere intact.

That’s how IRC has always worked, and that’s how open communities in general work.

The marginal cost to Freenode is effectively zero, and the benefit is that users are not cast adrift without warning.

Clearly Freenode is no longer an open platform.

> don't expect them to keep your empty channel with a pointer elsewhere intact.

...except that has been the written policy. And then after channels were forcible taken over, they changed the policy to remove any mention of this.

"The policy!" As if it's some holy relic to be revered. Things changed, the policy changed. Where is the sense of entitlement coming from?

They could've reached out to channel owners, informed them of the policy (change/reinterpretation) or reminded them of it, and ask that they change the topic. Set a clear expectation, like 48hrs to resolve it, and then act. They could've even used a server wide notice for it. A little courtesy goes a long way and would've helped build up a bit of trust in the new staff.

None of that happened. Whether they believe they were in the right or not doesn't matter at this point. Trust in the new team was already low. Based on what we know, this also wasn't staff action, but just Lee. These actions also further cement the stories ex-staff has told, which only serves to damage trust in the new team further. What little trust there might have been is now gone and it seems to have galvanised those who remained to also leave. Which in itself completely defeats having ownership of the network.

Yeah, and the 'staff' that quit could have not quit and tried to resolve things amicably.

> None of that happened

You don't know that, you assume that.

> Whether they believe they were in the right or not doesn't matter at this point.

On what planet? I think the actions were reasonable given the circumstance. Taking a position of outrage because some perceived red-tape wasn't followed, that's unreasonable.

Nobody suffered any real harm. None of this is a huge deal, but people want to play victim.

> You don't know that, you assume that.

I don’t have to assume that at all. We’ve got hundreds of accounts of open source maintainers and communities of what happened. Their channels were taken over for mentioning Libera in the topic. No warning was given or possibility for redress before the takeover would happen.

If that didn’t happen like they said, then congrats you’ve discovered a massive conspiracy there. But then again, it should be trivial for anyone including the new staff to provide logs to the contrary.

> Nobody suffered any real harm. None of this is a huge deal, but people want to play victim.

Do you honestly think that all the maintainers of 250+ open source projects all "want to play victim"? Really?

You need to come to terms with "I was both in my right to and had reasons to do what I did" does not mean everyone has to be a-ok with it and play along to accomodate your decisions. What Lee did was monumentally stupid and short-sighted from the perspective of anyone caring about a project-related community they maintain on IRC. Why should they keep using freenode? Because nobody suffered any real harm yet (fwiw, you don't know that, you assume that!)?

Google could tomorrow bounce all emails to free gmail accounts that do not come from gmail and demand payment for letting them through. They would be fully in their right. It might sound like a great idea for making some $ numbers go up this month. People would not be "outraged" because Google stopped doing something for free that they had no obligation to do. People would be "outraged" (read: baffled, and scrambling to cut the service out of their lives) because it would be an incredibly braindead move.

Except the other side "responded" against bystanders, not the instigators. If I was a bystander, I would leave.